How not to solve problems in education

In an article in the Washington Post, Marion Brady argues that our standardized tests are the product of unaccountable institutions that are out of teach with real educational needs. She relates the story of a friend "on the school board of one of the largest school districts in America" who decided to take a tenth grade standardized test himself, to see how he would do. The results were abysmal. In particular, he only managed to get 10% on the math portion (no surprise to me, by the way) and a 60% on the reading portion. The key to Brady's telling of the story is that her friend is actually a perfectly successful individual:

His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.

So the claim of the article is not that grown-ups on the school board are stupid, but rather that the tests are too hard, and don't really test anything that students will need to know as adults.

Maybe this is true and maybe it isn't. I'm sure we'll hear some responses back and forth about that claim. But if you dwell on this question, then the real point of the article is easy to overlook. The real point is made when Brady quotes her friend as saying,

“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”

Individuals who lack perspective and aren't really accountable are exactly the kind of people you get when you put some people in charge of others. If there was ever an argument for a libertarian restructuring of education it's precisely this. It comes down to a simple logical quandary, really: if the only way to hold people accountable is by putting others in charge of them, then who holds the people in charge accountable?

The case for freedom in general, and education in particular, is that people will generally be held accountable by reality. The real world does not have unlimited resources. Possibilities are only endless insofar as the human mind is able to make more creative use of what is available. This means all decisions come with considerable risk: there is no way to be absolutely sure that one particular choice is better than all of the others which could have been made.

This is true of education no less than anything else. The desire to standardize education stems from the desire to shield children from the possibility of being "left behind," but in the process it simply forces all students to bear the consequences of whatever risks the federal government takes in determining education policy. A political process simply cannot determine what is best for everyone, given the unique individual needs of millions of students.

Education is not a magic bullet. We have damaged our society by indulging ourselves in the illusory narrative that all good students who do the right thing will invariably be successful in life. Statistics may show that this is true; but for any one particular individual dealing with the particular circumstances of his own life, statistics mean absolutely nothing.

Society learns more when we allow people to make their own decisions and bear the consequences of those decisions. This often turns out badly for some people who take risks; but to imagine that we have a better alternative than this is nothing short of delusion. The only alternative is to let other people make our decisions for us, and then to bear the consequences of the risks they have taken. The idea that any government bureaucracy or corporation could produce a curriculum appropriate for all students is yet another example of the fatal conceit at work in our political system.

There are ways we could quickly make our educational system more free. School vouchers are a good idea. We could also start abolishing laws in school districts that prevent charter schools from moving in. Repeal No Child Left Behind. There have to be dozens of other actions that could be taken, but all of them are prevented by one special interest group or another. All we can do is watch those groups fight each other for power.

There are many problems in education, and almost all of them are caused by the fact that certain people have too much control over the decisions we make for ourselves and for our children. The way not to solve those problems is to give someone else even more power over the people who now have power over us.

The way to solve these problems is liberty.

Some links

Today I sent one of my professors a link to a book called The Fall of the Faculty. Here is the description:

Until very recently, American universities were led mainly by their faculties, which viewed intellectual production and pedagogy as the core missions of higher education. Today, as Benjamin Ginsberg warns in this eye-opening, controversial book, "deanlets"--administrators and staffers often without serious academic backgrounds or experience--are setting the educational agenda.

The Fall of the Faculty examines the fallout of rampant administrative blight that now plagues the nation's universities. In the past decade, universities have added layers of administrators and staffers to their payrolls every year even while laying off full-time faculty in increasing numbers--ostensibly because of budget cuts. In a further irony, many of the newly minted--and non-academic--administrators are career managers who downplay the importance of teaching and research, as evidenced by their tireless advocacy for a banal "life skills" curriculum. Consequently, students are denied a more enriching educational experience--one defined by intellectual rigor. Ginsberg also reveals how the legitimate grievances of minority groups and liberal activists, which were traditionally championed by faculty members, have, in the hands of administrators, been reduced to chess pieces in a game of power politics. By embracing initiatives such as affirmative action, the administration gained favor with these groups and legitimized a thinly cloaked gambit to bolster their power over the faculty.

As troubling as this trend has become, there are ways to reverse it. The Fall of the Faculty outlines how we can revamp the system so that real educators can regain their voice in curriculum policy.

I suspect the book may be controversial among university administrators, but not so much among faculty, who will virtually all agree on the diagnosis of today's university system.

In turn, my professor sent me a link to this article from The Economist, entitled, "A sorry story of American trade." Excerpt:

WHEN experts try to ferret out the causes of America’s lost decade, international trade is often cast as the villain. It may in fact be the victim. In the last decade America’s commitment to openness has flagged, and with it, its trade prowess and its appeal as a destination for investment. As international trade and investment have historically been major drivers of productivity, employment, and innovation, this declining engagement with the world may be an important contributor to the malaise that afflicts the economy.

Once again, economic protectionism does the opposite of protect.

The future of education

If a revolution in education production is possible, this is it:

"Humanizing the classroom"--with technology, incidentally. It's more than just humanizing the classroom; it's individualizing education. Educators have always been searching for ways to give each student the chance to move at her own pace; now that opportunity is readily available.

A colleague of mine is actually trying this method with her calculus class. Apparently you can make your own video lectures, which she has done, and she is assigning the lectures as homework. Then the entire classroom experience is for the students to work on what used to be homework. I'm really excited to see how it goes for her. I'd be willing to try this teaching method in the future; I sort of wish I'd thought of it before we started this semester.

And this is all thanks to YouTube...and a former hedge fund analyst. Spontaneous order, indeed.

