Against maximizing

Is there a more bureaucratic word than “maximize”? The word was born for PowerPoint presentations. To maximize standardized test scores, we may have to neglect untestable qualities like creativity, initiative, skepticism, or the ability to ask a good question; we may have to train our kids to be passively obedient to all authority figures; we may have to cut luxuries like art and music from the curriculum; we may have to bribe the kids to quiet down and pay attention; we may have to squeeze the pleasure out of education and make learning a chore. But who can object to “maximizing academic achievement”?

Maximizing any one variable, of course, tends to come at the expense of all other variables. Such an approach has a name, borrowed from economics: the “corner solution.” As Jason Kuznicki explains:

A corner solution arises whenever, when faced with a tradeoff among two or more variables, we declare that one of the variables is to be minimized [or maximized] regardless of the state of the others. In public policy, some corner solutions are justified, but most are not.

“We have to control our borders” is one example of a corner solution. It posits that unauthorized border crossings are to be minimized, and it says nothing about the other factors that probably ought to be relevant to sound border policy – factors like expense, loss of civil liberties, collateral damage, our international reputation, and the sheer fact that without illegal immigrants, many sectors of the economy might entirely collapse. The corner solution ignores all that. In so doing, it obtains a clarity that may or may not be real, but that is politically very useful.

“Politically very useful”: that’s not how I like to think about my kids.

It is delusional to think that education is a science or can be approached like one. You don’t help kids become intelligent, capable, happy adults by maximizing quantifiable variables; you do it through judgment, experience, and wisdom. We should be freeing teachers to develop and use those qualities, rather than forcing them to execute some pseudo-scientific centrally-determined plan.

Incidentally, a search for the word “maximize” on the PBIS website brings up a hundred and fourteen results.


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Recommended reading

Check out Homework Headaches, written by another parent driven to blogging by the state of our schools – in his case, by the excessive and mind-numbing homework assigned to his seven- and ten-year-old daughters.


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Quote for the day

“First, do no harm.”

--Origin uncertain

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Caution: Experts at work (continued)

By now everyone has heard the story of George Rekers -- the co-founder of the Christian conservative Family Research Council and proponent of “curing” homosexuality, who was recently discovered to have hired a male prostitute from a website called Rentboy.com to be his “traveling companion” and to give him nude massages. (Rekers denies that he is gay or that he did anything inappropriate in hiring the man.) Rekers’s story may be old news, but I just today read the following detail:

In 1974, Rekers, a leading thinker in the so-called ex-gay movement, was presented with a 4-year-old “effeminate boy” named Kraig, whose parents had enrolled him in the program. Rekers put Kraig in a “play-observation room” with his mother, who was equipped with a listening device. When the boy played with girly toys, the doctors instructed her to avert her eyes from the child.

According to a 2001 account in Brain, Child Magazine, “On one such occasion, his distress was such that he began to scream, but his mother just looked away. His anxiety increased, and he did whatever he could to get her to respond to him . . . . Kraig became so hysterical, and his mother so uncomfortable, that one of the clinicians had to enter and take Kraig, screaming, from the room.”

Rekers’s research team continued the experiment in the family’s home. Kraig received red chips for feminine behavior and blue chips for masculine behavior.

. . .

The blue chips could be cashed in for candy or television time. The red chips earned him a “swat” or spanking from his father. Researchers periodically entered the family’s home to ensure proper implementation of the reward-punishment system.

After two years, the boy supposedly manned up. Over the decades, Rekers, who ran countless similar experiments, held Kraig up as “the poster boy for behavioral treatment of boyhood effeminacy.”

At age 18, shamed by his childhood diagnosis and treatment, Rekers’s poster boy attempted suicide, according to Gender Shock, a book by journalist Phyllis Burke.

I won’t equate Rekers’s quackery with programs like PBIS, but they obviously share some assumptions about how adults should intervene in the lives of children, and about how to understand human behavior. Stories like the one above certainly make you wonder about the long-term consequences of trying to change a child’s behavior without paying any attention to the underlying reasons for that behavior.

Rekers, by the way, has a Ph.D. in human developmental psychology from UCLA, is on the faculty of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine -- where he chaired the psychology faculty for almost twenty years -- and is the author of over a hundred academic publications, including footnote-filled studies in peer-reviewed journals advancing his theories about using behavioral techniques to “cure” homosexuality. The man’s obviously an expert. Has your brain shut down yet?

UPDATE: Apparently in response to someone flagging it for review, Blogger has put this post behind a warning for violating its Adult Content policy, almost thirteen years after I posted it. I have reviewed Blogger's Adult Content policy, and I cannot understand how this post has violated it in any way. Most of the policy is limited to the posting of images or videos, and there are no images or videos in my post. The policy's one reference to textual content refers to "textual content that depicts or encourages rape, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia." As you can see above, there is no text in my post that even remotely meets that description. The post is simply summarizing a news event that was reported widely in mainstream media. As reported elsewhere, the "Rentboy" prostitute referred to in the story was a twenty-year-old adult man, and there is no indication that the relationship was not consensual. I am adding this update as my appeal to Blogger to reverse its decision.
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Evidence and values, revisited

Yesterday I wrote about how any invocation of expert authority is enough to stop most parents from questioning educational policy decisions, even though those decisions often hinge on value judgments that parents are just as qualified as experts to make. If, for example, the focus stays on whether behavioral rewards “work” to make children more obedient, parents can be quickly cowed by anyone who cites an empirical study. But if we focused on the value judgments that necessarily have to come first -- for example, whether schools should put their main focus on qualities other than blind obedience -- the institution could no longer pull rank on the parents by claiming special expertise.

