Indoctrination versus education: “Time that we remind teachers of their job descriptions.”
Last week, I ran a piece sent to me by a Clayton State education professor describing schools as pressure cookers. Professor Mari Ann Roberts questioned the value of standardized tests and cited the growing demands on teachers. Now, another academic responds, with strong criticism.
English professor Mary Grabar, who has taught at Clayton State, Georgia Perimeter and Emory, offers a much different take.
By Mary Grabar
In the wake of revelations of testing fraud in Georgia, professors of education blame the tests. Both Shannon Howrey of North Georgia College and Mari Ann Roberts, at Clayton State University, opined in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that less testing is needed. They echoed the dominant view of education schools, where mastery of the subject is relegated to the position of an onerous task to be circumvented.
While they train in new techniques of emotionally coercing students to adopt their own ideological views, teachers share strategies for keeping within mandates—officially. I learned this by attending the National Council for the Social Studies conference, where workshop leaders openly admitted to teaching for “social justice.” Knowledge of the subject matter and academic skills were never mentioned in workshops that teachers attended to earn continuing education or graduate credit.
Professor Roberts, in fact, questions the value of knowing the material on tests and asks, “Does spitting out the date of the Civil War on cue help a child negotiate a contract, hold a conversation, keep a job or determine right from wrong?” She continues, “Do we want our children to be critical, conscious thinkers or rote memorization machines? Do we want them to recognize the value of knowledge or, instead, to believe that the purpose of learning is to regurgitate what’s been crammed in their heads for the CRCT or the Georgia High School Graduation Test?”
“Critical thinking” is critical only toward the United States and Western values, and is usually conducted under the cover of exploring feelings in groups. It is “facilitated” by teachers who themselves don’t know the material, but have an ideological agenda.
If cramming is necessary it’s because teachers spend so much time on such rap sessions. At Roberts’ school, Clayton State University, future middle school teachers spend only 24 credit hours out of a total of 122 in their subject areas. The field requirements for the five social studies classes do not even include one in U.S. history; in fact, only three are from the history department, with two of dubious value (Georgia History and Government, Selected Topics in World History, and History of World Religions). The other two are in social science: Themes in World Geography and Research Methods in the Social Sciences.
But in required education classes, like Roberts’ EDUC 2130 class, future teachers learn about “linguistic diversity,” eliminating “gender bias in the classroom,” and running “performance-focused” rather than “mastery-focused” classrooms. Her own students, following the future assignments they are expected to give their students, “co-construct” their own exam questions and make “culture quilts.”
It is a sad commentary on the degeneration of education schools that so much time is wasted on counterproductive activities and that an education professor even thinks to question the need to know the dates of the Civil War.
But it is time that we remind teachers of their job descriptions. After all, two-thirds of my DeKalb county property taxes go to supporting schools that educate 89 percent of our citizens.
As Roberts disparages the “regurgitation” of dates, we should ask her whether she feels it important that her students know the dates of the Civil Rights Movement, such as the year Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
If she does, would she not want students to know about those who came before King, like Frederick Douglass? Would the dates of the Civil War not be relevant to an understanding of his experiences as a slave?
Contrary to Roberts’ claims, learning the dates of the Civil War in a classroom that focuses on subject mastery, maintains boundaries between students and teachers, and students and students, and honors the privacy of students’ “feelings,” would help in all the goals she lists.
Were students expected to read well-written books about the Civil War and asked to memorize facts, they would have developed their powers of concentration. Reading skills are abysmal in large part due to the fact that classrooms increasingly rely on computer games, audio-visual aids and projects, and peer discussions. Even textbooks are laden with illustrations interspersed amid snippets of politically correct and deathly boring prose.
Such focused concentration and discipline would prepare the student for the grind of analyzing data, memorizing sales pitches, writing reports, and reading those contracts Roberts mentions. A common complaint by employers about Generation Y is that their undisciplined habits and solipsism carry over into the workplace.
Professor Roberts expects schools to prepare students to hold a conversation. I would assume that she means intelligent conversation, for teenagers are seldom at a loss for words among peers. But what happens when one of her students, whose natural curiosity does not lead her to “explore” the Korean War, places it in the 19th century during a conversation at a workplace party? I’ve had students in my college classrooms who could not place Columbus in his century and who had never heard of communism.
Professor Roberts also expresses doubt that knowing historical dates can help the student distinguish between right and wrong. Surely one must understand that a war that produced the greatest casualties in American history, where brother fought brother, largely over the enslavement of a people who are the ancestors of many of the students, is important enough to know its dates. An understanding of what came before 1861— of the division over slavery at the time of our country’s founding in the previous century, of the awakening of consciences through Christian spiritual revivals, of various Supreme Court decisions, of its institutional history, would help a student place this profound moral question.
Roberts’ pedagogical methods ill prepare students to be the well-spoken, independent, moral citizens she envisions. Instead, her and her colleagues’ teaching methods waste classroom time, taxpayers’ money, and violate student boundaries to the point of emotional harm. That her services are not needed is illustrated by the superior achievement of homeschooled children, usually taught by parents without education degrees.
One way to raise test scores is to fire those like Professor Roberts.
To read more about this issue, see Grabar’s report on indoctrination versus education.
In the meantime, there is a lot to talk about in her piece here.
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134 comments Add your comment
Attentive Parent
February 25th, 2010
9:16 am
S&T-
The traditional definition of a civil war is when both sides are fighting over which gets control of the national government. That’s not what was at issue in the 1860’s. The south wanted to go its own way and no longer be a part of the national union.
I think they preferred the term War Between the States because it implies parity between competing positions.
I’m old enough to have had a grandmother who was the youngest of 11 children and she had uncles who fought in the war. She also remembered when the Titanic sank and recalled it vividly when Challenger exploded. Something about a common thread of hubris about technology.
