In 1950 Harvard-educated businessman Albert Lynd published
an attack on our Education Establishment. His book was aggressively
titled Quackery in the Public Schools.
That
title resonates with contempt. Quackery?!
I suspect that the people running our schools had never heard themselves
discussed in this insolent manner. Probably this word sounded even ruder
in the more polite 1950s than it does today. In any case, quackery is
the perfect distillation of this spectacularly disingenuous field.
Lynd's
book shows that almost 70 years ago, education was already deeply corrupted.
Its true direction could not be revealed, which was to subvert
traditional education and replace it with socialist indoctrination. The challenge for the
Education Establishment was to recruit and shape people who would perpetuate
this secret sabotage so that, for example, 70 years into the future (i.e.,
today), the field would still be undermining what has
traditionally worked. We must admit that the top brass have been
successful.
Lynd's
shrewd, sarcastic book is one of the best early exposés of how John Dewey
and Gang dumbed down the schools. It's still a good read
(and still available on Amazon). Lynd is smarter, better
educated, and more ethical than the people he writes about. He depicts
education as a wasteland focused on controlling doctrine while generating big
bucks. Lynd is alert to something that almost everyone else misses: the
quasi-communists sabotaging the school system are skillful capitalists.
Their ideological crusade funds itself!
Lynd
explores a surprising fact: education is the only field where the practitioners
never graduate. Doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers, who must
master a far more difficult body of knowledge, earn a diploma, and that's the
end of their educational journey. But teachers must go back to school in
the summer and on weekends. Lynd points out that the same small amount of
content is divided and repackaged in a huge variety of forms. In this
way, the professors are kept employed teaching new variations of old courses,
and students are made to pay again and again to learn what they already know.
This is featherbedding.
Lynd
writes, "[T]he courses offered by professors of Education have multiplied
by the thousands in regular sessions, summer sessions, and in late afternoon
and Saturday sessions. There is no other professorial body anywhere
enjoying so great an advantage over its subjects, and none which takes so few
chances on attracting students through the intrinsic interest or appeal of
courses."
Lynd
scoffs, for example, at the courses offered at Teachers College one summer:
Division
I is concerned with Foundations of Education. There are so many Foundations,
and so many courses in each, that a student may conceivably spend his life in
the basement of Education, far from the superstructure. A general course in
Educational Foundations is only a starter. Social and Philosophical
Foundations is an area subdivided into: A. Social Foundations
(11 courses), B. Historical and Comparative Foundations (6 courses), and
C. Philosophical Foundations (2 courses). But the social, historical,
comparative, and philosophical foundations support only part of the
Educational temple; there are also Psychological Foundations with a score of
courses.
So
there is a lot of padding, repetition, and hyping of trivia. Finally,
there is an even worse aspect. everything is in agreement with everything else.
It's all Education According to John Dewey. Strip away the ever
changing jargon, and there's nothing new. (That's why I refer to K-12 as Groundhog Day.)
The
University of Illinois prepared a course for students of elementary education:
Elementary
School Core Programs. An exploration of several organizational centers for
determining selection of sequence of educative experiences: the social problems
approach, the themes approach, the centers of interest approach, and the life
situations approach. The role of the teacher in relation to the above
considerations is emphasized.
Lynd
mentions "the luxuriant growth of Education courses in Home
Economics," which compares revealingly with the "few courses in
Language Education and Mathematics Education." Lynd notes that
"altogether, Teachers College offers more than 40 courses under
Educational Administration, not counting such specialties as administering the
use of audiovisual materials. ... There is a 'philosophy' of practically
everything in Educationdom. The University of Pittsburgh School of
Education offers a course in Philosophical Bases of Health and Physical
Education."
Lynd
concludes that "[t]he educationists create their own demand through
their influence on definitions of teacher qualifications." In other
words, the people at the top dictate that everybody must jump through certain
hoops and must pay repeatedly for the privilege.
Lynd
speaks of "endless multiplication of courses," "[e]ver more
elaborate course requirements," and "shameless course-manufacturing
and course-breeding." The result according to one critic is
"oceans of piffle." But finally, it all has a
purpose: forcing everyone to accept the Party Line and generating income
for the Establishment.
The
Education Establishment is always whining about more funding. They would
like you to forget that many people make good money in this field, probably
more than they can make outside. While teachers average $40,000 (and
college English professors average $90,000), principals,
administrators, and superintendents are often over $150,000 and
pushing past $200,000. People at the top get grants, awards, publishing
deals, promotions, and sabbaticals. These compensations buy loyalty.
Lynd
makes fun of research; its vast volume reflects meager content. "A
publication on the Student Council in the Secondary School contains a
bibliography of 31 books and 37 articles; someone earned a Masters with an
article titled 'effects of coaching on acquisition of skill in basketball free
throws.'"
Behold
the arrogance of the Education Establishment. A professor pouted:
"[P]arents wish only the best of school condition for the children;
determination of what is best, however, is not a matter for parents to decide,
but is the responsibility of the regularly constituted school authorities. It
is all too easy for parents, particularly when organized into an association,
to get the idea that schools are conducted for their special benefit."
Lynd's
summary is brilliant: "But the reform has devoured that which was to be
reformed. Pedagogical ignorance is now sanctioned by a system which accepts
Education as a substitute for education."
Here's
his three-word summary of the New Education: "the New Ignorance."
Lynd
quotes a principal who famously concluded in a 1951 speech: "We shall some
day accept the thought that it is just as illogical to assume that every boy
must be able to read as it is that each one must be able to perform on a
violin, that it is no more reasonable to require that each girl shall spell
well then it is that each one shall bake a good cherry pie."
Ignorance,
illiteracy, and maybe some cooking – that's the perennial goal of the quackery
entrenched in our public schools.
Bruce Deitrick Price explains educational theories and methods on his
site, Improve-Education.org.
For info about his four new books, see his literary site, Lit4u.com.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/k12_quacks_rule.html