Education: When Liberals Took Charge

PoliticalChic

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....education died.

1.When I was reading posts this morn, I came upon the name of one of my heroes…“E. D. Hirsch wrote a great article for the WSJ last week on how the school systems ruined the country.” Critical Race Theory.

2. If you are interested in the education of our children, and the reason that it has ceased, the two men that need be studies are E.D. Hirsch, whose methods and views produced an amazing educational success, known as the Massachusetts Miracle, and another man, Marxist Paolo Friere who believes believed that indoctrination for communism and in opposition to capitalism, is the purpose of government schooling.

Sadly, it is the latter whose views are dominant in education.



3. I found two recent articles about Hirsch, truly an embarrassment of riches.

“Is American Teaching Doing What It Ought?
E.D. Hirsch is absolutely correct when he states: “If you want equity in education, as well as excellence, you have to have whole-class instruction in which a teacher directly communicates information.”
Opinion | Is American Teaching Doing What It Ought?

and

Bad Teaching Is Tearing America Apart
Education’s dumbing down frays the bonds of citizenship and is hardest on the poor, says E.D. Hirsch, the man who wrote the book on cultural literacy.”



4. For the necessary context, Friere, the darling of ed schools, doesn’t endorse teaching actual factual content. “The pedagogical point of Freire’s thesis : its opposition to taxing students with any actual academic content, which Freire derides as “official knowledge” that serves to rationalize inequality within capitalist society. One of Freire’s most widely quoted metaphors dismisses teacher-directed instruction as a misguided “banking concept,” … Freire proposes instead that teachers partner with their coequals, the students, in a “dialogic” and “problem-solving” process until the roles of teacher and student merge into “teacher-students” and “student-teachers.” Pedagogy of the Oppressor



5. Now for Hirsch’s view: Real education involves discipline, and accountability....both from students and teachers.
The student must have a base of knowledge. "Hirsch was also convinced that the problem of inadequate background knowledge began in the early grades. Elementary school teachers thus had to be more explicit about imparting such knowledge to students—indeed, this was even more important than teaching the “skills” of reading and writing, Hirsch believed. Hirsch’s insight contravened the conventional wisdom in the nation’s education schools: that teaching facts was unimportant, and that students instead should learn “how to” skills. …expanded the argument in a 1983 article, titled “Cultural Literacy,” in The American Scholar." E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy


Here's proof it works:
The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch’s legacy.

Unless our system can be wrested from Friere and returned to Hirsch, America is doomed.
 
Most School Boards in the US are run by Conservatives

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Unless our system can be wrested from Friere and returned to Hirsch, America is doomed.
According to History- ALL empires fall- when havoc is created, chaos ensues and catastrophe is inevitable-

So "doomed" - as we know it. Catastrophe can be minimized with the Truth. ALL education has to be founded in Truth or it's foundation will shift and crumble. Knowledge evolves. Truth is constant.

How to? How to read, write and do simple arithmetic - everything else is frivolous. Anything can be learned if one can read.
Schools and many *jobs* are merely baby sitters, which are needed, because both parents have to be gainfully employed for a materialistic society to sustain itself with built in inflation and so many trinkets to acquire and to *pay* for Public Education with onerous "user fees"- so, describing "how to" in the argument/essay should be addressed. Of course, with the flu hoax we're living with many parents are now working from home and from the little I've read (head lines mostly) working from home is going to continue, if not expand.

Fortunately, or not, depending on perspective, the young (school age up to about 35 or so) are pretty good at adapting- what they adapt to is always questionable and has been since the beginning of man. Otherwise, man would have already gone extinct.

Is it dire? Historians will make that determination- it is sad for sure that colleges have to have remedial reading and math for some freshman-
 
In 1818, a vocal minority of Bostonians got this government school fiasco ball rolling. Though a survey of the city's schools determined that even without compulsory attendance, nearly 100 percent of the city's children attended school, the city relented and created the Primary School Board.

Compared to the new government schools, private schools proved better at providing instruction, pupil supervision, and social atmosphere, but the malcontents persisted, and by the Civil War, municipalities around the country had lain foundations for a government takeover of education, which would include the secularization of the school system.
 