Everyone's down on education

From the Onion:

Despite years of putting up with underperforming teachers, overcrowded classrooms, and a gradually deteriorating educational experience, American students reluctantly announced Tuesday that they would be giving the nation's public school system yet another chance this fall.

Saying they would "probably kick themselves later" for deciding to enroll once more in a system that has let them down time and time again, millions of American children agreed to put up with their schools' insufficient funding and lack of adequate arts and science programs in hopes that administrators might finally start providing a nurturing, or at least tolerable, environment in which to learn.

The rest goes as you'd expect.

If people generally agree that the American public school system is such a failure, why does nothing change? Why do we still see our performance come out so low on international rankings? Why do we still see such a high achievement gap? Most of all, why are people generally so unhappy with the system?

Here's a suggestion for how to improve schools: stop hiring education majors. Or at least, stop hiring only education majors. Need a math teacher? Hire someone with a master's degree in math. How about science? Even someone with a bachelor's in chemistry, physics, or biology could probably do a world of good. Particularly at the high school level, my feeling is that endless lists of courses in pedagogy just really aren't that important for teachers who specialize in a subject.

There are plenty of people out there who would make brilliant teachers, precisely because they'd taken the time to master a particular subject. It takes a great deal of confidence to get up in front of people and teach them a lesson. What better way to have confidence in your teaching ability than to have a rich understanding of the subject extending beyond the material being presented? We all know that a teacher's enthusiasm for a subject improves the students' ability to learn it, and likewise a teacher's anxiety about a subject greatly harms the students' ability to learn it.

This is really a very simple, practical way we could start improving public schools immediately, and in fact it's already being done in charter schools. Private schools have always been free to do this. Why not public schools? I have no idea. Sometimes political realities are just incomprehensible. I guarantee you, it's not about the children.

If we're going to fix education, it might just have to be the hard way: demanding more charter schools, or taking the homeschooling option (without being exempt from paying taxes to fund public schools, I might add). The political process is broken. Indeed, I find it a little difficult sometimes to distinguish the Onion's reports from reality:

Grateful for another opportunity to amend its past administrative blunders, the Department of Education was quick to promise it wouldn't let students down this time and would do all it could not to mess everything up again.

"We want to thank all of our students for this vote of confidence," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a special televised press conference. "We are seriously going to work harder than ever before this year and make some real changes. I promise. Students will not regret giving us this chance."

"That being said, funding is a little tight right now, so try to keep your expectations within reason," Duncan added.

Markets, Immigration, and Education

A friend pointed me to this story about foreign teachers being forced to leave the country, which really ties together well three very important issues.

Gelmer Suganob has been teaching special education classes for four years in Prince Georges County, a suburban district near Washington, DC. The Filipino teacher started an autism program in a local middle school and received glowing job reports.

He’s one of thousands of foreign teachers who have been filling the ranks of US classrooms for the past few years, spurred by a shortage of American teachers and new testing requirements for math, science and special education. Like Suganob, many of these teachers come from the Philippines. They’re hired by recruiting companies in their home country and pay big fees to land lucrative jobs in the US.

But despite his stellar reviews, Suganob recently got a double dose of bad news. He received a call telling him that he had overstayed his visa, and that he no longer had a job.

Some of the comments on this story were amusing. "Teaching shortage?" people ask. How can there be a teaching shortage with some teachers losing their jobs? Note the specializations mentioned: "math, science and special education." Surely Americans aren't naive enough to think we have plenty of those to go around. Seriously, do people even know why our public education is so notoriously bad?

Let me break this down. There are three key issues at stake here:

1. A man who's done nothing wrong is now being forced to leave our country and work somewhere else because of an ineffective system of paperwork. In short, a man's right to his own labor is being violated.
2. Our irrational fear of immigration, based almost entirely on issues which have absolutely nothing to do with teachers arriving from the Philippines, has created an environment in which our laws prohibit the market from working to resolve important issues, such as the education of our children (particularly disadvantaged ones). In short, immigration policy is economic policy.
3. Did I mention this hurts our school system?

And this is why, whenever I hear some ridiculous conservative speech designed to arouse anti-immigrant sentiment, I just cringe and wonder how people who profess faith in the "free market" can be so profoundly ignorant about these important issues. I can't say it any clearer than this: belief in the free market demands belief in an open immigration system. I'm not saying have no borders. I'm simply saying, in general our tendency should be to let people in and do what they want. Everyone benefits from this. No one is "stealing jobs." Quite the opposite, if you look at the whole. Greater efficiency in one area of the market means greater efficiency for everyone.

This is why, when we think about the issue of immigration, these are the types of cases we need to keep in mind, not some fear-mongering about drug dealers on the Mexican border.

Results in education

There's an interesting discussion going on at Bleeding Heart Libertarians on the issue of social justice in education. The question that comes to my mind is this: how are we measuring results in education? No Child Left Behind was an attempt to judge schools more rigorously, with the result that now 80% of schools are deemed to be failing. Which begs the question: failing at what?

One thing seems to pretty clear: schools are failing at satisfying parents and students. Another thing which is now evident is that they're failing at reaching government standards. Although they may be failing at both counts, there is no inherent relationship between the two. In particular, there is no guarantee that if schools lived up to government standards, they would also live up to ours. Conversely, what do we make of the case when government demands something other than what the public actually wants?

I worry about the general trend to formulate objective, quantitative standards by which we measure education's benefits. Education, ideally, is about helping a person live as a free person. The more highly standardized and quantized our measurements of education become, the less our education will be oriented toward freedom and creativity and the more it will be oriented toward fulfilling some preconceived vision of a good, productive workforce.

