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Friday, July 5, 2013

Education, not graduation, should be the goal

COMMENTARY
GEORGE TEMPLETON

 
By George Templeton
Gazette Columnist

This will be the first of a two part series. It sets the scene for the recent commotion about the Common Core.

I don’t intend any prescription, or to say that back in my day we had the “right” idea.  My experiences, because I am not a professional, are the context that I view the current commotion from.

The atmosphere of destructive criticism aimed at public education is unhealthy.  Business managers don’t want negative feelings in their employees or customers.
The second part will be submitted before school starts.  It will try to present less sensational, constructive criticism.

Education
The TV news explained how rap music was used to teach science.  Math is the language of science, not rap!  Could this provide insight into why many Americans think that Intelligent Design is a science? 

Critics say that public schools are failure factories and children, who have the opportunity to study, are not learning.  How often do they complain that not enough home work is assigned?  Have we created a culture of mediocrity that values a good time most of all?  The teacher should make learning exciting, entertaining, and easy, but in reality how often is life like that?  The benefit a student gets depends as much on his effort as anything else.

Public School
 “Government” schools are under attack, though they are responsible for our middle class, an informed voting public, and the dream of upward social mobility.

The belief that “good” teachers are born, not made, and that education’s problems can be solved by firing the bottom ten percent of teachers, is voiced in Karl Weber’s 2010 book Waiting for Superman and boosted by HB2500, making a teacher’s inadequate single yearly performance plan a basis for dismissal.

Economists present numbers and subjective conclusions claiming that educational results are not improved by dollars, fewer students, and advanced teaching degrees, but numbers are meaningless when they are presented outside of context.  When you have sick patients your focus should be on them, not on the typical person.  Gross National Product does not measure happiness or guarantee a meaningful life.  America’s soul won’t be found in bottom-line, short-term business management demanding a quick payback.

Forty years of shipping jobs overseas have grown American consumerism while discouraging the creativity and synergism of local industries.  We did not question what America could do that the rest of the world would pay us for.  The way to future jobs lies in a broad education, stressing fundamentals that do not quickly become obsolete.  Common Core gives this strong foundation.

A social divide in American society concerns whether religion or the rationality of the Founding Fathers should govern education.  Thomas Jefferson realized that a theology that makes itself antithetical to education is not compatible with democracy.  Should education maintain and transmit traditional cultural values and skills, or address maladjustment to the present and future.  Is education a liberal conspiracy, a religious-political agenda, or a competitive need?  Will pseudoscientific rationalizations and denial of mankind’s greatest problems be passed on to succeeding generations, or will we encourage confronting a changing reality and guide culture as it evolves in succeeding generations?

Destructive propaganda hurts.  A mean-spirited atmosphere persuades good teachers with public service motivations to leave the profession.  The consequences of educational mistreatment do not appear until the inventory of knowledgeable people becomes depleted through attrition and retirement.  How can the community expect teachers to be loyal to them when they are not loyal to teachers?

Common Core
Common Core is a set of recommended standards (not regulations) developed cooperatively by the public and state experts, intended to establish uniform, nationwide minimum knowledge needed to be competitive in today’s world.  Standards do not set an upper cap on what can be taught, will not make schools and students identical, don’t define teaching methods, and won’t provide necessary funding.  Competing business organizations, lacking a plethora of linked propaganda tanks intent on sabotage, have been able to cooperatively write standards for the good of the public.  Can education do the same?

The standards are bottom-up, not top-down, and have been published in draft form since September 2009, resulting in nearly 10,000 public comments, but right-wing propaganda from the likes of Glen Beck and Michelle Malkin did not emerge until the spring of  2013 following President Obama’s reelection.  Conservapedia’s characterization of Common Core as atheistic, leftist, and substandard seems to be concentrated on the things that make the Radical Righteous Right (RRR) conscious of their own bad qualities.  Their propaganda stereotypes it as government repression, but it cannot be that because the government lacks the expertise to independently create any standard without the help of state experts.

Arizona policymakers and educators are not always communicating on identical wavelengths.  The Tea Party has mounted an intensive campaign to ambush the Common Core.  They associate Common Core with all their boogeymen:  Inept government, separation of church and state, secular values, social policy science, conflicts with Genesis, global warming, environmental sustainability, critical thinking (called liberal indoctrination), and big spending.  The loss of our children’s global competitiveness will far exceed any savings from ending the project.

Arizonans against Common Core calls it a dark, sinister plan to control our educational system and dumb us down.  Senate Bill SB1403 curtails and links it with UN Agenda 21’s sustainability.  SB1213 promotes teaching the scientific validity of Intelligent Design and global warming denial.  Reality flips upside-down when the tax exempt, undisclosed donor, fake-science, Heartland Institute claims “secular” is a religion and student diversity requires teaching Christianity in public schools.  The Gulag Bound web site goes farther by claiming that Common Core will eliminate private property, and exterminate twenty-five million Americans.  The Cornwall Alliance rallies the public to fight a “spiritual world war” against Darwin’s evolution and environmentalism.  They preach that believing in climate change “is an insult to God”. 