Most School Boards in the US are run by Conservatives
Oh shut up you stupid fuck! BOTH subscribe to the UNconstitutional- it ain't a left right thing- geezus h christ on a crutch- how can you be so fucking ignorant as a functioning adult?! Who ties your goddamn shoes-
 
6. "If you have school-age children, the pandemic-induced move to online classes may give you an unusual window into their education. E.D. Hirsch expects you’ll be surprised by “how little whole-class instruction is going on,” how little knowledge is communicated, and how there is “no coherence” from day to day, let alone from year to year.

The current fashion is for teachers to be a “guide on the side, instead of a sage on the stage,” he says, quoting the latest pedagogical slogan, which means that teachers aren’t supposed to lecture students but to “facilitate” learning by nudging students to follow their own curiosity. Everything Mr. Hirsch knows about how children learn tells him that’s the wrong approach. “If you want equity in education, as well as excellence, you have to have whole-class instruction,” in which a teacher directly communicates information using a prescribed sequential curriculum."
 
7. "Mr. Hirsch, 92, is best known for his 1987 book, “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.” It is an argument for teaching “specifics,” followed by a lengthy list of them—thousands of historical figures, events, concepts and literary works with which, in Mr. Hirsch’s view, educated Americans should be familiar.

Heavily weighted toward Western history and civilization, the list provoked charges of elitism. Yet Mr. Hirsch is singularly focused on helping disadvantaged kids. They “are not exposed to this information at home,” he says, so they’ll starve intellectually unless the schools provide it.

He continues the argument in his new book, “How to Educate a Citizen,” in which he describes himself as a heretofore “rather polite scholar” who has become more “forthright and impatient because things are getting worse. Intellectual error has become a threat to the well-being of the nation. A truly massive tragedy is building.” Schools “are diminishing our national unity and our basic competence.”


Unless, of course, you don't care how ignorant your children will be.
 
8. Hirsch “cites both history and neuroscience in explaining how education went wrong. It began in the 1940s, when “schools unbolted the desks and kids were no longer facing the teacher.” Instead children were divided into small groups and instructed to complete worksheets independently with occasional input from teachers.

“That was also when our verbal test scores went down and the relative ranking of our elementary schools declined on a national level.”
On the International Adult Literacy Survey, Americans went from being No. 1 for children who were educated in the 1950s to fifth for those in the ’70s and 14th in the ’90s. And things have only gotten worse. Between 2002 and 2015, American schoolchildren went from a ranking of 15th to 24th in reading on the Program for International Student Assessment.


It’s the concept at its root—“child-centered classrooms,” the notion that “education is partly a matter of drawing out a child’s inborn nature.” Mr. Hirsch says emphatically that a child’s mind is “a blank slate.” On this point he agrees with John Locke and disagrees with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought children need to develop according to their nature. Both philosophers make the “Cultural Literacy” list, but “Locke has to make a comeback” among educators, Mr. Hirsch says. “The culture is up for grabs, and elementary schools are the culture makers.” Opinion | Bad Teaching Is Tearing America Apart
 
9. It’s all about knowledge, the passing on of factual data to students, the very opposite of what has infected government schools today.


E.D.Hirsch:

“I came to see that the text alone is not enough,” Hirsch said to me recently at his Charlottesville, Virginia, home. “The unspoken—that is, relevant background knowledge—is absolutely crucial in reading a text.”… he received an endowed professorship and became chairman of the English department at the University of Virginia.[He found that] the reading and writing skills of many incoming students were poor, sure to handicap them in their future academic work.

In trying to figure out how to close this “literacy gap,” Hirsch conducted an experiment on reading comprehension, using two groups of college students. Members of the first group possessed broad background knowledge in subjects like history, geography, civics, the arts, and basic science; members of the second, often from disadvantaged homes, lacked such knowledge. The knowledgeable students, it turned out, could far more easily comprehend and analyze difficult college-level texts (both fiction and nonfiction) than their poorly informed brethren could. Hirsch had discovered “a way to measure the variations in reading skill attributable to variations in the relevant background knowledge of audiences.”



Hirsch was also convinced that the problem of inadequate background knowledge began in the early grades. Elementary school teachers thus had to be more explicit about imparting such knowledge to students—indeed, this was even more important than teaching the “skills” of reading and writing, Hirsch believed.

