George F. Will: Ed Schools and the Fall of Western Civilization
Can you tell that I'm house-sitting for someone who gets Newsweek? I've turned my nose up at that mag for twenty years, but it turns out that it's actually pretty good. I mean, it's no New Republic or anything, but that's not the niche it's striving to fill.
Anyway, this George F. Will column elicited hearty "amen"s from me and from Johnny Quest. As is almost always the case in such analyses, Will picks out one pattern in a complex situation, but it's a very strong, important, influential pattern. Not every person in ed school is an air-headed fluffy-liberal spouting half-baked, hand-me-down postmodern hogwash...but a frighteningly large percentage of them seem to be.
One thing Will gets wrong, however, is this: he suggests that there's an emphasis on reasoning rather than knowledge in ed schools. As far as I can tell, neither of those things is emphasized in ed schools. I myself was an education major once. As the first person in my family to go to college I had never heard of graduate school, and hadn't even dreamed of teaching at a university. I dropped out of the ed program after about a semester. I went in to see my advisor about scheduling classes, presenting him with a tentative schedule that included an advanced course in formal logic, a philosophy of science class, a history of science class, and an American history course (that turned out to be one of my best classes ever) called Revolution and Early National Period with my all-time favorite history teacher (George Suggs, for the record). I still remember my advisor marking out three of the four classes and replacing them with classes on teaching method--classes that I'd been informed by other education majors were a tragic waste of the human spirit, mainly focusing on things like how to make a lively bulletin board.
I walked out stunned, and it took me all of about 30 seconds to decide that my years-long dream of teaching highschool was not going to be realized. I even stood on the sidewalk and said, out loud, something like "I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm not doing that." Secondary education, that is. And this is a common complaint among and about education majors: they spend so much of their time on utterly worthless methods classes that they know very little about the subjects they are teaching. But as almost anyone who has taught will tell you, it's mastery of the material that is about 90% of the battle. Teaching per se is hard, but after awhile you figure out how to do it.
That experience was ultimately good for me, but, I believe, bad for secondary education. (As it turns out, there's significant evidence that I'm an unusually good teacher.)
In fact, I've never known a single education major who I repected intellectually who had very much at all good to say about undergraduate or even graduate education education. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever heard any of them talk about it without a lot of eye-rolling and head-shaking. Most smart people in that world realize there are big, big problems there. (For the record, I did meet someone once who held forth at length about how difficult it was to finish her Masters in education. Turns out she was having trouble with her thesis. Turns out that her thesis was--I'm not making this up--ten lesson plans. (For the record, my master's thesis was 97 pages of blood, sweat and tears on Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's private language argument...))
Anyway, that education schools need reform on several fronts is obvious to anyone who's had even passing experience with them. And it doesn't take a genius to see how important teacher education is. This is something we simply cannot afford to keep getting so very, very wrong.
Can you tell that I'm house-sitting for someone who gets Newsweek? I've turned my nose up at that mag for twenty years, but it turns out that it's actually pretty good. I mean, it's no New Republic or anything, but that's not the niche it's striving to fill.
Anyway, this George F. Will column elicited hearty "amen"s from me and from Johnny Quest. As is almost always the case in such analyses, Will picks out one pattern in a complex situation, but it's a very strong, important, influential pattern. Not every person in ed school is an air-headed fluffy-liberal spouting half-baked, hand-me-down postmodern hogwash...but a frighteningly large percentage of them seem to be.
One thing Will gets wrong, however, is this: he suggests that there's an emphasis on reasoning rather than knowledge in ed schools. As far as I can tell, neither of those things is emphasized in ed schools. I myself was an education major once. As the first person in my family to go to college I had never heard of graduate school, and hadn't even dreamed of teaching at a university. I dropped out of the ed program after about a semester. I went in to see my advisor about scheduling classes, presenting him with a tentative schedule that included an advanced course in formal logic, a philosophy of science class, a history of science class, and an American history course (that turned out to be one of my best classes ever) called Revolution and Early National Period with my all-time favorite history teacher (George Suggs, for the record). I still remember my advisor marking out three of the four classes and replacing them with classes on teaching method--classes that I'd been informed by other education majors were a tragic waste of the human spirit, mainly focusing on things like how to make a lively bulletin board.
