Shucks… With regard to the talk, any particular reasons for the cut? I’m assuming it’s from the POV of “these ideas are beyond individual teachers’ control” …but I think it’s useful to provide teachers with insight about what they could/should advocate for at their schools, from the standpoint of “so given that equity is distinct from equality, what could be done within our priority scheme to improve equity?”

If children were sorted into skill based groups, and more experienced teachers were assigned to smaller classes with the lower skill groups, that might be better for equality, and perhaps better for the pursuit of other values, for all we know, than heterogeneous classes, especially if heterogeneous classes are suddenly established without large-scale investment in preparing teachers to differentiate effectively within the classroom.

Perhaps you could also make the point that this arrangement can be thought of as more fair, even if there are disparities in the accomplishments of the different student groups.

robertdfeinman: Education is meant to control the vast majority of people, and it has done that quite well.

I don’t know what “meant” means, precisely, in this context, but yes, public education provides social indoctrination. I guess it’s worth pointing out that people were not exactly completely free of control prior to the advent of public education.

Perhaps social indoctrination through education is, potentially, a Good Thing: perhaps with enough advocacy and investment we’ll see a day when questioning strategies, logical reasoning, and skeptical inquiry are “core values” indoctrinated through public education. I spend most of my nonprofessional time investigating how to further these ends in my state, to establish an educational system that promotes inquiry and curiosity (it helps that I currently work for a land grant university, and am studying under a research group that’s intensely committed to this particular community service). It’s a struggle. But it’s a struggle that lots of well-minded people are engaged in (I consider myself fortunate to be a participant).

I think, compared to 1909, we’ve made some substantial progress. The idea that kids should think about what they’re doing, should self-assess and grapple with the meaning of the procedures they employ, is gradually gaining mainstream approval in mathematics ed. That’s a “core value” to teach kids, the value of questioning and reasoning things out and being charitable to people who disagree with you.

robertdfeinman Citing a handful of people who were able to challenge authority over a period of several hundred years does little to bolster your case.

You are the one who claimed that a set of educational practices “tead toward a hierarchical model of society, with leaders and followers. Authority is the determinant of what is ‘right’”. If you want to make this case, the burden of proof is on you.

The suffrage movement in 19th century England (both for women and for universal male suffrage) was not supported by merely a handful of people. Of course the suffrage movement may have arisen for reasons independent of the British education system, I am not saying that the British education system caused the suffrage movement to happen, I am just saying that this movement is a problem for your hypothesis that education that aims at teaching a set of core values and common knowledge causes obedience.

As for the leadership trying to suppress opposing views, is that because of their education system or is that because they wanted to remain in power? Critias was a violent oppressor during the time of the 30 Tyrants in Ancient Athens, does that mean that Socrates was a teacher who wanted his students not to think for themselves and instead follow authority blindly? This is hardly compatible with his views. Or how about the Communist leaders who installed dictatorships after having criticised dictatorships thoroughly themselves? If people think for themselves there is no guarantee that they will only think liberal thoughts.

You neglect to mention others who ended up, not just in prison, but executed for their thoughts.

Well if you wish to count those up and add them to the tally based on their education type, feel free to do so. I think you will turn up a fair number who had an education focused on teaching a core set of values and core knowledge. After all the Catholic church executed a fair number of its own priests for hersey over the years. The Chinese government has executed a number of dissidents, though Chinese education is not famous for its teaching of disobedience, Trotsky was executed for his beliefs (the belief in particular was that Stalin wasn’t perfect), though I don’t think Russian/German education at the end of the 19th century was noted for its free thinking, etc.

I agree that my case is weak, I have done no comprehensive historical survey. What I am curious about is the evidence for your case. I know of no evidence for your case, and I know of several counter-examples. If one side of the case has only weak evidence and the other side of the case has none, I can think of no rational reason for concluding the side with no evidence is right.

As for documentation, I think the vast quantity of work published by John Dewey and others of his school and the continuing efforts to eliminate evolution from the classroom provide enough material.

I have read some articles by John Dewey. I have never come across any empirical evidence in his work that teaching the accepted core set of values and common knowledge of society tends towards a hierarchical model of society, with leaders and followers in practice more than any other education system (of course many people who taught that sort of knowledge did so with the intent of perpetuating a hierarchical model of society, eg the Jesuits, it’s just that a teacher cannot control what their student does with their knowledge). Can you please provide a full reference if you know of a paper where he did so?

…and the continuing efforts to eliminate evolution from the classroom

I thought the creationists were worried that teaching common knowledge such as the law of evolution would lead students not to be Christian – in other words they would start questioning authority. (I know that earlier I gave a couple of examples of things that are common knowledge that very few people actually believe to be true, eg Red Riding Hood, but common knowledge can and does include thoroughly tested scientific theories like evolution and gravity, although I suspect that biologists and physists find many things to complain of in non-specialists’ writing on those topics).