In my mind, then, the argument for school choice is more than a matter of giving students more opportunities. It is also a matter of identifying the value of education where it belongs: in the subjective. We don't know what future benefits a particular kind of education may have. People should be free and even encouraged to try different forms of it. God forbid that the government should have a monopoly on what people can and cannot learn in order to improve their own lives.

Mental liberty

Talking to my grad student friends about teaching reveals a lot of agreement. For instance, one of the things that strikes all of us who teach calculus is the way our students tend to ask this particular question:

Am I allowed to do that?

Are you allowed to do that? I think to myself. Who ever suggested to you that you were somehow under someone's authority? Notice what the student doesn't ask. She doesn't ask, "Is this true?" She doesn't ask, "Is this the correct meaning of the symbol I'm using?" She doesn't even ask, "Will this get me the right answer?" Just a simple, submissive question: Am I allowed to do this?

Semantics, you say. All of those questions are really just different ways of asking the same thing. Nonsense! It is no accident that students ask this wretched question. From the time they are little children, they are trained to think that truth is a matter of authority. They are trained to look in the back of the book for answers to their math problems, they are trained to solve problems using the exact step by step process spoon fed to them by their teachers, and they are trained out of the creativity they once possessed as children. Because they also happen to be imbibed with an American sense of anti-authoritarianism, they simply become relativists, not having any sense of truth as an objective reality. American individualism notwithstanding, this view of truth degrades human freedom and is the source of all political evil.

I try to tell my students, There are no rules! You are constrained solely by what is true! Only a free person understands this; indeed, it is the definition of freedom. You are never free of all constraints. Objective reality does not give in to your whims. But you are free to poke it and prod it as you wish. What students fundamentally misunderstand about their education is the relationship between themselves and reality. They believe that in some aspects they can stand in authority over reality, whereas in others they must bow in submission. Neither is correct; the human mind never transcends the world, but neither is it simply drifting in the wind.

In short, no one can be free from God; but to be free of every will that is not God's is true freedom. There is a reason we call it liberal education--it is the education of free people. It is not my students' ability to reason quantitatively that I most worry about. What I worry about is their desire for truth, which is fundamentally linked to their creativity and above all their ability to exist as free people. Truly, no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven except as a child. It is when we lose our child-like tendency to ask questions out of sheer curiosity, to poke and prod and play with, to seek out boundaries and see how far we can push them--then we lose our freedom, and with it our thirst for truth, and with that the things that make us most fully human.

What's wrong with math education...

see more funny videos

Another sign that our math education is based on mindless application of formulas rather than common sense...

P.S. The teacher is wrong here, not the student.

Beauty for Truth's Sake - a review

If I could pick my top five topics to think about on a regular basis, three of them would be faith and reason, education, and, of course, mathematics. Thus Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education seemed like a perfect book for me to read and contemplate in my spare time. In it Stratford Caldecott offers something of a "manifesto" summarizing a view of education which sees the classical Western Liberal Arts tradition as a means of integrating faith and reason, art and science.

There is much to appreciate about the book. The beginning is quite strong, displaying a clear sense of what has gone wrong in modern education on the philosophical level. The opening lines read,

"In the modern world, thanks to the rise of modern science and the decline of religious cosmology, the arts and sciences have been separated and divorced. Faith and reason often appear to be opposed, and we have lost any clear sense of who we are and where we are going."

Why is this a problem? I think Caldecott sums it up nicely when he says,

"The purpose of an education is not merely to communicate information, let alone current scientific opinion, nor to train future workers and managers. It is to teach the ability to think, discriminate, speak, and write, and, along with this, the ability to perceive the inner, connecting principles, the intrinsic relations, the logoi, of creation...

As the title of the book suggests, one of the key integration points between these seemingly disparate areas of knowledge is beauty. "Everything," Caldecott says, "is true, good, and beautiful in some degree or in some respect.... Beauty is the radiance of the true and the good, and it is what attracts us to both." In particular--and this is part of what I found intriguing about the book--mathematics is a key to understanding how the classical tradition sought to "perceive the inner, connecting principles" of the universe.

"Theology, therefore, has an important place in the integration of the arts and sciences. Equally important, however, is a symbolic approach to number and shape--that is, the awareness that mathematics has a qualitative, as distinct from a purely quantitative, dimension."

Caldecott spends a couple of chapters in the middle of the book illustrating that qualitative dimension of mathematics, using examples from the ancient Pythagoreans, numerology from the Bible, and various other musings on the relationships between numbers, shapes, and the world around us. It is a rather delightful survey, ranging from the Tetractys to the five Platonic solids to the golden ratio. It really is a shame, in my opinion, that modern mathematical education leaves very little room for this kind of appreciation of mathematical objects.

Let me briefly outline the structure of the book, to show how these ideas are expressed as a whole. The Introduction states the problem as I have, and offers three guiding principles. The first is, "The way we educate is the way we pass on or transform our culture.... The fragmentation of education... is a denial of ultimate meaning. Contemporary education therefore tends to the elimination of meaning...." The second is, "The "re-enchantment" of education would open our eyes to the meaning and beauty of the cosmos." The third is, "The cosmos is liturgical by its very nature." In this way Caldecott makes it clear from the start that education can never find true integration without a religious foundation. This raises interesting practical questions, but this book doesn't deal with them.

