Will-ing a straw man
I had some illuminating experiences observing at my mother's elementary school Monday, but i'll post about those soon. For now, I want to talk about the column heard 'round the eduworld -- George Will's jeremiad against Education Schools in Newsweek. Will argues that Ed Schools are counterproductive largely because,
I'm not interested in getting into the specific question of Ed Schools; people far more expert and far smarter than I are the commanding voices in that debate. I want to challenge Will on his straw man syllogism that equates the flaws in Ed Schools with flaws in an imaginary ideology of "progressive education."
First, Will is simply incorrect in suggesting that any variant of progressivism/constructivism is the dominant form of pedagogy in contemporary American education. As I've detailed, the National Assessment of Education Progress, High School Survey of Student Engagement, Trends in International Math and Science Study and National Assessment of Adult Literacy all bear out the widespread prevalance of traditional teaching in our schools. Moreover, almost all 50 state assessments -- see Texas, Virginia, California and Georgia for examples -- ask overwhelmingly multiple-choice questions which require almost nothing but (wait for it) knowledge.
Next, Will, ever the crafty writer (having penned about a hundred columns myself, the techniques stand out), sets "contextualized knowledge" and "constructed knowledge" in opposition to "rigorous" knowledge, grouping them instead with the somewhat less academic goals of tolerance and self-confidence. The only problem is, take away context and take away students' ability to learn for themselves, and what you're left with is facts. Quite simply, he is lionizing lonely nuggets of information that are supposed to somehow constitute the skill sets and thinking ability necessary for all children to achieve their highest potential.
I don't doubt that some people espouse the soft philosophy Will and Heather MacDonald assign to everyone who doesn't sleep with a copy of direct instruction manuals underneath their pillow, but those people are a minority and are embracing a wholly bastardized version of progressivism. Piaget made it abundantly, explicitly clear in his writings that pre-existing knowledge was necessary in order for new knowledge to be constructed. Dewey wrote that "Education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience" and offered that the classroom should resemble a tiny democracy; he never said that students should be left with no structure and no guidance in the hopes they stumble upon thinking skills.
I could go after Will's other arguments, such as pointing out that there are plenty of public and charter schools which take a more progressive approach and succeed just fine (my ubiqutious love of H-B Woodlawn works well as an example here); or perhaps noting that the decline in adult literacy coincides with the rise of the conservative-supported "Standards Movement" (not to make the case that the two are related, only that blaming a certain philosophy while the country was moving in the other direction doesn't make a whole lot of sense), but let's leave it at this:
It is fair to make the proposition that Ed Schools aren't up to snuff. It is manipulative to connect flailing Ed Schools to the unique liberal philosophies many of them espouse, generalize those philosophies, and then declare that this amorphous progressivism is dominant in our schools and responsible for the majority of the problems we're facing. It's not, and I have a hunch George Will knows that.
The dogma has been that primary and secondary education is about "self-actualization" or "finding one's joy" or "social adjustment" or "multicultural sensitivity" or "minority empowerment." But is never about anything as banal as mere knowledge. It is about "constructing one's own knowledge" and "contextualizing knowledge," but never about knowledge of things like biology or history.
I'm not interested in getting into the specific question of Ed Schools; people far more expert and far smarter than I are the commanding voices in that debate. I want to challenge Will on his straw man syllogism that equates the flaws in Ed Schools with flaws in an imaginary ideology of "progressive education."
First, Will is simply incorrect in suggesting that any variant of progressivism/constructivism is the dominant form of pedagogy in contemporary American education. As I've detailed, the National Assessment of Education Progress, High School Survey of Student Engagement, Trends in International Math and Science Study and National Assessment of Adult Literacy all bear out the widespread prevalance of traditional teaching in our schools. Moreover, almost all 50 state assessments -- see Texas, Virginia, California and Georgia for examples -- ask overwhelmingly multiple-choice questions which require almost nothing but (wait for it) knowledge.
Next, Will, ever the crafty writer (having penned about a hundred columns myself, the techniques stand out), sets "contextualized knowledge" and "constructed knowledge" in opposition to "rigorous" knowledge, grouping them instead with the somewhat less academic goals of tolerance and self-confidence. The only problem is, take away context and take away students' ability to learn for themselves, and what you're left with is facts. Quite simply, he is lionizing lonely nuggets of information that are supposed to somehow constitute the skill sets and thinking ability necessary for all children to achieve their highest potential.
I don't doubt that some people espouse the soft philosophy Will and Heather MacDonald assign to everyone who doesn't sleep with a copy of direct instruction manuals underneath their pillow, but those people are a minority and are embracing a wholly bastardized version of progressivism. Piaget made it abundantly, explicitly clear in his writings that pre-existing knowledge was necessary in order for new knowledge to be constructed. Dewey wrote that "Education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience" and offered that the classroom should resemble a tiny democracy; he never said that students should be left with no structure and no guidance in the hopes they stumble upon thinking skills.
I could go after Will's other arguments, such as pointing out that there are plenty of public and charter schools which take a more progressive approach and succeed just fine (my ubiqutious love of H-B Woodlawn works well as an example here); or perhaps noting that the decline in adult literacy coincides with the rise of the conservative-supported "Standards Movement" (not to make the case that the two are related, only that blaming a certain philosophy while the country was moving in the other direction doesn't make a whole lot of sense), but let's leave it at this:
It is fair to make the proposition that Ed Schools aren't up to snuff. It is manipulative to connect flailing Ed Schools to the unique liberal philosophies many of them espouse, generalize those philosophies, and then declare that this amorphous progressivism is dominant in our schools and responsible for the majority of the problems we're facing. It's not, and I have a hunch George Will knows that.
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 09, 2006 at 9:26 PM.
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