Zombie Part Five - Proposals for an Educational Renaissance

In parts  one through four of this five part series, Zombie has laid out the problems with our educational system. Well, anyone can criticize and point out problems, right? In part five he proposes some possible solutions for fixng the problems. Some are more practical/attainable than others but the suggestions are worth discussing. Examples:

Educational structures

• Introduce competition into the educational marketplace.
• Encourage homeschooling
• Break the monopoly of public education, but keep it as a safety net

Curriculum

• Get back to basics
• End the practice of mass-adoption of a few major textbooks
• Form centrist national pressure groups to make textbooks indoctrination-free
• Get politics and religion out of science classes
• Introduce and popularize “skills survey” courses

Pedagogy (methods of instruction)

• Group students by ability, not age or ethnicity; bring back “tracking”
• Have “small schools” or “departments” within large high schools
• Allow teachers with creative ideas to be idiosyncratic

Transparency and Independence

• Parental notification
• Break the teachers’ unions
• Bring back competition and individuality

Read the whole thing. 

Zombie Part Four - In Pursuit of Cultural Hegemony

Here is part four of Zombie's excellent series on education. So far he has laid out the thesis that there is a battle going on for the hearts and minds of the nation's children as it plays out in how text books are written.  We have seen how the 800 pound gorillas in influencing how they are written, the Texas State Board of Education and the California State Board of Education, approach the task. Today, he takes on the "self-esteem" crowd. An excerpt:

While educators may be unconsciously relying on dubious theories of psychological modeling (as mentioned in yesterday’s essay) to justify the unrelenting ethnic tokenism in our nation’s schoolbooks, their official explanation revolves around the supposed need to boost students’ “self-esteem.” Those kids who do poorly in school, the theory goes, fail only because they have low self-esteem, leading to low expectations. Therefore, the best way to boost performance for struggling students is not to make their curriculum more challenging or to tailor it to their needs, but rather to use the curriculum as a mechanism to improve students’ self-image. If kids love themselves, the educational theorists claim, they’ll want to succeed, and if they want to succeed, they will succeed. Problem solved!

And so the entire educational system has systematically been re-tooled to focus on self-esteem building. In early grades this involves unsubtle classroom activities — assignments, songs, everybody-wins “contests” — directly informing each student how wonderful they are. In later grades, however, kids begin to grow more sophisticated and skeptical of such heavy-handed methods, so the curriculum designers “cleverly” embed self-esteem building hidden messages into the reading material where it can work on each student’s subconscious. Usually this involves praising and glamorizing “heroes” who just happen to share some ethnic/cultural/gender/appearance attribute with kids in the class, the assumption being that the students’ minds will internalize the message, “If this hero who looks just like me can succeed, then so can I!”

Needless to say, this is the biggest crock of baloney ever foisted on the American public. True self-esteem is not a precursor to achievement and success, it comes as the natural consequence of achievement and success. It’s something you earn, not something you’re given. And to the extent that one can artificially induce baseless self-esteem in someone who has not done anything noteworthy to earn it, one has only succeeded in creating a child with a personality disorder whose swollen ego and sense of entitlement will only later serve as a hindrance in adult real-world interactions.

It's all good stuff. Read the whole series, if you haven't already.

Zombie Part Three - Indoctrination Nation

Installment three of Zombie's five part series on education is here.  This time, California is compared to Texas.

While the media generally goes into hysterics every time the Texas State Board of Education meets, with commentators hurling mockery, outrage and vitriol at the board members, there is a total lack of interest when other states’ boards of education meet for the same purpose. Yet Texas is not the only state that influences the content of American schooling: a few other states also determine textbook standards that end up being used in other parts of the country. California, in particular, is also an important textbook market for publishers. Yet mysteriously, one never hears of any controversy erupting when the California State Board of Education meets to decide the content of textbooks used throughout the state and in many other school districts around the country which shun the Texas-approved textbooks.

 

Why is that? Could it simply be that California-approved textbooks aren’t as politicized as those in Texas?

 

Quite the contrary. If anything, the textbooks approved by the California State Board of Education are even more politicized than Texas textbooks, and more ideologically biased. So: Why does the media ignore what happens in California textbooks? Because the state’s bias goes the other way. California-approved social studies textbooks are politically correct in the extreme, with multiculturalism and “social justice” as the defining characteristics. The pressure groups and board members setting policy for California’s (and hence a substantial portion of America’s) textbooks exceed their Texan counterparts in their extremism, but since California pushes the “correct” kind of extremism, you never hear about it.

Read the whole thing.

Zombie on the Ideological War Over School Curricula

Over at Pajamas Media, the blogger known as Zombie has the first two parts of a five part essay up on the battle for the hearts and minds of today's children, how the extremes of the left and of the right have crowded out the middle and how Texas has become a central battlefield in the debate over what our children should be taught and how. The thesis:

Students are returning to school this week. But they’re not heading back to class — they’re walking straight into a war zone. Our kids have become cannon fodder for two rival ideologies battling to control America’s future.

In one camp are conservative Christians and their champion, the Texas State Board of Education; in the other are politically radical multiculturalists and their de facto champion, President Barack Obama. The two competing visions couldn’t be more different. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Unfortunately, whichever side wins — your kid ends up losing.