Chapter 1 sets about calling us to return to an idea of education as a means of becoming "truly free, fully human." Caldecott wants us to see that education is not just about what is useful. It is, in the great Socratic tradition, about gaining knowledge of "the forms, or the highest causes," which one can only attain "through the systematic ordering of the soul." In Chapter 2, he shows us that this path requires awakening the "poetic imagination," the ability to find "within the self something that corresponds to the object, thus leaping over the barrier between self and other." Thus symbolism comes to play a key role throughout the remainder of the book. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 essentially serve to illustrate the "poetic imagination" at work throughout the Western tradition. I've already mentioned the mathematical objects; there are also a number of excursions into theology, as well as music, architecture, ecology, and astronomy. Throughout these chapters one gets the sense that while Caldecott may not be advocating a return to a medieval understanding of the cosmos, he certainly seems to have an affinity for it. Chapter 6 argues quite strikingly for that third principle mentioned in the introduction, that "the cosmos is liturgical by its very nature." He thus argues that any real education must involve elements that are at least implicitly religious.

The conclusion is perhaps the most explicitly religious, in fact explicitly Catholic, part of the whole "manifesto." He says, "As we have seen, the Liberal Arts were intended to conduce to freedom of mind, and they were developed and nourished by the Catholic Church." He then explains that the modern conception of freedom is deprived of a certain fullness that is granted by the Christian (Catholic) view.

"The best way to put this might be that the Christian conception of freedom is larger and fuller than the modern conception, for it includes both vertical and horizontal dimensions. The horizontal dimension encompasses the world we see directly, and the vertical allows for degrees of being and value, invisible realms, formal causality, and so on. ...

In the traditional "three-dimensional" world, the self was encouraged to collect itself together in a point, in order to attach itself to a vertical axis, a spiritual "path." ... Modernity, on the other hand, rejects the existence of the vertical altogether, or the very possibility of thinking in terms of up and down. ...

In a flatter universe, freedom had to be reconceived as entirely a matter of movement within the horizontal plane. I am assumed to be "freer" the more places I can go to, the more things I can choose on the supermarket shelf, the more people I can have relationships with. And that is why the Church claims today to be in the business of liberating human freedom, by making known the beauty of truth in its fullness.

Now that I've summarized the book, let me get into my complaints. I agree with Caldecott that the fragmentation of knowledge is symptomatic of some deep problems. I also agree with the basic idea of seeking beauty in the universe, and that the pursuit of knowledge is, at its core, about love. But I would challenge some of the assumptions of his "Christian Platonism."

Before I do that, though, let me make some slightly more superficial comments. I have to say, and I think many readers would agree with me, there were many times during the reading of this book when I thought "Re-enchantment of Education" simply meant redecorating the universe with medieval superstitions. Certainly Caldecott was aware of this as he was writing, which is why he made the occasional remark that he is not trying to undo the Enlightenment or go back to the Middle Ages. Yet these remarks have little force behind them; he doesn't seem to have anything good to say about the Enlightenment in any meaningful sense.

On a related note, Caldecott relies so heavily on his own Catholic tradition that it is difficult for readers outside that tradition to understand the appeal of his illustrations. For instance, he mentions more than once how cosmically significant it was for Christian that there are seven days in a week and seven sacraments. Well, suppose there aren't seven sacraments... Does that mean the universe is less enchanted with meaning? In one part of Chapter 4 he wanders off into a discussion about the filioque controversy, a subject which is thoroughly uninteresting to many of us. Even more importantly, such controversies aren't settled by geometric arguments, and Caldecott's references to the relationship between mathematics and theology are more likely to offend believers of different theological persuasions than they are to enlighten anybody.

Chapter 4 ends with a paragraph that begins, "Speculations like those I have mentioned in this chapter will appear forced to many." Believe me, they did. I found circles and lines to be wholly inappropriate for trying to visually represent the Trinity. I found the comparison between Jesus and the line perpendicularly connecting a point on a circle to a given diameter also rather "forced." And the ratio between this line in the "golden circle" and the circumference, why, it's miraculously just over 7! The amount in excess of 7 which we find in this ratio is, of all things, what Caldecott thinks might correspond to that "tiny and indispensable human contribution needed if heaven is truly to descend to earth." In other words, heaven divided by earth = 7 (God's number) + some tiny human contribution = pi * ((2 * phi) - 1) = 7.02481473...

It is worth noting here that the number of man's symbolic contribution in this calculation is irrational. All this to say, one has to be very careful before going off to find the logoi of creation. This search can easily degenerate into such absurd arguments as "there are seven sacraments because there are seven days in a week." It might be postmodern of me, but different cultural perspectives really are worth keeping in mind as we examine the connections underlying things in the world. For instance, the octave interval in music might very well have a special relationship with the number "eight" in the West, where eight might have special theological meaning (on the eighth day Christ rose again) or other kinds of meaning. But, lest we forget, this association is based on Western musical scales. Other cultures have more varied intervals, and therefore the association doesn't work. That's often how it goes with Platonism. You think you've found the form of which all the world is a reflection, but then you realize it's just your own perspective being forced on the world around you.

Now I am starting to get into my deeper qualms with Caldecott's assumptions. Consider this third vertical dimension of human experience, which he proposes in his conclusion. It is as if he says we ascend to heaven through the illumination of education (the right kind of education, anyway). This is indeed a very Platonic way of viewing things, but not a very Christian one. In the gospels, wisdom is given to ordinary people. It is all about grace, not enlightenment through systematic human effort. As I have already suggested, there is no guarantee that such systematic efforts would lead one closer to heaven. Human beings have difficulty seeing the difference between the beauty inherent in the universe and their own prejudices based on cultural conditioning.

Another point I would make is that this Platonic notion that Ideas are ultimate reality (the "thoughts of God," for a Christian Platonist), and all else is reflective of these pure Ideas, is in some sense to deny the goodness of creation. Creation has its own reality that is not a mere shadow of something else. I'm sure this point has been made plenty of times by people much more theologically astute than I, but from my own perspective it is important to recognize that every single thing you see and feel has its own existence. Yes, it is all made of the same basic stuff--i.e. matter and energy governed by universal laws of physics. But to have the underlying principles is not to have the thing itself. The world is not translucent. I don't agree with this idea of looking at the world as if the only thing that makes it good is being a channel through which to see something else.

