DEFAULT, A RED HERRING

-By Bob Ward

From the beginning of the debate over raising the debt limit, Democrats and the media have been warning us that not raising the limit means the U.S. defaults on its debt for the first time in our history. With few exceptions, the Republicans have failed to refute this claim.

In recent days, Obama has upped the ante by suggesting that there may not be enough money to make Social Security payments if the limit is not raised. The claim is not believable on its face. The President does not have to cut off payments to the elderly and the disabled. He would only do it if he hopes to blame the cut-off on the Republicans. With the help of the media it is entirely possible he could pull it off.

Terence P. Jeffrey, writing for CNSNews, reports that according to the Treasury Dept, since Federal borrowing reached the legal limit on May 16, tax revenue will more than cover the cost of interest payments, Medicare,Medicaid, Social Security, the Veterans Affairs department and federal workers wages and insurance benefits including wages and insurance benefits for military personnel.

Jeffrey notes that between May 16 and July 7, the Federal government took in a total of $296.176 billion in new tax revenue. In that same time period, total interest payments on the national debt equaled $14.632 billion. So the Federal government took in enough money between May 16 and July 7 to pay the interest on the debt 20 times over.

The combined expenditures for interest payments, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Veterans Affairs Department and Federal workers wages and insurance benefits equaled $270.151 billion. So government would have met all those expenses, paid the interest on the debt and still have $26.025 billion left over. By claiming that the government may lack the funds to pay Social Security recipients Obama is making Bill Clinton look like Honest Abe. If the government fails to send out Social Security checks it will be because Obama wants it that way for political, not economic, reasons.

If there really was a money squeeze he could take a bite out of the Education Dept, or, better yet, ask Congress to abolish it. Every state in the union operates a public school system. The Federal department is an expensive redundancy.

Or he could agree to shut down the Public Broadcasting System. There are hundreds of TV channels available on cable so there is no need for this unconstitutional haven for artists who couldn’t cut it in the private sector. And National Public Radio could go too. Americans should get their news from real journalists, not from government flaks masquerading as reporters.

Also a suitable target for abolition is the National Endowment for the Arts. Before the government was in the business of supporting art, we got composers like George Gershwin, Aaron Copeland, Rodgers & Hart, and Cole Porter, playwrights Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, novelists Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser. With government money we get a photograph of a crucifix dipped in urine.

And if things really got desperate he could stop funding Planned Parenthood’s abortion mills or even cut off Obama's pals at ACORN. Imagine that!

FRAUD IN EDUCATION

By Bob Ward

Imagine. You’re being sued and in the middle of the trial you learn that your lawyer flunked the bar exam but is allowed to practice anyway because the authorities think he will pass on one of the next three times he tries.

Parents of children in some Texas schools – and all Texas taxpayers – are in a similar situation in regard to the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test which their children took. The press has reported that under something called the Texas Projection Measure (TPM), a student who fails the test is counted as having passed if he is expected to pass within three years. Using this deceptive system, every student group improved in every subject. Except, of course, they didn’t.

Press reports noted that 74 school districts in Texas were rated “exemplary” and 73 of them gained that status by using this fraudulent scoring method. The Austin American-Statesman reported that eight schools in the Austin school district were rated academically unacceptable last year, the first year the TPM was used. Under an honest measure 11 would have been ranked unacceptable. For the current year, only one AISD school has been found academically unacceptable. An accurate scoring would have put four additional schools in that category.

Just as bad as the fraud itself is the reaction of the state’s education officials. Education Commissioner Robert Scott has promised, not to abolish this deceptive practice but merely to "review" it. And he want to review not because parents and taxpayers are entitled to an honest assessment of our schools’ performance, but because, he said, the students' and educators' "hard work is being overshadowed by criticism of the use of TPM.” Apparently Scott would be just fine with this dishonest system if only the critics would just shut up.

However, faced with the criticism, Commissioner Scott has reportedly offered several options for modifying the system. His options include abolishing the system, allowing districts that want to continue using it to do so, or modifying it in some unspecified way.

State Rep. Scott Hochberg (D-Houston), chairman of an appropriations subcommittee overseeing the education budget, correctly dismissed Scott's proposals as "lipstick on a pig." Hochberg says that only abolishing the TPM and instituting a “real measure of the progress students make," is acceptable.

But Hochberg is facing an uphill battle if he wants to get the TPM abolished. Whatever its faults, it does make the schools look good – and that’s what keeps the state and Federal money flowing. And isn't that what public education is all about?

Breaking Higher Education's Iron Triangle: Access, Cost, and Quality

A followup to earlier thoughts on the Higher Education Revolution: Breaking Higher Education's Iron Triangle: Access, Cost, and Quality lays down a challenge that both developing nations and western nations need to address: "provide wide access to high-quality higher education at a low cost."

How to get there? "There is a growing realization that government provision of higher education in traditional modes alone cannot accomplish this task."

Why not? Traditional higher-education has been locked into an 'iron triangle' of high cost, limited access, and non-scalable educational models:

Much of today’s higher education remains a blend of student community and lecture bazaar, each of which contributes a particular notion of quality. In the community model, quality is largely a matter of the characteristics of the entering students. If the student community is difficult to get into, it must be a place where excellent education occurs. Quality is identified with exclusivity. The lecture bazaar model brings in another dimension of quality, namely expenditure per student: the more the better.

These models have no economies of scale because they are based on the concept that students need time of highly educated teachers in order to learn. Lack of cost controls are built on assumptions and institutional biases (through endowments and Government subsidies) that stymie innovations. They note:

The iron triangle—the assumption that quality, exclusivity, and expense necessarily go together—has been the bugbear of education.

