Math Wars Redux

 According to this article about math education in the San Francisco public schools, students are falling behind, parents are upset, and the Education Mafia don't give a shit. In other words, in 30+ yrs of the Math Wars, absolutely nothing has changed.

Precisely, the Education Mafia don't care about your concerns. They do care a lot about the GAP in academic achievement between 

• high achieving White and Asian students on the one hand, and 
• low achieving Black and Brown students on the other. 

If the Education Mafia could reduce the Gap by raising achievement, they would gladly do that, but whether achievement rises or falls is a matter of utter indifference to them, just so long as the Gap diminishes.

With a hat tip to the TV series, "Star Trek", I call this overarching commitment to reducing the Gap, "The Prime Directive" of education.

Of course, it is impossible to raise achievement and reduce the Gap. Raising achievement can only increase the Gap. The only possible hope for reducing the Gap is to bleed academics out of the schools. And that, dear friends, is how, after many years, we reached the point in our historical development where students graduate high school unable to add fractions or construct an English sentence.

One remaining question is why was my side, in the Math Wars, singularly ineffective in altering this trajectory of failure. After all, my side was comprise of math professors, teachers, mathematically sophisticated parents, a few hangers-on like myself, and even a couple of people who held important positions in state government. 

We were all painfully naïve.

The central organizing doctrine of our strategy was to keep the Education Mafia in control of the schools. I.e., we wanted the EM to do the job, but we were going to tell them how to do it.

Words fail me.

In my own defense, I can only say that when I joined the fight, late in the 1990's, it had already started with a remarkable group of professors and parents in CA, Mathematically Correct, who were deep into textual criticism. I thought that was the battlefield.

It was only some years into the fight that I began to understand we made a terrible mistake. The problem was never the textbooks. The problem was the people choosing the textbooks.

When I started making this point, I got the same response from my comrades-in-arms as we got from the Education Mafia when we criticized their "sources and methods": Silence.

The ideas of the Education Mafia are intellectually vacuous (just think of Whole Language reading instruction), so they had nothing to gain, and potentially a lot to lose, by engaging with us, so they did not engage. But, why were my own comrades giving me the silent treatment? Eventually, I could not deny evident reality.

All my comrades-in-arms are personally wonderful and professionally accomplished people. And, if not out-and-out socialist (at least two were self-avowed), most 

• lean pretty hard towards the political Left, 
• are deeply committed to the doctrine of centrally planned education, and 
• are highly sympathetic to labor unions. 

Including, inexplicably, the teachers unions and other "professional" organizations like the NCTM, to whom I refer as "The Dark Side of The Force".

In other words, my comrades were politically the same people as the Education Mafia, except they were right about math education. And there's the rub.

The problem of education in general, and math education in particular, was never technical. Education is never going to be solved by 

• the right textbook, or 
• the right curricular structure, or 
• some magic pedagogical bullet. 

The education problem is a political problem. For children to win, the Education Mafia have to lose. But, if the Education Mafia, and the anti-Education Mafia, are cut of the same political cloth, winning was never in the cards.

Personally, I learned a lot in my 20+ yrs in the Math Wars, much of that redounding to the benefit of my son and to the children of some of my friends. So I can't be sorry about that. But, I greatly regret we had no effect on the public schools.

Centuries from now, when future historians start to tell the story of the collapse of the American Experiment, that narrative will begin with the collapse of public education.

Betsy DeVos (redux)

A word about my attitude regarding Betsy DeVos.

Our schools have been in a state of constant reform for over a century.  John Dewey published "The School and Society" in 1900.  Public education went on steroids with massive IV money infusions in 1957 with the Sputnik scare.  In 1968 the teachers organizations transmogrified from professional associations into trade unions.  And in 1983 the commission empanelled by President Reagan issued their report, "A Nation at Risk."

President Reagan's commission delivered at least two famous phrases:  the "rising tide of mediocrity" phrase and the "act of war" phrase.  I quote,

(a) The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people,
and
(2) If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

That was 1983.  Thirty-four years later, the public schools are in much worse condition.  At this point in our historical development, we can fairly say they have collapsed.

