I want to chime in on the analysis of teaching offered by Joe H. in your blog of 1-5-2010.
Much of his critique rings true. In a time of budgetary chaos it is right that teachers
salaries hew to the available funding. Similarly, there must be institutional pullback
from the bureaucratic over-reach into the realm of education exemplified by the over-reliance
of curricula upon the ambiguous objectives and results of standardized testing.
As you and others have pointed out, it is the whole concept and purpose of public education
that must be re-examined. We need to put more vocation back into schools. We should also
approach education with the purpose of encouraging all citizens to continue learning their
whole lives; to learn not just to increase their wage earning potential, but to increase
their understanding of themselves, and of history, of what it means to be a human living
in society.
But much of Joe H.’s analysis seemed rendered for ideological purpose not well-suited to
the subject of teaching. As I was reading his essay, numerous questions that it seemed
he was trying to answer, that I had hoped he would answer, remained in my mind.
1. Who benefits from the tendency of Humans to form societies?
2. What is wrong with society?
3. What is the purpose of Public Education?
4. What is wrong with Public Education?
5. What is the purpose of Standardized testing?
6. What is wrong with standardized testing?
7. What is the purpose of Unions?
8. What is wrong with Teachers Unions?
9. What is the purpose of paying teachers?
10. What is wrong with Teacher pay?
11. What makes a good Teacher?
12. Why do children of teachers become teachers?
13. What is wrong with teachers?
14. What was wrong with Mrs. Hatley my fifth grade teacher?
15. What is really bothering people who do not like teachers?
16. What is wrong with Steve R that he feels he must answer critiques of public education and the teaching profession?
Only a fool would think to answer these questions in summary form. Of course Joe H was wise enough to avoid most of these. This list of questions, as I organized it, is a drill down from most general to most specific. Thus formatted the list suggests a dialogue complete with answers in and of it self. Some might see in this implicit script the makings of a Socratic dialogue. One may also see the trap of circular reasoning it sets. The list is really sort of an endless causal loop. By the time you get to the bottom you realize you are really back at the top.
I have been reading
Survival+ for the last several days. I am enjoying your new work immensely. I have to say I was not prepared for the philosophical treatment you have given the subject of survival. The logic of your analysis is impeccable and the structure makes it easy to follow what would otherwise be pretty abstruse concepts and complex interactions of socio-economic factors leading up to the Great Transformation. I love that label for what we face in the coming decades. It really takes the edge of wind out of deniers who might otherwise interpret your perspective as schadenfruede or another auguring of the great collapse. Too, I thought the content would be more like what is in your columns.
At any rate, Survival+ has inspired me, despite my initial reservations, to respond in a way to the OTM post of 1-5-2010. For the sake of self deprecation, and as a lesson in futility, I feel compelled to provide summary answers to the above questions. I hope it will be taken in the proper spirit of ironclad befuddlement and Socratic incomprehension.
1. Who benefits from the tendency of Humans to form societies?
Those who learn to participate in society benefit from affinity humans have for one another’s company. Of course there are free riders. A full spectrum of competency in group functioning obtains as well. Corruption and decadence, distinct but in some ways similar attributes, rise and fall with scales of efficiency approaching a limit related to an entropic constant that burdens all human systems.
2. What is wrong with society?
Stable societies are efficient in that their metabolism tends to reinforce stability. Efficiency attracts free riders. Free riders generate social turbulence or instability. The metabolism of unstable societies is characterized by flight or fight types of activity and corrupt interactions. Objective efficiency may be greater or less in unstable societies compared with stable ones; but the efficiencies of unstable societies induce forces opposed to liberty and human rights.
3. What is the purpose of Public Education?
The purpose of public education is to prepare citizens to participate in society. No, scratch that. The purpose of Education is to babysit your kids while you are off “working”. Ever go to work whistling a happy tune because you knew you would be free of the ambient level of strife that comes along with raising kids? I know I have…Go back to question 1.
4. What is wrong with Public Education?
Public education tries to teach all children secular humanist pagan values. Children raised
in the public classroom lack a moral compass. Schools are products of the cultures
predominate locally and in society at large. Children from the lower rungs of society
learn to be free riders unlike the rest of us who learn to be normal upstanding citizens
like investment bankers.
The problems with public education are endemic to the concept of publicly administered
education and are unsolvable. Private and profit based education is more efficient because
it lowers teachers wages. Teachers at private schools therefore have more incentive to make
sure all children become more normal as per standardized testing. Class sizes are too big.