I walked out stunned, and it took me all of about 30 seconds to decide that my years-long dream of teaching highschool was not going to be realized. I even stood on the sidewalk and said, out loud, something like "I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm not doing that." Secondary education, that is. And this is a common complaint among and about education majors: they spend so much of their time on utterly worthless methods classes that they know very little about the subjects they are teaching. But as almost anyone who has taught will tell you, it's mastery of the material that is about 90% of the battle. Teaching per se is hard, but after awhile you figure out how to do it.
That experience was ultimately good for me, but, I believe, bad for secondary education. (As it turns out, there's significant evidence that I'm an unusually good teacher.)
In fact, I've never known a single education major who I repected intellectually who had very much at all good to say about undergraduate or even graduate education education. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever heard any of them talk about it without a lot of eye-rolling and head-shaking. Most smart people in that world realize there are big, big problems there. (For the record, I did meet someone once who held forth at length about how difficult it was to finish her Masters in education. Turns out she was having trouble with her thesis. Turns out that her thesis was--I'm not making this up--ten lesson plans. (For the record, my master's thesis was 97 pages of blood, sweat and tears on Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's private language argument...))
Anyway, that education schools need reform on several fronts is obvious to anyone who's had even passing experience with them. And it doesn't take a genius to see how important teacher education is. This is something we simply cannot afford to keep getting so very, very wrong.
posted by Winston Smith at
1:19 PM
8 Comments:
Shorter philosoraptor:
Those who can't teach, teach education?
Winston,
I'll pretty much give you an 'amen' on the lack of emphasis on the learning of subject matter for teachers.
A good friend of mine was a HS teacher (he now runs a successful tutoring business), and that was one of his pet peeves: that graduate school for education puts too much emphasis on the 'method' of teaching and not enough on the subject matter the teacher will actually be teaching.
BTW, big props to you on getting through the Kripke stuff in one piece. I recall with anguish trying to make sense of NAMING AND NECESSITY for a phil seminar on modality. I thought it'd be the death of me.
My better half is getting a PhD in education policy at Stanford, and as far as I can tell anyone saying "we should clearly do x" has no clue.
As far as this issue is concerned, there's a ferment about paedegogical content knowledge - teachers have to know the material, they have to know how to teach, and they have to know how to teach the material (the last part being pck).
Winston is certainly right about a great deal of what passes for education education. It's a faddish discipline which offers a 'practical' methodology in doing something that looks like common sense anyway, and recipients of this education seem often to pick up a vague, self-satisfied moral nihilism. Actually, this sounds almost exactly like buisiness school, except of course MBAs get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for *their* jargon-heavy nihilism.
But seriously, two points: First, the worthlessness of much education education (henceforth E2) tends to increase proportionately to the level of the students - that is, the education student's future students. If you are teaching US history to a bunch of 16 year olds, mostly what you need is a good deal of knowledge of the actual subject and enthusiasm enough about it to hold on to at least some of the students' interest. Most teaching 'techniques' at this level are apt to degenerate into bulletin boards and Robin Williamsesque clowning. But what of the little ones? I know know how to read, and apparently Winston does too. Nonetheless I doubt either of us is cut out to teach 1st graders to do it. After all, the mental processes of a 1st grader are very different from our own. Can you even imagine what it is like to go through a world where shapes are not constanty meaning something? In a foreign country even you will be able to pick out which of the objects are the meaningful ones; a pre-literate child might not even be able to do that. Getting such children to read requires a fair amount of specialized knowledge - not of readings - but of how we ordinarilily aquire this skill. This is the kind of knowledge that a good E2 in early childhood would impart. It's applied developmental psychology. There is no reason that such a subject has to be stupid, at least no more stupid that engineering (applied physics) or medicine (applied biology). If education students are not being held up to the levels of intellectual achevement that we demand of doctors and engineers (they're not), it has much more to do with the shite pay and working conditions of teachers relative to these other applied-theory professions than with the nature of the discipline itself. They can't get people to teach in cities with the requirements as they are. Imagine if we also demanded 96 page blood/sweat theses?
