Jul 25, 2008
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This isn’t really my fight, but one thing I don’t stand for is intellectual irresponsibility.
The issue at hand is part history, part scholarship, part old-fashioned common sense. It’s about Dewey, movements, petty partisan politics and modern education theory.
And K. Carey is still out of his element. He responded:
I’m glad to know you agree with me half the time. As a Cooperstown resident and baseball fan, you’re no doubt aware that a .500 batting average is spectacular, so by that measure you’re doing pretty well.
Liam said that the theories “did not exist a half century ago,” which is obviously untrue. You’re saying that I have an obligation to respond to what Liam wish he had said, or should have said, rather than what he did say? Fine — I wish my last post had been the most brilliant and insightful essay yet written, and hereby condemn you for suggesting otherwise.
As to the question — Dewey and his ideas were very influential in his time. Your readers can decide for themselves whether the progressive education movement should be dismissed as insignificant.
First, I’m a little disappointed that Carey cited batting average and not on-base percentage, especially given our agreement on that baseball-themed value-added stuff. Since it is Induction Weekend here in the hamlet, I’ll let that pass.
But at this point, I can’t tell whether he truly misses the point or is purposely dishonest. Neither is commendable.
This is what Fordham’s Liam Julian wrote:
“Is it not true that much of this theory and methodology is a relatively modern invention, one that did not exist a half-century ago, when fine teachers surely did?”
“Much of this theory” - the bulk of what passes for required curricula in education schools, for example - is a twisted third-cousin of Dewey’s [and others'] work. The same is true of Constructivism, the current strain of which has betrayed Giambattista Vico to an embarrassing degree.
It isn’t that Carey has an obligation to divine Julian’s thoughts, though Julian’s implications were clear enough. He does, however, have an obligation to use a bit of common sense. The issue at hand is movements - and mixing a movement’s roots with its developments is usually a mistake.
In that lineage of ideas, we can say that Jesus’ life marked the beginning of Christianity about 2,000 years ago. And now some time later we have all sorts of Protestantism, we have the Roman Catholic Church, we have Eastern Orthodoxy, etc. - all of which are offshoots of the original.
But like those developments in Christianity - some stringently faithful to the original, others resembling the original in name only - Dewey’s theories, for better or worse, have inspired, grown, matured, morphed, split, mutated and back-flipped. Combine that fate with an increasingly ignorant, under-trained corp of practitioners and poor Dewey gets attached to some awfully useless modern ideas — just like Jesus, 2000 years later, gets melded in with crazies like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.
That is how movements work - their histories are more like back roads, with lots of dead ends, dirt paths, seasonal sections, potholes and the like, than a well-paved and maintained Interstate [except in Soviet history textbooks, where there was a convenient high-speed monorail from the past to the present].
If I were to suggest that Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church wasn’t a feature of Christianity’s margins because, after all, Jesus Christ had published the foundation of those theories 2,000 years ago, any sensible person would rightly laugh in my face - despite Jesus’ ideas being, as Carey wrote about Dewey, “very influential in his time.”
I’m also unaware of anyone who is serious about education who would call the “progressive education movement” insignificant. Baseless, suboptimal, harmful? Maybe, but those charges are all signs of its significance.
Common sense and a bit of historical/political reality win the day on this issue. It is difficult to avoid both at the same time - jig-like, I assume.
I’ll pay homage to Carey’s alma mater and call this the Susquehanna Two-Step.
Jul 23, 2008
Posted | 1 comment
I don’t know the guys’n'gals at Fordham, though I’ll admit that I agree with them more than I disagree.
I don’t know The Quick and the Ed’s Kevin Carey, either - I’m about 50/50 on his ideas.
Here’s a lesson to all who have blogs, corporate, foundation, personal or otherwise: Being partisan is fine - just keep it intellectually honest.
Fordham’s Liam Julian is taking some heat from Carey:
Then there’s this gem from an earlier post about “theory” and the practice of teaching:
Is it not true that much of this theory and methodology is a relatively modern invention, one that did not exist a half-century ago, when fine teachers surely did?
If my calculations are correct, a half-century ago was in 1958. John Dewey published Democracy and Education in 1916. The first half of the 20th century (i.e. the pre-1958 half) featured a series of intense ideological debates about the meaning and practice of public education. Whole educational movements rose and fell, each grounded in theory, with a significant impact on schooling for millions of students. How do I know this? Because I-unlike, apparently, Liam-read Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, by noted education historian Diane Ravitch. Liam shouldn’t have any trouble finding a copy-Ravitch is on the Fordham Institute’s Board of Trustees.
Suggestions for summer reading: less blogging and God and Man at Yale, more education policy and history.
I left the following comment on Flypaper, and as soon as TQatE’s blogger platform is actually working again, I’ll leave it there, too:
Liam’s comment about theory is being treated dishonestly. Yes, Dewey published nearly 100 years ago - we all know that. We also know that the mass implementation of Dewey’s theories [really, their offshoots/distortions] are relatively recent.