What are the alternatives? "Open and distance learning (ODL) and eLearning are increasingly seen as key to providing access to the wider student population now seeking higher education, especially to working adults and those in remote rural areas."

What doors are opened up and need to be opened up? We need scalable economic models, and this is achievable on the side of information distribution with Open Educational Resources and other means of instructional material and course reuse. That means course developments that can be reused, technology that can be leveraged. Economies of scale can lower cost without harming quality.

We also need specialization, and one area the article notes that is essential is to de-link the learning process from the testing/certification. In doing so, we have a new models of education quality assurance through standardized forms of examinations to certify completion:

the key factor is the shift of emphasis from residence and lectures to outcomes and examinations. If the trend to delink testing from teaching continues, it will lead to more flexible and less expensive models of higher education, with the result that the aspiration of giving people access to high-quality higher education worldwide may not be an illusion. In terms of the access-quality-cost triangle, the examination system is a major breakthrough. Access is only limited by the availability of examiners, quality and standards can be set at the level required, and students are spared the costs of residence and instruction.

Consider it this way: Suppose instead of going to Harvard, you simply went to the Harvard examinations? You will need an educational and learning experience to get ready for those exams, but that process could and should be one that is tailored for the individual. There are examinations for College level courses like that - CLEP.
One myth is the myth of the need for Professorial contact:

Some important research by Robert Bernard and his colleagues at Concordia University, Montreal, explodes the myth about the importance of face-to-face support. They carried out a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies in which distance-education students were treated in different ways. They distinguished three types of interaction: student with content; student with student; and student with teacher. They then analyzed all the studies to find which type of interaction made the greatest difference to student performance when it was increased. The results showed clearly that increasing student-content interaction had much the greatest effect, with student-student interaction coming next and student-teacher interaction last.

See, when your freshman section was taught by a TA, you really didn't miss out on anything after all.

What they propose is a radically different way of conceiving of education. It's a form of education that is more personal, more effective, less costly, more flexible. It won't have those Ivy-covered Halls and exclusive clubs, but it will have a path for students to learn. The article summarizes their case this way:

The aims of wide access, high quality, and low cost are not achievable, even in principle, with traditional models of higher education based on classroom teaching in campus communities. A perception of quality based on exclusivity of access and high expenditure per student is the precise opposite of what is required. ... But perceptions of quality are changing, and the growing emphasis on outcomes and standards heralds the possibility of a model of higher education that could achieve the ministerial aims—one that centers on examinations and allows students to choose different ways of preparing for them. Although this type of system has a long history, contemporary technologies such as eLearning and open educational resources promise to make it even more cost-effective today.

Open Education Resources

A brief introduction to Open Education is a talk by David Wiley, who forsees big change in education. How big?

He said all the content, research, support services, social life and even degrees can be obtained without the typical college experience. The reason why is because of the availability of free information through the attributes of the digital age.

He asks: Why do students go to Universities instead of a library?
1. Instructional sequence and the related materials.
2. Library and the institutional repositories of knowledge.
3. Support services - questions and guidance by tutors, professors, etc.
4. Credentials for a job.
5. Social life.

On point 1, this "Manifesto of Open Access" calls for freeing authors and users of materials from the commercial copyright system. The concept of Open Educational Resources is to free the materials created in the process of research and teaching from the restrictions placed by Copyright law. Thanks to the Creative Commons organization, copyright models have been developed that allow the "4R open" sharing concepts - Revise, Remix, Reuse, Redistribute. These models allow the producers and consumers to create a "Pro-sumer" ecosystem of shared Intellectual Property development. It is pointed out that taxpayers fund teachers and researchers, so how is it that publishers, who have little to do with funding or creating the research end up with the copyright?

An example is this free Calculus book offered under a Creative Commons 'sharealike' license, you can read it electronically. These new materials extend the concept of free books from old public domain, to a whole new generation of materials that students and teachers can use without violating copyright law or engaging in piracy.

This is not just about freeing textbooks, but about putting all the educational collateral into a system of sharing, reuse, remix and extending. The great value of this is to drive the incremental cost of informational sharing to effectively zero.

Combine Open Education, as ccLearn advocates, with the fact that online education beats the classroom and we have the recipe for a very different, lower-cost and more effective education. As stated in the article:

“We are at an inflection point in online education,” said Philip R. Regier, the dean of Arizona State University’s Online and Extended Campus program.

When you put it all together, people will be asking Who Needs Harvard?

Austin Tech Republicans - Nov 12th meeting on SBOE TEKS

The November Austin Tech Republicans is on November 12th, lunchtime, at Mangia's at Mopac/Duval in north Austin, and will be discussing SBOE Social Studies TEKS review. Jonathan Saenz from the Free Market Foundation and Brooke Terry from TPPF will discuss the topic.

A factoid that relates - http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2009/11/texas-new-leader-of-nation.html:

"Texas students "are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age," even though per-pupil expenditures on public school students are 12% higher in California."

We are beating California and achieving 'more for less' in education because we have rigorous educational standards put in place by the SBOE through the TEKS, which defines the curriculum for students in Texas. Having the right school curricula in place determines the future of Texas.