Cultural capital matters in school and in life. If you can’t get it at home and the ed schools that are the gatekeepers for who gets to teach devalue it as “mere facts”, we fail to raise too many children beyond the circumstances they were born into.
That’s a pity for the child and a national loss of potential to boot.
EX-Evil Old English Teacher
February 25th, 2010
9:16 am
I wish GA would just admit it doesn’t value public education highly, and move on with it. This article exemplifies what people in GA think about education.
Sad.
Liberal Teacher
February 25th, 2010
9:18 am
I do believe educational programs have to change but to become more realistic. Multicultural education classes and diversity pedagogical classes are needed to help new teachers understand the various students they may come across, and learn varying teaching techniques for those students. Again, public education is just that, PUBLIC. Many of our students are kids who most people could not/would not even think of speaking to, or would be afraid to do so…
Unfortunately, educational programs are not realistic. They give new teachers these great idealistic,critical, exploratory activities to use in the classroom that they can not really use because of the curriculum schedule. They also do not prepare new teachers for the legal obstacles they will face especially with Special Education children. This is why teachers complain so much (as someone stated earlier) because the expectations are never really met. New teachers quit every year, or play the switching game thinking they will find a school or system that works. And of course they never find one. Between the politics; the bickering b/t admin. and teachers; the silly testing; uninformed parents; unfocused students w/many electronic devices and no paper/pencils; the furloughs; growing population of children w/special needs; etc… Education in this country is going downhill. I could go on but I think you get the picture. There is not one answer but as one teacher stated…”If parents do not wake up, they will lose their children and this country a whole generation (and generations to come).”
Honestly, to prepare a teacher for today’s schools, more academic hours would have to be added and more classroom practice. For the poor pay, not many of the new generationers will sign up for this…Lord knows they want it quick and easy, and so do their parents. Teaching is so much more than academic knowledge because any average person can study a book and become knowledgeable. To teach a child is something totally different…
Nature Dude
February 25th, 2010
9:21 am
Actually what keeps America behind is an apples to oranges comparison.
Much of the developed world has a system where high standards and expectations hare kept. Students must take exams to enter high school, and that determines their track. Refusal to perform or attend school means you’re kicked out. If you want to go to college you are forced to work for it, and if not then they will show you where to go.
We here in the states are stuck in dealing with an entitled way of thinking that comes from politicians, parents, and students. There are many reasons for this, from a schools perspective it comes down to money, each student is worth x number of dollars to the school. Kicking a bad student out means less money for the school. In addition when looking at the way AYP is measured, if a student is ejected from a school as a freshman and never enters another school, and school #1 loses track of said student, the student will count against their graduation rate 4 years later. Does that make any sense, and in the age of fear does that encourage adminstration to do the right thing?
We must equip and allow those in education to do the right thing, not the politically expedient.
BugKiller
February 25th, 2010
9:23 am
@ S&T: could it be because the American Civil War was literally a “war between states.”
Actually, literally, it was a war between a republic and a confederation of independent states.
But War Between the States is an accepted variation.
DrDaddy
February 25th, 2010
9:26 am
Maureen, I usually enjoy the pieces you post, but I fail to understand what you saw worthy in this personal screed by Grabar. You should have done your homework on this one. It is not enough to say you post things like this just to generate “interesting debate.” You cannot have civil debate while allowing for little more than personal attacks to be bandied about.
Based on Grabar’s own website, opinions I have heard from those she works with and those she has taught, as well as her rating on ratemyprofessor, she is seemingly a very angry and unhappy individual with a tenuous grasp on reality at best. She is an unabashed conspiracy nut who sees communist/marxist/pinko-lefties hiding around every corner. She laments teachers with ideological agendas who violate student boundaries while simultaneously forcing her own religious and political views down students’ throats.
She may have a few good points in this diatribe, but they are buried under an embarrassing morass of personal venting that would best be shared with her therapist or anger-management coach.
As a person who is worked extensively with home-school students for years, I would love to see her data showing home-school students perform better across the board than students in the public education system. My experience has been very different.
Our educational system is broken. No one would dispute that. But, the last person I would turn to for advice on how fix our system is Grabar. She would throw us back to the 1700s. These debates about the value of rote memorization vs. more constructivist approaches to education are little more than brass polishing on the Titanic.
The real challenges center around how the world of education is being radically altered and that change is driven by technology, openness, and unprecedented access to knowledge. Control over the learning process is being abolished at the institutional level and placed into the hands of the individual.
The point to be taken is that American school systems, and many of those abroad, were never designed to support open, collaborative learning. There were designed to serve the needs of a society and not to support personalized learner-centered instruction. Given this, it is easy to understand the resistance to change as it would require a complete rethinking of the entire institutional setup. But, rethink we must.
Real, modern, learning is messy. The current educational system is insular and controlling, and it is doing a disservice to our students. That is the debate.
Devildog
February 25th, 2010
9:28 am
Georgia looks at education differently, that’s for sure.
My daughter was the highest ranking student in her class when she got her Masters Degree in Special Ed. She burned out after eight years and decided to go to regular classroom teaching.
The deep thinkers in education told her she had to go back to school and take certain classes to be certified. To my twisted way of thinking that was like sending a Marine veteran to army basic training.
She breezed, needless to say. Just a waste of money.
Yvonne
February 25th, 2010
9:28 am
Ms. Grabar is correct, diversity and disparaging the West has taken precedent over true teaching, we are going to lose our country at the rate we are going.
susan
February 25th, 2010
9:30 am
Bugkiller: Very well put. I agree with you 100%. I remember a social studies teacher that I had in high school (in 1983)that was really liberal – and all of the students in the class were heavily influenced by her, or were afraid to propose opposing views – I was the only one who would ever disagree with her. More recently, I completed my accounting degree and had to take a business management class – the teacher was hugely liberal and taught more sociology than management!
