Topic: Education
Balderdashing Education Bashing When Calvin Coolidge said "The business of America is business," he and very few if any others knew just how deep this sentiment would sink into the American consciousness. Now it seems apparent that the way business thinks has muscled every other kind of thought process out of the American mind. The unfortunate result is that if no business solution exists to an American ailment, it festers into an incurable American disease.by John Kozy
(centrist liberal libertarian)
Saturday, November 14, 2009
When Calvin Coolidge said "The business of America is business," he and very few if any others knew just how deep this sentiment would sink into the American consciousness. Now it seems apparent that the way business thinks has muscled every other kind of thought process out of the American mind. The unfortunate result is that if no business solution exists to an American ailment, it festers into an incurable American disease.
Two kinds of thinking dominate the business mind. One comes from the paradigm of manufacturing; the other from the paradigm of marketing. Both have been used as the basis of education bashing.
If looked at in terms of the manufacturing paradigm, education is likened to the assembly of parts into a product. And the paradigm decrees that if the worker assembles the parts correctly, a good product is produced. If the product produced turns out not to be good, the conclusion drawn is that the worker did not assemble the parts correctly.
The paradigm, of course, is very problematical. It overlooks questions of design and materials among other things. Nevertheless, the paradigm is pervasive. And it is the foundation of some education bashing.
The educated student is likened to a product, subject matter is likened to its parts, and the teacher is likened to the worker. When the student turns out to be uneducated, the conclusion is that the fault lies with either the subject matter or the teacher. So we are subjected to interminable curriculum debates, reform, and teacher bashing.
If looked at in terms of the marketing paradigm, education is likened to selling. The idea is that if teachers packaged the material in attractive ways, the student would buy it.
This paradigm too is problematical. It overlooks the fact that just because a product is bought has no bearing on whether the buyer uses it at all or to its best advantage. Nevertheless the paradigm persists, and when it turns out that the student is unable to use the product or use it well, the conclusion drawn is that the way the product is packaged must be faulty, and since the teacher is the packager, the ultimate responsibility for the failure is, yes, the teacher's! So we debate teaching methods and tools. We hear things like, "Make learning fun," "Turn the classroom into a game room," "What we need is more toys in classrooms," the toy of fashion being the computer. And we bash the teacher again for not being an entertainer, forgetting that if teachers were entertainers, they wouldn't be in classrooms.
But education fits neither of these paradigms. The educated student is not a product assembled by teachers, and learning is not a game. Furthermore, both of these scenarios overlook things that should be blatantly obvious.
The first of these is that educated people have existed in all the eras of recorded history. People acquired educations long before the school and the classroom were invented, people acquired educations long before anyone even thought of things called teaching methods, so the methods, the schools, and the classrooms cannot be sufficient conditions for the education of students.
The second should be even more obvious. Almost every teacher teaches a group of students called a class simultaneously. Every student in the class is exposed to the same material presented in the same way. Some of these students learn a lot, most learn some, and some only a little. How can this be if the teacher and the material are at fault?
During my many years as a university professor, friends often asked for the names of good colleges to send their children to. My answer always baffled them. Although there are various way of "rating" colleges—the number of professors with terminal degrees, the number who publish, the number of Nobel Prize recipients, the size of libraries, etc.—I know of none that measures the amount of learning acquired by graduating students. So I used to say "If your child is a good student, he or she can get a good education at any accredited college, and if your child is not a good student, he or she will not get a good education at any college."
The point is that, and it should be obvious, education has very little to do with the teacher or the teaching and almost everything to do with the student. Yes, of course, an exceptional teacher can produce exceptional results in some students. And yes, facilities, books, and equipment do have some bearing. But neither of these affect all students. Even exceptional teachers find it necessary to fail some students, and everyone who attends schools that have the best facilities and equipment doesn't graduate either.
So the real question ought to be how do we rear good students? The other questions are really irrelevant, for no matter how they are answered, unless we can find the answer to the first question, the result will be the same, the debate will go on, and teachers and teaching will continue to be bashed.
The ultimate truth is that a social institution can be no better than the society that supports it, and unfortunately American society is not and has never been intellectual. Intellect and scholarship have never been esteemed. Too many parents don't or can't read. Too many homes lack educational resources. Books, magazines, and journals, especially good ones, are lacking in too many homes. Television is pervasive and from the point of view of intellect, is almost universally bad. It deserves its nickname, "boobtube." Intellect and scholarship are not the "business of business" and therefore not the "business of America." And I might add neither is education.
