The Mythologizing of Memory in Education Analysis (Or Why Victor Davis Hanson Gets It Wrong): One of the biggest problems in when it comes to education among most people is that they view schools through subjective memory, or what I call “the myth of the good ol’ days”. Because everyone has attended school at some point in their lives, they think that their experience is the norm when it is isn’t necessarily so. And if their educational experience was positive, they wax rhapsodic about a past without any basis in empirical evidence.
Washington Examiner pundit Gregory Kane — usually an intelligent commentator on most issues — made this mistake earlier this month in a piece in which he derided school reform efforts as being useless because the problem in his mind lies with what he considers to be, to paraphrase: ‘those knucklehead kids and their parents over there’. The otherwise eminent military historian Victor Davis Hanson makes the same mistake this week in a Pajamas Media piece. While declaring that he isn’t mythologizing the past, he proceeds to do exactly that by recalling his time attending high school in poor Latino neighborhoods where “the non-air-conditioned rooms were often over 90 degrees”, where “there was almost no violence on campus”, and poor students “arrived clean, polite, and ready to study”.
Given that most school data from before the 1980s is generally incomplete or non-existent, it’s hard for Hanson to actually prove his point. The closest thing to information on school crime can be gotten is a 1978 study by Robert Rubel that included surveys conducted by the National Education Association and no FBI crime data on school violence. Essentially, Hanson can’t make his case just on the evidence.
Given that he also grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California before its cities became mired in the typical problems of urban America, one would also say that his experience is in some ways an anomaly from what was happening at the same time in Harlem, L.A. (especially around Dodger Stadium and South Central L.A.), or even in the South Side of Chicago. In all three areas, gang crime was well-documented and growing problem. Based on the history of those areas at the time — and of areas such as Levittown, N.Y., and other growing suburbs of the period, Hanson’s experience may be particular to his area, but not to the objective reality of what was happening throughout the nation. In fact, one would dare say objectively that there was no typical public school experience.
The other part is the reality that, as kids, we don’t know many of the students with whom we attend school. In fact, in most high schools, the kids in the AP classes are often unlikely to mix with the kids who are on the path to dropping out. Memory is faulty; it leaves out (and fails to consider) what is unseen. In short, to paraphrase legendary New York City Mayor Ed Koch, the good ol’ days were only in the mind. It’s why prosecutors and historians don’t rely just on only eyewitness testimony.
Meanwhile Hanson fails to even consider the four decades of research that shows that American public education is systemic failure, one that cannot be simply blamed on kids or parents. Based on current school discipline and juvenile justice data, schools don’t struggle with getting difficult students of all races (both real and perceived) out of schools. If anything, it’s too easy for schools to toss kids out.
Perhaps he can start with the work of Jonah Rockoff at Columbia University on teacher quality. Or read the L.A. Times‘ series on teacher quality in L.A. Unified Schools — including the analysis of school turnaround efforts at Edwin Markham Middle School. What Hanson would learn is that the problem isn’t the kids or even the parents (many of whom were taught at these same dropout factories, sometimes by the very same teachers), but with a system that protects laggard teachers at the expense of taxpayers, families and kids alike.
Which bring up another point (and this one is for both Kane and Hanson): Until recently, most reforms have either fallen apart or had little success because they didn’t address the three critical areas for reforming education: Overhauling how America recruits, trains and compensates teachers (including near-lifetime job protections in the form of tenure, which, unlike in higher education, don’t actually advance any kind of academic freedom and protect laggard teachers from termination); bringing college preparatory and other rigorous curricula to classrooms; and engaging families in education beyond field trips and homework. The fact that reformers have called for the end of tenure, for subjecting teachers to private sector-style performance management (including the use of student performance data in evaluations), and the push to replace degree- and seniority-based compensation is also why there has been so much rancor among the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and university schools of education. The latter are the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo and don’t want meaningful reforms that involve subjecting their Baby Boomer rank-and-file members (and their coffers) to real consequences.
Now, let’s give Hanson some credit on one thing: Parents most certainly need to set the example of good discipline and good behavior for their kids. Leon Dash has documented the consequences of what can be called the lack of values among parents, relatives and other adults in communities. Schools can be safe havens for these kids; but these are also secondary roles and it’s the job of families to set good moral examples.
But as we’ve seen with the Knowledge is Power Program, Catholic schools and even the best traditional public schools, schools can often offset these negative influences by providing high quality teaching, rigorous instruction, caring teachers and principals who are also competent, entrepreneurial leaders, and cultures of genius in which all kids are held to high expectation. This isn’t happening throughout American public education. These failures have almost nothing to do with the kids and with a system in which low-quality instruction, low-grade curricula, and a culture of mediocrity has been tolerated by teachers unions and other defenders of the status quo at the expense of the kids in their classrooms.
Your editor appreciates Hanson taking an interest in school reform. We need all hands on deck. But he would be better off ditching his memories (or putting them down into a novel) and looking for more-objective analysis on education issues. Dropout Nation can help him in this regard.
Why Curriculum Reform Isn’t Enough, Part XXX: Curriculum reform advocate Marion Brady graced the pages of your education news site last week in response to the reprint of my speech at the State of Black CT Alliance’s Building Blocks of Educational Excellence Event. In the comment section, Brady declared that the nation’s education crisis won’t be solved until today’s curriculum — what he calls a “19th Century relic, designed by 19th Century educators” — is ditched to the ashbin of history.
For one, Brady conveniently sidesteps the reality that it isn’t 19th century curricula — which included the college prep efforts of Harvard under Charles Eliot — that is the problem (by the way, Brady even fails to consider that the 1800s was not a period of universal agreement on curriculum). What kids are learning today isn’t even close to 19th century curricula (and one could also say that least 26 million kids would actually been well-served if they actually were required to read the typical regimen of Great Books and Latin lessons). If there is an important curriculum-based reason why American public education is in the toilet, that lies with ability tracking and the comprehensive high school model, both of which have dominated education for most of the last eight decades and have festered the culture of mediocrity, laggard curriculum and low expectations that have damned so many young men and women to poverty and worse.
The second problem with Brady’s argument (one he shares with Robert Pondisco of Core Knowledge) is arguing that reformers don’t focus on curriculum as part of their overhaul efforts. Last I checked, there are a number of outfits, including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, that are quite focused on curriculum and standards reform. But, as typical with nearly all reformers (and even those in the status quo), Brady apparently thinks they aren’t sufficiently focused on his respective bailiwick. Oh, well.
But the more-important problem with Brady’s argument lies with his conceit: That there is only one silver bullet for what ails public education. This thinking, a problem among many in the school reform movement, is especially an issue among the curriculum reform crowd (who may note the importance of improving teacher quality, but then dash past all that uncomfortable mess). Sure, curriculum is one of the most-critical elements of reforming American public education. But curriculum reform on its own isn’t enough. A rigorous math curriculum (including Algebra 1 courses in eighth grade and pre-calculus in ninth) will not improve student achievement if its taught by teachers lacking subject-knowledge competency, entrepreneurial drive and care for the kids they instruct. It’s akin to handing a Dremel (or even a high-end pneumatic die-grinder) to a first-time do-it-yourself-er. It’s this reality that explains why many school reformers are more-focused on teacher quality reform than on curriculum.
One appreciates Brady’s passion for improving education for all kids. His argument that curriculum should be more-reflective of what students will do in college and career in this century should be considered (even if you disagree with it). But he needs to realize that teacher quality reform and curriculum reform goes hand-in-hand. One won’t work without the other.