As it turns out: brain research shows that when people are given expert advice, the decision-making parts of their brains often shut down. (And if a scientific study says it, it must be true!)

This topic has gotten me to thinking about my email exchange with Alfie Kohn last October. Kohn agreed that we need to challenge the behaviorists on issues of values, but good-naturedly scolded me for ceding the question of evidence to them. Any thorough analysis of the evidence, Kohn has argued extensively in his books, shows that reward systems do not promote the desired behaviors over the long term, and ultimately have negative consequences. So, Kohn argued, we should challenge the behaviorists’ evidence as well.

I see Kohn’s logic, but I also know what happens when experts start debating the merits of their evidentiary claims: the average person throws up his hands, and the institution gets its way. If I’ve noticed this effect, and brain scientists have even studied it, you had better believe that school administrators have noticed it too. I can’t help but think that they welcome any opportunity to change the subject from what values we should pursue to what evidence the experts can summon.


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Values, not programs

Back in Connecticut, Aimee is posting about more humane and respectful alternatives to programs like PBIS. I’m on her side, but I also share her skepticism about the need for any of these packaged “programs,” with their workshops and institutes, their implementation consultants and development kits. I certainly prefer the education-as-humane-engagement industry to the education-as-control-and-manipulation industry, but I disagree that what teachers really need is a high-priced instruction manual.

Most parents I know would laugh at the idea of getting trained in some kind of marketed program to manage their kids’ learning or behavior in the home. Nor is there any movement to provide extensive training in step-by-step teaching techniques to college and university professors -- most of whom are sent into the classroom on the assumption that, with a little common sense and a few semesters of practice, they can teach as well as anyone else. University professors are amateurs when it comes to teaching in the same way that all parents are amateurs when it comes to parenting, yet the world keeps turning.

In K-12 education, though, you’re nowhere if you don’t have a program, and if it comes with its own jargon, even better. Let me suggest that one of the primary functions of these programs, like of all types of jargon, is to wall out the layman -- in this case, the parent -- and to hang a big sign on that wall saying KEEP OUT. We’re experts, and we’ve got evidence-based methods, scientifically tested, so unless you’re trained in this field -- preferably with a doctorate -- step aside, please, and let us handle this.

I’m skeptical that this elevation of expertise actually helps our kids grow and learn. But as a walling-out technique, it sure does work. Faced with an authority figure brandishing a claim that a program is supported by the latest cutting-edge research, most laymen wilt. What parent is going to devote his or her spare hours and energy to scrutinizing the methodology of some education-school research article to debate its merits with someone whose livelihood depends on defending it? A fancy website with cool graphics, official-looking charts and graphs, and several footnotes -- even if it doesn’t withstand just a few minutes of close scrutiny -- is enough to send most people down the path of least resistance.

Funny how presenting everything as an issue of technique (“Does it work?”), rather than as an issue of values (“What do we want for our kids?”), has the effect of putting the institution in charge, rather than the parents. If we were to discuss the values that underlie our educational policies, there would be no rationale for excluding parents from the debate. Experts, after all, can’t tell you what values to hold. So that topic is, conveniently, ignored.

Give my child a thoughtful, humane teacher who respects kids, sympathizes with them, and takes them seriously. One who values inquiry, initiative, creativity, and intellectual curiosity. Give that teacher enough autonomy in the classroom that he or she can enjoy the job and stay in it long enough to acquire some skill and some wisdom. Then the kids will do fine -- and you won’t even need a flow chart.


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The risks of rewards

Alfie Kohn has written a whole book -- Punished by Rewards -- about why we should be reluctant to use rewards to motivate our kids in school. For a much briefer sampling of his arguments, check out this essay of his, The Risks of Rewards. More of his articles on the subject are available here.


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Is math necessary in elementary school?

Our school works awfully hard to keep the students up to “grade-level” in math, and the kids work awfully hard to get there. Not just at our school, of course; schools across the country are measured, in part, by how many of their kids meet benchmarks on standardized math tests each year. The importance of meeting those benchmarks is used to justify behavioral programs like PBIS and the “character education” programs that are designed to keep kids quiet and obedient so teachers can maximize on-task time.

How sure are we that kids benefit from learning math in this way? What would happen if we didn’t introduce math at all until, say, sixth grade? In 1929, a school superintendent named L.P. Benezet suggested trying exactly that. “For some years, I had noted that the effect of the early introduction of arithmetic had been to dull and almost chloroform the child’s reasoning facilities,” he wrote.

In the fall of 1929 I made up my mind to try the experiment of abandoning all formal instruction in arithmetic below the seventh grade and concentrating on teaching the children to read, to reason, and to recite - my new Three R’s. And by reciting I did not mean giving back, verbatim, the words of the teacher or of the textbook. I meant speaking the English language.

You can read more about his experiment here. The upshot:

Benezet showed that kids who received just one year of arithmetic, in sixth grade, performed at least as well on standard calculations and much better on story problems than kids who had received several years of arithmetic training. This was all the more remarkable because of the fact that those who received just one year of training were from the poorest neighborhoods--the neighborhoods that had previously produced the poorest test results.

I don’t vouch for this one study’s methods or conclusions. (Benezet’s paper is here.) But I do wonder how open our current educational establishment would be to Benezet’s hypothesis, no matter how much evidence supported it. (Funny how unconventional ideas simply don’t get studied, and so remain forever “non-evidence-based.”) When we’re choosing between different educational approaches, shouldn’t the burden of proof be on those whose approach is more coercive, more burdensome and time-consuming, and more likely to make the kids dislike the subject matter?


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Quote for the day

“When test scores go up, we should worry, because of how poor a measure they are of what matters, and what you typically sacrifice in a desperate effort to raise scores.”

