"In recent years, parents have cried in dismay that their children could not read out loud, could not spell, could not write clearly," while "employers have said that mechanics could not read simple directions. Many a college has blamed high schools for passing on students ... who could not read adequately to study college subjects; high schools have had to give remedial reading instruction to boys and girls who did not learn to read properly in elementary schools..."
On and on goes the devastating indictment of our education system. Or -- well, perhaps I shouldn't say "our" education system, since few of us had much to say about school policy when this article appeared in 1954.
Similar jeremiads were published, of course, in the 1980s (see especially the Reagan Administration's influential and deeply dishonest "Nation at Risk" report) and in the 1970s, but one could argue that those, like today's denunciations of falling standards and demands for accountability, reflect the same legacy of multiculturalism, radical education professors, and the post-Woodstock cultural realignment that brought down traditional values inside and outside of schools.
But how does one defend such an argument when it turns out that people were saying exactly the same things about America's dysfunctional education system before Vietnam, before Civil Rights, before feminism -- and displaying that same aggressive nostalgia for an earlier era when, you know, excellence really mattered?
And if pundits were throwing up their hands during the Eisenhower era about schools on the decline, about students who could barely read and write, about how we're being beaten by [insert name of other country here], the obvious question is: When exactly was that golden period that was distinguished by high standards?
The answer, of course, is that it never existed. "The story of declining school quality across the 20th century is, for the most part, a fable," says social scientist Richard Rothstein, whose book The Way We Were? cites a series of similar attacks on American education, moving backward one decade at a time. Each generation invokes the good old days, during which, we discover, people had been doing exactly the same thing. ("Grade inflation" is a case in point: Harvard professors were already grumbling about how A's were "given too readily" back in 1894, only a few years after letter grades were introduced to the college.)
Of course, this phenomenon isn't limited to schooling. As I've described elsewhere, claims that parents are too permissive, that they fail to set limits, and consequently that "kids today" are spoiled and self-centered, can be found in articles and books that date back decades, if not centuries.
To dig up strikingly familiar observations or sentiments offered by people long dead isn't just an amusing rhetorical flourish. These echoes deprive us of the myth of uniqueness, and that can be usefully unsettling. Whenever we're apt to sound off about how contemporary education -- or any other aspect of modern life -- is unprecedented in its capacity to give offense, the knowledge that our grandparents or distant ancestors said much the same thing, give or take a superficial detail, serves to remind us of an observation once offered by Adrienne Rich: "Nostalgia is only amnesia turned around."
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The catch is that even though the standards were higher fo schools, the majority never met those standards. For the most part I became educated in spite of the system, not because of it.
What you'll find is that our system has done a pretty remarkable job trying to educate everyone---instead of just the upper crust that were educated in the early years of the American public school system....or that are currently educated in the vast majority of international countries that we're compared to.
How does that reality---that our system is serving far more kids from far different social and ability classes than we were during the golden years that you so admire---change your conclusion that today's schools are a failure?
The question we need to ask now is if we can educate these previously tossed students to high standards.
I think we can, but only if the students and parents do their part.
Language is a living thing, and all living things change and grow. When Chaucer and Shakespeare first appeared on the scene they too were criticized for being too bawdy or just low class literature in general. So we are in transition, language is in transition, how the students now learn and connect is linear thinking, surface level stuff with no deep connections.
So, we either figure out a way to make deeper connections to the internet and promote critical thinking skills or we just sit back and think of the good old days, when most populations were illiterate anyway.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-r-cole/waiting-for-superman-or-g_b_794381.html
for myself I see education as just a reflection of something bigger that is wrong with our society.
education is just an aspect of this society's failure on several fronts.
deming told us our future if we did not change and make the emphasis on quality in all aspects of our culture. we listened not.
"I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamities which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality"
And, of course, the demonized or diefied charter schools continue to make news in both large cities and rural districts.
Would love to discuss this with you at length. Have a good friend who would join the conversation - retired central office from Chicago.
social security and education.
and they will even create a social security crisis when there is none to privitize it for wall street scams.
and it will work they will create a war on social security like terrorism and americans will let it go private.
the capitalists are ten times smarter than the general population.
the amount of corp profits that can be made from our wars for corp profits with cost plus contracts is not for the faint of heart.
the rebuilding of tanks used in iraq war alone that corp has a five year backlog of orders.$$$$$$$$
I think it is about time we cease trying to solve this problem with the same kind of thinking that created it. We are simply perpetuating the problem, enabling it to manifest in different ways, but it is still the same problem.
Though JD Hoye was correct when he said, “we need a strong education system to build a strong workforce” this doesn’t mean that the purpose of education is economic—that the only reason to attend to the educational system is for its economic value. So we should stop training people for careers and begin educating them for life.
The value of learning is not solely for the money it affords. Learning is far more fundamental and essential to the human condition than that! We shouldn’t educate people for the sole purpose of providing labor to feed the economic system we must educate to develop human beings. Why not stop playing the game that is destroying all us? (see www.forprogressnotgrowth.com/2010/12/09/on-economics-and-education/ )
You are now being followed (As ominous as that sounds, it just means I'm set up for your updates, heh.)
you did not mention him but oh he was fond of your teaching methods; this nation could use some of his profound knowledge about now.
but as he predicted if we did not start to use that profound knowledge we would be in the trouble we are in now. he nailed it.
have read your work and it is indeed a paradigm shift that this nation knows little of.
hope you make some comments on pay for performance as it is going to be applied to teachers performance. the destruction to come will be great and a bit sad. same destruction as wall street and big three and banks. etc.
I see american education going the wrong way and things will get worst much worst.
you would think what did not work on wall street or the big three or the banks they would not try with education but in our ignorance we will use it in spite of the evidence.
I owe deming so much as he changed the way I view the relative phenomena world. his teachings of systems and variation is outstanding indeed profound knowledge.
as I work with pre school I see the amazing things these kids are capable of then by the fifth grade most but the top ten per cent are turned off to learning. and yet we continue with the same ignorance.
This is so true . I remember when I taught a class of "at risk" second graders at risk for retention because their teachers ddidn't believe that they would be able to pass the standardized test. These chilchildren had no idea about what to do when they saw a word. I taught to their stengths in a systematic way and I could tell that the children had some glimmer of hope. When the Administrator brought in the Standardized "intervention books", I could see the disappointment and frustration on their faces. I asked them, "Who never plans on reading again after they finish school. Every hand in the room went up. We are killing these children and frustrating them to death.
My contention is that IF YOU KNOW HOW TO TEACH, YOU CAN TEACH ANYTHING YOU KNOW!
Instead we get stuck with Arne Duncan. I object and I refuse to do anything Duncan tells me to do in my classroom.