You don’t even have to get out of your chair for this:
Democracy and Education

I can’t see anything in here that provides support for the belief that teaching the accepted core set of values and common knowledge of society tends towards a hierachical model of society, with leaders and followers, where authority is the determinant of what is right. Of course, that does not mean that such data does not exist, it is a full book and I have only skimmed it. Can you please provide a full reference to the bit which you believe supports your assertion?

As for documentation, I think the vast quantity of work published by John Dewey and others of his school and the continuing efforts to eliminate evolution from the classroom provide enough material. There is a difference between teaching 2+2=4 (and calling it a core value) and isolating students into parochial schools where they can be fed misinformation and shielded from other viewpoints.

You don’t even have to get out of your chair for this:
Democracy and Education

OC —yes… but this is about providing educational opportunities for development of skils, knowledge, etc.. Which is rather different from reserving positions for people who have not developed the skills, knowledge etc. Once Tracy W’s concern, and concern with educating the talented for the sake of the less advantaged, etc are all taken into account I’m not sure there’s another worry. (IN fact, one of the objections to heavy handed AA schemes (I don’t know which are this heavy handed, but doubt that anything practiced in the US has been) is that it lets governments off the hook from providing the education that would prepare lower caste/disadvantaged to compete for positions on a level playing field (which would cost much more, and be much more just).

Lindsey—almost nothing. There are school districts and states that do take into account the out-of-school stuff, and MMSD is definitely moving that way a bit, but not systematically. More on that.

robertdfeinman On one side are those who think that the goal is to teach the accepted core set of values and “facts” that society believes. On the other side are those who think that the purpose is to teach the basic tools, especially the tools involved with further lifetime learning on one’s own after leaving school.

This is a false dichotomy. If you are going to teach the tools involved for further lifetime learning on one’s own after leaving school, you need to teach the accepted core set of values and common knowledge. I use common knowledge here rather than facts because there a number of things that most educated people in society know but that they don’t believe in, for example I don’t think many people believe that Red Riding Hood really happened in the sense that a wolf had the intelligence to hop into bed in grandma’s clothes and talk, or that there was an actual Scrooge who was literally visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve but we feel free to refer to that common knowledge without explaining it further, and expect our readers to grasp the reference (as I am doing so now).

See this article by a cognitive scientist for more evidence and discussion on this.

There is also something weird about distinguishing between teaching “the accepted core set of values” and teaching the tools for further lifetime learning. If all schools aim to teach kids to learn throughout their lifetime, doesn’t that immediately become an accepted core value?

The former tend toward a hierarchical model of society, with leaders and followers. Authority is the determinant of what is “right”.

Can you cite the evidence behind your assertion? Because I can’t think of any, and I can think of a set of counter-examples. The Jesuits for example produced Voltaire, Bayle and Descartes. British legal training produced Gandhi, and possibly had a hand in Nelson Mandela. Medieval monastic education produced Martin Luther. The rise of general education in Britain in the 19th century came along with the rise of the suffrage movement, expanding the vote to both all men and women, eventually. Of course my failure to think of any examples supporting your assertion does not mean that no such examples exist, it may merely be a reflection of the limits of my education. I am very curious as to what support your assertion does have.

Of course the educators of Martin Luther, Voltaire, and Gandhi may have intended to produce a hierachical model of society with leaders and followers and authority being the determinant of what is right (and certainly the early Protestants were on side with authoritarism). But they don’t appear to have achieved it in the sense of stopping their ex-students from questioning society. This fits in with the idea that teaching your students a set of common knowledge is at least useful for giving them the tools for life-long learning.

Picking up on one point of Bloix’s, we are living through the best of times for exceptionally gifted students to realize their talents, especially in math and science, in that they can now freely take advantage of a vast range of online university courses or find like-minded students in a way that simply was not possible in most school systems before.

What does for the benefit of all, mean, though? How is an arrangement for the benefit of all if the worse positions within the arrangement would have been better under some feasible arrangement? Surely then its just for the benefit of some. (I am using “worse off” here, because I agree that not only the worst off matter).

The creation of educated participants in a democratic society, who are competent to participate in the political and social life of the community.
The teaching of the shared values and the perpetuation of the culture of the community.
The fostering of creativity and productivity in arts and sciences for the benefit of all, not merely for the worst off.

“In so far as we can improve the conditions of society to benefit the worst off by training the talents of the talented and getting them to put those talents to work, that’s what we should do. This gives us a powerful reason to foster the talents of people who are likely to develop the wealth and technology that can improve the lives of, for example, the severely cognitively disabled”.

I agree there’s an independent value in fostering the achievement of those with great talent, but unlike the three values I identified I don’t think it has priority over seeking equality. I think the quoted passage, though, justifies quite a bit.

Omega C—during a presentation of the document referred to a a public meeting, the Super insisted that they are using “is” aspirationally. A young woman in my break out group said, very sincerely, “its like they are using “is” completely wrong to mean something it just doesn’t mean. In English that is”. I think that’s right—when they say “is not” they mean “should not be”. Hence my bemused footnote.