In terms of application I think this point can be rather significant. As in I don't think it's necessary or fruitful to link every scientific discovery to some theological precept. I don't think mathematical objects have some inherent mystical meaning. In terms of mathematics education, I do think it would be helpful for people to be taught that mathematics is more about inner relationships than it is about formal operations, which can have nothing to do with reality. Far from vindicating Platonism, however, I think this just points for the need for human beings to be connected to things. Caldecott gets it right when he talks about the "poetic imagination," at least insofar as he describes human beings as inherently connected to creation. But I think he gets it wrong when he posits a realm of pure Ideas which have some higher reality than the world of tangible experience.

The last thing I'll point out is that Caldecott seems, in spite of himself, to miss the strong distinction between Platonic idealism and Christian realism. Related to Platonism is, I think, a tendency to try to escape realism. If the most important thing is to ascend to the Forms, then it becomes less important to actually deal with the gritty details of the real. I submit that this is a theological weakness in Caldecott's understanding. He spends some time in first chapter talking about "Beauty on the Cross." There is, paradoxically, a great deal of beauty on the Cross of Christ, but the other side of that paradox must always be remembered. The crucifixion was a gruesome, grotesque thing. The Incarnation itself was an "emptying" of Christ to the point of humble obedience.

It is important that we as Christians remember this, so that we, like Christ, can enter into the world as it actually is, and not as a mere reflection of perfect Ideas. True education demands a certain realism. We cannot gloss over the details. We must be willing to face the world as a complicated, often frustrating place. We're not going to be able to transcend uncertainty and confusion. Even Christ himself prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Father, if it is your will, save me from this hour." And on the cross he cried out, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" How much less will we be able to transcend the uncertainty of this life? Caldecott criticizes the postmoderns for doubting the human ability to obtain truth, but to a certain extent the postmoderns are right. It is not necessary to believe that truth is "relative" to have a healthy skepticism about the human ability to possess truth. We have to be realistic about ourselves, and about the world we live in. And instead of trying to transcend this world, we ought to follow Christ's example; he stepped down from his position of transcendence, that he might enter into this world--not, I believe, to show us the way out of this world, but to begin to transform it.

Caldecott is right about the most important thing: it all comes down to love. It is difficult to know what direction love should take us. While I don't agree with the direction Caldecott proposes, I think he is right to give us an alternative to our current approach to education. We do live in a beautiful universe, and it would be a waste to treat it in the purely utilitarian way that students are encouraged to now. Perhaps there is a better approach, one that relies not so much on enchantment as on the love of the universe for what it really is.

Plagiarism and Incentive

Read this in an interesting New York Times article on growing amounts of plagiarism in American universities:

A University of Notre Dame anthropologist, Susan D. Blum, disturbed by the high rates of reported plagiarism, set out to understand how students view authorship and the written word, or “texts” in Ms. Blum’s academic language.

She conducted her ethnographic research among 234 Notre Dame undergraduates. “Today’s students stand at the crossroads of a new way of conceiving texts and the people who create them and who quote them,” she wrote last year in the book “My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture,” published by Cornell University Press.

Ms. Blum argued that student writing exhibits some of the same qualities of pastiche that drive other creative endeavors today — TV shows that constantly reference other shows or rap music that samples from earlier songs.

In an interview, she said the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.

“Our notion of authorship and originality was born, it flourished, and it may be waning,” Ms. Blum said.

She contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity — as their 1960s counterparts were — than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking.

I find these remarks rather fascinating in that they trace a pattern through all areas of modern culture. Could we really be losing our desire for originality in general?

Perhaps, but I think Blum misses the essential structural problems that have led to this trend in American schools.

I tend to see the issues with American education in practical, economic terms. What Americans need to understand is what kind of system we have created, and how the pressures of that system will inevitably lead to more plagiarism, less originality, and less desire to achieve the Enlightenment of ideal of individual creative thought. The Internet may be a huge catalyst for this change, but the basic structures have been in place for years.

What we have is a system in which the following ideas are taken for granted:

1. Everyone deserves the same chance at a good education.
2. All good jobs require four years of college education.
3. The sooner you can finish college and start working, the better.
4. Being a "well-rounded" and super-involved student is much better for finding jobs than being a bookworm or nerd.

Now let's talk about the natural, and inevitable, effects of these ideas, when they are taken for granted by the whole society:

1. Price inflation: The price of education must go up. This is in fact what we have seen for years now, and it's amazing that people still marvel at it. Yet this is a very predictable result of the incontrovertible law of supply and demand.
2. Utilitarianism: The vast majority of students will not see the pursuit of truth as the primary reason to go to college and participate in academics. They will see it, rather, as a means to a good job in the future. That this is the case seems self-evident, but I'd be happy to find some source to back me up on this.
3. Trade-offs: When education is really about reaching economic goals, students do whatever will help them reach those goals. If teachers hold the line on things like plagiarism, that will make some difference, but it won't be the final word. Students will inevitably have to compromise between many different priorities.
4. Grade inflation: It's not just the idea that everyone deserves a chance. It's also simple economics. If grades matter to their economic well-being, then students will do whatever it takes to get higher grades. If they find that certain strategies other than actually learning more are working to get them grades, these strategies will flourish. It is infinitely more difficult for teachers to universally maintain rigorous standards than it is for students to come up with new ways of getting good grades. Grade inflation, under this system, is as inevitable as price inflation.