Alfie Kohn

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Should schools beat kids?

“Should Schools Bribe Kids?” asks the cover of Time magazine. The subtitle then reveals “an uncomfortable truth -- it can work (if it’s done right).”

Here’s another uncomfortable truth: Beating kids works, too, if what you want is immediate behavioral compliance. Is whether it “works” the only question we’re allowed to ask about that practice?

My concerns about the use of bribes -- almost none of which are about whether it “works” -- are here.


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What passes for school choice

Nine years ago, Stanford University started a charter school in East Palo Alto, to try to bring the benefits and resources of a great university and “state of the art instruction” to a struggling school district. This week, though, the local school board voted to close the school because of low test scores.

Unlike other nearby charter schools, which focus “primarily and almost exclusively on academics,” this school “focused on academics and students’ emotional and social lives.” The school’s supporters protested that test scores are “not the most accurate measure of student achievement, particularly if you have new English language learners.” The school “puts a lot of attention on a variety of skills and opportunities that don’t necessarily promote higher scores,” its president said. “If you’re just looking at test scores,” one student said, “then you don’t see what we’re learning.” Although the school’s high school completion and college acceptance rates were impressive, the board was unswayed by the school’s arguments.

This is why I have no faith in the “school choice” movement. Under the prevailing conception of what “school choice” means, families will have a choice among several schools that are all being measured by the same criteria -- which are, inevitably, based on standardized test scores. If what you want is a school that would aspire to fulfill a different set of criteria, forget it. No choice for you.


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Time out

I suppose you know that behavioral rewards have made the big time when they land on the cover of Time magazine. The article, though, is a disappointment. It devotes five short sentences to a few of the actual objections that people (like me!) have to the use of rewards in school, then zeroes in on what it identifies as the crux of the debate: “But all this time, there has been only one real question, particularly in America’s lowest-performing schools: Does it work?”

The only problem is that that question has never been the crux of the debate at all. Even the most prominent opponents of behavioral approaches to education -- for example, Alfie Kohn -- admit that rewards can work to achieve short-term compliance with behavioral goals, and even to raise standardized test scores. They oppose the use of rewards anyway, because of its unintended long-term consequences and because of the values it embodies and conveys.

Time’s focus -- its suggestion that the “only real question” is whether rewards work -- thus completely misrepresents the debate. Leave it to Time to write a four-thousand-word article on the one aspect of a contentious debate on which everyone agrees.


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Absence of Mind

One of the disturbing aspects of behavioral rewards systems like PBIS -- as these Connecticut parents point out -- is that they put “little or no emphasis on dealing with why the individual child is behaving unacceptably.” One doesn’t ask why a trained seal prefers to swim around than to spin a ball on its nose; one just pulls out the clicker and the barrel of treats and goes to work. So the same principles apply to “teaching” our kids to behave.

I thought about this aspect of PBIS as I read Marilynne Robinson’s new book, Absence of Mind. Her thesis:

I propose that the core assumption that remains unchallenged and unquestioned through all the variations within the diverse traditions of “modern” thought is that the experience and testimony of the individual mind is to be explained away, excluded from consideration when any rational account is made of the nature of human being and of being altogether.

What Robinson sees as the most distinctive feature of our species -- the conscious mind -- is now disparaged by many as a mere illusion, a kind of unreliable narrator, serving mainly to trick the body into pursuing whatever will propagate its genes to the next generation. Robinson makes the case that these understandings of the human mind, and of human nature, are inadequate, and that their claims to being comprehensive explanations of the human condition are comically overblown. Unsurprisingly, Robinson includes, on her list of such modern schools of thought, the behaviorists.

Which raises the question: What does it say about a society when the task of education, of all things, is turned over to people who believe in the fundamental unimportance of the conscious mind?


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Daydream believer

From Jonah Lehrer’s blog:

Everybody wants a creative child - in theory. The reality of creativity, however, is a little more complicated, as creative thoughts tend to emerge when we’re distracted, daydreaming, disinhibited and not following the rules. In other words, the most imaginative kids are often the trouble-makers.

Eric Barker recently referred me to this interesting study, which looked at how elementary school teachers perceived creativity in their students. While the teachers said they wanted creative kids in their classroom, they actually didn’t. In fact, when they were asked to rate their students on a variety of personality measures - the list included everything from “individualistic” to “risk-seeking” to “accepting of authority” - the traits mostly closely aligned with creative thinking were also closely associated with their “least favorite” students. As the researchers note, “Judgments for the favorite student were negatively correlated with creativity; judgments for the least favorite student were positively correlated with creativity.”

Lehrer then defends the value of daydreaming, pointing to research indicating that “a wandering mind may be important to setting goals, making discoveries, and living a balanced life.” Something tells me that this evidence, though, won’t find its way into our “evidence-based” “effective schoolwide interventions.”


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Quote for the day

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”

--Clay Shirky

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Some company in Connecticut

Apparently I am not the only parent driven to blogging by the use of the PBIS rewards program on our kids. I wish these parents the best, and would love to hear their thoughts as they push back against the assumption that our kids are best understood as objects to be manipulated rather than as human beings to be respected and engaged with.

I continue to believe that something like PBIS would never be initiated in a school system in which parents were the primary decisionmakers. Unfortunately, it seems like we are less and less in such a world (as I discussed here).

Here is as good a place as any for a compilation of previous posts on the topic of PBIS:

Behavioral, yes. Positive and supporting? Maybe not.

Evidence and values

What’s good for General Motors . . .