The meeting is Thursday, November 12th, lunchtime (11:45-1pm) at the Mangia's at Mopac and Duval (*)

(*) Location: Mangia's Pizza at Mopac and Duval is right off Mopac (northbound access rd at Duval exit) at Duval and Burnet.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=12001+N+MO+Pac+Expy,+Austin,+TX&vps=4&jsv=164e&sll=30.41848,-97.711759&sspn=0.02561,0.055747&ie=UTF8&latlng=30407404,-97713679,9125205684671566230&ei=PTVESsX9KZ7uMvWprNsJ&sig2=5pcwkvIflYgpsHiEaI-UEQ&cd=3

12001 N MO Pac Expy, Austin, TX 78758-2992. (512) 832-5550

E-books and the Universal Digital Library

David Rothman, who hangs out at TeleRead calls for "Kindle in every backpack", to get e-books in the hands of students and others everywhere at low cost.

Eventually, this will come about. Paper books sales are declining while e-book sales rise. With Gutenberg and other projects like Google Books, we are getting to the point where a vast amount of public domain literature is available. What remains to be freely (and legally) accessible online is the vast amount of copyrighted matter. DRM and other techniques are being used to protect this IP when its sold for devices, but in the process this hampers the concept of borrowed library book. To implement the idea of a 'universal digital library' where such material is easily available on a borrowed basis, we will need some way to borrow that DRM key.

Some cautionary comments about the impact of Ebooks on the brain by David Gelertner:

The most important ongoing change to reading itself in today’s online environment is the cheapening of the word. ... the narrowing time between writing for and publishing on the Web is helping to kill the art of editing by crushing it to death. The Internet makes words as cheap and as significant as Cheese Doodles. ...

The tools (as usual) are neutral. It’s up to us to insist that onscreen reading enhance, not replace, traditional book reading. It’s up to us to remember that the medium is not the message; that the meaning and music of the words is what matters, not the glitzy vehicle they arrive in.

Postscript: Between starting this article and finishing it, I: opened up 2 dozen Firefox tabs on topics relating to e-books; read reviews of the Barnes & Noble Nook (a Kindle competitor); downloaded Linux E-pub reader Fbreader; read several powerpoint presentations from IDPF's events (IDPF is International Digital Publishing Forum); perused the Gutenberg list of 30,000 public domain titles; picked up my daughter from a High School Robotic competition, then went off for Chinese for dinner with kids, then came home and put the young ones to bed; then re-visited more sites; then dove into three texts downloaded from Google books as epubs and PDFs including P G Wodehouse and a history of the Revolutionary War; and found that last links via E-Reads.com and a blog item by Mark Curtis touting his book DISTRACTION with this marvelous quote:

As e-books move out of their infancy and into a dominant role in the reading life of our society, it is imperative that we recognize the significant psychological differences between reading on screen and reading on paper.

Touche. I have managed to touch dozens and dozens of thought-streams, dipping toes and fingers, and briefly the whole mind, but grazing and moving on, with no more than a quick perusal for most sources. This was non-linear, random-walk, reading. It is imperative that we understand that millions of books at one's fingertips - the Universal Digital Library - may change what those books do for us and mean to us.

UPDATE 10/25: How close we are to universal access to massive numbers of public domain books hit home with this news from March this year - a Sony deal with Google books:

Sony Electronics has struck a deal with Google in a major endorsement that makes more than half a million public domain books from its digitization project available for free on the Sony Reader in its e-book store.

ACLU versus School Safety

A message from a school superintendant:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is attacking the Code of Discipline in DeSoto County Schools. The ACLU has just filed the 3rd lawsuit against our school district. What some may not realize is that they are challenging our safe and orderly environment--the one characteristic that separates our school district from districts near us.

The ACLU can make charges against the school district saying we have done something to a student. We cannot respond because of privacy issues.

In May of 2008, the ACLU ran ads asking students who were displeased with DCS disciplinary proceedings and their parents to come to a meeting in Olive Branch. I am told approximately 30 people attended.

As superintendent, I do not want any child mistreated. But I do believe in rules and regulations. We don't allow baggy pants, cell phones used during school, drugs, guns, knives, cursing or foul language. Our teachers and administrators work very hard to make DCS as good as it can be. We cannot have an outstanding school district if we ever lose the safety at school. Our number one priority is safety for our students and staff. ...

The ACLU is well-financed. Every dollar DeSoto County Schools has to spend on lawsuits is one dollar we could spend on educating students. It is a shame that the ACLU can file one suit after another without any accountability. I have one message that is echoed by the Board of Education: Everyone has the right to do what he wants at home; when he comes to the school house, he must obey the rules just like we did when we went to school. We are going to take the time to teach children right from wrong. We are going to enforce our Code of Discipline, and we will do everything within our legal rights, to keep our campuses safe. It is my prayer, and yes, I said prayer, that the ACLU will not chip away DeSoto County School's Code of Discipline on my watch.

Education Revolution About To Hit

Why am I blogging about the purpose of education, the legacy of John Dewey in education and correcting Dewey's errors, and the bafflegab errors of Eduspeak?

I am circling around to some propositions about education, most importantly that communications technology and the web have come to a point where education itself is ripe for a revolution. Thus when I encountered this comment today, it struck a chord:

We are at a point in history when our intellectual life has already been massively unsettled by technological advancement. The printing press brought the gospel to the common man and undercut the power of the priests. The camera brought pictures of war to the widows and raised questions about political and military leadership. Radio and then television and satellites allowed us to hear and see events far from our own lives and challenged the comforts of tribalism.

The internet combines all of those technologies with an always-there availability, and an individual programming capability that allows us to choose entirely for ourselves what we will or will not see. At this time in history critical thinking, a basic grounding in epistemology, and some moral foundation in the central value of truth, is absolutely vital.

The key fundamental innovations in internet, communications, computing and storage technoloies have led us to this point:

• The cost of storing information electronically is free(*).
  
