SUMMARY: Traditional education is continuously criticized. Maybe teachers were too strict. But now we’ve gone too far the other way. We need some of that old-fashioned discipline and tough love.

Several generations back, teachers could spank students or rap knuckles with a stick. They could yank an unruly kid’s ear. If you were a teacher, you had real physical control over your class. Students behaved or else. They listened respectfully, and did what you told them to do.

Teacher! Leave them kids alone!

If there is one thing all modern educators agree on, it’s that the old days were sick and unsuccessful. Students never had fun and didn’t truly learn. They were slaves in a factory; every pedagogical method was a mean-spirited mistake; schools were dim and depressing. The obvious symbol for all this misery is a teacher governing with an iron hand.

Teacher! Leave them kids alone!

But what was this strict governance really all about? It was intended to achieve one thing: education. Which at that time meant that children should know the multiplication tables; how to spell words correctly; Paris is the capital of France; the names of the biggest countries, highest mountains and longest rivers; who Napoleon Bonaparte was; and what the Civil War was about. So little time, so much information that children needed to learn to have their best chance in the world. Maybe it can be argued that teachers were too harsh; but students did learn and did have their best chance.

Then a bizarre thing happened. Progressive educators decided that empty heads were what they preferred to work with as they tried to build a socialist world. Accordingly, they set out to undercut everything that education had traditionally been focused on. Facts and knowledge were demoted to insignificance. The educators gushed about escaping from the odious past–drilling and killing, teaching to the test, memorizing useless information.

Thanks to the genius of progressive educators, education would now be concerned with personal growth. For the past hundred years, each new theory, each bold new innovation, somehow taught less; but that was glossed over. The relentless emphasis was on kids finding fulfillment, becoming truly human, and learning, really learning. Even as, in fact, they got dumber and emptier.

So, in simple terms, here was the deal: kids would have more fun but they wouldn’t learn nearly as much. Is that a bargain? In any case, this trade-off turned all of modern American education into one of the oddest episodes in this planet’s history. Fundamentally, everything in our public schools became a scam. And part of that scam was a constant put-down of traditional schools as brutal and dehumanizing.

Teacher! Leave them kids alone!

Today, American education is best described with metaphors from theater and show biz. You have a stage, costumes, and make-up. Finally, everyone acts a part. Participants and spectators pretend that certain things are happening –look, James Bond is shooting people! look, kids are learning to think critically–but those things are not actually happening. Make-believe is the distinguishing trait of American education.

How can the Education Establishment not pretend? If the true goal is social engineering, and if there is a war against content, then the Education Establishments must engage in endless subterfuge. Clever new pedagogies must be devised whose secret intent is to teach less, not more (e.g., Whole Word, Constructivism, New Math, Self-Esteem, et al). Novel testing procedures must be devised to hide what is going on. That’s why, to give one small example, we started hearing about “alternative testing” (i.e., not a real test). When people understood this code, the Education Establishment switched to “authentic assessment”, which is typically neither authentic nor assessment. (Instead of learning the facts of American history, for example, the student is allowed to do a portfolio on some aspect of American history. He collects items from magazines. He can earn an A in American history and know virtually no American history.)

What is actually happening is stunning and counterintuitive. Despite ever greater budgets and rising per capita expenditures, American public schools produce more ignorant students and less capable workers. Citizens are less informed and the society is less competitive.

How do we get out of this? Let’s go back 100 years and freeze the frame. Let’s stipulate that schools were too severe, that we should make schools more pleasant and teachers more gentle. Then we would have the best of all possible worlds, right? Kids have fun while learning a lot. All of this was an option; but it was not chosen.

What we got instead was among the worst of all possible worlds. Kids not learning at all while the schools dissemble; and educators push left-wing politics. And does anybody hear that kids in public schools are rolling in personal satisfaction? No, they mostly know it’s a scam but one that asks little of them, so why would they complain?

We know what schools should be like because we all know what we would want for ourselves and our children. Don’t we all want a safe, structured environment which will allow the maximum amount of learning to take place? Don’t we want expert teachers to explain to us the things they know more about than anybody else in the room? Isn’t the blueprint really rather simple: goals are high; expectations are clear-cut; progress is assumed; and tough love is the norm. Tests occur regularly so that parents, teachers and students know how they are doing. Sure, we welcome digital tools, field trips, fun projects, but only if they result in learning and more learning.

Progressive educators are the only ones who don’t understand that this is the ideal.

Today, we have to shout: Hey, Education Establishment! Leave them kids alone!

(For related analysis, see “45: The Crusade Against Knowledge–The Campaign Against Memory” and “47: Teach One Fact Each Day” on Improve-Education.org.)

Author Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of Improve-Education.org, an outspoken education and intellectual site. One focus is reading; see “42: Reading Resources.” Another focus is education reform; see “38: Saving Public Schools.” Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is “THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.”

Category: Education
Keywords: K-12, public schools, discipline, standards, knowledge, learning, teach,