This collapse is not an "act of G-d".  It does not arise from drought or flood or earthquake.  There is no actual war or widespread starvation or social disruption.  And there is no mysterious "Invisible Hand" (pace, Adam Smith) that works against us.

Rather, our public schools are the necessary consequence of policies and practices that have been knowingly and intentionally implemented by individuals known to us, mainly the education schools professoriate ("The Ayatollahs of Education") and the leadership of the teachers unions, to whom I refer collectively as "The Education Mafia".  They have massive political power, they have been in charge of our schools for generations, and they are responsible.  It's all on them.

And, they cannot be persuaded.

Friends, there are only two possibilities left to us.  Either the Education Mafia remain in charge, and nothing happens until educational collapse leads to societal collapse, or we prise their death grip off the throat of public education.

The only important thing about Betsy DeVos is that she is not of the Education Mafia.  All the rest of what you read about her, in the NY Times and the Washington Post, is irrelevant shit.

Yeah, Whatever.

The NY Times does not like Betsy DeVos, President Trump's nominee for secretary of Education.  Yeah, whatever.

The president should close the U.S. Department of Education (or, as I like to call it, the Dept of Public Education, "DOPE"), which was Jimmy Carter's pay off to the teachers unions for their support in the 1976 elections.  There is no indication that Betsy DeVos, if confirmed, will do that, so meh.  On the principle that the alternative will probably be worse, however, DeVos should be confirmed.  A word on what "worse" means.

Let's not mince words, American public education has collapsed.  The numbers are grisly, and the underlying reality is much worse.  You must remember that most of the numbers we have, to weigh and measure public education, come from the Education Mafia themselves, and they have been cooking the books for three generations.

For example, any right thinking person will groan in despair when learning of the enormous gap in high school graduation rates, between White students and Black students.  At 47% graduating nationwide, an absolute majority of Black males will not graduate at all, giving rise to a nearly 30% gap from their White peers.  So, that's bad, but the reality is worse, and it is worse in at least two dimensions.

First, the average Black student who does graduate high school reads and calculates at the level of the average White 8th grader.  How and why this happens is your homework assignment, but it should be immediately obvious that, bad as the graduation rate is, reality is much worse.

Second, this terrible problem has existed for generations, so the Education Mafia is well aware.  And yet, knowing that many students, Black and White, fail to graduate or graduate with inadequate skills, they do nothing about it leaving these large numbers of students woefully unprepared for life.  Oh, the Education Mafia work really hard a remediation, but consider carefully what that means.

Remediation means they force students to remain in an endeavor for which they have amply demonstrated the lack of interest or aptitude or both, never mind that it patently does not work (we have been at it a while, you know).  Remediation is mainly a harbinger of educational failure.  What about something else?  Vocational training, anyone?  Nope.  Oh, there is some.  Not remotely enough.  Why?  Why not a lot more vocational training or something else, anything else, just not the same old, tired, failing program that has afflicted us all our lives?

The people who have been in charge of our schools for the past 60 to 100 years (depending on how you count), the architects of this disaster, the people whom I affectionately call the Education Mafia, are prisoners of their own ideology.  If you read their literature, which I have done as penance for my sins, there is not a hint of an alternative to the Existing Order.  To the contrary, they circle the wagons against any possibility of reform, hence their animus towards Betsy DeVos.  The Education Mafia are incapable of reform.  With the Education Mafia firmly in charge, the public schools are unreformable.

(BTW, I am talking about true reform.  It is easy to tell when you do not have it.  If any proposed reform ends up leaving the same people in charge, and the same people are doing the same things in the same ways, you have not achieved reform.  Contrariwise, when the Education Mafia scream like banshees, you know you are on to something different.)

So, if we are not going to close the DOPE, the next best thing is to bring in an outsider, somebody who has not drunk the Kool-aid of the schools of education, someone who is not a votary of the "ayatollahs of education", as I like to call the education school professoriate.  This person should bring in the experts, both the ed school ayatollahs and the serious critics of the ayatollahs, of which there are a few.

We need a person who is able to look at the problem with new eyes.  Let this person listen to the arguments on both sides.  Let him, or her, consider the track record of the Education Mafia, and let him proceed accordingly.