• The marginal cost of communicating any such information is close to free.
• If information is free, then any business resting on information is exposed to a massive tectonic shift. Like newspapers, like the music/movies/entertainment, ... or like education.

(*) You could take the entire public domain library of Google books, assume it is 1 million books of 10 million bytes each (PDF) and put it on a 10Terabyte storage machine. 1 TB hard drive is $59, so for under $1000, you can store 1 million books electronically, and display any one of them on a Kindle. So if 1 million books could be stored and viewed in this way for under $1500, the cost per book is ... 0.15c. Free. To put this in a profound way - the entire stored knowledge of the world's best library of 1925, say the Harvard University library, can be put on a desktop. Yet such an act, while an interesting exercise, is unnecesary, since that information is available already to any desktop now - via the internet. For free.

Now, having addressed the fact that the information itself is free, we are left with the simple point that it is finding information, selecting which information to consume, and determining the value of that information that is critical to our intellectual development and life. Information is abundant, but our time, attention, focus and thoughts can only be in one place at a time.

What is profound about the quote comment is the observation that the technology "allows us to choose entirely for ourselves what we will or will not see." We have 1 million books at our fingertips .... which ones to pick? And will the act of individualistic selection atomize a previous community of intellectual understanding? Will conformity of the intelligensia give way to a new form of tribalism? It leads us to have an understanding of heightened value in critical reading, selectivity in sources, and ability to see the 'forest' for the 'trees'.

The most important fact about education today is that it is NOT much different from 40 years ago. This glacial pace of change is deceptive, a function of ossified edu-cratic institutions and the limits of human social interaction that cannot glide down the Moore's Law slope as bits can. Yet a lecture from 20 years ago is far more out-of-date now than a lecture from the 17th century was in 1980, not in terms of the content, but in terms of the form.

The education revolution will not be televised ... but it will be googled, tweeted, blogged, you-tube'd, etc.

Eduspeak, the language of Educrats

"The Roots and Perils of Eduspeak—The Language of Pretense and Evasion" discusses the 'bafflegab' of educational jargon, creeping into schools.

The roots again can be found in "Cults of Ignorance" errors of Progressive Education:

In developing his case against the "damaging bromides" of Spencer -- and their steady institutionalization by Dewey and Kilpatrick in teachers' colleges and K-12 public schools -- Egan looks carefully at the real effects of "child-centered" education, psychological "developmentalism," and what he usefully calls the "biologized view of mind" that changed curricula all over the Anglo-American world from common-sense transmitters of the cultural achievements of mankind to present-minded, experimental, experiential, naturalistic, and unchallenging approaches.

Such an approach has been shown to be a failure.
This article traces the path - 'progressive education ideals', based on a misunderstanding of human nature and the real purposes of education, has hollowed out the educational system, leaving a void of dumbed-down and lower standards:

As a public educator for nearly 25 years and student of popular culture for nearly double that, I believe that attending to lesser things/arguments is also contributing to a “dumbing down” of the American public, and, therefore, public education in America. ... This diminishing of quality education is also the consequence of a passionate opposition to memorization, coupled with a breakdown in the teaching of and knowledge about American history, Western literature and values.

He begs the question of experiential education and the folly of not leading children in the right way:

Why dance with the devil only to learn what others have been saying since Adam and Eve? Dance with the devil and he will surely step on your toes. Besides, experience is often overrated as a teacher.

Another way to view it: A more 'natural' education for children would be a good justification for closing all schools, firing all teachers and letting kids run wild in the streets.

Obviously, such a conclusion would not do for educational professionals, aka Educrats. We need less education?!? No, this calls for more education, more and more of it, and the more failed and incompetent, the more we have to pour into it. So they resort to obfuscation to cover the tracks for the failures of these educational methods:

Former Ontario college teacher Barry Kavanagh agrees. “Although jargon is used by bureaucrats of all kinds to facilitate their own interactions, it seems to me that, in education, bureaucrats additionally employ jargon to keep their real agenda (the socialization of students) and their dismal academic results hidden from parents and taxpayers.”

An example of Eduspeak is Service Learning, which is neither service nor learning in practice. It's Eduspeak: "Eduspeak is a language of hypocrisy -- excuse me -- tact. That is, of indecision, of hesitation, of reluctance, of prissiness and of indirection. Of all those things that undermine the formation of courage, steadfastness, forthrightness and commitment."

Is "service learning" education? No. "Perhaps it is time for educators to stand up to their practically inexperienced and morally befogged directors and say no to anything which undermines the basic mission of the school. This might also require our foregoing Eduspeak and talking directly to our students. I suspect such a situation might be far more effective than so-called "service learning" in teaching character."

Words mean things. Ideas have consequences. Lack of clarity in expression reflects confusion and poverty in thinking. The bafflegab that is Eduspeak is a cover for poor educational theories and methods. Good educational theories are simple and concise and accessible to all - even the students.

Correcting John Dewey's Errors

Here are some of John Dewey's basic beliefs and how they wrought a failed education philosophy. We respond with a corrective view on education and its purpose:

“I believe that the social life of the child is the basis of concentration, or correlation, in all his training or growth. The social life gives the unconscious unity and the background of all his efforts and of all his attainments." - John Dewey

It is the mental life of the child that is he basis of concentration, or correlation, in all his training or growth. The mental life of any person is what gives unity to their efforts and attainments, tying to to their personal motivations, world-view, sense of self, and level of understand of a particular subject. Learning of all types is a mental process. This may encompass a social component, since part of skills are social skills, for example, communication, persuasion and empathy with others. However, all we know - both facts, opinions, and skills - is integrated with our sum of mental understanding and capability. The "social life" is merely one aspect of one's life. Dewey's premise has deprecated not only individualism, but deprecated the inner life of the mind, robbing education of its key component.