Alfie Kohn on our red tickets

DoublePlusUngood

Weird science

The risks of rewards

Caution: Experts at work (continued)

And, since we’re on the subject of what an impoverished conception of our kids PBIS embodies, one more:

Quote for the day


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Weird science

Our school’s behavioral rewards program (also known as PBIS) claims to be “evidence-based” and supported by “peer-reviewed randomized control trial research studies.” A closer look at the program’s materials, though, might lead someone to question whether it is truly informed by science, or whether it is simply bound and determined to put some scientific credentials on its marketing materials. Although the program cloaks itself in the language of science, it cannot contain its cult-like evangelical fervor, which bursts from virtually every page of its website.

The most striking aspect of the website is the contrast between the program's ambitious certitude, on the one hand, and the banality of its content, on the other. The program unashamedly seeks to pervade every aspect of a child’s world -- not just the hallways, playground, and cafeteria, but also the classroom, the community, and the home. It then summarizes that goal using helpful charts like this one (in case you’re more of a visual learner, I guess):



In the web page accompanying this chart, the program gives us its vision of education in a pithy two sentences that are far more revealing than was probably intended:

Education is a vital cog to any community. Quality education creates high caliber employees, college students, supporters, and consumers.

To ensure that our kids will become these high caliber employees and consumers, the site not only recommends that parents “participate on the leadership team” and even start distributing rewards tickets in the home (redeemable at school!), but also that local businesses be recruited into the program. For example (and I’m not making these up):

Grocery store chooses one student per week from gotcha [i.e., reward ticket] drawing to serve as an apprentice on Saturday at the grocery store.

Car oil change company gives out letters for the school to send out to exemplar students giving the parents 15% off their next oil change.

Discount cards donated by restaurants, bookstores, discount stores, grocery stores, etc. earned for receiving a predetermined number of gotchas.

The site also urges people to cultivate political support for PBIS, and even to use the children as lobbyists on its behalf (“Have the students talk about what a difference Sw-PBIS has meant [sic] to them”). When the federal government was allocating its economic stimulus money, PBIS was ready with a brochure promoting the use of stimulus money for -- you guessed it -- PBIS. A remarkable amount of the site is dedicated to Amway-like discussions of how to talk other people into supporting PBIS.

One state’s PBIS advocates summed up the program’s mission in a nutshell (emphasis in the original):

to have EVERY teacher and administrator in EVERY school district in the state knowledgeable about and engaged in the use of Positive Behavior Supports as a means to enhance the learning of EVERY student.

Science, in its best form, is skeptical and self-questioning, and reaches conclusions only tentatively. Do these materials reflect a scientific mindset? Or do they reflect some weird amalgam of Madison Avenue pitching and messianic fervor?


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Against the law

"Campbell's Law," that is. The late social scientist Donald Campbell's idea: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."

Examples of Campbell's Law at work (as summarized by Richard Rothstein here) include "when cardiac surgeons, held accountable for raising surgical survival rates, refuse to operate on the sickest patients most in need of intervention; when employment agencies held accountable for job placement numbers meet their quotas by placing the unemployed only in the most easily filled and lowest-skill jobs; when colleges send pre-completed applications to unqualified high school students because U.S. News & World Report ranks college selectivity by the number of applicants rejected; or when Wall Street traders take reckless risks because they are rewarded only for short-term, easily measured outcomes."

Campbell himself saw how his principle would inevitably apply to the use of high-stakes testing in education: "[A]chievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. . . . Achievement tests are, in fact, highly corruptible indicators."

In other words, test-driven education is likely to have unintended consequences. That's part of what drove Diane Ravitch to change her mind about No Child Left Behind. It's worth noting, though, that although those consequences may have been unintended, they certainly weren't unforeseeable. Campbell formulated his "law" in 1976, and others (for example, Peter Sacks) were applying it to high-stakes testing long before Ravitch finally came around on the issue.


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Zero

Almost five months ago, I wrote to the seven members of our board of education, and to our superintendent, about our district’s behavioral rewards program. I put some time and thought into the letter, and I hoped the recipients would at least read it, but I certainly didn’t expect anyone to agree with me, or to treat me any differently than anyone else who writes a letter to the board. (The letter is here.)

Even I was surprised, though, when none of the people I wrote to even so much as acknowledged the letter. None. Not even a postcard saying, thanks for your views. I might as well have dropped the letters down a well.

I thought of that non-response today when I posted a comment on our local paper’s suggestion that we should reduce the number of school districts and make them larger than they currently are. In my comments there, I mention some of the reasons I’d be disinclined to enlarge school districts (some of which echo this post), but here’s another: if our school district is already so big that elected board members can’t acknowledge letters from voters, maybe we should think about making it smaller, instead of bigger.


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U-turn

As you can see, I've gotten side-tracked from blogging by a busy semester and by other projects. I haven't forgotten the blog entirely, though, and hope to keep posting occasionally.

The Times today has an article about Diane Ravitch, originally an influential advocate for standardized testing and accountability, who has now changed her tune. “Accountability, as written into federal law, was not raising standards but dumbing down the schools,” she now says. Check it out.


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Slow month

Sorry I've posted so little lately. End-of-semester obligations and holiday activities have crowded out time for other things. But the blog will be active again soon. Some things I'd like to get to soon:

• A closer look at the promotional materials and claims of our reward tickets program

• Should "staying in from recess" be used as a punishment?

• The case against foreign language requirements

• What the workings of our school system teaches kids about democracy

Stay tuned . . .


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Multiple choices

I may have to retract my criticism of standardized tests: this author makes a persuasive case that life really is a multiple choice test, even for kindergartners.


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Avert your eyes

The Einstein posts were fun, but ultimately frustrating. Few people would outright disagree with any of Einstein’s comments on education. It’s easy to imagine a school board member, a school principal, or a Congressperson nodding in agreement if they were to read those posts. Yes, yes, coercive and authoritarian approaches to education are bad; we need to engage the child in her own learning; the more autonomy for teachers and children, the better. Then they would return to their project of making the schools more authoritarian and coercive, treating the children like passive subjects to be dictated to, and eliminating autonomy all around.

