SOS: Save Our Schools

Pop Quiz:

What political journalist said: “A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.”?

What patent office employee said” “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”?

What author wrote: “The United States…the only country in history born, not of chance and blind tribal warfare, but as the rational product of man’s mind.”?

What British Historian said: “Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.”?

Answers at the end of this post.

Much is said today about existential threats to our Republic but what is a bigger threat than an illiterate, uninformed and incurious electorate? The revitalization of our education system may be our last, best hope. The question is how do we repair the damage that has been done over the past half century?

In the 1800s the people saw the school curriculum as simply the three R’s: “reading, writing and ‘rithmatic”. Abraham Lincoln was raised in a house that had only five books. He attended local schools intermittently and yet he needed no speech writers to help craft his Gettysburg and Second Inaugural Addresses. Montessori schools are less structured and they encourage independent learning. Perhaps the task of our schools should not be driven by a one size fits all curriculum but rather should be teaching students to be intellectually curious, desirous of learning in a more eclectic manner.

Reading should be stressed and every school should have a large and varied library which would allow students to explore a wide range of authors…e.g. Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Jane Austen and Kenneth Roberts. There are many wonderful books that will teach children about our rich political and social history. We should remove the shortcut to “learning” provided by electronic media.

How do we create a nation of autodidacts?

Teach Critical Thinking not Critical Theory

Critical thinking is an essential discipline for growing intellectually. Students should be presented with a specific question to be answered. Let us assume for purposes of this post that a class is asked to prepare papers explaining how the Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution.

To begin the process the students should apply research tools and identify resources that can provide the information required to formulate a potential response. In this case they should start with the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. The student will learn about the English Bill of Rights from 1689 and the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776. Was there opposition to the Bill of Rights? If so, what were the arguments that were made against the addition of a Bill of Rights? The student will discover that the original proposed Bill of Rights included not 10 but 12 Amendments. Why were two Amendments dropped? Was the Bill of Rights essential to the final ratification of our Constitution?

The teacher should lead a class discussion of potential “answers” and should employ the Socratic Method as part of the process. The teacher should not offer any answers and should proceed by challenging the students with questions designed to support the research. This method allows the teacher to stimulate discussion.

This seems to be a simple process but it is rarely used in American classrooms today. Students are reluctant to engage in classroom “debate”. They are uncomfortable having to formulate opinions and make arguments to defend those opinions. There is an almost pathological fear of disagreement and having to be exposed to ideas that are new or contrary to their existing body of “knowledge”, whether that knowledge is right or wrong. Students cannot learn if everything is merely an affirmation of what they have come to believe.

Education must involve teaching students how to think not what to think. Teachers should not indoctrinate and should not put their thumb on the scale. A student at Cornell University had the following question on a mid-term in History: The United States interned people of Japanese descent during World War II, dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and did nothing to stop the Holocaust. Why? The student answered the question based on historical knowledge and was rewarded with a D. The student went to the professor assigned to the class (Teaching Assistants actually led the class discussions) and the student was told that her paper was excellent but the TA awarded to low grade because the proper answer was: Because America is a racist nation. This a perfect example of what higher education has become…brainwashing at $75,000 per year.

Every school should have a debating class and there should be debate competitions involving local schools.

This interactive teaching should begin in the elementary schools. Cynical observers see the lower grades as merely a day care activity. Our elementary schools should go back to the three R’s. Reading with comprehension should be job one as it is the basis of all adult transactions. Every student, starting in the first grade, should learn to be confident in embracing new concepts and ideas and should not be afraid to share those ideas with their peers. They should learn to deal with counter arguments as that is, in many cases, where real learning takes place. They should learn the rudiments of hands on research rather than asking Google or Wikipedia both of which are politically slanted.

My son was in seventh grade when he had an interesting experience with a politically motivated teacher. The class was asked by a show of hands to declare whether or not they believed in Global Warming. Every hand but one reached for the sky. Imagine my pride when I learned that the one dissenter was my son. The teacher than engaged in a bit of pedagogical bullying to fix this potential outbreak of independent thinking. The teacher announced a “debate” and selected two of the best students to challenge my son. I provided a few simple handouts and the debate was on. When the dust settled the class voted again and now seven students agreed with my son. Amazing what shining a light in the dark can do.

I had a recent encounter with a college professor who was lamenting the fact that her students were “depressed” about the state of the world. There are two levels of depression: the first is a personal depression and the second is a reflection of a dystopian societal mindset. The first is not within the purview of the classroom teacher other than, perhaps, a responsibility to let the parents know of observed concerns. The latter is in many cases driven by influences that may be related to education. The particular issue for this professor was the “existential” threat of climate change. It was suggested that she could provide data (which is abundantly available) that might show the students that the problem may not be all that bad. It was later reported that this simple suggestion made the professor “uncomfortable”. Is that not an abdication of her role as an educator…i.e. addressing ignorance?

It could be argued that her reluctance to challenge her students was motivated by politics rather than education. It begs the question as to whether politics has any role in the world of pedagogy. The answer is NO!

Answers to the Pop Quiz:

What political journalist said: “A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.”? Norman Cousins

What patent office employee said” “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”? Albert Einstein

What author wrote: “The United States…the only country in history born, not of chance and blind tribal warfare, but as the rational product of man’s mind.”? Ayn Rand from Atlas Shrugged

What English Historian said: “Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.”? G. M. Trevelyan