| first of all, be stone-cold realistic about this project. | | | | prevent children from mastering even the simplest |
| The Education Establishment, that is, the people in | | | | arithmetic. (It’s helpful here to note that |
| charge, don’t give a darn what you want. | | | | private schools and the homeschooling community |
| They have been dumbing down the schools of the | | | | tend to reject New New Math.) |
| US for almost 100 years, relentlessly, ruthlessly. They | | | | Reform Five: kids should learn facts. The Education |
| won’t look kindly on your efforts to improve | | | | Establishment has for many decades waged war |
| education. They will think you presumptuous and | | | | against memorization. “They can look it |
| insubordinate. They are in charge of education, you | | | | up” is the cry of this anti-intellectual cartel. No. |
| are not, and that’s that. So you should | | | | “They” won’t need to look it |
| anticipate that they will mislead you, obstruct you, | | | | up because “they” will know it. |
| song-and-dance you, and in general treat you like the | | | | Starting in the first grade, children should learn the |
| silly, irrelevant person they know you to be. | | | | simplest facts (the names of the oceans and |
| Still want to improve education? Okay, let’s | | | | continents, for example). They learn foundational |
| get started: | | | | information; they build on this; and then they build |
| Reform One: the single most important change we | | | | another layer on the first layer. As the years go by, |
| need is that teachers must major/minor in the | | | | they become what used to be called educated. And |
| subjects they will teach. They absolutely must not | | | | they like it that way -- because facts are fun, and |
| major in Education. They must, throughout their | | | | knowledge is power. |
| teaching careers, be Experts in the subjects they are | | | | Reform Six: root out all the phony methods |
| teaching. Only in America can someone major in | | | | introduced by the Education Establishment during the |
| Education and end up teaching Chemistry. It’s | | | | 20th century. Vast energy was spent devising and |
| so ridiculous you can deduce immediately that the | | | | promoting sophistries whose actual impact was |
| people who made this possible were not serious | | | | negative. There are DOZENS of these clunkers, each |
| about education. | | | | one more destructive than the next. Self Esteem said |
| Reform Two: the second most important reform we | | | | you had to praise children even when they had the |
| need is that states which now require teachers to | | | | wrong answer. Constructivism said children had to |
| join the NEA (a highly politicized union) must change | | | | create their own knowledge, an absurd project |
| that law. If teachers want to join a union, | | | | requiring many extra years. Multiculturalism said that |
| that’s their business. Coercing them to join | | | | knowledge about faraway places was just as |
| sounds a lot like an un-American abuse of power. | | | | important as knowledge about a young |
| Let’s take the politics out of education, | | | | student’s own city or country...The point is |
| especially the far-left ideology that has always been | | | | that all these sophistries are destructive. They are a |
| more concerned with social engineering than with | | | | kind of mental crabgrass growing everywhere in the |
| genuine education. | | | | public schools. So the first order of business is to |
| Reform Three: fix reading instruction. Reading is the | | | | clear away the weeds. |
| single most essential skill; education can’t | | | | All right, suppose we have achieved these six |
| really begin until reading is learned. Phonics proponents | | | | reforms. What would the resulting schools look like? |
| have always said they would teach virtually all children | | | | Like almost all the best schools have looked for |
| to read by the end of first grade. On the other hand, | | | | many thousands of years. But less severe perhaps, |
| proponents of Whole Word, Sight Words, Dolch | | | | more ingenious in the use of teaching aids (thanks to |
| Words, and all non-phonetic approaches have never | | | | the digital age, we have so many more of them |
| claimed that they would teach children to read more | | | | now). |
| than a few hundred words per year. This is what | | | | Point is, the old-fashioned schools worked very well. |
| lawyers call prima facie malfeasance. The victims of | | | | Ordinary kids learned the basic information they |
| this wrong-headed approach turn out, in large | | | | needed to be citizens, to read the daily paper, and to |
| percent, to be functionally illiterate, dyslexic, or able | | | | advance further academically if they chose. So much |
| to read only with great difficulty. | | | | of the claptrap introduced in the public schools the |
| Reform Four: the next most important skill is | | | | past century never had anything to do with |
| arithmetic, which should be taught in a smooth | | | | education, only with social engineering. All these |
| progression from the simplest bits to the more | | | | ill-advised additions have warped our judgment of |
| advanced aspects. Reform Math programs (a/k/a | | | | what a school should look like and, indeed, all that a |
| New New Math) should be eliminated from the | | | | school can hope to accomplish. What we need to do |
| schools because they muddle the basics, mix in | | | | is to recover the best of the past, blended with the |
| advanced concepts with simple concepts, and | | | | best of the new possibilities. |