I have a daughter in fourth grade. The underlying theme in much of her science book is about how people are destroying the earth. Not much weight is given to OTHER things that have an impact on the earth. I know that, unless there are some dramatic changes, it will only get worse as she goes through school. Fortunately, I take an interest in what she is learning in school and make sure that I fill in the holes in her education.
EX-Evil Old English Teacher
February 25th, 2010
9:33 am
Devildog– “Georgia looks at education differently, that’s for sure.” Not differently. Georgia HATES public education. That is very clear. Once vouchers are introduced though, most upper middle class can go to private and the poor or lower middle class will be left in a system that has been abandoned by teachers, because Georgia has shown them nothing but disdain and disrespect. Keep bashing them, Georgia. Keep it up. They’ll follow my suit. Then you’ll get the left overs and, perhaps, that is what you deserve.
Pierce Randall
February 25th, 2010
9:34 am
Really, what a lousy English teacher, to so abuse the practice of scare quotes.
The argument that someone who did not feel it critically important to know the date of the Civil War would find it important to recite the date of a speech by Martin Luther King is a strawman. I think it is a cogent point on education to say that it’s more important a student understand the themes of the Civil War and of the Civil Rights movement than the dates on which some events occurred. It’s more important to teach students, indeed, to think critically about these themes: there’s this perennial debate about whether the Civil War was about slavery. Well, let students hear both sides of that. Or let students learn about attempts to pass Civil Rights in the 40s and 50s that were blocked by Southern Democrats. This kind of information is history, less so the date of this or that event.
Also, this Gardner person really circles around white fears of encroachment. Who said critical thinking is always anti-Western values? If you want to talk about industrialization in Europe, for instance, tell students about Max Weber, Karl Marx, the Luddites, Adam Smith, Peter I of Russia, and the labor movement. You can pretty much only talk about white guys, and appeal to this Grabar lady, and still see the different ways people reacted to that, their concerns, and whose model works better for understanding industrialization.
Grabar gives us a pretty plain-jane populist critique of contemporary trends in education, perhaps to shield her deeply dishonorable conclusion calling for the firing of a remote colleague (both Grabar and Roberts worked at Clayton State). What will ultimately measure the success or failure of a history education? If students go to college and take history courses, they’re much better off thinking critically about history than having a set of dates memorized. (Most professional historians are, or are reacting to, some sort of broadly-structural understanding of history that places more emphasis on cause than on the actions of individuals, at least in the context of most historical debates.) If students pursue work in an area other than history, the ability to form arguments, understanding causation, and contemplate the broader significance of things is about the best you can hope for, I think, from a history education in terms of employable skills. If students just need to speak intelligently about a topic for five minutes, rote repetition of facts is less useful than forming those facts in a narrative sequence, or understanding 2 or 3 different views on a subject. If students are supposed to just supposed to know some facts, then it’s easier to fit facts into some sort of framework, like an argument or a narrative.
All this stuff Grabar puts in scare quotes, about exploring things and making culture quilts, is just regurgitated right-wing rhetoric from the 80s. A good culture quilt assignment might teach students about history–it just depends on the depth of the subject matter discussed.
BugKiller
February 25th, 2010
9:34 am
Liberal teacher: bullcrap.
The problem is GOVERNMENT (the word “public” is a lie) schools are in the grip of ideologues who find cause to abandon actual knowledge to embrace “multicultural diversity.”
How about ASSIMILATION???
People come to this country wanting to enjoy the American way of life, yet they want no part of America itself. They don’t want American history, American language, American heritage.
And for some reason, educators and politicians are giving THEM what they want.
We’re so busy trying to honor and respect so many other, different cultures that we ignore and degrade our own.
Again… DOWN WITH SOCIAL STUDIES. Let’s get back to HISTORY and GEOGRAPHY.
BugKiller
February 25th, 2010
9:40 am
Dr. Daddy, if you were capable of rational thought beyond your own biases, you may understand where Dr. Grabar is coming from.
She’s not someone who “sees communist conspiracies” everywhere. As for her ratings on RateMyProfessor. PLEASE. You might as well be deriving your information from a Wikipedia page, but with far less oversight.
While I do not agree with everything she says, she is largely correct in pointing out how a very NARROW ideological bias is destroying government-controlled education in this country.
But I’m guessing you’re all about that particular bias, so you don’t care all that much.
Happy Teacher
February 25th, 2010
9:50 am
You know what’s amazing as I read these posts? Good points are made on both sides…
It just seems that there are “sides” staked out at both ends of the spectrum who just insist on a scorched-earth policy instead of listening to one another and debating one another rationally.
Unfortunate, because it is seems like there is a lot of strong intellect and concern at work. But a lot of hate, too.
Philosopher
February 25th, 2010
9:55 am
Rote learning of the facts is boring and forgettable. Teach them the facts and make them discuss the facts in the time frame in which they occured and throw out scenarios for critical thinking. Dump the scantrons and constant government testing and test them regularly to see that they are getting it. Fail the ones who don’t and move on.
Philosopher
February 25th, 2010
9:59 am
There is just too much for kids to learn to waste so much time on CRCT test preparation…it is irresponsible!
Gerald
February 25th, 2010
10:20 am
Pierce Randall:
Thanks for proving that you are out for leftist indoctrination as opposed to actual education.
And the person who said “she wants to take us back to the 1700s” (which means back when 15 year olds were studying Greek and Latin instead of sending explicit pictures of themselves to each other using their cell phones) thanks for showing what you are all about as well.
And the person who claims that in a voucher system the upper class will abandon public education and the lower and middle class kids will be left behind … thanks for putting your cards on the table too.
This is the primary problem. The left sees public education as a vehicle for social transformation and social uplift. It has ever since A) John Dewey transformed public education in America and public education adopted his theories (and yes, John Dewey was a socialist) and received a huge shot in the arm with B) busing for integration purposes (which embedded the idea that transforming society was the primary role of education) and C) things like Head Start, school nutrition/health, and the liberal pedagogical reforms (which put the finishing touches on the idea that schools are supposed to uplift the poor and remake society).