What does any of this have to do with plagiarism? Far too many people are under the impression that plagiarism is a sign of moral degradation and/or laziness among students. It is neither. I find it extremely hard to believe that entire generations are actually very different from one another in moral character. A friend once told me that some of the oldest writings we have from human civilizations include words lamenting the moral decline of younger generations. The belief that one generation is worse than the previous is as old as time; yet it is probably never true.

No, plagiarism is not a sign of moral degradation or laziness. It is actually the inevitable result of students trying their best to do what they've been told they must. They must go to college, they must do more than they can possibly do well in order to get the most out of college, they must get good grades, they must develop good relationships and networking skills, and they must find some way to balance all of these imperatives. Desire for free, original thought may be what drives the professor at the chalk board, but the students in their classroom are driven by much more practical concerns.

This, by the way, is a source for a lot of confusion in education over the issue of how to actually teach subjects to modern students. We see that students are motivated by practical concerns, so we think that the solution is to try to make learning more "hands on." We insist on finding ways to make everything from mathematics to philosophy more "practical." But this is to fundamentally mistake students' motivations for learning style. Of course different methods of teaching are always important for different students. But it is not as if an entire generation of students has become more "hands-on" than ever before (unless you just mean they know how to use a computer). It just means that an entire generation has become more interested in education as a tool for success and not as a path for intellectual growth.

Another point worth mentioning is that original thought may be genuinely more difficult than ever to produce. Think about it. If there are more kids in college and more information available than ever before, isn't it possible that there is less room for meaningful originality? It's not at all surprising to me that someone would say, as was quoted in the article, “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.” Young people must surely feel this way after realizing that any good thing they ever thought has already been said before, and any original thing they ever thought is crap. (This blog post, for instance, probably falls into one of those two categories.) It's easy to become cynical.

As long as our system remains in place just the way it is, I suspect that plagiarism will become more and more common, and students will come to accept it more and more from their peers. It will not help to simply be appalled at it. I find it staggering the way professors in the academy can look at the situation we have with an air of self-righteousness. Do professional educators seriously not understand how the business of education works?

A kink in the first amendment

Fox News reports on the case of a student from Capistrano Valley High School (California) suing a history teacher for making such comments as these:

"[W]hen you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth."

"Conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies — that's interfering with God's work."

"When you pray for divine intervention, you're hoping that the spaghetti monster will help you get what you want."

The comment that finally got the judge to rule in favor of the student was referring to creationism as "religious, superstitious nonsense." The court ruled that this, at last, was favoring irreligion over religion, which by recent judicial precedent is considered a violation of the establishment clause of the 1st amendment.

According to the article, the judge tried to "balance" between the rights of the teacher and the student given to them by the 1st amendment. Which brings up an important question: what is this whole debate really about? One thing it's not about in this case or perhaps in any case is whether science and religion are compatible. This case is about power--power over intellectual discussion and over how ideas are presented.

What I'm wondering about is how the first amendment can seriously be applied one way or another in these cases. Conservatives will surely applaud the outcome of this case, but the reasoning used by the courts in these cases is fundamentally inconsistent with the conservative notion of "strict constructionist" interpretation.

That is, a literal interpretation of the first amendment by no means implies that this teacher was in the wrong. One teacher acting out of order does not establish a state religion. Only by extending the establishment clause to provide more general protection could the judge make his decision.

It just seems to me that a "government of laws and not of men" is not going to hold up in these cases, because we're dealing with complicated power struggles. We've created a system in which teachers hired by the government have power over students who may or may not agree with their philosophy. Someone's freedom is going to have to give--there's no way the teacher's right to free speech can be absolutely sacrosanct when students are placed in submission under them.

This power struggle over issues like creation vs. evolution is complicated because the dynamics are different depending on where you are in the country. Many people would like to see this struggle in purely dualistic terms--"us" and "them." In reality, the lines are squiggly, blurry, and otherwise so ill-defined so as to be useless in particular cases such as the one in Capistrano Valley.

Wisdom is what's needed in these cases. I applaud the court's decision in this case. I don't think it was a conservative decision at all. I just think it was a wise decision. (Note that the student didn't demand monetary damages, just that teachers not be allowed to make such comments in the future.) In this case the power seemed too heavy in favor of this rather insensitive teacher, and it needed to be tilted back. In a different case that might not have been true.

As a Christian I think this country needs actions on the part of individuals that promote love. In particular, I think we need court decisions that promote free discussion and remove hostility from the classroom. Frankly, a line by line reading of the constitution will not bring this about. Only wisdom that is borne out through experience with real people will work.

An A's an A?

So I happened to get an e-mail a few days ago giving me a link to CampusBuddy.com's results on the grade distribution here at UVA. You can't find a similar one for my alma mater, so I didn't know what to expect, exactly.

Maybe I shoudn't be surprised, but it seems that 78% of grades given at UVA are at least a B, and 47% of grades given are at least an A-. In fact, all the grades less than a B-, i.e. C+ down through F, constitute a mere 14% of grades given.

There are almost as many A+'s (7% of all grades) as there are C's and C+'s combined (9%), which is far more than the total of D+'s down through F's (a mere 3%).

UVA students are, for the most part, really smart, so on the one hand, this amazing grade distribution makes some sort of sense. On the other hand, doesn't that mean an 'A' is worth a lot less? Almost half the grades given are at least an A-. Even the A+ just doesn't seem to mean a whole lot.

I know people who complain about grade inflation are usually seen as crabby students who came from private schools, but hear me out.