Hirsch’s insight contravened the conventional wisdom in the nation’s education schools: that teaching facts was unimportant, and that students instead should learn “how to” skills. …expanded the argument in a 1983 article, titled “Cultural Literacy,” in The American Scholar.”
E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy
A content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids.
E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy


"Hirsch’s insight contravened the conventional wisdom in the nation’s education schools: that teaching facts was unimportant,..."

...which brings up this Joe Biden talking point:
'We choose truth over facts"

 
A comment on the interview:


"I began kindergarten at Catholic school in 1957 and, until I graduated in 1970, the good sisters taught me stuff. I learned stuff about history, arithmetic, science and English. In college I learned more stuff about mathematics, science, English and lots more stuff about history. I spent 25 years teaching my students stuff about history. Because I knew stuff and taught my students stuff, we could compare, contrast, analyze and critique things. Why? Because we knew stuff to think about and examine.

Today students aren’t taught much stuff. Teachers try to teach them to think, critique and analyze without knowing stuff, but they have nothing to draw from and examine. Opinions and ideas are formed without rudimentary knowledge of stuff. They argue from passion, not knowledge. Stuff is important. It is necessary to bind us as a nation and as a people. Without stuff we fall apart.

Gavin W. Murdoch

Amsterdam, N.Y.

 
Kids need to learn how to solve problems and how to think through problems. Knowledge in math and science far exceeds history.
 
Kids need to learn how to solve problems and how to think through problems. Knowledge in math and science far exceeds history.



"Mr. Hirsch also takes issue with grade schools’ focus on “skills.” Whether it is imparting “critical thinking skills,” “communication skills” or “problem-solving skills,” he says such instruction is a waste of time in the absence of specific knowledge. He describes the findings of the National Academy of Sciences on the subject of the “domain specificity of human skills.” What this means, he explains in the new book, “is that being good at tennis does not make you good at golf or soccer. You may be a talented person with great hand-eye coordination—and indeed there are native general abilities that can be nurtured in different ways—but being a first-class swimmer will not make a person good at hockey.”

He cites the “baseball study,” conducted by researchers at Marquette University in the 1980s, which found that kids who knew more about how baseball was played performed better when answering questions about a text on baseball than those who didn’t understand the game—regardless of their reading level. The conventional response in education circles is that standardized tests are unfair because some kids are exposed to more specific knowledge than others. In Mr. Hirsch’s view that’s precisely why children should be exposed to more content: Educators “simply haven’t faced up to their duty to provide a coherent sequence of knowledge to children.”
 
Educators “simply haven’t faced up to their duty to provide a coherent sequence of knowledge to children.”
Today's educators(?) came from what he's railing about-

I have no experience teaching kids- but, I have found that by teaching same age or older people my own understanding grew sharper.

I was in grade school in the late 50 and early 60's's- but I lived in Lubbock, Tx not exactly a small town at the time (population 100, 000), but I attended a rural school and a Church of Christ sponsored school at the Broadway Church of Christ and I always got a star for spelling- I also had excellent penmanship- Jr high (6th through 8th grade) was in Pecos, Tx (population 12,000 at the time) and I did one year High School there and one year in Llano, Tx- then I stopped going. But, I can read and have excellent reading comprehension. I also know and knew how to use a dictionary.
I don't remember anyone forcing me to do anything- what History I know I've learned in the last 16 years from reading. Period. I know basic arithmetic and can do most adding, subtraction, multiplication and division in my head, but, I also filled a Mechanical Engineering Technician billet on Diesel Powered Military Products and was instrumental in several developments of our equipment and became quite proficient in my knowledge of internal combustion engines and Sprint Car suspension. Why? Because I wanted to know why, not just how. Anyone can figure out a how if they know the why- if they can read they can learn, if they want to- my Mother once told me (though it didn't sink in at the time [about age 13-14]); you can do anything you want to if you want to bad enough. And that, cannot be taught, only instilled through example- or have it naturally. I have a natural curiosity about "stuff"- I was taught one song (3 chords) on a guitar when I was 14- I started playin at playin again last April and I now know upwards of 20 songs in about 9 chords- because I can read and have a fair to midling sense of rhythm - and most importantly, I want to.
Forcing somebody to learn doesn't instill a desire to learn. It encourages rebelliousness- and kids will rebel, that comes naturally. If it's not interesting to them that's where a good teacher comes into play-


But, with today's educators tied to a nationally approved curriculum, regardless of the intent, it will fail- no two people are wired the same and trying to force a large wire into a small hole will result in a ruined wire.
 