People are so intent on using public education to solve society’s problems (even conservatives are getting in on the act with “abstinence education”, although in this they were only imitating the massive failure of liberal sex education programs, which were introduced in the 70s and 80s only to see teen pregnancies continue to spiral out of control … abstinence education wasn’t introduced until the mid-90s when the teen pregnancy rate in many communities and populations was already 70%) that teaching kids how to read, write, compute and reason gets pushed aside.
If Roberts, Downey, “liberal teacher” or the rest of their ilk actually cared about kids’ education, then they would be on the front lines demanding that we return to the way schools were run back when they actually worked for most people: back when everyone agreed that no learning was ever going to take place in the absence of a disciplined environment or in an environment where large percentages of children fail to master fundamentals.
But they don’t care about kids learning. They care about using schools to achieve societal transformation. Look, these “graduation tests” … most of them are actually on the 8th grade level. Even the SAT was only on the 10th grade level before they dumbed it down to the point where so many kids now get perfect scores that some get rejected by Texas and UCLA (especially if they are Asian). But instead of being concerned with the fact that in so many schools 60% to 70% of 12th graders can’t pass an 8th grade level “graduation test”, instead of asking how they got into the 12th grade without being able to pass a test at the 8th grade level to begin with, they challenge the practice of giving the test!
Now again, I am not a fan of the CRTC, ITBS, NAEP and all of these other alphabet soup acronym tests. I especially hate how so many schools have eliminated art, music, PE, recess etc. so kids can sit and study for standardized tests all day. But the tests aren’t the problem. The problem is why these tests exist in the first place: all these kids in HIGH SCHOOL who can’t read the Sunday paper (let alone Charles Dickens or Shakespeare), who can’t write a half-page essay about THEMSELVES, and who can’t add fractions or perform long division. Even worse, these high school kids don’t know or care about their educational deficiencies because they haven’t been instilled with any ideas about their own personal goals and future.
We need to get away from these political agendas – whether liberal or conservative – and get back to talking about how to start back producing kids who can read, write and do simple arithmetic. The problem is leftists like so many of the people posting on this forum who could care less about your academic deficiencies so long as you think (and vote) like they do. It is fitting that the first commenter was John Trotter. Lest we forget, it was Trotter who put his underlings on the Clayton County Board of Education, leading to that system’s loss of accreditation, which Trotter then went on to claim was a racist conspiracy by SACS.
I will say that if teaching kids “social justice” requires that they be so poorly educated, that is a powerful bit of evidence that right wing ideologues like Roberts have on their side!
And oh yes, the person who said that Roberts’ ideas sounded like something from the Reagan era: excuse me, I am no Reagan fan by any means, but as far as education goes, everything they said was correct. The Reagan folks stated that outcome based education, new math, connected math, social promotion, and all of those other fads from the 60s and 70s were failures, talked about the decline in kids’ mastery of basic educational skills, sounded the alarm about the increasing discipline problems, let folks know that “comprehensive sex education” was a massive failure, and warned of the declining academic performance of males and minorities. Guess what? They were 100% right. Look, even stopped clocks are right twice a day, and that points to the correctness of what the Reagan conservatives said on education. But a clock that is running fast is ALWAYS wrong, and that describes the “public education as social uplift/transformation” liberals who claim that the way to address the problem of so many 12th graders being unable to pass an 8th grade test is to stop giving it so that we won’t find out how miseducated they are.
Carter G. Woodson, the fellow who created black history month, once wrote a book called “The Miseducation of the Negro.” Were Woodson alive today, it would take him 5 seconds to conclude that all races are now being miseducated, and no Woodson would not see that as an improvement, for black people or anyone else.
Maureen Downey
February 25th, 2010
10:28 am
Gerald, I think there is a lot of romanticizing of “the way schools were run back when they actually worked for most people.” Fact is, they did not work for most people because there was never an expectation that most people needed a high-level education. We are in a brand new era where we cannot shrug off the lack of reading skills and math fluency because we assume many kids are going to end up in the mills or factories or family farms. Those jobs are gone and that era is over. Nostalgia aside, it wasn’t the golden period that many people contend.
Go back? To where? Where is the period of American education where standards were applied to every kid?
By the way, I don’t expect schools to transform society. I do expect them to teach kids advanced reading skills that are necessary not only to read a college chemistry textbook today but a manufacturing guide or a car repair manual.
Maureen
Mary Grabar
February 25th, 2010
10:47 am
Maureen, you should read Sandra Stotsky’s book, “Losing Our Language.” She demonstrates with statistics the decline in reading levels over the years. Today’s ninth-grader, for example, reads at the level that a fifth-grader would have read 50 years ago. She documents it. Textbooks have been dumbed down. Kids aren’t even writing essays, but blog posts. More and more teachers assign “video essays.” The high school graduate of fifty years ago knew a lot more than today’s high school graduate. This is not only backed up by anecdotal stories like the ones I hear about someone’s uncle doing crossword puzzles in Latin, but from studies. They’re out there. The liberal school reforms have been ANTI-intellectual.
JacketFan
February 25th, 2010
10:57 am
As someone with a PhD in English, I ask that we please stop with the negative generalizations about PhD’s in English. My area, for instance, is in folkloristics and my research is in both the interaction between folklore and literature AND anthropological (folkloric) approaches to community development. I have served on economic development authorities, consulted with communities wanting to improve their environments and worked to promote the traditional arts in the state. Furthermore, I also work as a branding consultant and copywriter for an Atlanta design firm. All English PhDs are not alike – please don’t lump us into such a confining little box. Much thanks.
