Among the many challenges for the
K-12 Revolution in the United States is the cluelessness of most of those who
consider themselves to have an interest in education change.
Most of these reformers have scant
knowledge of the best education systems of the world, all of which have
national curricula, superbly trained teachers, a lack of emphasis on sports,
parents who are engaged in the academic lives of their children rather than
PTA-type activities and athletic boosterism, and students who as a matter of
internalized ethic know that perseverance and diligence are more important than
natural intelligence or ability. Nations
and geo-political entities such as Finland , South Korea, Taiwan, Shanghai (China),
Japan, and Singapore feature whole-class instruction, grade by grade coherence
of curriculum, class sizes that are large by the standards of the school
systems of the United States, and an assumption that all students can succeed. Immigrant populations and economically impoverished
populations of these nations do well, because the systems are designed to serve
all students in uniformly excellent schools, each institution staffed by well-paid
and high-status teachers who have gained certification in highly selective
teaching-training programs.
Students of these nations regularly
far exceed the performance of students in the United States on the PISA
(Program of International Student Assessment), an exam largely designed by the
physicist and educator Andreas Schleicher, a German by birth who lives in
Paris, where the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the
entity under which aegis the PISA instrument is administered) is located. The PISA exam requires a great deal of
factual knowledge, with an emphasis on application and critical analysis. In placing a great deal of importance on
critical analysis and creative application, Schleicher of his own convictions constructed
an assessment that answers the typical criticism of those who oppose
standardized tests and are quick to offer excuses for the abysmal performance of
students in the United States.
In my next blog entry as you scroll
on down a reader, Martin Peyer, whom I have come to regard as a gadfly of the
Ted Kolderie type, offers the following response to the article, which details
a set of remarkable experiences that I had last Thursday, 30 November, involving
students of very distinct grade levels
and types of struggle, all reflecting, though, the flaws of our K-12 system of
education in Minnesota (saliently representing the United States) and the
ill-trained teachers who inflict such an abdominal level of education on our
students.
Somehow, Peyer missed the entire
thrust of the article by offering this comment:
Gary, if you actually want to
improve things, work on the system rather than the people.
I replied:
Martin---
Your comment is characteristically clueless. More than anyone in the United States, I
commit most of my waking hours to changing both the system and the people. One of our gravest errors is to assume that
the quality of staff is a minor concern. The Nazi system worked superbly as it was
designed to work, but there were considerable moral problems with the people
who generated Nazi ideology and implemented policies based on totalitarian
fascist precepts.
Systems matter.
Staff matters, crucially.
Our problem in waging the needed K-12 Revolution in the United
States has as much to do with would-be reformers who tout as new ideas that are
traceable to the lamentable postulations of William Heard Kilpatrick, who at
Teachers College of Columbia University from the 1920s perpetrated the anti-knowledge
pap that has ruined generations of teachers, victims of the erroneous
expostulations of those campus lowlifes known as education professors.
Make no mistake, though, dear readers:
The K-12 Revolution is coming, and when the needed overhaul of
K-12 education arrives, the revolutionary tide will sweep away the fatuous
notions of the Martin Peyers and Ted Kolderies of our currently degraded ether,
will engulf university teacher training systems, and bring to the fore a
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete K-12 curriculum, imparted by excellent
teachers who know that people very much matter and that as true education
professionals they are key to the success of the revolutionized system of education
at the level of the locally centralized school district.
Even the talented educators of Finland, South Korea, Shanghai,
Taiwan, and Singapore will observe the K-12 Revolution of the United States with
awe.
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