"I believe that the subject-matter of the school curriculum should mark a gradual differentiation out of the primitive unconscious unity of social life." - John Dewey

Since learning is a mental process, the subject-matter of the school curriculum should mark a gradual differentiation out of the natural mental processes of a child, to condition and develop those mental faculties for progressively greater and greater tasks and accomplishments. Thus a natural rule of pedagogy is to start with simpler tasks, be directive early on, then build up from simpler tasks to more complex ones, freeing the student along the way to experiment and try things in their own way as they are capable. Those tasks and that progression do not happen naturally or on its own. If left to their own devices, children would learn only some of the habits for future success and would fail to adopt many other. Thus education, the guiding of the child in learning, has a purpose, and a purpose that benefits the child's later life. This learning progression has as its end to develop the child fully as a citizen, self-learner (scholar), and productive member of society (able to utilize mental faculties productively, for example, as a professional). Should the child understand this process and its benefit and utility to them, they will become willingly engaged in their own development.

"I believe that we violate the child's nature and render difficult the best ethical results, by introducing the child too abruptly to a number of special studies, of reading, writing, geography, etc., out of relation to this social life." - John Dewey

We obtain the best learning results by pacing our delivery at the level of readiness of the child, fast enough to challenge yet moderate enough to avoid failure. All children (and adults) can learn, they all learn at different paces and levels and prefer, based on individual capacities and innate abilities, different learning modes.

Dewey compounds his previous error by forcing all of the curriculum to be tied to the anchor (and it is an anchor) of social life and local experience. The only error in the 'abruptness' of any training is to subject a student to a level of skill they might not be ready for; for example, a beginning skier does not belong on a 'black diamond' slope. However, that is a matter for pacing, not content. Too fast, and the child gets discouraged, too slow and the child gets bored or de-motivated. Reading, writing, and geography are fit subjects for a 5-year-old and for a College student, the difference will be the pacing and level.

"I believe, therefore, that the true center of correlation on the school subjects is not science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography, but the child's own social activities." - John Dewey

The true center of correlation on the school subjects is the mental skills, mental conditioning and store of knowledge that is developed when each subject is encountered.

Of course, science, literature, history and geography are the windows from a child's local social experience to the continuity of the experience and knowledge of mankind. With these subjects, the child learns beyond his local and immediate sphere. This liberates the child from a narrow experience to a wider one. Relating subjects to a child's own social activities imprisons them in their own context, whereas the life of the mind can think outside such contexts. An example of this trend is the push for 'relevance' in schooling, a trend that is at root anti-intellectual. To an intellectual, Plato's cave is relevant, the pure analogy of the life of the mind and lives of those ('in the cave') who have not yet expanded themselves beyond the immediate social experience. Never mind that such social experience does not require education at all, since it is available at all times to all members of society in all cultures.

Bruce Price calls it "the Most Revealing Dewey Quote Of All Time":

“The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively an individual affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.” (John Dewey, The School and Society, 1899)

If 'education' is to ignore the 'selfish' aspect of 'mere learning', yet aspire to change society itself, for the sake of 'social gain', however that is defined, it will indeed stray far from a system that helps children learn.

Dewey's viewpoint at root is collectivist. We have witnessed in the 20th century the failed collectivist ideologies of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, Nazism and Communism, rise and fall. The lone survivor seems to have been American education. The result of this was a form of Industrial Education that was wrong then and is even more wrong now, crippling children in mediocrity rather than equipping children with knowledge and skills for their own success.

Price ends with a plea to take to heart: "The way we save our schools is to bury Dewey’s ghost. It has caused enough mischief."

What Dewey Wrought

"Even the best education cannot stop a brilliant mind." - My College Professor, quoting the scientist Enrico Fermi

The previous column's declaration that 'the focus of education should be learning' might be considered a declaration of the obvious. Isn't that what education has been about all along? Alas, no, and the point of it's necessity is to highlight that education has gone wrong at the level of root causes. If it were so, that is, if the purposes of education and its methods were more properly aligned to what they should be, we wouldn't be under a 'constant crisis' in education.

The constant crisis in education exists because the methods and goals of education as actually practiced fail to achieve ends of learning. The lack of learning then shows up in statistics on "Why Johnny Can't Read" or our failure to do better than Bulgaria on learning outcomes, and the public and educational professionals wring their hands. The result is invariably some 'reforms' that fail because they don't radically alter the failed configuration of education.

The root cause of the failure is this: Progressive Education has been wrong for 100 years and has dumbed down education in a 'progressive' sequence of de-learning throughout. "John Dewey invented progressive education a hundred years ago. It was wrong then and hasn’t gotten better." says Williamson M. Evers. This failure is a failure of American progressive education, and it is so pervasive that 'educational reform' is not real reform, but a deepening of existing failed trends.