It's Not Brain Surgery
February 25th, 2010
11:06 am
S&T, I’ll spare you and everyone else a joke about the value of your “southern” education. As BugKiller points out, the American Civil War included the United STATES of America and the Confederate STATES of America. The Union (USA) had a more centralized (Federal) government, which UNITED the STATES. the Conferacy (CSA) favored a more loosely organized CONFEDERATION of STATES. this is why some believe the war was about “states rights” (which is another of saying; slavery was a states rights issue, ipso facto, the war was about slavery)
Attentive Parent
February 25th, 2010
11:06 am
There apparently was a golden age of fairly widespread literacy throughout the population in the 19th century but it predated the public education system as we know it. The idea of mining camps putting on Shakespeare readings is almost unfathomable today. What happened?
Mass education systems do not ever seem to have been fond of teaching the basic skills that are necessary for most of us to learn to read or do math well but that the adult teacher had already mastered to the point of automaticity.
Much of the history of US education for the masses seems to be about developing various justifications for why it is not necessary to teach these component skills directly. Once immigrants started arriving in significant numbers in the late 19th century, there were brief discussions of academics for all. Soon thereafter you have the rise of manual training movement and then the life adjustment movement.
After World War II and Sputnik progressivism in education had a bad name because we had discovered that a significant part of the population did not have the literacy and math skills society needed. In the year Lawrence Cremin said progressivism was dead (1961), Jerome Bruner presented his theory of constructivism in education. The names change but the actual practices not too much.
Maureen- You are so right that it is hard to find an era where American public education tried to raise most of its students up to solid academic standards. It’s mostly a history of why we cannot and why it’s not necessary.
The Pioneer Report discussed yesterday indicates that Common Core will be more of the same. Rhetoric about excellence for all but a reality that is anything but. We have a great deal of information about what works in education but not a willingness to implement it or we would be copying what works in the high achieving states and A+ countries. Are we as a society uncomfortable with the reality that there’s a hierarchy to academic achievement that may be inconsistent with our desire for fairness?
What will be the national cost of our emphasis?
Dr. John Trotter
February 25th, 2010
11:16 am
Professor Grabar: You make some valid points, but the answer is not the sterile, one-inch-deep curriculum that reflects essentially just what is questioned on a standardized test. I was an undergraduate history major. I went to grad school at UGA to earn a Master’s and a PhD in History. I looked at the job market and concluded that I did not want to end up teaching History in junior college in Kansas. I was and am a Georgia boy. So, I decided to teach school in Georgia. I had to take a couple of quarters off from my history studies to go through the certification stuff. For one quarter, I took a block of courses in Education over at Aderhold Hall at UGA. I student-taught one quarter. Then, I resumed my studies at LeConte Hall in History. I agree that the teacher (especially in the upper grades) needs to take many more courses in the subject that he or she will teach. This is very important. The students need to sense that the teacher is “the authority” in that field. Unfortunately, so many of the courses that a prospective teacher has to take from an education department on a college level are a waste of time. I believe that one semester (no quarters anymore!) of education courses is plenty! Most of the time should be spent on subject matter.
When the student becomes a teacher, then let the teacher teach! And, if the teacher simply cannot cut it, then a loose net will catch this. By far, most of the prospective teachers will be very adequate teacher, if the snoopervisors will leave them alone. Let them teach. Let them be creative. Trust and respect their professional judgment. The tight net-type of snoopervision is destroying public education and causing many otherwise good teachers to abandon any idea of “teaching” in this type of environment. (c) MACE, February 25, 2010.
neo-Carlinist
February 25th, 2010
11:19 am
Maureen, I think you need a “time out” (that’s a joke). Gerald was not “romanticizing”. In fact, in my opinion his comments reveal critical thinking, augmented by FACT. I don’t if it is the cause or the effect, but most public schools are social engineering labs. Today’s student might as well be a lab rat, as “educators” experiment with this method or that, and can’t seem to determine if stating facts (understanding core curriculum) is more important than expressing feelings (diversity, cultural quilts, etc.). Even if the “end game” is some sort of ideological robot, robot cannot further the ideology if it cannot read and write or add and subtract.
a constructivist
February 25th, 2010
11:47 am
“We have a great deal of information about what works in education but not a willingness to implement it or we would be copying what works in the high achieving states and A+ countries.”
Although I don’t agree that “copying” something from another country (or even state) would necessarily produce the desired results, I think it is worth looking at what others are doing and adopt things that can be useful in our context. The GPS mathematics standards seem to be one such effort – by examining and adopting the Japanese (one of the A+ countries) curriculum standards.
Of course, people are quick to point out that Japan is practically mono-racial/ethnic country, Japanese parents value education more, etc.
Attentive Parent
February 25th, 2010
12:13 pm
Fortunately for the Japanese and unfortunately for most Georgia Students (outside of Lucky Fulton), the Japanese aren’t trying to use learning tasks and the Instructional Frameworks’ inquiry approach to teach math.
They also have solid textbooks.
I don’t think the homogeneous population has much to do with this unless you think that one of the problems in the US with better instruction flows out of political concerns of disparate impact.
joseph
February 25th, 2010
12:26 pm
Anyone with an open mind who has spent any time at all in public education will have no difficulty vouching for the truths stated by Dr. Grabar. Educational leftist bias is the norm, in my own experience as a teacher at the high school and college level. Think of any educator you know and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts they are liberal. I think many liberals are well-intentioned and ill-informed, all the while believing they are ‘the ones we have been waiting for’. Not!
Some of these posts have teachers union written all over them. Of course people don’t want their stranglehold on educational indoctrination challenged or broken. Maybe the Patriotic, revolutionary housecleaning beginning to happen in Washington will spill over into the educational system. Clean out the shit-for-brains and America-haters.
For all you liberal diversity-lovers out there, please bend over now and kiss Ms Grabar’s arse for actually providing some (diversity of thought). The fact that you all are attacking the lone conservative who ‘dares’ to point out the obvious is a sad reflection on the lack of free-thinking and openness to a variety of opinions in education today. Libs, your intolerance is showing and you have proven Dr. Grabar’s assertions.
