Tom Peters Judges Public Schools
Friday, May 12, 2006
U.S. Freedom Foundation www.freedomfoundation.us
David W. Kirkpatrick Senior Education Fellow   

It's been said that a new joke is often an old joke that you haven't heard before.  The same might be said about what's "news."   With that in mind, the following views of public education are by Tom Peters, one of the nation's best-known management consultants, perhaps best known as the author of "In Search of Excellence."          

A few years ago he addressed a conference of the Foundation for Excellent Schools. Little noted at the time, his remarks still merit attention.          

First because of his audience of about 400, mostly classroom teachers.  Second, because he was highly critical of public schools.  And, perhaps most of all, because despite the nature of his audience, or perhaps because of it,  he received a standing ovation.   At the very least, this shows there are dissidents in the ranks of educators.          

Arguing that "Children know how to learn. It's in the genes," Peters stressed that "The only thing that screws up learning is the classroom ...Designed perfectly to kill all interest in the subject matter at hand."          

Nor is he an admirer of much that passes for "school reform."  In his view, "What the reform movement gives us is more of what we have, regimentation, standardization, and brutalizing boredom in places designed by the devil, called classrooms."          

Another critic of public schooling is the late Peter Drucker, perhaps the best-know management expert. Peters noted that Drucker  means "printer" in Dutch.   Drucker himself said his ancestors were, in fact, printers from 1500 to 1750, a period of 250 years, 15 generations, in which they didn't have to learn anything new about their occupation because it remained unchanged.          

Even the most obtuse among us recognizes that those days are gone forever. Today considering even a generation to be long-term can be a mistake. Peters believes that 90% of white collar jobs are in jeopardy within a few years, a trend from which teachers won't be exempt.  In response to questions after his formal presentation, he said that, speaking of schools as buildings, there is perhaps an argument for them for the first four or five years of a child's formal education experiences, but not beyond that.         

He repeatedly cited John Taylor Gatto, three times New York City's Teacher of the Year, and twice Teacher of the Year for New York State. To a significant degree, as Gatto has subsequently written, his awards were was because he so often broke the rules and engaged in what I've termed "creative noncompliance."          

Retiring in 1991, after receiving his honors, Gatto has been on a crusade to change the system, writing several books in the process, such as "Dumbing Us Down" and "The Exhausted School." His "A Different Kind of Teacher," made him a hero to Peters who said "I happen to agree with damn near every semi-colon and comma that Mr. Gatto has written."          

As a friend of Gatto's for many years, and also a career public educator, I concur with his view that rarely does the system permit teachers to do or be their best. Even the late Al Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers for a quarter of a century, wrote that teachers who seem to be too creative are often screened out by the hiring and promotion process and that 25% of the teachers in the classroom are not sufficiently competent to be there.          

As for the students, Gatto adds that "It's absurd and anti-life to be compelled to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class." Which is perhaps why New York Post columnist Jimmy Breslin commented, "Every time I pass a jailhouse or a school, I feel sorry for the people inside.          

On the down side, the two-day conference was devoted to specific programs and results affecting individual students, classes, and/or schools, including a number that had won awards.  By itself, this was to the good.  What was missing, except for Peters, was a broader view of the system including the necessity, and possibilities, for change.          

While Peters himself didn't say it directly, one is reminded of a prediction that the years immediately ahead may not be pleasant ones for teachers' unions.
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Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."  Bertrand Russell.
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