That’s because this war is for the power to dictate what our children are taught — and, by extension, how future generations of Americans will view the world. Long gone are the days when classrooms were for learning: now each side sees the public school system as a vast indoctrination camp in which future culture-warriors are trained. The problem is, two diametrically opposed philosophies are struggling for supremacy, and neither is willing to give an inch, so the end result is extremism, no matter which side temporarily comes out on top.

Both visions are grotesque and unacceptable — and yet they are currently the only two choices on the national menu. Which shall it be, sir: Brainwashing Fricassee, or a Fried Ignorance Sandwich?

He goes on to describe the opposing sides in general and in installment two Zombie dissects what the Texas State Board of  Education is trying to accomplish. It's very thought-provking reading.
 
Part one can be found here.
 
Part two can be found here.
 
Read the whole thing.

California's Morality Play in Three Acts

California 4th District Libertarian/Republican Tom McClintock gave a speech to the Competitive Enterprise Institute on July 10. In it, he chronicles how the once great state of California came to be in its present sorry condition and what lessons we should learn from it. Instead of learning though, he is watching as the Democrat controlled US House of Representatives (led by the odious California liberal Nancy Pelosi) making all the same mistakes.

I should also warn you of the strange sense of déjà-vu that I have every day on the House floor as I watch the same folly and blunders that wrecked California now being passed with reckless abandon in this Congress.

We passed a “Cash-for-Clunkers” bill the other day – we did that years ago in California.

Doubling the entire debt every five years? Been there.

Increasing spending at unsustainable rates? Done that.

Save-the-Planet-Carbon-Dioxide restrictions? Got the T-Shirt.

To understand how these policies can utterly destroy an economy and bankrupt a government, you have to remember the Golden State in its Golden Age.

A generation ago, California spent about half what it does today AFTER adjusting for both inflation and population growth.

And yet, we had the finest highway system in the world and the finest public school system in the country. California offered a FREE university education to every Californian who wanted one. We produced water and electricity so cheaply that many communities didn’t bother to measure the stuff. Our unemployment rate consistently ran well below the national rate and its diversified economy was nearly recession-proof.

One thing – and one thing only – has changed in those years: public policy. The political Left gradually gained dominance over California’s government and has imposed a disastrous agenda of radical and retrograde policies that have destroyed the quality of life that Californians once took for granted.

It's a lengthy speech, but well worth your time to read.

(Hat tip to Bob)

Why Are Conservatives So Mean? Andrew Klavan Explains

Go and see this short Klavan on Culture video over at PJTV (sorry, no embed) in which Andrew Klavan explains for the benefit of those just graduating from college just why it is that conservatives are so "mean."

More on Higher Education - Will It Be the Next Bubble to Pop?

This article at Minding the Campus is worth reading. It talks about the cost of higher education and its potential for being the next bubble, a la the housing market. The cost of a college degree has been rising at roughly three times the rate of inflation for some time. People have been willing to pay it, often going deep into debt (see post below), because they see it as the price of entry into the competition for the best paid jobs. Never mind that the degree earned may have little if any relevance to the career they actually end up with. I remember when I went to Large State U that the Chancellor addressed the incoming class and one thing he said has stuck in my mind ever since. He said that only about 5% of all liberal arts majors actually end up working in their field of study. I'm certainly not in that 5%, and that's probably a good thing because chances are it would be a poorly paid job teaching other people the same stuff.

After all, didn't ambitious citizens have to pay their dues to higher ed in order to have a meaningful chance at success? With seemingly no viable alternative or exit strategy, consumers have stretched their pocketbooks to the breaking point and taken out loans to purchase a chance at the American Dream. (Today over 35% of students rely on student loans, and the number is growing.) Not surprisingly, the last twenty years have seen tuition costs rise at over three times the rate of inflation. The overall costs for many private schools add up to $50,000 per year, while public universities cost up to $20,000
for state residents, and over $30,000 for those who hail from out of state. Meanwhile, wages for most Americans have been left in the dust.

Another point made in the article is of particular interest to me because part of my job involves arranging financing for both public and private higher education institutions.

Last September, Timothy Burke, a professor of history at Swarthmore, wrote an influential essay at Inside Higher Ed in which he asserted that "the party's over" for higher ed's tuition and building binge. Burke focused on five main reasons for a contraction in higher education: 1) declines in tuition growth; 2) underperformance by endowments; 3) pullbacks by donors (indeed, on November 26 the Wall Street Journal published a lead story on how the economic crisis has caused a downturn in charity giving nation-wide); 4) lower funding from public and private sources; and 5) the fact that revenues from IPOs, investment property rights, and technology benefit only a few institutions. A respondent to Burke's piece added three other factors: 1) fewer students are attending college as the nation's demographics change; 2) "growing public awareness of the declining economic returns of a college degree" is causing a backlash; and 3) such on-line schools as the University of Phoenix provide education at a fraction of what residential institutions charge. (Will the Internet affect higher ed the same way it has affected newspapers?)

It's all very though provoking. Read the whole thing.

(via Instapundit and Newsalert)

Update: I remembered reading a column by James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal along these same lines a while back and thought I blogged it already. Seems I didn't, so here it is. "College is an expensive way of taking an IQ test."

The Case for School Choice. QED Indeed.

In six minutes and 5 seconds flat, this clip from the Britsh TV series "Yes, Prime Minister" demolishes most arguments against school choice. It even gets a dig in against socialized healthcare.