JH
Mac
February 25th, 2010
12:47 pm
Mary “Maureen, you should read Sandra Stotsky’s book, “Losing Our Language.” She demonstrates with statistics the decline in reading levels over the years. Today’s ninth-grader, for example, reads at the level that a fifth-grader would have read 50 years ago”
The vast majority of children with learning issues dropped out of school before 9th grade 5 years ago. Now they do not. I would venture to say those statistics are basically meaningless.
Mac
February 25th, 2010
12:50 pm
filtered!
Oh no!
February 25th, 2010
12:57 pm
I agree that most college professors are liberal. Many want to teach more about “social justice” than they do about content. I have not found this be true in elementary, middle and high schools however. 90% of the teachers we know are actually hardworking conservatives.
One Voice
February 25th, 2010
1:12 pm
Dr. Grabar,
When assessing educational trends through the use of statistics, we generally use a compilation of actual studies, not books written by a single author. That’s how individuals become indoctrinated- they become entranced by a book by an author who has an ideological bias and can manipulate the statistics to support their predetermined opinion.
My question to you is whether you took many (or any) courses in measurement or statistics when doing your PhD in English? Can you look at the statistics presented by Stotsky, understand them, critique them, and interpret them? Do you know if they are accurate? Do you know how to discern correlational research from experimental research? Do you know which one of those can effectively gauge cause and effect and which one cannot? Do you understand statistical significance, an ANOVA, an ANCOVA, regression, etc.? Or did you just read the book and decide Stostky must be right because her presentation of the data supported your point of view?
As someone with experience in state and national assessment, as a language arts teacher and through doctoral work in educational psychology at a national research university, it is my conclusion that most of your contentions are factually incorrect. It is my understanding that the quantitative ability of American students has declined over the last century, but verbal skills have increased over that time, as measured by standardized assessments and psychological tests. The broad dissemination of print material, in addition to the ubiquity of technology and the internet, as well as the SAE that is prevalent on TV, is likely related to this trend.
While 50% of the adults in the country read at an 8th grade level or below, the percentage of the population that is literate is higher now than at any time in our nation’s history. There were far more illiterate people, proportionally, in the past, with the ratio increasing the further you go back in time. We have many people who are still functionally illiterate or semi-literate, but very very few who are completely illiterate and cannot read short words or pronounce the sounds of letters.
Over the past 30 years literacy has remained fairly stagnant with only small dips and gains, and that is a problem. But it is a problem that shows little resemblance or relationship with the “facts” you report. It does not sound like you understand the difference between a study and a book, science and opinion, fact or fiction. After receiving my undergraduate degree in literature from UGA, I chose not to pursue a PhD in English because it was too subjective, based too much in opinion, and would leave me lacking in more objective scientific knowledge. After reading your work, I cannot say how glad I am I made that choice.
Philosopher
February 25th, 2010
1:51 pm
@Oh no! You seem to imply that only conservatives are hard-working and that only liberals have an agenda…really! If there is any dogma being pushed, shoved, fried, slathered with religion and shoved down children’s throats these days, it is conservative “values”. For real??? Our dinner table conversation many evenings is directed toward undoing the indoctrinating crap my kids hear at school. Education should not be based on ANY agenda but on facts!
EX-Evil Old English Teacher
February 25th, 2010
1:54 pm
Joseph– THERE ARE NO TEACHERS UNIONS IN GEORGIA
James H. Ward
February 25th, 2010
1:55 pm
I have read quite a few of these responses and see that they fall into two categories, neither of which addresses anything but an opinion.
No matter what the subject being taught, results is the issue. By all reports the majority of high school graduates, a number that is less than half in my home in Chicago, are functional illiterates. From my personal experience of working with and hiring, I sometimes have trouble believing that they are even functional.
Back in the far past, when I went to college, having to take a remedial course in anything was an embarrassment that most students could not stand. Now it is standard freshman fare, and not just in one or two subjects. The only thing that seems to have improved is excuse making.
Before we condemn all teachers, we should first examine the system that turns out such dismal results. I cannot be convinced that someone who has mastered a subject cannot be trained to present it. I am less convinced that someone who has mastered presentation can be trained n a subject. I am also sure that an Ed degree is similar to a MBA, which is training in administration, relying on someone else to provide something to administer.
As to the comparison of the human brain to a computer, I can tell you that the greatest computer program in the world or the greatest operating system in the world is totally useless without data. And when it comes to data, GIGO is a statement of fact.
both sides
February 25th, 2010
2:02 pm
Here’s a thought: Why can’t we have both? Children need to know the important facts AND the context that surrounds them. To not have both is to paint an incomplete picture.
One way that could be addressed is by having more true “subject matter experts”. In other words, those with Math degrees teach math, those with Biology degrees teach science, etc., instead of Education majors teaching all of the above.
Just my opinion…
Tina Trent
February 25th, 2010
2:06 pm
I’m quite surprised that so many people here leap to the assumption that Mary is advocating for a curriculum of “shallow,” rote memorization. She says no such thing. She is advocating for a content-rich pedagogy in both education schools and ordinary classrooms, where much time is wasted now on solipsistic expression, “peer-to-peer” exercises, and technological distractions.
Further, to imply that one needs a specialized degree in education studies to be able to perceive, let alone comment upon, the idiocy flooding Georgia’s education schools (let alone a discussion of education policy in a newspaper blog) rather proves the point that the empresses of education studies have no clothes. It would be funny, if only the results were not so tragic. Here is a random article from the first education studies journal I came across in a quick google search: it richly illustrates the inanity — not to mention the borderline illiteracy — of the “science” of education:
http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=15043
I encourage Dunwoody Mom, Dr. Daddy and others to read Mary’s full report on the Social Studies conference and engage her arguments. And, Dr. Daddy, it speaks volumes about your character that you choose to lash out so personally while quavering behind a fake name.
