ParisTampaBlog

Three comments from today’s news concerning the performance, or failure to perform, of our public schools, two from the Times, and one from Time Magazine.

First Ross Douthat, in an op ed piece. He cites the sociologist, Kristin Luker who in her history of the sex education debate concluded that, “… it is surprisingly difficult to show that sex education programs do in fact increase teenagers’ willingness to protect themselves from pregnancy and/or disease.”

Douthat comments:  ‘This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s attended high school. What is taught in the classroom is vastly less important than the matrix of family, culture and economics: the values parents impart and the example that they set, the friends teenagers make and the activities they join, and the cross-cutting effects of wealth, health and self-esteem. (And, of course, the impact of entertainment: the MTV reality show ‘Teen Mom”’is far more absorbing than the average sex-ed curriculum, and probably more influential as well.)”

Reasonable, right? Would anyone without his own dog in the fight disagree with Douthat? It’s been evident for a long time, in my case for more than 50 years, that what is taught in the classroom does little or nothing to change the already ingrained habits of thought and action of today’s adolescents. We go on talking at our students, not with them or to them.

The second comment, this one from the event now taking place in Davos, Switzerland, is from Azim Premzi, head of the Indian outsourcing company, and is quoted in Alison Smale’s Times article, Bankers Put focus on ‘Real Economy.’

Premzi says that, “there may be too many people pursuing a moderate amount of education, which will leave them overqualified for low-skilled jobs in agriculture or other areas, but not qualified enough to take part in an increasingly high-tech economy.”

Also reasonable, right? What he gently calls a “moderate amount of education,” really means the school’s failure to educate large numbers of our young people, even those who have graduated from high school. It’s probably true, as he says, that too many young people upon leaving school are little fit for any job at all, let alone one in the high-tech economy.

Premzi clearly implies that we ought to be doing something else, perhaps as in Germany and in other countries, and begin to give our young people while still in school the training necessary to get and retain a job upon graduation. Whatever he means by the “moderate amount of education” that our kids are supposedly getting it is clearly not enough, and probably of little or no value to them.

Joe Klein, writing on education in Time Magazine, is the least convincing of the three. He is probably correct when he accuses the New York teachers’ union of blocking Secretary Arne Duncan’s “Race to the Top” by their refusal to accept Federal stimulus money that would go to support school choice and competition (charter schools) as well as a new emphasis on teacher evaluation and accountability, all three reforms anathema to the union.

But in what he says about American schools he repeats generally accepted but irrelevant clichés that don’t at all have the depth of meaning he would give to them. This is unfortunate because his criticism lends further support to the public perception that what is wrong with our schools is first and foremost the refusal of the teachers’ unions to reform themselves.

Here is what he says: “American schools have been slipping for decades — our students are now 32nd internationally in math scores, 10th in science, 12th in reading. It will be impossible to rebuild our economy — to create the sophisticated, high-paying jobs we need — as long as we have an archaic, industrial-age school system. It’s also hard to keep a strong democracy with a citizenry that is increasingly uneducated and ill informed.”

In regard to his three judgments, really critical put-downs of the teacher union dominated public schools, here is what I would reply.

First of all such international comparisons as the ones he mentions have been shown to be without substance. It’s enough to think about what groups of students are being compared to understand that such comparisons are impossible to make. Our students do quite well when the two groups being compared are in fact comparable, say at the international Math Olympiad. However, this is rarely the case.

Secondly, there are very few of those “sophisticated, high-paying jobs,” of which he speaks, out there. Most jobs that are available are in the service and retail industries and are definitely neither sophisticated nor high-paying.

In fact, there are now plenty of graduates to fill the jobs of which he speaks, and if not they would quickly appear among the thousands, tens of thousands of much better qualified new arrivals to the country, than from the inner city high schools, even from those schools where the union obstacles to reform have been lifted and removed.

And finally, the Jeffersonian complaint, that our democracy is in need of an increasingly educated and well informed citizenry. Of course, but don’t look to our schools to make this happen. The schools have never created such a citizenry in the past, and no matter what they do in the present, even if the union leaders are sent to a desert island, will they create Jefferson’s desired citizenry.

A well informed, literate, and thinking public is as much our dream as it was that of Thomas Jefferson. We ought, however, to have learned during the intervening 200 years or so between him and us that such is not in our power, let alone in the power of our schools, to make happen.

There are good citizens, just as there are good people, but are we any closer today than ever before to knowing how to make them?