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January 11, 2006
This is a must read...
In it's entirety:
Ed Schools vs. Education
Prospective teachers are expected to have the correct 'disposition,' proof of which is espousing 'progressive' political beliefs.
By George F. Will
Newsweek
Jan. 16, 2006 issue - The surest, quickest way to add quality to primary and secondary education would be addition by subtraction: Close all the schools of education. Consider The Chronicle of Higher Education's recent report concerning the schools that certify America's teachers.
Many education schools discourage, even disqualify, prospective teachers who lack the correct "disposition," meaning those who do not embrace today's "progressive" political catechism. Karen Siegfried had a 3.75 grade-point average at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but after voicing conservative views, she was told by her education professors that she lacked the "professional disposition" teachers need. She is now studying to be an aviation technician.
In 2002 the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education declared that a "professional disposition" is "guided by beliefs and attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice." Regarding that last, the Chronicle reports that the University of Alabama's College of Education proclaims itself "committed to preparing individuals to"—what? "Read, write and reason"? No, "to promote social justice, to be change agents, and to recognize individual and institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism," and to "break silences" about those things and "develop anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-sexist community [sic] and alliances."
Brooklyn College, where a professor of education required her class on Language Literacy in Secondary Education to watch "Fahrenheit 9/11" before the 2004 election, says it educates teacher candidates about, among many other evils, "heterosexism." The University of Alaska Fairbanks, fluent with today's progressive patois, says that, given America's "caste-like system," teachers must be taught "how racial and cultural 'others' negotiate American school systems, and how they perform their identities." Got it?
The permeation of ed schools by politics is a consequence of the vacuity of their curricula. Concerning that, read "Why Johnny's Teacher Can't Teach" by Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute (available at city-journal.org). Today's teacher-education focus on "professional disposition" is just the latest permutation of what Mac Donald calls the education schools' "immutable dogma," which she calls "Anything But Knowledge."
The dogma has been that primary and secondary education is about "self-actualization" or "finding one's joy" or "social adjustment" or "multicultural sensitivity" or "minority empowerment." But is never about anything as banal as mere knowledge. It is about "constructing one's own knowledge" and "contextualizing knowledge," but never about knowledge of things like biology or history.
Mac Donald says "the central educational fallacy of our time," which dates from the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, is "that one can think without having anything to think about." At City College of New York a professor said that in her course Curriculum and Teaching in Elementary Education she would be "building a community, rich of talk" and "getting the students to develop the subtext of what they're doing." Although ed schools fancy themselves as surfers on the wave of the future, Mac Donald believes that teacher education "has been more unchanging than Miss Havisham. Like aging vestal virgins, today's schools lovingly guard the ancient flame of progressivism"—an egalitarianism with two related tenets.
One, says Mac Donald, is that "to accord teachers any superior role in the classroom would be to acknowledge an elite hierarchy of knowledge, possessed by some but not all." Hence, second, emphasis should be on group projects rather than individual accomplishments that are measured by tests that reveal persistent achievement gaps separating whites and Asians from other minorities.
Numerous inner-city charter and private schools are proving that the gaps can be narrowed, even closed, when rigorous pedagogy is practiced by teachers in teacher-centered classrooms where knowledge is regarded as everything. But most ed schools, celebrating "child-centered classrooms" that do not "suffocate discourses," are enemies of rigor.
The steady drizzle of depressing data continues. A new assessment of adult literacy shows a sharp decline over the last decade, with only 31 percent of college graduates able to read and extrapolate from complex material. They were supposed to learn how to read before college, but perhaps their teachers were too busy proving their "professional dispositions" by "breaking silences" as "change agents."
Fewer than half of U.S. eighth graders have math teachers who majored in math as undergraduates or graduate students or studied math for teacher certification. U.S. 12th graders recently performed below the international average for 21 countries on tests of general knowledge of math and science. But perhaps U.S. pupils excel when asked to "perform their identities."