If we believe education to be a human right of sorts, as the modern theories of education
assert, then to make teaching more effective for the various types of learners and ability
levels class sizes must be reduced. If all teachers were volunteers, I guarantee you that
you would have only the best and most qualified persons, capable of differentiating the
material for all the ability levels and learning types, holding teaching positions.
Unfortunately, you would only have enough teachers to educate a slim fraction of the
society. And every single one of those pupils would be from the most wealthy or corrupt
families. This is not to say that there would be no well qualified teachers left for
private schools that could afford to recruit the best teachers. But because the prospects
for the profession generally would be much bleaker, talent would stratify along economic
lines.
Education of the masses would progressively deteriorate. It is bad enough that
under the current regime education is just considered the motions we go through in
order to survive puberty and join the “workforce”. Education need never stop, even
though that is the attitude of most “survivors”. That is the real problem with education:
most people either never learn or make a conscious decision not to learn after they reach
some stage of affirmation of personal conceits. How else can you explain “real estate
always goes up” and financial derivatives? Go back to Questions 1 and 2.
5. What is the purpose of Standardized testing?
In order to participate in society, children must learn. But all children learn at different
speeds and by different means. Some are visual learners. Some kids are kinetic learners.
Some child intellects are scary sharp, quickly grasping abstract concepts and memorizing
facts. (Only 65 % of these “gifted learners” actually ever get to a college or university.
It a true fact backed up by IQ testing performed independent of the standardized scholastic
achievement testing! Granted we may produce more degrees than needed in society. But
what does this fact tell you about education and testing?) Standardized testing creates
jobs for test and curricula creators and constrains the real job of teachers which is
to find a way to inspire the love of learning in all children. Thus constrained teachers
are therefore less effective and less deserving of higher salaries which makes the whole
system more efficient and unstable. Go back to Questions 2 and 4.
6. What is wrong with standardized testing?
Testing per se is not a bad practice, though as a means of grouping and sorting, somehow
related to abilities, it is imperfect. For example, testing cannot measure the learning
that occurs as a result of the test- which in my case is actually where all the learning
takes place! One can only discover learning from the test itself by administering the
Post-test test, and so on.
There has always been standardized testing. It has opened doors for some and slammed them
shut for others, not always on the most objective bases. The problem is with the current
fixation on testing. Most of us are aware that society in general, as may be exemplified
by academic performance, is in a decadent phase at the moment. We don’t need the results
standardized test to tell us this.
Few people point out how these tests are manipulated or even compromised in order to get
the results the districts need. Its already way worse than we think. Standardized testing
provides data that says nothing about the value of education or good educators.
In the same way that a bad teacher can ruin your whole attitude towards public education,
one good teacher can turn you on to learning and thereby unleash all of the potential
you have for benefiting yourself and society. What can a standardized test tell us
about the next Edison (home schooled by the way) in some classroom right now? Zip!
Standardized testing tells us even less about teachers. That’s what the whole "no child
left behind" fiasco was supposed to do: Standardize teaching! It worked, if you count
dumbing down the average as a success. Sure we need to drum out the incompetents and
free riders, but all the standardized curricula did was restrict and waste the talents
of the best.
The standards had no impact on a districts ability to reform the corrupt
or fire the incompetent. To expect such a result is like trying to remove a sliver
by eating a pair of tweezers. By the way, unlike in public schools, private schools
are not required to teach curricula that have been forced through the standardized
testing sausage maker.
7. What is the purpose of Unions?
Unions are collective bargaining arrangements whereby persons offering their resources
(time and energy) to enterprises organized for public or strictly private benefit have
a means to arbitrate as great a rate of benefit as the market for such service of their
time and energy will bear. The problem arises when the recipients of labor (enterprises)
also claim to be providing a public benefit by virtue of their privatized profit.
Public benefits of private enterprise are held by some to be incidental and in proportion
to the degree of stability and efficiency provided by the tendency of humans to form
societies. In fact, without consideration of such incidental character, it might be
argued that society owes a net debt to private enterprise.
Conversely the argument
can be made that private enterprise is utterly dependent upon social structure. In
this view, private enterprise benefits from an inherent “free ride” component. If the
opportunity cost of an extant stable society is held to zero while the incidental public
benefits from private enterprise are assigned positive value, institutional labor
arbitrage can be made to appear a useless drag upon the system or a corruption of the
system.
But more objectively it might be stated that Unions exert by social induction
a force in the opposite direction as that induced by monetization of resources (profits).
