|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
|
Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
June 1, 2006
by Gordon Francis Corbett
In 1959, scholar E. Merrill Root examined eleven high-school U. S. history texts in his book, "Brainwashing in the High Schools." One was the text I had studied in my junior year. When I read it, right after graduating in 1961, I learned how my school's textbook had misled me. Through the "Advanced Book Exchange," even in hardback, this book can be bought very cheaply. For more insight into the deficiencies of today's schools, you might try these similarly cheap thirty-to forty-plus year-old books by California's late Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Max Rafferty: "Suffer, Little Children," "What They are Doing to your Children," and "Classroom Countdown." Old as they are, they explain very well the foolishness--and worse--of today's "progressive" education: bad reading instruction, bad English teaching, slanted history and civics, small amounts of subject matter, and low discipline. Low discipline cripples. With exceptions, today's students are not taught an awful lot of subject matter. Therefore, they do not have to study very hard. This is no accident. Today's "progressive" educators do not want to teach solid subject matter. They do not want to teach English, civics, history, geography, and other bodies of solid facts and skills. In their eyes, making students work enough to learn those subjects to a high degree would be wasteful. They are wrong. These courses comprise facts and skills that youngsters will need all their lives. Moreover, learning them could enhance something missing from modern "education": character. Take penmanship. A century ago, elementary-school students learned to "print" manuscript letters, to put them into words, and to put the words into sentences. Later, they did the same with cursive handwriting, producing script that flowed legibly and that looked good. Some of it was truly beautiful. This work also taught diligence, precision, and beauty, and showed students one way to combine them in their daily lives. The teaching of character did not stop there. Many of the texts used to teach reading, such as McGuffey's Readers, used stories that taught morality. Many other courses' textbooks did the same with examples from their bodies of subject matter. So, ethical precepts youngsters learned from their parents were reinforced at school. The system governing today's public schools militates against sound morality. The bullying, dope, stabbings, and shootings are bad, but at least they involve no teachers. Teachers have been caught teaching students to cheat on standardized tests. And, perhaps worst of all, instructors teach against being "judgmental," which, in the jargon of "political correctness," means "condemnatory." This is a moral crime. "Progressive" teachers say that to discriminate is immoral. Wrong. Unfairness is immoral, by definition; but one reason that people educate themselves is to learn accurate discrimination. They want to distinguish good from bad and to act accordingly. Sound discrimination teaches and reinforces bravery, honesty, honor, diligence, industry, perseverance, and every other virtue undergirding human progress. One Federally ordered style of instruction does not support them: "co-operative learning." It changes a normal classroom into a workshop, turns its teacher into a facilitator, and eliminates all tension. This transformation lets students interact co-operatively, which is the technique's entire goal. Instead of conventional desks, students taught by "co-operative learning" sit at tables. At each table, a table leader chosen for brainpower leads his mates in reading the day's textbook assignment. Then, at the instructor's direction, each table's members discuss among themselves what they have read. At the proper time, the tables report their findings to the class as a whole. Individual students cover only small portions of the day's lesson, so each learns little of its subject-matter. Neither does any "co-operative learning" student build ability to withstand the stress of individual study. The Roman Catholic Society of Jesus, otherwise known as the Jesuits, know that stress very well. When I attended their University of San Francisco, I became acquainted with their philosophy of education. They hold that students should study very hard for two reasons. The first is value. Students need to learn the most facts and skills possible in a course's limited time. The second is mental strength. Students need to build their ability to learn. The more a mind does learn, the more it can learn. In other words, a Jesuit's classroom is a mental gymnasium. Instead of helping students to lift physical weights, he helps them to "lift" scholastic ones. Consequently, his students increase their attention-span, their determination, and their mental toughness. Other things being equal, these attributes make an applicant for work irresistible. Employers are desperate for workers who can ignore given tasks' unpleasantness and prosecute them to completion. Somewhere around 1980, Pacific Bell's employment office in San José, California, rejected far over half of their applicants. They could not do at least one of three things: pass the written test, endure working-stress, or follow directions. Today, with exceptions, public-school teachers are discouraged from demanding high discipline. They learn to work with low discipline. They learn not to speak negatively. They learn not to demand quiet. They learn to avoid conflict. To some extent, instructors of science, mathematics, and music stand outside this dismal picture. Substituting for them taught me that most teach solid subject matter all day long. All the same, these men, and a few liberal-arts instructors, were exceptions. I was one of them. While teaching a high-school summer course in California, I told one student to be quiet until he finally stood and threatened to punch my nose. I threw him out. Later, the summer-school vice-principal accused me of having "set him up." Private education is the key to solid teaching. Paying tuition makes parents pay attention. Instead of enduring boredom at "parents' nights" while instructors display their materials, as public-school-parents do too often, private-school-parents attending similar meetings ask teachers what they plan to teach. They peruse their children's textbooks to see if the writing is clear and if the subject matter is accurate. During the school year, they help their youngsters learn their studies. They watch to see if the teacher teaches well. They question their children daily to see if, or what, they are learning. If the answer is "no," "little," or "wrong," they do something. Private education is also the key to restoring parents' rights. Public-school teachers work for the government. They teach the government's classes as the government wants. Private education is, well, private. Private educators do not speak for the government. They work "in loco parentis": "in the place of the parent." They serve their students' parents, not the State capital or Washington, D. C. Not knowing their rights is our countrymen's greatest political fault. Educating their children privately, at home or at private schools, makes them comprehend that they have parental rights. Then, having realized their ownership of one right, they might perceive other rights and come to understand that their Constitution protects all of their rights from their public guardians. Multiplied sufficiently, that realization will let our people regain the rights we have gradually lost over the last seventy years. That sounds good to me.
Enrich your life with a book about politics and current events... Enrich your political & social life with a politics or news magazine... |
|
Politics Resource Center Main Page |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
[Homepage] [Newsletter] [Search] [Support the Academy] [Link to Us] [Contact the Academy] [Citing Articles from Our Website] [Privacy Policy & Disclaimer]
Copyright 1998-99, 2000-01, 2002-03, 2004-05, & 2006 by The Radical Academy. All Rights Reserved.