We need to understand that the de-focus on real learning, real content (derided as 'mere facts and memorization'), real individualism (derided as antithetical to socialization), and excellence (derided as anti-egalitarian) are not accidental, but a deliberate, rooted in the views of John Dewey:

John Dewey, in his long life, wrote dozens of books and hundreds of articles. A lot of it is murky and ambiguous. Whatever you wish to promote, you can find support from Dewey. But in the interest of speed, let me summarize: he and his buddies were Socialists. They were sick of individualism, the pioneer spirit, free enterprise, and people doing their own thing. John Dewey wanted you to be a happy member of a group. You didn’t need that much literacy or knowledge. Dewey actually saw these as impediments. He calls, especially in the early grades, for sharply curtailing the study of literature, history, math, science, geography and such, in order to make room for social activities, specifically, “cooking, sewing, manual training, etc.” (his words). So here, tragically and pathologically, John Dewey, Educator, metamorphosed into that most unexpected of things: John Dewey, Anti-Educator. To advance his sociopolitical visions, Dewey was eager to dilute content and diminish learning.

Consider this. If the goal of education was socialization, then learning that took any individual above their station in life was of no use. The policy is dumb by design:

The policy of dumb by design, to the extent our educators can slip it past parents and politicians, guides them to this day. Isn’t it fair to say that not one educational reform crafted by educators actually leads to better education? My impression is that none of these reforms is truly intended to lead to better education. The self-esteem movement. New Math. Fuzzy math. Whole language as a way of learning to read. Bilingualism. Ebonics. Outcome Based Education. Numerous campaigns against testing, homework, standards, or discipline. All seek a lower common denominator.

The author Bruce Price has quotes to explain further 'the agenda':

Counts, 1932: "Historic capitalism, with its deification of the principle of selfishness, its reliance upon the forces of competition, its place of property above human rights, and its exaltation of the profit motive, will either have to be displaced altogether, or so radically changed in form and spirit that its identity will be completely lost."

Willard Givens, 1934: "We are convinced that we stand today at the verge of a great culture....But to achieve these things many drastic changes must be made. A dying laissez-faire must be completely destroyed, and all of us, including the owners, must be subjected to a large degree of social control."

Counts, 1934: "Cumulative evidence supports the conclusion that in the United States as in other countries, the age of individualism and laissez-faire in economy and government is closing and a new age of collectivism is emerging."

Counts, 1934: " [Our new magazine] assumes that the age of individualism in economy is closing and that an age marked by close integration of social life and by collective planning and control is opening. For weal or woe it accepts as irrevocable this deliverance of the historical process."

National Education Association Journal, 1936: "Let us not think...in terms of specific facts or skills [that children should acquire] but rather in terms of growing."

NEA Journal, 1937: "The transition of society from the philosophy of individualism to the new emphasis on group goals and cooperative action produces vexing problems in secondary education....Only education which seeks the reconstruction of society is [valid]....Teachers should play an active part in securing acceptance by their communities of new social ideas and ideals."

NEA Journal, 1946: "In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher has many parts to play...He can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children for global understanding and cooperation....At the very top of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession."

Bruce Price asks the question:

Our educators seemed intent not on educating children but on creating a new kind of children...But who asked our educators to embark on this project? Who voted? Who discussed?

Proposing that "Teachers should play an active part in securing acceptance by their communities of new social ideas" and asking teachers "to prepare the hearts and minds of children for global understanding" are examples of agenda-driven education, satisfying the ideological purposes of teachers and educational 'experts' while doing nothing for the children themselves. The call away from teaching facts, leaves the children sufficiently ignorant and malleable for other agendas. This cruelly

This gets us back to our original point. What Dewey wrought has been 100 years of educational malpractices that has watered down education and taken it away from its proper purpose. Any educational reform has to begin from proper premises and to fix education, we need to fix the purpose of education - it is to induce learning in the child, to open their mind to truth, creativity, and to build their knowledge and skills to be citizens, scholars and professionals when they grow up.

The Focus of Education Should be Learning

Some questions make the answer. In life as in research, as in education, it is the question that comes first and is more important. The issues and problems with our 'educational system' invariably lead to questions, such as "How do we fix the system?"

Of course, if you set about fixing a system, you have to ask a more basic question: What purpose is it supposed to serve? What is the right way to do education?

Which leads to a question: Why do we educate? A better question is: Why do we learn?

Why do we educate? We educate children to train them up to be citizens and productive members of society. It is certainly appropriate that we make citizenship, scholarship, and professional achievement (to get a good career/job) goals of education. But that part of 'education', if it is not in giving them knowledge, consist of either indoctrination or inculcating in the children an acceptance of the role society has laid out for them. This begs a question of whether 'education' is for the sake of the child after all, for this is not education in the sense of opening up the child to knowledge and skills, but social conditioning.

Yet to a large degree Industrial Education was that enterprise. As John Dewey put it, "Education as a Social Function." The social function is the preservation and continuity of the society, by rearing up the young as participants. Thus it has been throughout history. We are ever 20 years from barbarism and it is education that saves society from it.

But why does a child learn? If one puts the focus back on the child, and ask why does the child learn? one gets a difference answer. The social function becomes secondary. Education means nothing without learning; and while education is the guiding of others to learn and is thus social, learning has a meaning all its own.

Learning is not a social process. Learning is a mental process, that extends inward and outward both. If there is not learning, there is no education. Thus, while the educative process is social and external, the learning process that it tries to affect is personal and internal. Learning involves literacy, via listening and reading and watching and communicating; learning involves thinking - critical thinking and analysis, memory, computation, and creative imagination and thought; learning involves the exercise of motor skills, behaviors, artistic skills, writing skills, complex skills (from stacking blocks to arguing Constitutional law cases) built on prior skills; learning involves the skills of observation, sensory perception, emotional intelligence.
The end result of these learning activities is to acquire knowledge, habits, skills and dispositions not previously acquired.

Why learn? For a child, learning up to a point is natural. Curiosity and 'play' is programmed into humans. Play is a form of learning, in fact, it's main 'useful' role is learning. Children are great imitators, and imittaion begets acquisition of skills. Alas, as they grow, children may end up imitating the worst habits and not the best if not guided in the proper way.