It was Ludwig Wittgenstein who said, “When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of.” 

Learning
My life was forever changed by my 3rd grade teacher.  Our teacher brought her college science texts to school and allowed us to read them after completing our assignments. We shared insect collections, grew plants, and experimented with electricity.  Curriculum requirements did not limit her active participation with students.  She believed in our potential.  We were discovering the wonder and mystery of life along with basic studies.

In junior high, shop classes introduced us to vocational art.  The men at the motor winding shop gave us free magnet wire to build crystal radios.  Vocational education was not inferior to or in place of a broad education.  Youth and freedom from adult responsibilities comes only once.  It would be a shame if a narrow educational focus replaced an opportunity for exploration of life’s meaning.

My luck was to live in the time of Sputnik and the ascent of transistors and computers.  America addressed the Russian challenge collectively.  Unprecedented public spending on education led to “government” Physical Science Study Committee physics and summer teacher education opportunities.  We were all special!  It was a time of camaraderie.  We were to become a super industrialized nation supplying the best products to the world.  Good jobs were real and next door waiting for individuals with the right qualifications to fill them. 

In high school, we had physics, chemistry, biology, English, math and electronics.  My class had only 540 students, but we filled a full schedule and more of each of these subjects.  Accelerated classes were available for students qualified by ability, aptitude, and ambition.  They provided challenges for students without branding others as “not made of the right stuff”.  We had released time Bible instruction, a band, large orchestra, and free summer music instruction.  We had after-hours clubs for special interests.

On career day, more than three quarters of the fellows indicated their future involved going into some field of technology.  Nearly all of the students in our school graduated.  We knew that education, not graduation, was the goal.  We realized that there was intrinsic reward in a job well done.

The university students were frantically checking to see if they could drop-add into a different class.  The professor had a bad reputation!  I checked my schedule but no openings were available.  By the next class there were only five of us remaining and all admitted to trying to drop the course.  The teacher was a task-master who gave huge assignments and loved teaching.  He graded rigorously but honestly.  When he could see that you were beginning to catch on, he would provide an additional special assignment “just for you”. 

My English class was not just about grammar, punctuation, spelling, and research.  It was writing about, and debating the meaning of life.  There was no uproar about truth decay and indoctrinating shades of gray.  My friend, inspired by this class, changed his major and became an English professor.

My hand-written notes for beginner’s theoretical mechanics filled two large three ring binders with about 500 pages of calculus.  It was all proofs, concepts, and derivations without numerical calculations or multiple-choice exams.  Our teacher had an inspirational grasp of the subject matter and an ability to come at every question from different angles.

In Electromagnetic Field Theory all the exams were comprehensive, going back to the beginning of the class.  We had a book, but did not follow it.  Instead, we were given a lesson plan and a list of library books.  We were told that we were responsible for anything that could be found in any of those books.  We were to master the subject, not a test.  We learned that Maxwell explained radio waves and the speed of light, not Einstein’s relativity as creationists seem to think, and that “secular” astronomers measure distances indicating a universe much older than 6000 years.

Atomic Physics explained that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is not just a hunch.  It includes and extends Newton’s laws of motion, and has not been disproven in even a single case.  Scientific theories cannot contain supernatural causes.  They make explanations and falsifiable predictions of phenomena.   

Theology studies required us to be civically responsible.  We tutored inner city children.  We did not think that we were enslaving disadvantaged minorities by trying to help them.

My beginner’s course in Earth Science contradicted the 6000 year old universe claimed by creationist PhDs.  It described methods, all largely in agreement, not beliefs, for dating the age of the earth.  Being anti-science does not require rejecting the many benefits that science has brought to society.  Critical thinking does require application of the scientific method.

My beginner’s course in history had only written assignments and essay exams, no text or syllabus, and required researching, composing and typing about 400 single spaced pages to answer a weekly list of comprehensive questions.  It wasn’t multiple guess!  Every week I visited the library to find and check out stacks of needed books.  They required us to analyze and contrast differing historical opinions, argue a position, and write about the evidence, relevant culture, sociology, technology, economy, religion, philosophy, and politics of the time.  Footnotes were required.  We were graded on our ability to communicate, and on the depth of our arguments.  There was no correct answer, no absolute truth, only a question:  What knowledge has been most significant for mankind’s successes and failures?  We were reminded, “There is an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong”.

“Happening now, alert, alert”, news claims that one must not become “wonky” or detailed.  Conservative politics describing American exceptionalism, no intended slavery, combined church and state, religious harmony, persecution, liberal atheism, conspiracy, militarism, guns, and moral torture, is culture-war politics, not history.

Future
The Common Core standards are available on the internet.  Perhaps you can recognize some of my educational experiences in them.  I’ll present a critique next time.

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