Educators “simply haven’t faced up to their duty to provide a coherent sequence of knowledge to children.”
Today's educators(?) came from what he's railing about-

I have no experience teaching kids- but, I have found that by teaching same age or older people my own understanding grew sharper.

I was in grade school in the late 50 and early 60's's- but I lived in Lubbock, Tx not exactly a small town at the time (population 100, 000), but I attended a rural school and a Church of Christ sponsored school at the Broadway Church of Christ and I always got a star for spelling- I also had excellent penmanship- Jr high (6th through 8th grade) was in Pecos, Tx (population 12,000 at the time) and I did one year High School there and one year in Llano, Tx- then I stopped going. But, I can read and have excellent reading comprehension. I also know and knew how to use a dictionary.
I don't remember anyone forcing me to do anything- what History I know I've learned in the last 16 years from reading. Period. I know basic arithmetic and can do most adding, subtraction, multiplication and division in my head, but, I also filled a Mechanical Engineering Technician billet on Diesel Powered Military Products and was instrumental in several developments of our equipment and became quite proficient in my knowledge of internal combustion engines and Sprint Car suspension. Why? Because I wanted to know why, not just how. Anyone can figure out a how if they know the why- if they can read they can learn, if they want to- my Mother once told me (though it didn't sink in at the time [about age 13-14]); you can do anything you want to if you want to bad enough. And that, cannot be taught, only instilled through example- or have it naturally. I have a natural curiosity about "stuff"- I was taught one song (3 chords) on a guitar when I was 14- I started playin at playin again last April and I now know upwards of 20 songs in about 9 chords- because I can read and have a fair to midling sense of rhythm - and most importantly, I want to.
Forcing somebody to learn doesn't instill a desire to learn. It encourages rebelliousness- and kids will rebel, that comes naturally. If it's not interesting to them that's where a good teacher comes into play-


But, with today's educators tied to a nationally approved curriculum, regardless of the intent, it will fail- no two people are wired the same and trying to force a large wire into a small hole will result in a ruined wire.


"But, I can read and have excellent reading comprehension. I also know and knew how to use a dictionary.
I don't remember anyone forcing me to do anything- what History I know I've learned in the last 16 years from reading. Period. I know basic arithmetic and can do most adding, subtraction, multiplication and division in my head, but, I also filled a Mechanical Engineering Technician billet on Diesel Powered Military Products and was instrumental in several developments of our equipment and became quite proficient in my knowledge of internal combustion engines and Sprint Car suspension. Why? Because I wanted to know why, not just how."

There is a certain personal trait, an iron will, that we need breed into the populace before they can do what you did.
I'd have a great deal more faith in the future of our nation if I believed most students had the will and desire to know, as above.

Most are too lazy to read a book. Time and again when I ask for three or four of the books that have informed their geopolitical outlook, I get the deer-in-the-headlights expression.

Perhaps it is the ease of entertainment, but I blame most of it on a government that promises to cosset all from cradle to grave.....no personal responsibility required.
 
Most are too lazy to read a book.
:auiqs.jpg:hell, most adults won't read a book or even an article- they can't take the time to change their minds they already know what they know- which ain't much in the scheme of things- it's so much easier to buy a 15 or 30 second sound bite. The shorter the better.
 
Kids who play baseball will be able to answer more questions about it than simply reading a book about it. No book can compete with actually working with it. Reading books has its place. So does how to think mathematically and solving problems. Some learn from lecture, some learn from hands on learning. No two kids learn the same way. Kids today are smarter than any other generation and have more access to content than ever before.
 
Most people don't read because there's little time to do it. Working at least 40 hours a week until they are thoroughly exhausted takes up alit of time.
 
For June 2020, retail book sales in the US were $382 million. That's for bookstores. Add in online sales and library book lending.

People are still reading.
 

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