Lamar Alexander fails to save the day (again)

I happened on C-SPAN yesterday and there was Lamar Alexander, former Secretary of Education and now a US Senator, speaking in the Senate on restoring teaching history to it "rightful place" and making sure that history was part of the NCLB act. Since he says this same stuff all the time, here is a quote from him from 2006 taken from what was pretty much the same speech:


"Just one example of how far we are from helping our children learn what they need to know. The fourth grade national report card test asked students to identify the following passage, quote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Students were given four choices: Constitution, Mayflower Compact, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation. Less than half the students answered correctly that that came from the Declaration of Independence. Another question said, "Imagine that you landed in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776. Describe an important event that is happening there." Nearly half the students couldn't answer the question correctly that the Declaration of Independence was being signed."

Of course, since science and math is so very important as we all know, one wonders what history being restored to its importance does to STEM. When something comes in, something has to go out, in education. But this is not my point.

My point is that politicians never seem to get it about education. What history do students "need to know?" None actually, unless they plan on being historians or maybe senators. Now I realize this is a radical point of view, but just like math and science, history is not something anyone needs to know.

Why not?

Because knowing what happened in Philadelphia in 1776 does not in fact make you a better citizen, no matter what Alexander says. A good citizen would be one who carefully considered the issues when voting. That would mean being able to think critically and ask hard questions of politicians.

In 1776 we had a bunch of politicians who, if the present is any example, were surely voting for their own special interests. The fact that we, as a country, feel the need to make them into folk heroes does not make it one bit more likely they they were any better or worse than the current people who govern us. What Alexander is really arguing for is more indoctrination - more informing students what to think instead of teaching them how to think.

Students don't need to know any official facts. They need to know how to live their lives intelligently. It is quite obvious that schools and school reform movements do not have this as an item on their agenda. Just more cramming for tests.

The phone rings... its Milo

"I was wondering if you would like to play grandparent games with me..." says the small voice on the other end of the line.

Milo is 3 years and 4 months old. We read words for 30 minutes. You want to know how to educate children? Make it fun.

What were your test scores Mr. Obama?

“It means treating teachers like the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable,” Mr. Obama said. “Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement."

Really? Is that how professionals are treated these days? Do we measure other professionals by how those they mentor do on standardized tests? Would you, Mr. Obama, like to be measured by how your staff does on standardized tests?

Treating teachers like professionals might include letting them actually teach to a student's interest and concerns rather than helping them raise their math scores.

And, while we are at it Mr. Obama, what were your scores on the SAT? Did anyone ask you that while you were campaigning? Would you have thought it was stupid if they had?

Tell me the quadratic formula Mr. Obama. Can't? Might that be because it doesn't matter in any way to know it? Stop making kids memorize nonsense and you will be treating teachers like professionals.

More College Graduates? Say it ain't so Mr. President.

Mr. Obama has promised that by 2020, America will "once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world."

Can we think about that for a minute? Why does this matter? We Americans so believe in college that we rarely ask why. I asked my students at Yale and later at Northwestern why they were in college. I heard a lot about parties, a four year vacation, going because their parents made them come, and a lot about how you need a college degree to get ahead.

I never once had anyone say they were there to learn. Never.

College offers diplomas. Education, not so much. And to the extent that colleges do offer education, a Yale English major is typically considered well educated by modern standards, what difference does it make to the country? Those English majors don't easily find careers and in bad economic times even a Yale degree may not buy you much.

I am sure what Mr. Obama meant to say was that by 2020 our population will be able to reason effectively, work well with others, and communicate well. At least that is something he quoted from me while he was campaigning. But alas, now it all about making sure those 3000 colleges we have survive regardless of whether they are turning out more productive and reasoning citizens.

Why study what we have been teaching?

When I was at Yale I occasionally did some freshman advising. I once had to advise a student who had just arrived from the LA ghetto as to what courses to take. I said to take what interested him since there were very few requirements. That is not what he wanted to hear.He asked what I had taken as a freshman. I had attended Carnegie Tech 20 years earlier than the date of this advising session. There were no choices. You took Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Western Civ, and English Lit. No exceptions. He said that he would take those courses. I said that was absurd. He said that I was very successful and that had been how I had started so that was what he would do. And that is what he did.

I was reminded of this story when I had my little encounter with the Obama administration last week. They are about to propose spending hundreds of millions of dollars on education to ensure that we do a better job of teaching the curriculum that has been in place since 1892. Re-examining what is taught and why it is taught will not be considered because they are worried about class warfare. They don't want people saying that a new education system will be different than the one that got them to be the successes that they all are.

If Duncan, Obama (and Nick Kristof) got where they are by taking algebra and physics then we can't take that way from the next generation of students.

This argument is so stupid it is hard to know where to begin to counter it. Let me just say that not all my friends from Carnegie Tech nor from Stuyvesant High School for that matter have become great successes. And that those that have succeeded did so in spite of the mind-numbing "study for the test fact retrieval system" still in place in our schools.

I learned to think from my father, not from school. Most successful people fare well because of good parenting and good genetics not good schooling. We will always have winners of any system that is in place. School should help people live happier, more productive lives. School should not be about winning the competition. Of course, that is exactly what school is about now. What is needed desperately is to pour money into an absurd system?

Obama, Kristof, Duncan and the NY Times all agree

I had some hopes for education when Obama was elected. Gone now. Here is what happened:

Nicholas Kristof, an otherwise seemingly intrepid journalist, wrote a column in the NY Times about how he now realizes that education is our most important priority, and that the solution is higher teacher salaries and memorizing math songs like they do at the KIPP schools. This column was so wrong-headed that I decided to try and contact him so that I could help him understand the issues in education better. I asked a friend who could help me do that. This is what he told me:

Both the New York Times and the Obama administration are very concerned with keeping education exactly as it has been. They are afraid that if radical changes occurred they would be criticized by poor people because they will be seen as having kept the kind of education that made them successful away from the poor. The people who run Washington and New York went to the best academic schools, so any attempt to transform high schools into places where learning is fun and where real world skills are taught, has to be stopped because it would be received badly by poor people and this be politically damaging to the folks in power.

In other words, no job training, no life training, but more algebra and Dickens and Chemistry formulas. Despite the fact that those things were put into the curriculum originally by elitists in a very different world who cared not at all for the poorer classes learning these things is perceived by them as on the road to success and that idea will not be fought.

I have always said that everything evil in education starts with P. Politicians and the Press have always been my two favorites. They don't want to fix education, they want to make it look like it has been fixed.

Thank God for Educational Research!

In today's New York Times:

Children who misbehave at school are often punished by being kept inside at recess. But new research shows that recess helps solve behavioral problems in class.

This is how our Department of Education and all those brilliant Education researchers spend our money. What next? 20 years of research to prove that algebra is boring and irrelevant to all of those who drop out of school? How about a research program to determine why children find school stressful?

I went to school ten times one year to suggest to my son's teacher that she stop banning him from recess as a way of punishing his inability to not act up in class. "He can't sit still that long and making him sit still longer will not help," said I. If only I had known the relevant research!