What accounts for the disconnect between ideals and practice in education? When it comes to school administrators and teachers, it’s easy enough to understand: ideals are nice, but if your job, your raise, or your promotion depends on raising standardized test scores, you’ll do what you have to do. But what about parents? How do they make sense of what now goes on in the name of education?

I think many parents have a kind of cognitive bias in favor of giving the benefit of the doubt to the school. After all, many of us have little choice but to send our kids to school. To be openly critical of a school’s practices, while simultaneously sending one’s child there every day, could obviously be disturbing to the parent and potentially confusing to the child. Moreover, the message we receive in so many ways is that complaints are futile: everything is dictated from above; key decisions are made in Washington; one person can’t change anything. To criticize the school, then, would just make your kids less happy -- or maybe even turn them into alienated malcontents. As one parent said to me, after sympathizing with some of my concerns, “You have to just avert your eyes from a lot of what goes on.”

I know that reality never measures up to ideals. If our schools were engaged in a genuine effort to pursue humane educational practices like those Einstein talked about, it would be wrong to nitpick about imperfections. But what if we’ve averted our eyes to much more than we realize? What if our schools actually operate on an entirely different set of assumptions and values, and on ideals that are diametrically opposed to our own?

I see enough evidence to make me worry about the answer to that question, and I suppose exploring that issue is the mission of this blog. At some point, to avert one’s eyes is to deny reality -- the reality in which our kids spend a big chunk of their lives. Are we really doing our kids a service by making them the only people in this system who can see what's going on in front of them?


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What would Einstein do? (part 3)

A few more thoughts from Albert Einstein on education:

Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation. But that is not right. Knowledge is dead; the school, however, serves the living. It should develop in the young individuals those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth. But that does not mean that individuality should be destroyed and the individual become a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an ant. For a community of standardized individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. On the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals, who, however, see in the service of the community their highest life problem.

. . .

Give into the power of the teacher the fewest possible coercive measures, so that the only source of the pupil’s respect for the teacher is the human and intellectual qualities of the latter.

. . .

[T]he teacher should be given extensive liberty in the selection of the material to be taught and the methods of teaching employed by him. For it is true also of him that pleasure in the shaping of his work is killed by force and exterior pressure.

. . .

I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible. Apart from that, it seems to me, moreover, objectionable to treat the individual like a dead tool.

--Albert Einstein, 1936 (from Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1982).

Part 1 here; part 2 here.

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What would Einstein do? (part 2)

Despite the myth, Einstein was a good student, consistently getting high grades, especially in math. His troubles in school were the result of his conflicts with his teachers. He rebelled against the authoritarian approach to education that prevailed in the German schools he attended. Einstein had, in the words of a biographer, “a deep suspicion of authority in general and of educational authority in particular.” (1) “This contempt for authority did not endear him to the German ‘lieutenants’ who taught him at his school. As a result, one of his teachers proclaimed that his insolence made him unwelcome in class. When Einstein insisted that he had committed no offense, the teacher replied, ‘Yes, that is true, but you sit there in the back row and smile, and your mere presence here spoils the respect of the class for me.’” (2)

Eventually, Einstein left (or was expelled from) that school and eventually attended a preparatory school in Aarau, Switzerland. “It was a perfect school for Einstein. The teaching was based on the philosophy of a Swiss educational reformer, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who believed in encouraging students to visualize images. He also thought it important to nurture the ‘inner dignity’ and individuality of each child. Students should be allowed to reach their own conclusions, Pestalozzi preached, by using a series of steps that began with hands-on observations and then proceeded to intuitions, conceptual thinking, and visual imagery. It was even possible to learn -- and truly understand -- the laws of math and physics that way. Rote drills, memorization, and force-fed facts were avoided.

“Einstein loved Aarau. ‘Pupils were treated individually,’ his sister recalled, ‘more emphasis was placed on independent thought than on punditry, and young people saw the teacher not as a figure of authority, but, alongside the student, a man of distinct personality.’ It was the opposite of the German education that Einstein had hated. ‘When compared to six years’ schooling at a German authoritarian gymnasium,’ Einstein later said, ‘it made me clearly realize how much superior an education based on free action and personal responsibility is to one relying on outward authority.’” (2)

Einstein’s “‘early suspicion of authority, which never wholly left him, was to prove of decisive importance,’ said Banesh Hoffmann, who was a collaborator of Einstein’s in his later years. ‘Without it he would not have been able to develop the powerful independence of mind that would give him the courage to challenge established scientific beliefs and thereby revolutionize physics.’” (2)

What would Einstein have made of our schools’ increasing emphasis on behavior management, obedience, and standardized test scores? Of this, or this? More importantly, what would those practices, if they worked as intended, have made of him?

Part 1 here; part 3 here.

(Sources: (1) Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (1971); (2) Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007).)


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What would Einstein do? (part 1)

As the Baby Einstein phenomenon shows, our culture sees Albert Einstein as the ultimate icon of intellectual achievement, and with good reason. It is interesting, then, to read some of Einstein’s own thoughts about education:

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.

I am opposed to examinations -- they only deter from the interest in studying. No more than two exams should be given throughout a student’s [college] career. I would hold seminars, and if the young people are interested and listen, I would give them a diploma.

It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in the young human being, a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening with too much and too varied subjects . . . . Overburdening necessarily leads to superficiality.

[T]he gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Part 2 here; part 3 here.