Disclaimer: I’m implying nothing by citing this example other than a similar timetable to Dewey/education.
Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848 - the theory existed through the 19th century, some knew it, some didn’t, it developed. It took about 70 years to mature and be implemented.
It’s little different with Dewey and education.
Carey’s right - there were “intense ideological debates” about public education in the early 20th century, but the effect of those debates on the average teacher’s pedagogy was minimal compared to today.
That’s the reality of movements. They go a little faster now than they used to - 20th/21st century environmentalism took about 30 years as opposed to 19th/20th century Marxism’s 70, for example; the Progressive push to “re-frame the debate” is a feature of a movement that’s taken only a decade to pervade, which is evidence that changes are coming even faster - but they still take time. That’s why we go beyond a book’s publishing date, or the bracketed dates of a man’s life, when we evaluate arguments and prove points re: movements.
The irony in Carey’s suggestion that Julian imbibe “more education policy and history” is laughable after reading such rigid misunderstanding and intellectual dishonesty. My suggestion on summer reading - all reading, actually - is to focus on comprehension and honest evaluation. Otherwise, don’t bother reading at all, because some of us notice.
It’s tempting for some, especially in education policy, to relive those pseudo-scholarly glory days of Political Science 101 or Introduction to Education Theory. Stop that - because again, some of us notice.
In an effort to tamp the pretension in this debate - I prefer the low-brow to the high - I’ll leave Carey with a co-optation from The Big Lebowski:
Carey, you’re out of your element.
Jul 23, 2008
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Some old, some new, some blogs, some traditional media. All worthwhile, ‘cuz we’ve got Florida, race and Reading First.
The travel debate in Hillsborough County, Florida [St. Pete Times].
The travel expenses are in - board member Susan Valdes spent a lot, no doubt. But $50k over 4 years isn’t all that much if the travel/conferences were worthwhile. Her unfriendlier colleagues on the Board point to the gaudy number and never once address what she actually did with the funds.
There’s no evidence of impropriety, just frequent professional development. The horror!
And cue the gall from Jennifer Faliero:
Board Chairwoman Jennifer Faliero, who requested the four-year analysis of travel by elected officials, agreed. She led the call for a temporary halt on out-of-county travel at the last meeting.
She doesn’t think travel should continue during a time of budget cuts, but acknowledged that other board members don’t agree. She is pushing for oversight and budgeting that would equalize travel among officials.
“We didn’t have a policy, so you leave yourself open to all kinds of abuses,” said Faliero, whose own expenses totaled $13,000. “Even though you hope people will use common sense, that hasn’t happened here.”
Golly gee, it’s almost as if Ms. Faliero doesn’t want Ms. Valdes to win re-election!
Of course, everyone will remember that Ms. Faliero didn’t see it fit to live in the district she was actually representing [she moved back after public pressure]. If anyone is to criticize a board member about using common sense, it isn’t Faliero.
In the tradition of Ann Landers, I’ll issue a Confidential to Jennifer Faliero:
Grow up, you partisan hack. Or at least be politically savvy enough to conceal your motives more effectively.
Getting Real About Race in School [Eduwonkette].
This is old news, but it’s worth revisiting. Eduwonkette featured as a guest blogger Harvard’s Mica Pollack, author of Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real about Race in School.
And to think, I’ve only been committed to anti-racism on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other Saturday!
Pollock’s guest post is another in a series of Eduwonkette’s reminders that you [or me, or anyone, I guess] should know Pollock’s name. May 21st’s summer reading list suggestion and May 30th’s “Cool People You Should Know” nod apparently weren’t enough. Perhaps a hidden tenet of “Everyday Antiracism” is that we need to be reminded of it every day.
But Pollock’s debate is what warrants attention here. After repeating the 4 bullet points that explain the core of “Everyday Antiracism” - I’d bother linking to them if they weren’t repeated in half of Pollock’s posts - some commenters engaged Pollock in rigorous, sensible debate.
And you know how it goes. When the going gets tough, some just get going. Not everyone thought Pollock’s Kool-Aid tasted sweet, so she huffed, puffed, took her ball and went home.
I came late to the party [and the commenters raised all the issues I wanted to address, so I was content with just reading], but I’ll reprint my comment here:
Jul 22, 2008
Posted | 1 comment
A hearty thanks goes out to the National Association of Secondary School Prinicipals for advocating less administrative responsibility for their members. The less they do, the better - until we start making better administrators.
From Flypaper:
Richard Flanary, the director of professional development services for the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP for short), who was quoted in Thursday’s Education Daily (available to subscribers only, of which I think there are about 74) responding to John McCain’s call for greater authority for school principals:
“Certainly we support greater spending autonomy, but there needs to be more clarity on the criteria on which principals make these decisions. Principals already have very busy schedules, and I would hate to think that they would get caught in a situation where they are the purveyors of funds.”
