Half of fourth-graders who took a new national science test could not
identify the Atlantic and Pacific oceans on a map. That fact may upset
you, but to go by a survey of 900 education professors, few teachers of
teachers are losing sleep over the news.
Public Agenda, the New York-based policy group that conducted the survey,
found that only 33 percent of education professors believe students should
know the names and locations of the 50 states before getting a high school
diploma. As one Los Angeles ed prof explained, "Why should they know that?
They need to know how to find out where they are. When I need to know
that, I can go look it up."
Is it any wonder that some schools fail when teaching professors who
don't care whether kids know basic facts? As the study showed, the
ultimate "edu-crats" demonstrate little love of knowledge. They worship
process. They see teaching as an exercise in helping students learn how to
find out things. To them, knowledge is a byproduct.
Public Agenda asked: When teachers assign specific questions in math or
history, is it more important that kids struggle to find the right answer
or that kids give the right answer? An amazing 86 percent said that
struggling was more important. Only 12 percent preferred a right answer.
Are teachers "facilitators of learning" or "conveyors of knowledge"?
Facilitators, 92 percent agreed; 7 percent answered conveyors. The key is
to turn out lifelong learners who are excited about learning. Education
professors are striving for a nation of ill-informed, would-be
autodidacts.
Ed schools have turned into re-education camps, where the main focus is to
produce like-minded facilitators. Imagine education professors more
interested in attitude than actual knowledge.
One question: How are kids supposed to be excited about learning when
they're not learning much of anything?
One important point: Cult-like edu profs don't always agree with teachers
who have been pressed to practice this edu-babble in the classroom. More
ed profs (54 percent) than teachers (40 percent) believe in mixing fast
and slow learners in the same class. More teachers (88 percent) than ed
profs (66 percent) believe in taking persistent troublemakers out of
classes so that other kids can learn. Fewer ed profs (49 percent) than
teachers (62 percent) believe students should have to pass proficiency
tests to graduate into higher grades.
"They are honest even when it does not redound to their benefit," Public
Agenda Executive Director Deborah Wadsworth noted. To wit: 75 percent of
education professors said their students have trouble writing essays free
of grammatical and spelling mistakes. Yet 68 percent said most graduates
come close to their ideal of a teacher.
Then most profs blame the media for the public's decline of confidence in
public schools.
Wrong. If you want to know where the decline in public schools
incubates, here's your answer. New teachers must pass a 10th grade level
test to become certified in California. In 1991-1992, 29 percent
of-graduate students flunked that test the first time they took it.
That number contains some foreign students, but it still smarts,
especially when adults who hadn't been in school for 20-plus years scored
better than graduate and undergraduate test-takers.
Some minority groups have sued the state to end the test because too many
minorities fail it. They'd do better to sue the colleges that gave these
would-be teachers passing grades year in and out.
As Wadsworth noted, the ed profs dismiss the public's views on schools as
"outmoded and mistaken."
Yet they're the dons who turn out lifelong learners who can't pass a 10th
grade test. Maybe they do know how to learn, but they surely don't know
how to learn from their mistakes.
Debra J. Saunders is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.