There are two issues at stake. One is that students aren't being challenged enough. If it's that common to get an A, perhaps it is because professors aren't willing to give assignments that require more creative or original thinking.

The other issue is that grade inflation seems to make the world more competitive in the long run. I see this in high school, anyway. Just because you're smart, you still can't differentiate yourself from your peers without participating in 1000 different activities to boost your resume. You have to stand out, and doing well in classes isn't nearly enough. I would have to guess this has some similar affect on college students, as well.

Additionally, you get the problem that if grades are not efficient means by which to differentiate yourself from your peers, then you probably aren't going to focus on your coursework as much as other things. Is this really what universities are intending? Some of them may be. I guess there's something to be said for the university to be a forum for student activism, etc. rather than be strictly a learning institution. I guess I'm a little old fashioned; I still like the idea of the university as simply a learning institution.

But I suppose there's no turning back from the American system as we know it. The demand these days is more for preparation for the "real world," and not so much for education in a more traditional sense. So I suppose that skills like convincing your professor to bump that B+ up to an A-, asking for extensions on homework and extra credit to make up failed assignments, and learning to differentiate between important classes and freebies are much more valuable these days than simply learning things like philosophy, literature, mathematics, history, and science. The latter honestly don't get you as far in the "real world."

I guess the only thing that gets me is how people are willing to spend more and more for an education that actually means less and less.

School Choice--A Matter of Equality

Michelle Bernard (picture on the right) has written a great editorial in the DC Examiner about school choice, giving me all the more reason to be passionate about education reform:

"The promise of Brown v. Board of Education was to open every school house door to minorities. But many schools remain off-limits for too many black families today. The single most important step that we could take to promote full equality for all Americans would be to ensure that all children benefit from a quality education, and that requires giving parents more options and control over where their children go to school.

Of course, talking about school choice runs against the conventional wisdom of much of the black leadership, which defends the public schools. However, our children's future is too important to avoid uncomfortable truths."

I'm not sure what my black friends would say about this, but I agree with Bernard. The fact is, school vouchers work for everyone, even those who don't leave public school:

"'Contrary to the hypothesis that school choice harms students who remain in public schools, this study finds that students eligible for vouchers who remained in the public schools made greater academic improvements as their school choices increased.'

This should not surprise us, since competition is essential to our economic system, operating as a force to drive down prices while expanding options and promoting innovation.

Choice initiatives force the public schools to better serve their students - all of them. The benefits are particularly significant for minorities, who typically enjoy the fewest alternatives."

I found one reason to be optimistic about Barack Obama's take on this, coming from a blog on school choice:

"'If there was any argument for vouchers, it was "Let's see if the experiment works,"' Obama said. 'And if it does, whatever my preconception, you do what's best for kids.'"

So much the better. My frustration with this issue has been that for some reason "progressives" have been less than progressive on education reform. Supposedly school choice is a "conservative" idea, as if Sweden and the Netherlands are bastions of conservative thought.

I would think conservatives and liberals could agree on this issue. For the conservative, school vouchers put power back in the hands of the individual consumer and allow resources to be used more efficiently. For the liberal, vouchers give power to the less fortunate, enabling social progress. Personally, I find both of these ideas appealing.

In other news, I've started tutoring at a middle school in a lower income part of town through Charlottesville Abundant Life Ministries. If anyone else from Charlottesville happens to read this, we're always in need of more tutors.
One lesson I learned recently during this very tutoring program is that freedom in education is essential. This past week I actually heard a student compare coming to school with being sold into slavery.

This was probably an immature comparison, but it does underscore the idea that when students feel they have no choice in going to school, they really don't enjoy it. My hope is that one day school vouchers around the country will help change all that.

There's no denying that when you make your own choice about what to buy, you value it more. The same principle applies to education: when you choose to learn, it becomes infinitely more effective.

I hope that one day the students I tutor will have the same kinds of opportunities I've had. I hope they can make the choice to learn on their own. Then there would be nothing stopping them from having the life they want.

And isn't that what we all want for America?

Where should the money go?

Here's an example of the kind of reasoning I'm so opposed to when it comes to the issue of school vouchers.

A bill to create school vouchers has been introduced in the Georgia Senate. A local news station in Chatham County reports that their school superintendent is vehemently opposed to the bill.

Among his reasons, which are all pretty weak, is that "taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund private or parochial schools."

Of course not! Here is where people fudge the issue. When it comes to education, taxpayer dollars should fund children, not particular schools.

Parents ought to be empowered to choose where their children learn best. This would create maximum flexibility in the education system, whereas the current system has little to no flexibility for students who can't pay for it.

Here's an interesting quote from said superintendent:

“It’s not fair to say that my teachers are held accountable for children who have some challenges in their lives. Give me the same playing field as private and parochial schools and I’ll give you the same results if not better.”

If you want a level playing field, wouldn't it be best to allow students who don't have a lot of money to still have the option of choosing a different school? As it is, the whole reason public schools are left with certain children with "challenges in their lives" is that such children aren't rich enough to choose something else.

School administrators need to understand that the current system hurts them, too. Because there are so few options, children are not placed in the optimal setting, and that leaves public schools with a large and diverse collection children whom they are in no position to serve. Then when public schools aren't as good as other schools, administrators get blamed. It's not fair for anyone.

If we're going to spend as much money as we do on education, we deserve to expect results. We can get those result better if we free up the system to allow a more efficient allocation of resources.

Hence, we need school vouchers. Or at least something to give real choices to students.

Obama Chooses Private School--Well, Duh

So I've heard that Barack Obama is sending his two daughters to Sidwell Friends School, a private school where Chelsea Clinton also received part of her education. And why wouldn't he? He didn't send them to public schools in Chicago, so why would he try out the failing public schools in Washington, D.C.?