How do we educate? The best learner is a self-learner, so the best education is an education in learning HOW to learn. What are the learning skills? Reading, observing, skills in modeling behavior, acquiring motor skills, creative thinking skills, critical analysis skills.

The best way to acquire skills of any type, however, is to practice them, and thus the best way to acquire learning skills is to get engaged in learning and be guided in how you do it.

Are skills enough? No, need motivation, to improve the dispositions of learners: Motivation, curiosity, desire to learn or desire to learn in order to meet other goals (financial, social status and approval, gain ability to do specific things one desires, etc.)

However, if the motivation to learn is based on external appearances, then student will do enough to keep those appearances, eg, get a good grade, without absorbing the real lessons

If play is like learning and vice versa, then the problem with ‘boredom’ – people who are bored are people demanding sensory input - is a defect in learning and play skills.

Does education destroy curiosity? Sometimes. if organized education creates activities not tied to real learning, it can snuff out the impulses of real learning.

We started with the question "How to fix the education system?" and ended up in a point where in fact, the system itself in some cases could be crippling the real learning of children.

The cure or answer for this may be to think differently about education. The shadow of John Dewey has been cast over education for a century, and the 'social' approach to education has pushed it in a direction that is away from ideals of Roman education or that of prior centuries. Bringing students up to become socialized does not require Industrial Education. The fact of socialization has taken, through iterations and systems and controls and measures, to take education far away from the pure purpose of education as aiding learning.

There is a different way: Personalized learning; teaching students to be self-motivated and curious; teaching students to be self-learners; in short, the focus of education should be on the learning.

QOTD: Adams on education

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom." --John Adams

The Ivy League College bubble bust

Another "High-priced College Isn't Worth It" story. It's gets more believable to me the closer my kids get to College-age.

UPDATE 8/21/09: Via Powerline, a link to What Will they Learn? a guide that looks at the required core courses at particular colleges, which is the only way to ensure that college students actually learned the core "need to know" things in science, math, literature, history, etc. Interestingly, their "A list" of the best Colleges in terms of requiring basic core courses includes Baylor, UT Austin, and Texas A&M. Harvard? Rated D. Rice University, Johns Hopkins University, Brown University, and Smith College are rated F.

Patriot Academy

Something of interest for those with teenaged children - Patriot Academy, a summer school in governance:

"Patriot Academy is a five-day political training program where students age sixteen to twenty-five learn about America's system of government from a Biblical worldview. Each summer, young people from around the nation come to the Texas State Capitol to form a fully functioning mock legislative body, drafting legislation, debating bills and passing laws. Students participate in fast-paced, interactive workshops on media relations, public speaking, campaigning techniques and the founding father’s philosophy of government."

Rep Lon Burnam hates schools

Rep Lon Burnam (D - Dallas) hates schools that are teaching tens of thousands of schoolkids in Texas: “I hate charter schools. I’m going to kill this bill.” He hates Charter Schools so much he killed the Charter School expansion bill, thereby denying a better education to thousands more:

I’m wondering what the 17,000 kids on waiting lists to enter charter schools think about Rep. Burnam and his hatred of charter schools. Does Burnam hate these kids? ...
Two charter schools in Texas made the U.S. News and World Report’s list of “America’s Best 100 Public High Schools” – IDEA Public Schools in the Rio Grande Valley (#19) and YES Prep Public Schools in Houston (#52). I guess Burnam hates them also because they make his ISD schools look bad.

This is absolute and utter insanity. Educrat PACs are bankrolling this insanity.

YCT against the UT Diversity-borg

Blogosphere comes out swinging (minus broken table leg) over UT speech suppression ...

As members of Young Conservatives of Texas at UT, Dustin Matocha, Tyler Norris, Josh Perry and I wished to exercise our First Amendment right to make incoming Freshmen aware that we believe a certain mandatory program within their four day orientation experience is a session of unabashed indoctrination of liberal ideas.

... and UT's orientation program would have NONE of it, so thought police action and free speech suppression ensued by UT orientation folks. Sigh, file it under 'political correctness' and remember: Diversity is ANYTHING BUT.

Choosing the Right College

From ISI books: "Choosing the Right College". Definitely worth getting, although this guide does not cover all Colleges. Here's an Amazon review of a previous edition:

This college guide is hands down better than any guide I've seen. If actually getting an education rooted in a core curriculum is important to you, or knowing whethter or not the dorms your son or daughter will be living in have co-ed showers is something you might like to be aware of, than this guide stands alone in how it reviews schools. If the above (and so much more like it) is "conservative" or "Christian", than so be it. To me is just makes good sense. Choosing the Right College is an amazing resource.

Another review was not as kind calling it "cute but very bias", but this review by an Oberlin student revealed more about the utility of the guide than anything else. My reaction:

The student: "i.e. if someone offers you drugs/alcohol and you decline they, 9 times out of 10, will not pressure you/ask you again)."
Fascinating view of what is 'acceptable'. The real issue for parents is why should we expect that to be an acceptable occurance at all to be offered drugs. Being offered an illegal substance as part of the 'scene' at a college is something parents would want to know about - and avoid.

" He also cited Christians would have a hard time-if you're the type to force your ideas upon others in a close minded way then yes you will have a problem here-but that's wilth any philosophy you try to shove down people's throats at Oberlin"
What we can read into this is that a drug dealer offering drugs is considered more tolerable than a Christian evangelizing their religion. Of course, Christians who keep quiet don't cause trouble. But thats true in any non-free society too.- "Just stay quiet." And 'shove down throats' is what indoctrinating professors might do, but no student is in a position to do that at a College. If vocal Christians become social outcasts, that might be a concern to those who want to be open about it.