In a stable society the magnitude of these forces is approximately equal. See Questions
1 and 2
8. What is wrong with Teachers Unions?
Teachers Unions arbitrate as great a rate of benefit for the members of their profession as the market for such service of their time and energy will bear. Unfortunately the profession cannot compete for talent with investment banking and other largely male dominated professions. Thus, as expected form a non-normal distribution, talent in the pool for teachers is more dilute than if the gender bias was not in effect. Women generally will work for a lower wage and are excluded from a number of other trades. Men do teach the upper grades, but getting the kids out of dads’ hair is one of the main functions of education. (Full disclosure: I am a man and I am not a teacher, though I profess to love children)
9. What is the purpose of paying teachers?
This question has been answered collectively by all the other questions and is at the center of the circular reasoning that renders this project an insubstantial and futile exercise. Go to Question 10.
10. What is wrong with Teacher pay?
Teaching is not a mere profession, it is a calling. If being a landlord or a homebuilder was a calling, we could pay teachers a lot less. Otherwise, it's hard to get by on apples alone. It was sure a lot simpler when most kids didn’t go to school and women worked for free as homemakers. In ancient Greece all the teachers were men and the students were expected to have sex with them. Man, those were the days!
11. What makes a good Teacher?
I have known many teachers and my wife, a teacher, has known many as well. I have to admit that I cannot imagine how someone who has never had children can possibly be a good teacher, or even be the best teacher they can be without an up close and personal experience of the privilege that raising a child is. On the other hand I know far too many parents that do not understand the solemn obligation of parenting a child. And I know many teachers without children that are far more understanding and accommodating of children that I ever was before becoming a father. True, all the money in the world, and standardized testing to boot, cannot make a bad teacher into a good one. Neither is teaching “in the genes”. More than likely, the capacity for teaching is passed through the class room, from one inspired teacher to a student in sore need of an understanding adult, bypassing bloodlines entirely.
12. Why do children of teachers become teachers?
I am so glad you asked. Why do children of doctors become doctors? Some trades are so
demanding, so inconceivably difficult or mysterious that those of us unfamiliar with
the craft have a hard time imagining how to survive in those roles. Part of our lack
of imagination is that we never see how the doctor comes home and picks up the paper
after ten hours of blood bone and gristle and gets on with the other half of life.
The process of living with the grim reality, and the exultant moments too, of a doctors
life are a mystery to those of us not exposed to medical practice. How the hell can
one cope with responsibility for thirty screaming and sniffling elementary school kids,
preparing their lessons, keeping them safe, making nice with their parents, many of whom
suspect them of unspeakable atrocities? What about middle school with the raging hormones
and attitudes.
If you ask me the real reason for high teacher pay is to recruit enough
personality types in order to provide a pool of takers that can be hoodwinked into
teaching middle school. I’m not saying these are the best and brightest teachers either.
Some people believe that kids should not even go to school between the ages of 12 and
14! Well if you saw your parents were teachers and you saw them survive all this (and
yes, enjoy long vacations, though the summer vacation is rarer these days) you might
consider enduring the bad for the good and follow in their footsteps.
13. What is wrong with teachers?
Exactly! Who in their right mind would do this job?
14. What was wrong with Mrs. Hatley my fifth grade teacher?
Not her real name. She made my life hell. She did not have kids. Fortunately, my sixth grade teacher made up for the lost year of fifth grade. Or maybe he (yes that rare elementary school teacher that was a male) seemed better by juxtaposition alone. My sixth grade teacher was a quirky Buddhist who awakened my love of learning. I left the sixth grade with just enough stamina to get through the rest of high school, despite the fact that many other teachers did their best to humiliate me or anesthetize my gusto for academic endeavor. In sum, I basically hated my first twelve years of school. But I will defend every other student’s right to have the same imperfect experience that I did. After all, how can we possibly expect a homogenized scholastic experience for students to be a net improvement? Who in their right mind would even attempt to do such a thing?
15. What is really bothering people who do not like teachers?
Did you have a Mrs. Hatley too?
16. What is wrong with Steve R. that he feels he must answer critiques of public education and the teaching profession?
Go to question 1.
"Follow the money"--when there isn't enough to fund the status quo, then The Great
Transformation begins.
NOTE ON THE SURVIVAL+ BOOK: I am reformatting the interior for improved readability,
so your order will not ship for a few days. Your patience will be rewarded
with a new cover and more readable text.