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10753446/site/newsweek/
Comments
Golly! If George F. Will says this it must be true! I will have to send this to all the very conservative teachers I know who George F. Will says do not exist. Won't they be surprised to find out that Mr. Will says they don't exist?! I guess Mr. Will figures that if we get all those liberals out of Education we can open the door to teach Creationism only (better known now as Intelligent Design), abstinence only, and whatever else Pat Robertson believes should be taught in schools. I give you credit Tim, you are consistent, you never fail to blog on anything that bashes teachers and public education, of course never on anything highlighting all the good things going on in public education.
Posted by: Arleigh Kidd at January 11, 2006 12:42 PMGosh Arleigh - you make these debates so easy, and silly - hardly seems worth it - Oh - OK!
Yesterday you ripped me for not believing everything in the bond articles. Now, you're ripping me for believing what IS in the Will article?
All of us know that we should analyse things we read, and not take them at face value. I did just that with the Will article, and did the same thing with the Bond articles.
See - it's called being consistent.
Try it some time!
Tim
Posted by: Tim Keaney at January 11, 2006 07:20 PMI think Arleigh is the west coast version of Ted Kennedy. At some point it's pointless to try to have a rational discussion with a guy who isn't rational...
Posted by: C Hamilton at January 12, 2006 02:13 PMHave C Hamilton, Tim Keaney, or Jerre Reimers ever attended one day of a teacher prep program?
If not, wouldn't guessing what happens be ASSuming?
Posted by: Ann at January 12, 2006 05:49 PMActually I have. That's why I feel sorry for teachers who's only voice in this community is Arleigh Kidd.
Posted by: C Hamilton at January 13, 2006 08:48 AMYou're right Ann, I have never had a single day of teacher prep time. But I sympathize with the teachers. They have a very difficult job these days because no one supports them. And they have to spend so much of their time doing things that aren't teaching. If a kid gets a bad grade, the parents blame the teacher. But when the "in danger of failing" notices go out, only about 10% of the parents follow up. Why should the teachers care when the parents don't.
Once you realize that school is only about politics, suddenly everything else fall into place.
Posted by: Jerre Reimers at January 15, 2006 03:42 PMThis letter is about George F. Will's preposterous article entitled Ed Schools vs. Education. ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10753446/site/newsweek/ )
What I find amazing is his example of Karen Siegfried as someone who was discriminated against because of her political viewpoint. Only one problem: I was one of eighteen students forced to spend a year in the post-baccalaureate secondary education program at University of Alaska in Fairbanks. I say forced because Karen has little knowledge of how to act with other people. She was combative from day one. She challenged faculty, guest speakers and other students at every chance. I am not saying this as exaggeration. I have worked in a factory, construction, and in retail in my pre-teaching life. Through all these jobs and eight years of post-secondary education I have never before or since run into a character like Karen. She simply had a preternatural ability to be inappropriate and obnoxious. Her desire to compare her own intelligence to everyone in the room was grating after the first week.
I will admit that the UAF program is not perfect. The text quoted in Will's article was awful, and professors admitted it was a mistake and it was rarely used as a practical guide. My understanding was always that it was their first year trying that particular text out. Yes, some professors had a viewpoint and they expressed it. However, this was always done in the spirit of dialog. The program was graduate school; professors and students are supposed to act more as peers. I will be finishing my Masters in Economics in May. I consider myself something of a conservative. I support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I support some provisions of No Child Left Behind. I never felt like I was discriminated against because of my political views. Everyone, including Karen, was encouraged to speak their mind when it pertained to the issue being discussed. Karen often took the time to complain about random things and force her uninformed opinions upon us. She may be a conservative, but she is the worst kind. The kind that takes their talking points from Rush and sticks to them with no independent thought, failing to admit that the GOP can indeed make mistakes.
I can safely say that Karen was indeed ejected from the program after a full year because she lacked "professional disposition". We had class together nearly everyday of the week from August till May. In May Karen was unable to clearly present a 15 minute mini-lesson to us, whom she had know for nearly a year. The expectation that she is qualified to teach 130+ teenagers everyday because she was able to earn a 3.75 in her undergraduate studies is just plain stupid. Just because someone can write well they can develop lessons, grade fairly, provide rigor, control a room of 30 teenagers and deliver content clearly? Sure an english degree and teaching english is related, but do you assume that every excellent farmer is also an excellent cook? The facts are the facts: she was incompetent as a teacher
Finally, I would like to add that I am a high school math teacher without a major in Mathematics. The assumption that I am not qualified even after eight years of studying in economics and spending plenty of time in upper-level math makes no sense to me. As does the assumption that charter and private school data can be compared to public school data. After all, these schools can cherry pick from the best and brightest and when a student fails to meet expectations they can be dropped from the rolls.