Attentive Parent
February 25th, 2010
2:17 pm
One Voice-
I am so glad you expounded at length about your credentials since your facts are quite wrong and you confuse a large vocabulary for analysis.
Why precisely did they have to revalue the SAT around 1995? Because of the precipitous drop over time in the verbal scores. If you look at some of Jane Healy’s books she analyzes with examples the difference in standardized test questions over time. It’s the difference between inference and analysis after a sophisticated reading passage and reading a menu now and checking which item is not included on the Supreme pizza.
I do not think Dr Graber described the book “Losing the Language” as well as she might have if she’d known commenters would use her point to show off the statistics terms they know. Since I have a copy of the book, I thought I’d restate her basic point more clearly.
What Dr Stotsky did in 1999 was to show, with examples, how the basal readers used in the US had changed over time -shorter passages, less sophisticated syntax, more action and conversation and little descriptive imagery. She then speculated on why these changes took place and what the likely impact would be as fewer students were exposed to the quality of language that was common in previous generations.
Oh no!
February 25th, 2010
2:19 pm
@ Philosopher….sensitive any? I don’t think that is what I said(or implied) at all. I was simply making an observation that the teachers we know are conservatives who also happen to be hardworking. We do know one very liberal high school teacher and as a matter of fact he is the one who is constantly spouting off to his classes about how the evil Republicans are doing this or that. That is just wrong.
I’m also not sure what conservative “values” you are referring to. That is a catch phrase used by liberals to demonize anything they don’t agree with. Now if you mean religion, you are absolutely right.
Most of the liberal spin on things comes from the textbooks, not the teachers. We have no control over that and are required to teach the standards.
James
February 25th, 2010
2:20 pm
Vouchers – such an easy solution to problems such as these. Give students and parents real choice in education, and those that don’t care continue to rot away in South Fulton or South Dekalb schools.
Mary Grabar
February 25th, 2010
2:42 pm
Thanks for clarifying my post, Attentive Parent. I was in a rush. You are right about Stotsky’s book.
Punk Teacher
February 25th, 2010
2:54 pm
Here’s what bothers me about today’s posting. Dr. Graber’s report is not peer-reviewed and should not be accepted as anything but a political statement. You may agree or disagree, but Dr. Graber’s work is not scholarship. I fully support her right to express any views she has whatsoever, but to claim that this is anything other than a political report written for ideological purposes is, at best, to dissemble.
There are so many things to disagree with in Dr. Graber’s report that I don’t have time to begin. However, I would point out that curriculum is inherently political. The mistake I see on the right (and also sometimes on the left, but not as often) is positing that one’s teaching one’s view is correct and that opposing views are mere indoctrination.
I wonder why people would be surprised that many teachers are drawn to the profession out of a sense of social justice. I took some courses at a business college and expected most of the professors and students to be capitalists. They were, but that didn’t stop me from learning from them. I wasn’t damaged by taking classes from people with a different political bent than mine.
I entered teaching as a way to promote social justice and social transformation. Also, it seemed to offer a way to live in a capitalist society without being a capitalist or supporting capitalism. All educational choices are political; the difference between curriculum and indoctrination depends upon one’s point-of-view. I don’t want to venture too far into postmodernism here, but notions of fixed truth went out of fashion in the academy more than 20 years ago.
I am a lefty, very much so, and I believe in rigorous academics. My education liberated me, and I want to offer the same to the next generation.
Mac
February 25th, 2010
3:17 pm
Attentive — your clarification of the book does make sense – thanks for adding that.
I still think that the 2 populations of 9th grade students are most likely too different in makeup to be compared efficiently. Many more dropouts 50 years ago. The comparison of the content of the texts and readers makes much more sense for a comparison.
a constructivist
February 25th, 2010
3:34 pm
Attentive Parent,
So, the issue is just as much about having quality textbooks, isn’t it? If we don’t have quality textbooks, it really doesn’t matter what the standards say. I think many studies have shown that US textbooks are bloated, unfocused, and incoherent.
By the way, problem solving based instruction (of mathematics) is considered to be a good instruction model by Japanese teachers. See, for example,
http://hrd.apecwiki.org/index.php/Do_I_Have_a_Window_Seat_or_an_Aisle_Seat%3F_Grade_5_%28Japan%29
Gerald
February 25th, 2010
3:55 pm
Of course, the quick retort to the entrenched educational ideologue is “well we weren’t trying to educate everyone back then because back then people worked in farms and factories.” Nonsense. Utter, complete and total rubbish easily debunked by a perusal of statistics. The only major change is an increase in people going to college, and even that is only because a person now has to get an associate or bachelor’s degree to learn what was being taught in high school decades ago.
And by the way … I am not that old. I am not even 40. I grew up in the generation that came well after the civil rights movement. Yet I remember their changing the SAT twice because of the low scores. I also remember when first the junior high schools and then the high schools stopped requiring essays and papers because kids couldn’t write them anymore. I also remember when schools started allowing kids to use calculators in math class … and I don’t mean trigonometry, but to do basic addition and subtraction. And anyone remember “ebonics?” That happened during the Clinton administration. And ebonics was simply an attempt to get more federal funds for a school system that had ruined their schools on outcome based education and other fads that failed and needed the money to try and fix it. So do you mean to tell me that this school board wasn’t trying to educate everyone before they went with those nutty reforms in the 80s, two decades after the civil rights movement and when we were well into the post-industrial and high tech era? If not, what were they doing?
And oh yes, I should have pointed out this earlier: I have LOTS of relatives who are in public education. Some who taught for 40 years and more, who literally started back in the “one room schoolhouse” days. Those teachers would be SHOCKED to hear that they weren’t trying to educate everyone.