Since school choice is one of the most important political issues to me, I thought I'd mention this article by Ed Feulner. In it Feulner rightly points out the irony of Obama's decision.

During his campaign, he vowed, “We cannot be satisfied until every child in America -- I mean every child -- has the same chance for a good education that we want for our own children.” And the best way to give students that chance is to give their parents a choice. If parents were allowed to pick their children’s school (as the Obamas have now done twice), they’d pick the best available school, not merely the one that happens to be in their neighborhood.

...Sadly, candidate Obama seemed to be leaning in the wrong direction. “What I do oppose,” he told the American Federation of Teachers, “is spending public money for private school vouchers. We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools, not throwing our hands up and walking away from them.”

Giving parents and students a choice is not "throwing our hands up and walking away from" public schools. Rather, school vouchers put power in the hands of common people, rather than giving it directly to a corrupt and inefficient public education system.

What we have now, as this site makes clear, is a system in which teachers' unions work politically to maintain the status quo, which is that teachers get public money for doing less than our money is worth. So Barack Obama is really in favor of a system that favors the powerful over the powerless.

School vouchers, however, would still use public money to pay for education, but they would give power to the powerless, choice to those who have no choice. This would create a system in which schools actually have to compete for the money they make, and that would be in the public's best interest.

I do recall a commercial campaign by Lending Tree that said, "When banks compete, you win." When it comes to education, it's just as simple. When schools compete, students win. It frustrates me that Barack Obama would put the interests of teachers' unions before the interests of America's youth, despite what his rhetoric may say.

Do you know what the Electoral College does?

An editorial by Ed Feulner appeared on TownHall.com today highlighting the fact that most Americans just don't really know how government works.  You can find the article here.

According to the article, "The ISI [Intercollegiate Studies Institute] gave more than 2,500 people a 33-question quiz about basic historical and constitutional principles. The average score: 49 percent."

Here are some other results of the test:

* Fewer than half can name all three branches of government (legislative, executive and judicial).

* Only 53 percent realize Congress has the power to declare war (even though lawmakers have voted twice in the last eight years to approve foreign wars).

* Just 55 percent know that Congress shares authority over foreign policy with the president. Roughly 25 percent mistakenly believe that Congress shares its foreign policy authority with the United Nations.

This is perhaps the most disturbing part:

In ISI’s sample, 164 of the 2,508 respondents said they had been elected to government office at least once. There’s no way of knowing if this meant federal, state or local government. But it’s sobering to note that those who say they’ve held office earned an average score of 44 percent on the civic literacy test -- lower than the public they were elected to serve.

And get this:

Among these officeholders, almost half (43 percent) don’t know what the Electoral College does. One in five guessed it “trains those aspiring for higher political office” or “was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates” instead of identifying its actual role: selecting the president of the United States.

So not only are voters tragically uninformed, but the people we're voting for are, as well.

I have a recommendation to anyone who wishes to change this state of affairs. Read the US Constitution. It's actually not long at all. My pocket-sized version is only 37 pages, including all the amendments. Compare this to the European Union Constitution, where the "reader friendly" version has 219 pages.

And if you're not good with big words, they even have a version of the US Constitution for kids!

TeachersUnionFacts.com

My mother is a public school special education teacher, so I've been hearing about teachers' union politics roughly all my life.  Unions never sounded to me like a good idea, mostly because I have a strong philosophical bent toward merit pay.  Even if unions have a place in the workforce, particularly in education, one has to look at the facts about teachers' unions today and see that they are rather ineffective in ensuring quality education for students.

Check out this video:

The Truth about Teachers Unions from Union Facts on Vimeo.

I happened to find this web site, www.teachersunionfacts.com, and I was really impressed by how well it is put together, exposing the flaws in the current system.  I think education is probably my #2 political issue, right after right to life issues.  Good education is the only way to maintain a free society, and right now, according to the web site, our education is the worst in the world per dollar spent.

Something has to be done, and I think that includes reforms to give power back in the hands of the students and parents of students, and out of the hands of teachers' unions.  I'll definitely be keeping a close watch on this issue.

Are Republicans more progressive than Democrats?

On the subject of education, perhaps the answer is "yes." When we talk about school vouchers, which are essentially government hand-outs given to allow parents to choose which school they think is best for their children, who do we in America usually think of?

If the answer you came up with is, "conservative Republicans," then of course you're right. At least it's true if you're only looking at America.

What if I told you that there are countries who have already implemented the use of school vouchers, and that it has been a great success in improving education for lower income students? Now what if I told you those countries included Sweden and the Netherlands?

Check out this article for all the details. To quote the article,

Curiously, the idea of using government money to help send children to private schools is considered [in America] a very right-wing, conservative notion. ... Thus we have the odd situation of liberals opposing a government hand-out that has the potential to mostly benefit the poor and minorities. Not very progressive of them.

This is exactly what I have come to believe about the issue of school choice. As someone who has more and more of a taste these days for social justice, I am still very much inclined to side with the "conservatives" on this issue, because school choice benefits those in need. It turns out that good old-fashioned conservative concept of competitive markets is what benefits lower-income students.

From the article:

59 per cent of Swedish parents think that teachers work harder when there is school choice.

Exactly. For one reason or another, Democrats in this country have been opposed to the idea of competition in the education business. But I hope that as more Democrats are exposed to the merits of school choice, things will start to change.

Imagine in a world in which private schools directly benefit the poor. I'm not sure whether that's a liberal or conservative idea. I just think it's a good idea.

By the way, what does our new progressive leader Barack Obama think about school choice?

Sadly, he opposes it.