George, I watch you almost every week. I often agree with you, but next time you write an article on the failing American education system please question your sources and do some research.
This letter is about George F. Will's preposterous article entitled Ed Schools vs. Education. ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10753446/site/newsweek/ )
What I find amazing is his example of Karen Siegfried as someone who was discriminated against because of her political viewpoint. Only one problem: I was one of eighteen students forced to spend a year in the post-baccalaureate secondary education program at University of Alaska in Fairbanks. I say forced because Karen has little knowledge of how to act with other people. She was combative from day one. She challenged faculty, guest speakers and other students at every chance. I am not saying this as exaggeration. I have worked in a factory, construction, and in retail in my pre-teaching life. Through all these jobs and eight years of post-secondary education I have never before or since run into a character like Karen. She simply had a preternatural ability to be inappropriate and obnoxious. Her desire to compare her own intelligence to everyone in the room was grating after the first week.
I will admit that the UAF program is not perfect. The text quoted in Will's article was awful, and professors admitted it was a mistake and it was rarely used as a practical guide. My understanding was always that it was their first year trying that particular text out. Yes, some professors had a viewpoint and they expressed it. However, this was always done in the spirit of dialog. The program was graduate school; professors and students are supposed to act more as peers. I will be finishing my Masters in Economics in May. I consider myself something of a conservative. I support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I support some provisions of No Child Left Behind. I never felt like I was discriminated against because of my political views. Everyone, including Karen, was encouraged to speak their mind when it pertained to the issue being discussed. Karen often took the time to complain about random things and force her uninformed opinions upon us. She may be a conservative, but she is the worst kind. The kind that takes their talking points from Rush and sticks to them with no independent thought, failing to admit that the GOP can indeed make mistakes.
I can safely say that Karen was indeed ejected from the program after a full year because she lacked "professional disposition". We had class together nearly everyday of the week from August till May. In May Karen was unable to clearly present a 15 minute mini-lesson to us, whom she had know for nearly a year. The expectation that she is qualified to teach 130+ teenagers everyday because she was able to earn a 3.75 in her undergraduate studies is just plain stupid. Just because someone can write well they can develop lessons, grade fairly, provide rigor, control a room of 30 teenagers and deliver content clearly? Sure an english degree and teaching english is related, but do you assume that every excellent farmer is also an excellent cook? The facts are the facts: she was incompetent as a teacher
Finally, I would like to add that I am a high school math teacher without a major in Mathematics. The assumption that I am not qualified even after eight years of studying in economics and spending plenty of time in upper-level math makes no sense to me. As does the assumption that charter and private school data can be compared to public school data. After all, these schools can cherry pick from the best and brightest and when a student fails to meet expectations they can be dropped from the rolls.
George, I watch you almost every week. I often agree with you, but next time you write an article on the failing American education system please question your sources and do some research.
My rebuttal to Mr.Dunn's comments.
http://redneckliterati.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Karen at February 1, 2006 12:15 AMIn response to Mike. I can't say anything about how Karen was in the class they took together because I wasn't there, though having known Karen for far longer than he (being her Mom ) I do know she never has listened to Rush Limbaugh. I would have liked to hear from him more about the botched lesson plan and less about the Limbaugh talking points since whether one is "the worst kind of conservative" or not is irrelevant to one's ability to teach. I wish the University had seen fit to tell Karen what they didn't like about her, which they refused to do, even going so far as to delete their reason for rejecting her from her own student files. When you fire a person, which in effect they did, you give them a written reason. They did not. Possibly because they did not want to argue with her, possibly because they didn't want a paper trail. One wonders.
Posted by: Pam Siegfried at February 5, 2006 12:59 PM
And yet another reason to send your kids to a private school!
Posted by: Jerre Reimers at January 11, 2006 12:31 PM