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False advertising

The makers of Baby Einstein products -- videos featuring bright colors and classical music that would supposedly help increase your baby’s intelligence -- are now offering a full refund to dissatisfied parents. The article reporting this news was one of the most emailed articles in the New York Times last week.

Now we can all laugh at the idea that parents could raise their babies’ IQ by playing Mozart to them. Then we can send our kids off to schools where first-graders have homework every night. Hmm.

At least the babies got to listen to some good music.

Related post here.


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Cure or symptom?

The other day I wrote about a survey that found that thirty-six percent of high school students felt that newspapers should not be allowed to publish a story without first getting government approval. Follow-up studies in subsequent years confirmed that finding.

The foundation that sponsored the surveys asked Joel Martin, a school administrator with twenty years of experience, to comment on the results. He wrote:

One positive finding is that more First Amendment courses are now being offered in high schools. A continued effort must exist to patiently make progress. The charge will continue to be lead [sic] by organizations and entities with specific financial backing and clear mission statements.

. . .

Curriculum adjustments to focus on the First Amendment issues of free expression need to be explored. The idea of incorporating this topic into increased curricular areas must be studied. The government or civics teacher late in a student’s educational career may struggle, despite a genuine effort, to do justice to the subject of the Constitution and First Amendment.

Courses and/or curriculum at lower grades addressing these issues may be prudent. Schools need to consider developing new course offerings aimed specifically at First Amendment rights issues.

I nominate Mr. Martin as the voice of contemporary American schooling. His heart is in the right place, but he is completely unaware of the contradiction between his ends and his means. Genuinely concerned about issues affecting freedom and human dignity, he can respond only in terms of a system that sees kids as passive recipients of information and proposes to solve every problem by adding more class hours or required courses. (One imagines teachers drilling the kids to prep them for the Iowa Test of Basic Freedoms.) Faced with students who have a low regard for freedom, Mr. Martin can think of one response: We need to do a better job of telling these students what to think!

(Notice, for example, one type of fudging that appears in almost all the commentary I have read on this survey. Granted, many of the survey questions revealed actual ignorance about the content and effect of the First Amendment. But some of the most disturbing findings, such as the ones I cited, were about students’ opinions, not about their knowledge of facts. Shall we instruct them that their opinions are wrong? The idea that there might be a distinction between informing kids about facts and altering kids’ opinions -- that is, between education and indoctrination -- seems never to occur to these commentators.)

Of course, lack of instruction is not the only possible explanation for the survey’s findings. The idea that an individual might have rights that trump those of the authorities could not be more foreign in our schools. Many kids perceive, accurately, that they are not allowed to voice, or even form, critical opinions about the institution that governs a large chunk of their waking hours. Even the idea that kids might have some say in what they learn about, or in how they spend their time, is now seen as a flaky Sixties-era relic that has no place in the Era of Accountability and Standardization. Now more than ever, school is the place that tells you what to do. The good student is the one who is quiet and follows instructions. To openly criticize the authority figures -- the activity at the heart of the First Amendment -- is, for most kids, unthinkable.

When that message is transmitted every day for thirteen years, devoting a few more semester-hours to the Constitution is like fighting a flood with a thimble. Maybe instead of instructing the kids about the value of this alien thing called freedom, we might try giving them some.


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Where did the kids get that crazy idea?

Should newspapers be allowed to publish a story freely without first getting government approval? Five years ago, survey researchers posed that question to over 100,000 high school students across America. Thirty-six percent of the students said that government approval should be required. Only a bare majority -- fifty-one percent -- disagreed, and most of them only “mildly.” Thirty-two percent thought the press had “too much freedom,” and thirty-five percent thought that “the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.”

But never mind that. The real problem is that our math scores are lower than Singapore’s!

Related post here.


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Which crisis?

One of the main purposes of this blog is to explore the connection between test-driven education and the promotion of authoritarian values in our schools. As I argued at more length here, the pressure to raise standardized test scores has led schools to dwell heavily on obedience and behavioral compliance, which necessarily undermines any emphasis on the importance of inquiry, skepticism, and thought.

Is it worth it? Some might say it is. There is a crisis in American education, we are repeatedly told. We are falling behind our economic competitors. We are losing our advantage in the hyper-competitive global economy. The cure for this crisis is Accountability, which means more and more emphasis on standardized test scores as a measure of whether schools are succeeding. Creating good citizens is a nice ideal, but the economic reality is that we need to create good workers.

Is it true that, for the sake of our kids’ futures, we need to focus more on producing good workers than on producing capable citizens? Consider two sets of facts:

1. “[E]ighth grade students in the United States perform at a level that is slightly below average in mathematics and slightly above average in science. The countries whose students outperformed U.S. students in both subjects were Singapore, Korea, Japan, the Czech Republic and Hungary. . . . [O]nly five percent of U.S. eighth graders would qualify for inclusion among the world's top 10 percent in mathematics, whereas 45 percent of Singapore's students would fall into this category.” Those figures provide “‘ample evidence that our curricula and expectations for our young people are not demanding enough,’ said Norman R. Augustine, vice chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation and chairman of the Education Task Force of The Business Roundtable, a corporate group.”

2. In 2002 and 2003, the President of the United States argued that America needed to invade and occupy Iraq to keep the world safe from Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. The major news media applied little skepticism to that claim, and served largely as a vehicle for passing along the administration’s unscrutinized assertions. The slogan “Support Our Troops” was adopted by large numbers of people as a persuasive argument for going to war. Opponents of the war were widely vilified as unpatriotic extremists. That war uncovered no weapons of mass destruction, resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people, ensured generations of hostility toward our country in large sections of the world, and will eventually cost the United States two to three trillion dollars or more, most of it borrowed.