What do children see when they notice what American society does esteem? Entertainment, sports, and marketing. Therein lies the fame, the honor, and the rewards of being an American.
So what do our children want to be? Actors, rock stars, football players, salespeople, and in some cases, simple criminals, and none of these requires great intellect or a broad education.
Until this cultural attachment changes, America will have a problem with its educational system. So unless you're more optimistic than I, the teachers of America should acclimate themselves to teacher bashing just as they have acclimated themselves to low pay and low esteem, for good students cannot be reared en masse in a culture with these ideals.
What makes comparisons of the American educational system to the educational systems of other countries so insidious is that this aspect of a supporting culture is always overlooked. Students in those countries learn more than American students merely because those cultures rear better students, not because of better teaching, better teaching methods, or better equipment. And as long as we continue to believe that teachers and teaching are to blame, our students will not only learn less, but as time goes on, learn less and less.
The views expressed in this
article are those of John Kozy only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. John Kozy is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2009-11-14 01:46:25
"...the teachers of America should acclimate themselves to teacher bashing just as they have acclimated themselves to low pay and low esteem..."
Low pay? You've gotta be kidding! Teachers (and college professors) collect higher wages at their highly inflated, tenured positions than the majority of Americans earn. Frankly, in my experience, most teachers in public schools and colleges are overpaid compared to the value they provide.
Besides, you can't argue that student failure isn't the teacher's fault and then claim that teachers deserve to be paid more in the same breath. It's logically absurd, particularly in a system where it's the teacher, the administrator, and the legislator who decide what a student must study, rather than the students themselves. It's completely irresponsible to make that argument.
Calvin Coolidge neither said nor believed that "the business of America is business."
He did, however, as Governor of Massachusetts advocate higher wages for the Commonwealth's teachers. He quoted Roger Aschem -- Queen Elizabeth's teacher who said a man would pay a great sum to have his horse trained but only pennies for the education of his child. Hence, we have well trained horses but are greatly disappointed in our children. In my experience -- education is a great waste of time.
you bring up a good point in that anyone can learn, if they know how to learn.
more importantly, you mention the "culture" surrounding our nation and how it is detrimental to learning. and it seems you link it to "business", which is correct in the sense of "business as it exists".
what i think is missing is the connection between this "marketing" of a product, which you have pointed out is basically the "dumbing down" of people to become "better" consumers of product, rather than to become "smarter" people.
this marketing is a function of a non-competitive market. in other words, a lack of "free" business and a predominance of "controlled" business.
a "marketed" product can never compete with a product that has no marketing cost when it comes to price. costs are always higher on marketed products due to the marketing itself. if price competitiveness can be eliminated, then firms can use "marketing" of any form to sell their product at an inflated price.
if our "markets" were truly competitve, firms would have no time or money to waste on "teaching" people how to be dumb, which would make a smarter population, which would make companies work even harder. the media and anything else for that matter, would not resemble what we have today in the slightest.
by the way, if you think a population can progressively get dumber and teachers somehow would not, then you will have to tell me where from this "dumber" population these smarter teachers are coming from.
Most teachers get about $2.00 or less per student per hour per day when their salary is so divided out. The notion that university-trained teachers are overpaid when their pay amounts to babysitting wages per student per hour, is nonsense. Furthermore, most school contracts work like a form of serfdom. Teachers trade tenure and seniority at that one school for job immobility, since they lose both tenure, seniority and most of all pay when they move to a different school district. Ten years in any district makes moving to a new job a real financial sacrifice and that contributes to "burn out" with weaker teachers. Strong teachers challenge themselves to keep it fresh, no matter how long they are in the same job.
The one unbreakable law of education is not Murphy's law but rather the Matthew Effect. The reason the achievement gap never closes is that as teachers get better at teaching, the best students benefit most and the worst students benefit least from all the improvements in instruction. Both Race To The Top and No Child Left Behind ignore the Matthew Effect to a whole nation's peril and yet a lot of educational research has absolutely proven the inescapable nature of the Matthew Effect. The only way to avoid it is to purposely choose to deny the best teachers and best teaching techniques to the best students. And that is the real dumbing of America. (See Matthew 25:14-30, the parable of the talents)
Want to comment on this
article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is
required to track your comment. However, we will neither
publish your email address nor distribute it to other
organizations or persons. The only reason we might use
it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your
comment. All comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