B—all of the things you say in your second point were in a longer draft that my wife made me cut… The first can be very tricky, in schools with numerous language groups, or without a way of hiring competent teachers in those languages. (eg, in our own district, in which the proportions of spanish speaking children have risen quite rapidly, my guess is that it would be hard to hire significant numbers of fluent spanish speaking competent math teachers, both because of undersupply and because the district ain’t hiring. Incompetent teaching of a subject in one’s own language may not be so great. Also, a couple of schools have significant numbers of children whose first language is not english but who are, not to put too fine a point on it, super-privileged and can very easily and quickly be taught english).

A society that identifies its best natural athletes early and devotes very significant resources to training them will win lots of Olympic gold medals.

A society that identifies its most talented musicians early, etc.

A society that identifies its most talented math and science students, early, etc.

You see where this is going.

I see nothing in this post that places any value at all in identifying and educating truly gifted people to be as productive as possible. That value doesn’t have to be the highest value, but surely we need to acknowledge that talent does exist and that equality is not the only social good.

I tend to think of public education as having several goals. One is the investment in the skills of the future population. Another is providing a common set of experiences, so that the tendency of the community to fragment into disjoint pieces is reduced. Another is to increase the sense of belonging to that society, especially of the least fortunate. The later two goals clearly have a strong equity component, the former only weakly or perhaps inversely. In fact if we take equity too far, and invest educational effort in inverse relationship to individuals ability to learn, the societal return would be significantly diminished. Giving too much weight to any of these goals to the point of substantially abandoning the others is a serious mistake. We need to struggle mightily to give the less fortunate classes a chance to advance, but we also need to invest in the future leadership class as well -even if the later group may not proportionately reflect the societal
distribution. With a “good” system, it can reasonably be hoped by substantial numbers of the later group can come from the lower classes.

Then we have to be careful about denying opportunities for those that want to do better for their own. If a state has created a certain minimum standard for it’s educational system but a community within it wants to do more, should the state allow it? One the one hand it is a nice gift, contributing to the net value of the education of the population. On the other hand, it decreases equality of opportunity. A compromise might be to use a tax to redistribute some of the excess spending to other districts. Set that tax too high, and the incentive to provide extra local funds is ruined. Set it too low, and the sense of equity is damaged. There is no absolute right answer here. But the conflict should not simply be brushed under the rug.

The former tend toward a hierarchical model of society, with leaders and followers. Authority is the determinant of what is “right”. The latter favor a more questioning view of society, with people being free to question the status quo and work for change if they feel it is necessary. I think John Dewey best represents this latter view. He felt it was essential if one was going to have participatory democracy.

This spills over into implementation. The hierarchical view leads to a natural belief in those who get special advantages since they are going to be the leaders of tomorrow. Hence private schools, segregated, suburban enclaves, and multi-generational preferences as legacies in attending college. It is sufficient to train the rest to be obedient, unquestioning and having just enough skills to perform their functions as workers.

That this is a popular position (even by those not getting the maximum privilege) can be seen by how policies are implemented in practice. People self-segregate by income and ethnicity to an extent that school segregation is now back to levels seen before “Brown”. Funding for poorer districts is restricted by means of tax policies which are based upon local real estate values, and equalization efforts at the state level are opposed and usually inadequate.

The same thing carries over to social programs designed to eliminate the socio-economic handicaps of those at the bottom. Everything from the elimination of “welfare”, to gutting affirmative action to poor health services shows that many prefer a stratified society. There are also huge regional differences. The old South is especially bad at supporting education. Partly this is because whites tend to send their kids to (segregated) private schools and partly it is because the general feeling is that support for education is not a priority. So you get education in Mississippi or Alabama being funded at a level that is half (or less) than that in the northeast.

The lofty goals of the reformers will continue to go nowhere unless they are willing to face head on the anti-intellectual attitude that is so prevalent in the US. Notice the history of presidential candidates over the past 70 years. The “egg heads” were derided and generally lost. Someone like Clinton emphasized his good ol’ boy roots and not his Rhodes Scholarship accomplishments. Then there was Bush who made a point out of being ill educated. Obama seems to have broken the mold. Let’s hope it is a sign of change…

If your first language isn’t the one used in school you need to get lessons in it to the level that you know all the terminology in your first language as well. This will help school performance more than a thousand extra lessons in the second language and is a well researched fact.

Secondly, to help even out the gap between pupils with academic parents and those without that home support, let the kids have longer schooldays and a couple of hours in study hall instead of sending them home with their homework. This will give everyone the support of an understanding adult while they are working with new material.

There are of course other stuff as well: nutritional free school lunches, access to good school libraries, supportive and well educated teachers and so on. The main thing all these solutions have in common, besides known research proving that they work, is that they cost money. It is a lot easier to just tell teachers and schools that they are not doing it right than it is to give them the resources to do it right. Tax the rich and give the nation’s children a better tomorrow!