Which of those two paragraphs has more troubling implications for our kids’ futures?


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Is teacher autonomy just a perk?

Yesterday, I talked about the value of treating teachers as professionals, and giving them the autonomy to make their own decisions about what works in their classrooms. My belief in that value grows out of my own experiences as a teacher at the college and professional school level. At the University of Iowa, where I work, like at virtually any university in America, professors are given a great deal of freedom in how they teach their courses. No one tells you what books to use, what lecture to give, what projects to assign, or how to evaluate students' success: it is the professor who makes those decisions, and that is one of the pleasures of the job. At most, the professor is constrained by a few paragraphs prescribing the general subject matter to be covered in the course. Any attempt to take that autonomy away from the teachers, any attempt by a central authority to micromanage the classroom, would prompt an outcry and a rebellion.

This is in sharp contrast to the way we treat our school teachers. Teachers often have no say in what books they use, what material they cover and in what order, what assignments they assign, and how they assess students' progress. Those decisions are dictated by a central authority -- usually the school board -- and are largely driven by even-more-central authorities, such as state and federal governments. Since the federal government has made so much hinge on test scores, there is all the more incentive for central authorities to micromanage the classroom in attempts to raise those scores. (See this egregious example.)

Why do we give our college professors so much autonomy? Why do we not seek to hold them accountable with the same methods that we use to hold school teachers accountable? Is it just because they are spoiled, self-policing, tenured prima donnas who refuse to be told what to do? Or is it because we see them as professionals who know better than central administrators how to teach their particular subjects?

In other words, is teacher autonomy just a perk that comes at the expense of the students' education? If so, how can we justify giving it to our college professors?

Or is teacher autonomy an important element in providing a good education? If so, how can we justify denying it to our school teachers?


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Election Day thoughts

Actually, here in Iowa City, we had our school board election a couple of months ago, before this blog existed. (Today we vote for City Council, in an election that appears headed for an unusually lopsided result.) But today seems like as good a day as any to comment on the school board election, and on school board elections generally.

School board elections here have always seemed somewhat mysterious to me. I read the voter guides and candidate questionnaires, and I find it virtually impossible to detect any differences at all between the candidates. It is as if each candidate is trying as hard as possible not to reveal his or her actual opinions about any issues, for fear of losing the vote of someone, somewhere. I find myself trying to read between the lines -- to detect subtle differences in emphasis that might reveal, to those who know the code, something about the candidate's true leanings. It reminds me of the way Kremlinologists used to scrutinize photographs of Brezhnev and his circle for tips about the otherwise inscrutable workings of the Soviet hierarchy.

Once in a while, the voters are so concerned about an issue that the candidates cannot avoid discussing it. This year, the issue was redistricting -- in particular, how and when to redraw the boundaries between our two high schools, our middle schools, and our elementary schools. In fact, last night there was a district-wide forum on the issue that drew 160 people.

I won't deny that there are important issues involved in drawing boundaries between school districts. Still, there is some irony here. The teachers, and even the principals, now have so little autonomy over what goes on in their classrooms that the classroom experiences of a west-side fourth-grader look more like those of an east-side fourth-grader than they ever have. The curriculum, the books, the schedule, the goals, the educational philosophy, and the underlying assumptions about how kids learn are the same everywhere, because they are decided centrally -- often not even by the school board, but by the state or even the federal government. It is as if the most central aspects of educational policy have been taken off the table in school board elections. As a result, the major issue in our election was about where to draw the boundaries between these increasingly similar schools.

One unfortunate result is that voters then focus on the other ways in which the schools differ -- for example, which school gets more resources, and which school has more at-risk kids, and which school has more wealthy families, etc. The debate is funneled toward these particularly divisive issues and away from more fundamental questions about what the goals and methods of education should be.

I am largely skeptical about proposals for "school choice," though I hope to explore the topic at some point on this blog. But it's hard for me to believe that nationwide uniformity in educational practice is a good thing. There is a chance, after all, that the prevailing assumptions about what is good for children are, in fact, wrong. Should we put all our eggs in one basket, in a kind of nationwide experiment on our kids? I'm much more comfortable with a less centralized system, one that allows different places to make different choices, and one that treats teachers as professionals who are in the best position to know what works in their classrooms, rather than as actors reading from a centrally-written script.

If educational policy were decided locally, school board elections would actually hinge on those educational issues. As it is, no election hinges on educational issues. I have strong feelings about educational policy, but even I will admit that, when I vote for Congress or for President, many other issues are more important to me. By federalizing educational policy, we have basically taken educational issues away from the voters. Is that what a country that cared about education would do?


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Quote of the day

"Save as the efforts of the educator connect with some activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results but cannot truly be called educative."

--John Dewey

Dear Reader (and I use the singular advisedly): Sorry for the inactivity this week: too many other obligations, and too many internet connectivity problems, to keep up with the blog. Am headed out to buy a new router, if not a new computer. Stay tuned.


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Obedience counts, ctd.

The other day I cited this article for its criticisms of what passes for character education in today's schools. Really, it's worth reading in its entirety -- a thoughtful, sane take on the character education phenomenon.


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Theodore Sizer

Is this blog hopelessly idealistic about what school could be? It's easy to conclude that the practices of today's schools, while perhaps unappealing, are necessary, because there is no other way. That response certainly serves the interests of those who benefit from the system the way it is, as well as those who would just prefer not to have the boat rocked. But in fact there are alternative approaches; they aren't unthinkable, and there are schools that put them into practice.