Yes, that would be terrible for the managers of large organizations (in this case, high schools) to “get caught in a situation” where they are responsible for making funding decisions! But why stop at schools? Someone should alert the private sector that it’s stressing out its managers by expecting them to manage budgets. After all, managers already “have very busy schedules.”
You get the point. This is the primary lobby for high school principals, and it’s lobbying against giving principals more authority.
The NASSP is a funny bunch - that they’re the “primary lobby for high school principals” is the truth. The rub is that they’re absolutely awful at it, and in any given month, the NASSP exposes more about the inadequacy of administrators to lead our schools than any education advocate could do in 10 lifetimes.
I excoriated the NASSPismires re: Two Million Minutes, a film about which they issued a useless, ill-conceived rebuttal that embarrassed public education in the United States. This time, as Flypaper points out, they’ve done it to themselves.
And, of course, I agree with them. The average secondary school principal has the mathematics skills of the average 10th grader in my county. Why, then, would anyone want them messing around with money?
Before you write me a nasty, pseudo-scathing e-mail, remember: I’m not saying that all principals roam the halls unburdened by academic knowledge. There are very good, accomplished principals who know both management and scholarship, and there are terrible ones. That’s the way distribution goes.
So… if you’re a principal reading this and your mouth is starting to froth, relax. You’re probably not the one who can’t pass a trig test, it’s just every other principal you know - right? Right?
These charges aren’t speculation, either [page 19 of PDF]. One thing principals, taken as a whole, can’t do is math. They do beat out librarians/archive scientists, social workers, and those who declared “other” Social Science majors. Even the English Lit. majors stomp them by 20 points on Quant.
From ETS’s GRE page, a summary of the Quantitative section of the exam:
Quantitative Reasoning — The skills measured include the test taker’s ability to
- understand basic concepts of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and data analysis
- reason quantitatively
- solve problems in a quantitative setting
Again, the average 10th grader in Otsego County, NY can thump the average principal in our nation in a head-to-head math matchup. [If you're really curious about the Quant section of the GRE, check out a practice test.]
The NASSP won’t address this glaring inadequacy. They won’t release a statement on it, they won’t make a push to raise the academic achievement of their principal core, and they won’t try to recruit higher-achieving students to become administrators.
The only debate here is the question of where, exactly, their heads are - stuck in the sand, or stuck elsewhere [hint: their heads, apparently, aren't stuck in books].
I received an e-mail a few days ago about some research into problems with high school principals; they’re canvassing principals to find out about the “problems HS principals face.” I’d be more than happy to go over some of those problems with them, because God knows the NASSP won’t say a word about it.
UPDATE at 8.11pm, July 22:
To further demonstrate how badly out of touch the NASSP is with its own professionals’ inadequacy, the front page of their website has a piece called “The Elephant in the Room.”
That “Elephant?” No, not the total inability of most principals to write coherently and do math beyond converting fractions to decimals.
The “Elephant in the Room” is, of course…
… “Unauthorized Use of Staff Computers.”
Jul 21, 2008
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In short, the Fresh Air Fund needs to place about 200 children with host families for August. Host families need to be screened - this takes a little bit of time - and August is approaching quickly. From the FAF website:
The Fresh Air Fund has provided free summer vacations to New York City children from disadvantaged communities since 1877.
They’re modest at the FAF - they could have touted that FAF has provided summer opportunities to 1.7 million kids since 1877.
If you or someone you know would like to be a host, check out the information page:
- Please host a child or help us get the word out that we need folks who can welcome a child from the city into their homes next month
- One last thing that is actually very important. We are looking for families who want to extend an invitation to a 9-12 year old. We really need more families who want older children and boys
- Please Email Angie, [email protected], immediately and she’ll speed you through the process!
- Or, you can call us at 1-800-367-0003 (212.897.8900) — ask for Angie
My first real job after leaving high school was doing a little welding and woodworking instruction in rural California. As the evening sessions came to a close, we’d clean up the shop and hit the lights on the way out - and that’s when, more than once, I heard a kid from Los Angeles remark that he’d never seen stars in the sky like that before.
I suppose we’ll see further discussion at schoolracetalk.org.
Silence [right here on the Aughts].
Silly me, I decided to judge Stephen Krashen’s latest Reading First USAToday Crap-Ed piece on its merits. I thought that Reid Lyon’s argument was more compelling.
Gary Stager took me to task. His pith:
Very true. In related news, Gary Stager sports a mustache while I prefer a full beard.
Anyone can put out a stinker regardless of what they’ve done in the past. I happen to think that Krashen is full of stinkers, but that’s beside the point. His editorial, again, was not compelling - and when you write as many letters to the editor and op-eds as Krashen does, it happens. I replied:
Silence, silence, silence.