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Truly, it was a scene to be savored. Dana Gioia, a poet and Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, to illustrate from his own experience as a high school teacher how the arts can serve self-development, grabbed the stumpy hand of former assistant secretary of education (Reagan), Chester E. Finn, Jr., assumed the role of Romeo and said, in rounded tones worthy of being spoke at the Globe,
"If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."
Fortunately, Gioia, not Finn, took Juliet's lines as well:
"Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much..."
And so on.
Gioia stopped short of planting on Finn the wet one that Romeo lands on Juliet.
This dazzling display of thespian skill occurred mid-morning of an all-day conference that was full of promise seldom realized. It was titled, "Beyond the Basics: Why Reading, Science, and Math Aren't Sufficient for a 21st Century Education." The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law requires that schools test in reading, mathematics and, starting next year, science and show "Adequate Yearly Progress." Many a story has told of history, social sciences, art, music, and even physical education and recess being reduced or eliminated from the school day to make more time for the Big Three.
We haven't descended as far as Japan, but we might be enroute. In Japan, recently, it came to light that 280 schools had failed to teach courses required by Japanese law to obtain a high school diploma. The courses--most often world history--were dropped in order to give students more time to study for Japan's life-determining college entrance exams. The thousands of students affected will have to find some way to make up the classes.
Data presented at the conference confirmed anecdotes that since the onset of NCLB, American students spend more time in reading and math than previously, and less time in other subjects. American students in the middle elementary grades spend more time in reading, math and science, 68 percent, than do students in the other 30-odd nations that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 57 percent. American kids spend 38 percent of the day in reading and language arts while other OECD nations spend 32 percent, a figure that becomes startling when one considers that almost all other nations' teach foreign languages at the elementary level and the 32 percent includes that time.
It was to be hoped that this conference would synergistically fuse with an earlier gathering that had detailed NCLB's failings (blogged here December 10) and restore balance to American education. I took heart when conference organizer Finn, now president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, declared that the day would be known as "The Revenge of the Liberal Arts."
Unfortunately, another former assistant secretary of education (Bush I), Diane Ravitch led off with a dreary recounting of the "woeful" state of American public education followed by a horrifically inaccurate description of the College Board's report on the decline of SAT scores. Ravitch attributed the fall to academic dumbing down. The College Board's panel attributed much of the early fall to "the deliberate and historic decision in this country in the 1960's to extend and expand educational opportunity," meaning that more women, more minorities, and more students from low-income families took the SAT. It ascribed most of the later drop to "a period of turbulence and distraction rarely paralleled in American history:" urban violence, Vietnam, Watergate, the rise of the "counter culture," and a host of other social disturbances.
Ravitch was followed by Sidney Harman, Chairman of Harman International Industries (Harman Kardon audio products), who motored through a disjointed, inarticulate and irrelevant ego trip. Harman in turn was followed by a panel of able people who got too quickly bogged down in details about how they, were they the principal of a new school, would find time for the liberal arts in the crowded school day.
By the time Gioia took the podium to speak of a vision, many in the audience of 250 or so were depressed. Had he opened the conference he might well have inspired it to develop a vision of what an education that gives appropriate weight to the liberal arts could look like.
Seven after-lunch roundtables developed some interesting programmatic ideas, but the intended recipient of these ideas, Representative George Miller, the incoming chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Work Force, didn't show up. He apparently had been summoned by incoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Too bad because Miller might be the only person other than Margaret Spellings who thinks NCLB is OK in its current incarnation.
A closing panel on how to sell governors on the liberal arts also delved prematurely into mechanics and minutiae. Still, it is interesting that people who were once avid supporters of NCLB have again discovered the liberal arts and the well-rounded kid. Stay tuned.
A Webcast of the conference plus papers can be accessed at www.edexcellence.net.
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