Allison Boroda
Department of Human Development & Family Studies
Texas Tech University
home e-mail: sense who-is-at swbell.net
Tech e-mail: aboroda who-is-at ttacs.ttu.edu
phone: (806) 762-8145
Lou Coons wrote:
>
> Blame 'edu-crats' for dumb kids
>
>
>
> 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.