Theodore Sizer, who died on Wednesday at age 77, was the founder of the "Coalition of Essential Schools," based on the idea that schools should be egalitarian communities, "rooted in a kind of democratic pluralism." "In his ideal, educational policy should be determined from the bottom up, at the level of the school, rather than as a result of state or federal directives. Schools, he argued, should abandon one-size-fits-all educational methods like standardized tests, grading and even the grouping of students into classes by age." There are now several hundred Essential Schools across the country. Sizer's obituary is worth reading, as a reminder that things do not have to be the way they are.


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Quote for the day

"If we want children to resist [peer pressure] and not be victims of others' ideas, we have to educate children to think for themselves about all ideas, including those of adults."

--Rheta DeVries and Betty Zan

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Obedience counts

This is National Character Counts! Week. Character Counts! is a program of character education used in schools across America, including the schools here in Iowa City.

Critics argue that programs like Character Counts! promote a conservative agenda, because of their emphasis on personal responsibility to the exclusion of social responsibility. Although the national Character Counts organization claims to be non-partisan and to have no political agenda, it often appears -- alongside Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, the Christian Coalition, and the John Birch Society -- on lists of conservative organizations. (For example, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) In fact, the phrase "character counts" is a kind of rallying cry in conservative circles, dating back to the Clinton impeachment.

I'm not sure what to make of all that. I don't really object to my kids learning about the value of Honesty, Respect, Caring, Responsibility, and Courage, the five values promoted by our school's program. I would object, though, if the program chose to promote Obedience, Obedience, Obedience, Obedience, and Obedience. After a closer look at the program's materials, I'm starting to worry.

Our school, for example, explains the meaning of "Respect" to the students this way:

Hallway: Go directly where you need to go. Use body basics.
Lunchroom: Body basics. Voice level 1 or 2.
Playground: Line up quickly when the bell rings. Use line basics.

If your child asked you what "respect" is, is that what you would say?

To show "Responsibility" in the hallway means to "Use line basics," and "Voice level 0 or 1." (Apparently the line between responsibility and respect is a very thin one.) To be "Caring" on the playground means to "use equipment appropriately," and "return equipment." To show "Honesty," you should "follow the rules even when an adult is not around," and "play fair and follow [school] game rules." To show "Courage," on the other hand, is to "follow the rules even if others don't."

To be fair: not all of the definitions focus on obeying rules. (For example, to be "Caring" means to "greet others with a smile and wave," and to "care for self, others, and school.") But most of them do.

Again, I know that schools need to have rules. But it's another thing to create a culture that prizes obedience to authority above all other values. It may serve the school's interest in maintaining order, but does it serve the long-term interests of the kids -- or, for that matter, of democracy? Does it develop character? And what message does it send when words like "courage," "responsibility," "respect," "caring," and "honesty" are co-opted in an effort to keep the kids quiet in the halls?

Click to enlarge

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I miss Fezziwig

The other day I wondered why Evidence has become our master instead of our servant. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that Evidence is only one member of the new management team, which includes Expertise, Accountability, Productivity, and National Competitiveness. Alas, Wisdom, Curiosity, Individuality, and Humaneness -- perhaps never as high on the letterhead as they should have been -- are now scanning the want ads, and praying that their COBRA doesn't run out.

When I think about this change in management, I think about Scrooge's visit, with the ghost of Christmas past, to the office of his former employer, Fezziwig. It is Christmas Eve, and the fat and jovial Fezziwig is closing up early to put on his annual Christmas party. Scrooge, gripped by "the strangest agitation," watches as Fezziwig's family, friends, employees and neighbors pour into room: "In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. . . . There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer." Old Fezziwig himself dances to top them all. By the end of the party, when everyone has exhausted themselves, Fezziwig's apprentices -- one of whom is Scrooge's younger self -- are "pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig."

The ghost chides Scrooge: "He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?"

Momentarily not himself, Scrooge replies, "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."

As I watched my daughter head off to her fifth straight day of standardized testing last week, I couldn't help thinking that our schools have become more Scrooge than Fezziwig. We seem to have made a collective decision that the things that are "impossible to add and count up" simply do not matter. If a school fails to raise its test scores, it can get in serious trouble. But if it turns out kids with no intellectual curiosity, kids who see reading as a chore, kids who perform just to please the teacher and get by, kids who've never learned how to use good judgment, ask a good question, or make a good decision, kids who see adults as adversaries, kids who take no pleasure in learning -- nothing bad will happen to it.

The teachers do what they can to promote a broader conception of learning, but that's the system they're up against. When it comes time to hold schools, principals, and teachers "accountable," it's the test scores that count; the rest might as well be volunteer work. That's where Accountability has gotten us. Scrooge, of course, was a paragon of Accountability, at least until the ghosts knocked some sense into his head.


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Quote for the day

"We tend to think, now, of the ideal family as a little hatchery for future contributors to the Social Security system, non-criminals who will enhance national productivity while lowering the cost per capita of preventable illness. We have forgotten that old American nonsense about alabaster cities, about building the stately mansions of the soul. We have lowered our hopes abysmally, for no reason obvious to me, without a murmur I have ever heard. To fulfill or fall short of such minor aspirations as we have now is the selfsame misery."

--Marilynne Robinson on "Family," in The Death of Adam.

Robinson attributes that lowering of hopes to "a new upsurge of that famous Western rationalism, old enemy of reasonableness, always so right at the time, always so shocking in retrospect." When the time finally comes to put test-driven education -- and all its accompanying "programs" -- to rest, I can't think of a better epitaph.


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Should poor kids get less humane treatment?

One reader points out that the rewards ticket program seems to have been adopted only in the elementary schools with families of lower socioeconomic status, but not in the high-SES schools, in our district. One of the common criticisms of these programs is that they function as big tracking systems, so the poor kids get trained to be quiet little worker bees, while the kids from high-income families don't.

Expect more posts on this issue.


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