Uncle Orson Looks at American Culture 1996 -
Charles J. Sykes
Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add
E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
The Schools We Need: Why We Don't Have Them
I read the Sykes book first, and while the two authors are very different, I suspect that whichever one you read first will be the one you feel is most important or powerful. Nevertheless, I recommend them both for anyone who is interested in why American schools are doing such a wretched job of educating American children.
I must say, however, that I happen to live in a place where our school system doesn't fall into the worst of the traps spoken of in these books. Oh, we have our share of self-esteem-building and feel-goodism, and our administrations are as top-heavy with educationists who claim to be experts but in fact draw high salaries for interfering with the only relevant educational professionals: the teachers. And many of the problems in American schools begin, not with educational theorists, but with parents who forgot that the first job of parents is to civilize their children, for education cannot take place in an atmosphere of contempt for authority. In other words, we have to get over the stupid beliefs that became widespread in the 1960s and get back to the idea of parents who insist on excellence and obedience from their children, starting long before the first year of school. And parents need to stop taking the side of their children in every controversy, and start admitting the truth when their own child really is disruptive, lazy, dishonest, or corrupt, instead of suing or threatening to sue the school.
Having said that, the fact remains that educationists basically know less than nothing, for most of what they think they know is false. Yet these are the people we keep putting in charge of our school systems, and when we find that the schools are failing our children, we keep going back to the same experts who try even more of the same stupid ideas — getting paid very handsomely for their meddling every time. Meanwhile, the teachers — those who can somehow bear to stay in this insane system — are interfered with and/or deceived more and more with every passing year.
I'm not sure I agree with any of Sykes's or Hirsch's proposals — I personally believe in public education and that we can solve the schools' problems without destroying that principle. My own idea is that the beginning of the solution is to break up the statewide school systems and even the huge local school districts, returning to the principle not only of neighborhood schools but of truly local school government, using statewide school taxes only for the purpose of equalizing budgets between poor and rich schools. I would even break up the huge high schools that turn students into invisible — and therefore irresponsible — statistical units, and return to much smaller schools where everybody knows everybody else and no one can disappear. I'd also break the back of the educationist establishment by removing all the requirements for education classes for teachers, and instead require them to be masters of the subject matters they teach. This would make it easier for people to move into and out of the profession, so that people could contribute as teachers for a year or two or ten without committing to a lifetime of submission to administrators. It would also help eliminate the myth that teachers and administrators know more about education than "civilians." (And I say these things as the son of a professor of education (retired) — because my father was telling me these very things about his own profession before I was in my teens, and gave me plenty of chances to see how meaningless or counterproductive the work of his colleagues actually was.)
After you've read one of the above, you might also want to check out Neil Postman's The End of Education.
http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/reviews96/sykes.shtml