Fascinating, since of course she mentions " Oberlin, in a lot of ways, forces you to think critically about issues " Ah yes, forced to confront things from one perspective but protected from another. How .... one-sided.

The student also said: "The author also seemed to be dismissive of courses/majors that took a critical look at the world in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and class, dismissing them as more or less pitty parties"
This cultural marxist clap-trap should be critiqued, 95% of the 'scholarship' in these areas is dense, obtuse junk. It doesnt 'teach' but miseducates and indotrinates to use the false lens of cultural relativism/multiculturalism, post-modernism, and LGBT 'studies'. This has turned the humanities into a intellectual wasteland, the "Closing of the American Mind" as Bloom put it. Reviews that critique that are 'biased', but in the direction of intellectual rigor and honesty.

I think in a way the student's response confirms the utility of "Choosing the Right College" as a guide, including the review's poor grammer which might indicate Oberlin has a different focus than rigor in written English. The student has acknowledged in many ways their analysis of what is going on in Oberlin, but she has a different perspective on the value judgement to apply to the facts at hand.

Real School Choice vs inter-district transfers

A way around the DC vouchers impasse is proposed. The Democrats in Congress and Obama administration cut funding for a voucher program to rescue kids from the failing DC school system. The DC public schools are extremely expensive (average cost of $14,000 per year), but have a terrible performance record. The author proposes inter-district transfer program, to bus DC kids to suburban school. Some comments on that:

"A public school transfer program would avoid the church/state and accountability questions raised by private school vouchers."

Such concerns are phony red herrings and it is lamentable to see them paraded as if they are valid concerns. They are NOT. The DC voucher program rescued children suffering from bad public schools. The Supreme Court has properly upheld voucher programs and as far as accountability - school choice INCREASES the accountability of schools significantly, as the New Zealand experience and many other examples can attest.

The fact that so many children might want inter-district transfers doesnt tell us that this is the best solution, but it does tell us there is a need. The underlying need is for parents and children to escape from bad schools and go to better schools. The fundamental solution to address that need is full school choice: Give parents and children the right to get their education from the school of THEIR choice, not your choice.

Why the fetish on making sure the teacher is a Government worker? Do we have such a fetish for college professors? Do we worry about food stamp recipients only shopping in Govt stores? So why the attachment to a Soviet-model for K-12 education ... when we have seen again and again that private schooling is superior for many kids?

Here in Texas, we have charter schools. Some have not worked out, but most do well, and on average are taking significant numbers of at-risk youth, outperforming the public schools, and doing it at 80% of cost of public school. The Charter schools are limited though. Our attempt to get our own child into Kindergarten failed because there were FOUR TIMES THE NUMBER OF APPLICANTS TO SPACES. and what was limiting those spaces? Texas law, with Teachers unions fighting hard to limit charter schools. It's absurd.

We need to stop with the lie that only some schools (govt schools) deserve funding, or only some kids (only the ones in worst schools) deserve to have choice. EVERY child deserves school choice. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Limiting their choice is limiting their future.

To be pro-school choice is to be pro-school-children.

"If conservatives opposed the program, they would suddenly become the cold-hearted opponents of giving low income kids a better education."

Oh, so this whole essay was about playing politics?!?
Rather than using kids as props to play some partisan trickery,
the better question is why the entire Democrat party seems to be cold-hearted opponents of giving low income kids a better education by opposing school choice in general.

Further comments:

"Both transfer and charter school models bring some more opportunity, but remain very limited in relinquishing real power to parents and families."
I'm not saying these choice systems should go away. They are definitely needed today. I guess my main point is that they do not go nearly far enough in fundamentally changing the way we deliver education."
"Neither model provides the kind of system change, and power reallocation, needed for transformation. "

I agree. Go ahead and do this inter-district transfer thing, but lets not pretend its the real answer. It's a band aid.
After all, someone in the inner city DC should not to have to send their kids over 12 miles and an hour-plus bus drive away to high school just to get a decent education.

If the DC public schools are doing an abysmal job (and they are), quit propping up and rewarding failure and abuse of kids. the entire school system should be dissolved and replaced with a voucher-based school choice system, and let each school be run by parents,teachers groups or other private organizations, and let them work to attract students by creating real learning in their schools.

The Century Foundation could lead the way by taking over some of the schools and using their best thoughts to run them. If the Foundation is not willing to pitch in, then they really are of no help.

Awesome Education Rant

Via Redstate, the Best Education Rant Ever, funny yet poignant, from a man tasked to give a standardized test to a bunch of HS-miseducated miscreants. You don't need an official report on the state of education in America. You just need to know this:

I’ve got a girl here, born in the US, schooled here to 13 years in this system, ready to receive a diploma from this system. I give her a test on college level material, and she does so poorly THE COMPUTER ASSUMES SHE MUST NOT SPEAK ENGLISH! Does that not concern anyone else?

Anyone? Bueller?

Then again, maybe raising kids on XBox has its uses.

The rant has a comment that 'says it all' regarding how the school system treats excellence:

My mom used to be a High School English teacher. She was demanding, challenging, and all the students respected her. What’s more, her students scored better than others in well-recognized standardized tests.

She was asked to take a non-teaching position after two other teachers complained that the students preferred her over other English teachers.

She’s now a guidance councilor and is eagerly awaiting retirement.