Second point: While Will is likely correct about the relativist bent of E2, he is just cherry picking if he thinks the dicipline is unique in this regard. Relativism is an on the job hazard for any student who characteristly learns how opinions are formed, how judgements are made, or how actions ar performed. Sociologist know that we learn about right and wrong from from the opinions of our peers, and they tend to conclude that right and wrong is nothing but the opinion of our peers. It would be easy to multiply examples. Each is a variant on the classic idealist inference: You can't percieve it exists without percieving it, therefor to be is to be percieved. Anyone in the human sciences is likely to be tempted by this. My suspicion of Will is that he just picks on educators because the dicipline is by and large left of center, and this falls into the old liberalism-equals nihilism dichotomy that conservatives have been running since time began. Economists fall into the relativism trap just as often, but you don't see Will squawking about it.
Hey, great points ever'body. Thanks for the input.
I agree in particular that:
1. Will is cherry-picking, the situation is complicated, and ergo that it's not obvious how to solve the problem.
2. Kooky relativism/nihilism are widespread all across the academy, including in the non-philosophy parts of the humanities, business schools, and social sciences. 5 minutes of philosophy easily makes people relativists; it only takes about 15 minutes worth to shake it, but few people get that extra 10 minutes...
and:
3. Teaching very young children no doubt does require a set of very special skills. I wouldn't know how to start doing it. So that's a special case.
oh, also:
4. The pay ain't helping. Neither is the low status accorded to teachers. But this is a huge new subject...
Especially in math/science, a HUGE problem is not enough candidates with strong subject knowledge are attracted to the field. The mean GRE scores for grad students in the field of education is 981 (450 V/531 Q). The mean scores for the field of Education Administration are even lower - 949 (429 V/520 Q). This compares with a national mean of 1068 (470 V/598 Q)
(LINK: http://www.educationnews.org/gre-scores-of-school-administrators.htm)
No doubt, a large reason why education schools try to de-emphasize tests and core subject knowledge is because many of the people there have been remarkably unsuccessful in those areas.
In my mind, trying to teach how to teach is somewhat self-defeating -- teaching is something you only really learn by doing. Overhauling our education schools might marginally improve instruction, but the best way to get better teachers is to attract smarter people to the field.
As WS points out, it's not an easy task - low pay, low status, high stress .... it's no wonder the high-ability candidates go elsewhere. But I feel that Will is overlooking the underlying problem.
Good students are remarkably ignorant of the need for teaching techniques and other topics in education programs. It's the bad students who succeed or fail because their teachers have something besides the memories of their teachers to rely on.
How do you identify a student's learning style? And don't say it doesn't matter if an operational learner has to learn exclusively from lecture.
When you get a test score that shows strange answer patterns, how do you figure out why? Did the child cheat? Did he miss a fundamental concept but get a later one partially? What do you need to review with him?
Is it responsible to teach solely phonics or whole language reading? What gender needs which more often at the beginning of learning?
Are there tactics that allow classroom control without regimentation?
What do we know about the brain that makes learning easier? For instance, I grew up when lie and lay were taught together from the start, but most students learn better if they learn these separately and only later contrast them explicitly.
For that matter, proactive learning (earlier meaning of 'proactive') explains why people who have unusual names often get called by another name that resembles theirs but is more common. If your name is 'Rolf', you're used to being called 'Ralph'.
Is there any use for the politics of education as a class for administrators? How about public finance?
Can you diagnose Asperger's? Can you spot signs of abuse? Do you know when to intervene if a student is a danger?
Granted there's a lot of nonsense and a lack of subject matter competence in some, even many ed programs, but "common sense" is far too rare to do away with them.
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.
Mike
High School Teacher, Rural Alaska
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