But as long as we can keep excuses like “educational performance started declining only when/because we started trying to make sure that ALL kids could read, write, and divide 12 by 4 instead of upper class white males” then nothing is ever going to happen. Maureen, people like you are making me bigger and bigger advocates for home schools, charter schools, and vouchers all the time. And I don’t even LIKE those things. I especially dislike vouchers because I can imagine the unintended consequences. The best way to kill off private education in this country is to get all the private schools hooked on public money for 20 years, and then stop the public money from coming. That is just one example. But people like you are pushing me towards going ahead with the vouchers to save as many kids as I can from people like you now and worrying about the unintended consequences 20 years from now.
One Voice
February 25th, 2010
4:06 pm
Attentive
My point is that if you are going to try to reference statistics to validate your argument, then you should probably know something about them so you can discern whether they are accurate or not. I have my doubts as to whether Dr. Grabar or you possess that understanding.
It is important to understand the difference between correlational research and experimental research because only one of them can determine cause and effect. Dr. Grabar suggests that teaching practices commonly covered in educational courses are responsible for students’ poor literacy skills. This implies a causal relationship, which simply cannot be supported by the type of book we are discussing (and books are generally not viewed as providing sufficient empirical evidence for the reasons I described earlier, so bringing up another one does not enhance your argument). Neither of you seem to understand this so I do not find your conclusions credible.
I will stand by the facts I described: 50% of adults in the US read at an 8th grade level or below, but we have the highest proportion of literate citizens of any time in our history. Literacy levels have remained largely stagnant over the past 30 years. You can read your books, and be swayed by their ideological bent, but I’ll stick with reading actual studies, thanks. Enjoy your Supreme pizza.
blackbird13
February 25th, 2010
4:41 pm
I am enjoying the endlessly fascinating experience of taking college classes again after being out of any academic setting for more than 20 years. Though the age range has definitely expanded, most of the students are right out of high school. You would think that this would give them an advantage over older students who have to re-accustom themselves to academic work, but generally the opposite is true. Most of them are ill-prepared for critical thinking because they do not have even the most minimal understanding of the material. My sense of why this is so, which is admittedly based only on observations made over the last 18 months at one public college in Georgia, comes down to one issue: THEY DO NOT READ. For the most part, when a professor assigns material to be read, the assignment is treated as something they don’t have to do because, after all, it is “only reading.” The proof of this comes the next class period when the professor initiates a discussion of the material covered in the reading and the response is blank stares. Or, if an opinion is offered it is merely that, an opinion based on how that person feels about a topic in its broadest sense, not an informed opinion based on an analysis (or a even a basic understanding) of the material.
I am confident in saying that if you asked professors why high school students fail in college the number one reason given would be: THEY DO NOT READ.
Attentive Parent
February 25th, 2010
4:53 pm
Thank you for the lecture on cause and effect and correlational studies. Under the circumstances it is rather amusing that you are so presumptuous.
Constructivist- Of course the textbooks and their quality are important. Before Georgia became such a mishmash of the math content in the GPS, the inquiry oriented learning tasks in the Frameworks to “discover” math through problem solving, and the dire quality of many of the textbooks on the state approved list, everyone seemingly acknowledged that fact and planned around it.
As the math curriculum center (CSMC) quoted so well: “Teachers decide what to teach, how to teach it, and what sorts of exercises to assign to their students largely on the basis of what is contained in the textbook authorized for the course”. This is true all over the world although in recent years in Georgia it has been a problem.
In general CSMC nailed it when they said “mathematics curriculum materials are a strong determinant of what students have the opportunity to learn and what they do learn”. In Georgia, because of the mishmash, it looks like the enacted curriculum is far more reflective of the Frameworks that the Standards themselves. We have had some discussions on previous threads as to whether there was a Bait and Switch with respect to the intended math curriculum.
Problem solving is a wonderful method to apply and extend math knowledge. It’s just a very poor method to use to acquire correctly modeled and scaffolded information and math skills initially. You really cannot acquire conceptual understanding without plenty of problem solving with a myriad of types. First though most students need explanations, worked examples, and plenty of practice to develop automaticity. Rote learning is only a stepping stone but it is a necessary precondition to deep and rich understanding of a subject.
joseph
February 25th, 2010
5:32 pm
One of the ways that progressivism in education manifests itself is in dumbing down students about the history of our country and/or teaching US history in a way that would gladden the hearts of our enemies around the world. This is happening now, in history and in other subjects. No, leftist educators won’t complain about it, because they like it and agree with it. America is to be hated and changed. Patriotism and love of country is sooo uncool, only for the ignorant masses, not the smug, liberal elite of higher education.
When I taught college-level sociology a few years ago, the text was full of political correctness and a leftist mindset. There was no attempt at a balanced view. Were I a young mind without benefit of 56 years of learning and experience, the book would have filled me with despair about our nation. Around the world the progressive (communist) impulse has been destructive of people’s dreams, wishes and achievements. The history of the past 100 years is proof of that and continues to be so.
a constructivist
February 25th, 2010
5:43 pm
Attentive Parent,
Many Japanese teachers would disagree with you. They would use problem solving to introduce new concepts and procedures. That is not to say that the GA Frameworks are of any high quality. Even if their ideas may be compatible, their execution might be very different in quality.
I would like to hear what you have to say about the lesson I referred to.
Attentive Parent
February 25th, 2010
5:56 pm
constructivist-
I will look at it but it may not be tonight. I don’t mind being disagreed with.I just prefer documentation and solid analysis with examples to mere assertions. My children (I really am a parent) are pressuring me though to start dinner.
Somewhere someone has told me that Japan changed its approach to what you are describing and then went back to a more explicit approach after, I think, poor PISA results. I’m pretty sure I read that in one of the national ed publications within the last year or so.
Will check after making tacos.
As I have said before this matters because we really do want US students and Georgia kids especially to be the best that they are capable of becoming given the research we have and the funds committed. They are our future and our most irreplaceable economic resource.