PRIORITIES AND CONTRADICTIONS (32)

by JANN FLURY
Columnist EducationNews.org

April 7, 2003

All human endeavours are most successful if they progress from a solid foundation. Even the carefree islanders agree. They point out the truism, symbolically, in one of their catchy Calypso songs, which warns that, "House built on a weak foundation will not stand--oh, no--oh, no." Education, like everything else in life, can only flourish if it gets a good start. It can only grow from the humble to the great through logical stages that are based on a solid, carefully and systematically laid foundation.

Dozens of ancient proverbs underline the natural dynamics of life, which include the incremental, sequential nature of learning: "Learn to walk, before you run. The longest journey starts with one small step" etc. It is vexing and most disconcerting that modern educators feel they know best and fail to heed the wisdom of the ages. They ignore or trivialize the basic essentials needed for a child to embark on a successful learning journey through public school.

No sane person will argue against the fact that learning to read, write, and do basic arithmetic proficiently forms the foundation for all future learning. If those three skills are mastered, a student is off and running: equipped to expand his own store of knowledge and further personal interests independently, beyond what is taught in the ongoing school curriculum. How modern educators can justify to bypass this essential, first step in teaching and learning is most perplexing and--without a good explanation--smells of deliberate malpractice.

All normal children (98%) are ready to learn by age six. They don't need to be tested for school-readiness or have a kindergarten graduation certificate. Grade one students need to be introduced to school properly through an adequate briefing on school purpose, rules, codes of conduct and discipline. They need to be given an overview of what they will learn during the school year, and why it is important that they assume the responsibility of meeting the outlined goals: children love a challenge and are delighted and flattered to be given responsibility.

All things being equal, using tried and proven phonics teaching methods f rom many years ago, 98% of the students will be proficient readers by the end of the school year. Following a similarly familiar teaching method for arithmetic, students will have memorized the multiplication tables and will be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide before they finish grade one.

Firm discipline and good teaching are the key to happy, high-achieving students. And high achieving, happy students should be the top priority of the public school system. Why does the "progressive" education establishment put other, mostly subjective, non-educational priorities ahead of giving the children a functionally useful education? Is this not a systematic withholding of services that teachers are hired to provide? Who is responsible? Is it the teachers, the teachers' unions, the pedagogical administrators that control school boards and the governmental education departments, or is it the university professors who control how teachers are taught to teach? Perhaps it's a conspiracy, by all or some of the above, to produce a malleable dependent generation that will be at the beck-and-call of the academic elitists who see themselves as the undisputed leaders of our future society.

Some of what our academic elitists promise to teach our children in place of a basic academic education is preposterous. It would be laughable if it weren't so diabolically perverse and contradictory. The stated aim of the "progressive" educators is to turn out "individual learners that will achieve their full potential in physical, intellectual, emotional, social, cultural, and moral development." They talk about educating the whole child, teaching children to explore, to become discovery learners, to become lifelong learners, learn to learn, learn how to get along in a mosaic society, how to cooperate with a group, learn conflict resolution and critical thinking skills. They expect students to understand that there is no right or wrong, and that they must learn to be nonjudgmental to become good citizens. And the real clincher is that "progressive" educators suggest that they are teaching the children to make informed choices, based on "good" information, while telling them to be nonjudgmental and accept that there is no right or wrong.

How can students become discovery learners without a starting store of knowledge? Discovery is another word for doing research, and in the real world it is reserved for higher learning after all available archived knowledge on a subject has been acquired and digested. Grade three students who haven't been taught to read are hardly productive researchers, nor do they need to do research at that age until they have mastered all the essential basics. If they are left to fend and discover for themselves, what is the purpose of the teacher or our expensive public school system? Should students be left to reinvent the wheel and use the time that would be better spent learning math or how to read? They might as well thrown the students out on the street with the dropouts. They will learn soon enough for themselves, there.

A student's self-esteem is a top priority for modern educators. They believe self-esteem can be taught and is there for the asking. How can a student have self-esteem without achievement, without self-confidence in his scholastic ability, without knowing right from wrong, without self-discipline, without self-respect, and without any moral guidelines? How can a student be expected to make "informed choices from good information" without knowing what the facts are or what is right or wrong? How can students learn to think for themselves when only the group view based on popular opinion counts, and decisions (choices) are not the individual's, but are made using the dialectic process to arrive at group consensus?

Such are the contradictions of our modern education system. Our public school system is breeding disillusionment, frustration and confusion in students who will be ill equipped to face the challenges of life in the real world after school: a generation of bewildered lemmings, aimlessly scurrying along as a mass, pursuing a prescribed lifestyle based on the latest politically-correct fads and driven solely by popular opinion.