Is Betsy DeVos that person?  Probably not.  By all accounts, DeVos is, herself, slave to an old idea, charter schools, that has an uninspiring record nearly 30 yrs long.

So, if President Trump will not close down the DOPE and Betsy DeVos is not the reformer we so desperately need, then <<<YAWN>>> pardon me while I go get a cup of coffee and sort out my sock drawer or something.  Oh!  Will ya look at the time...

The Prime Directive

Ah, spring is in the air and a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of....Scratch that!  Actually, it's late August, school is about to start, and the newspapers are publishing their annual education articles.  Here is this year's WaPo entry, Whats wrong with U.S. schools: A multiple-choice exam with "no wrong answers",

The WaPo's is a clever article, mainly right, I think.  So, why am I unhappy with it?  Consider two questions raised by the article:

• What's wrong with teacher training, and 
• Why don't we know how children learn?

Good questions, and the WaPo raises a number of them.  But, these are the same questions that have been asked for nearly 100 years.  What the WaPo does not ask is why we do not already have some good answers for them.

Consider that schools of education have been around for more than 100 yrs.  Their faculties are doctors of education whose profession it is to research education.  How is it possible that after such a long time they do not have at least pretty good answers to basic questions?  BTW, here is a brilliant commentary on the subject, Reinventing the wheel of education, by Natalie Kramer  

But, why?  What's going on?  Are the Education Ayatollahs too busy to do the basic research (busy with what, exactly)?  Are they morons?  Or is something else going on?

After many, many years of its staring me hard in the face, it has become perfectly obvious what is going on in public education.  How could it be obvious if it took me so many years to recognize?  Here is a story about the English mathematician G.H. Hardy to explain.

Once upon a time, lecturing, Hardy was methodically working through a proof when, coming upon a key element he said, "Now, obviously..." and he paused and wondered aloud, "Is it obvious?"  He paced the blackboard.  He actually walked out of the lecture hall, lost in thought.  Quite some minutes later, he returned and exclaimed, "Yes!  It is obvious."

In the same way, I say it is obvious that the central organizing doctrine of American education, what I call "The Prime Directive", is:  Reduce The Gap!

You see, there is a chasm between academic high achievers and academic low achievers.  The provenance of this concern is, of course, marxist class warfare.  In the American context there is the additional frisson of race.  It is widely observed that high achievers are middle and upper class mainly White and Yellow, and low achievers are lower class mainly Black and Brown.
American educators are desperate to reduce this Gap in academic achievement.  Read the education literature, read their op-eds in the NY Times and the WaPo, listen to their public speeches and congressional testimonies, and you can see they think of nothing else.  Their every thought is bent upon solving this one problem.

The problem is that nobody knows how to reduce The Gap, and they cause much harm in the effort.  Consider, any time you teach something real, you must create a Gap.  Eg, suppose in a high school algebra class you teach the quadratic equation with the serious expectation that your students learn the idea and can apply it to solve problems.  Well, some students will learn it quickly and easily, some students will learn it more slowly and imperfectly, and some students will not learn it, at all, no matter what you do.  Voila!  A Gap.

Of course, the educators are not against teaching the quadratic equation, or any other idea of intellectual substance.  But, all efforts must conform to The Prime Directive.  So, if you cannot teach the quadratic equation without generating a Gap, eliminate the quadratic equation.  And so it ramifies to every idea in every academic subject.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, explains almost everything about modern, American public education.

The Educational Circus Act

I once read about an army officer famous among his colleagues for battle plans that went into extraordinary detail.  In a scathing indictment, one fellow officer said, "Yes, he takes into account everything except the disposition of the enemy."  In the same way, the Education Mafia seem to have a lot on their minds, not including the education of children.

In other words, the Education Mafia, like the misguided army officer whose name I have long forgotten, are so consumed with tangential details they have lost the point.

When my son, who is half Asian, was in NYC public schools, not one time was I concerned about whether he was the darkest-skinned child in the class, or the lightest.  I was concerned ONLY that he was safe and that he was getting an education.

Safety and education, nothing else mattered to me.  Yet, I find my concerns nowhere in this NY Times article about the NYC public schools.  And, if it is true, as the article suggests, that many parents are also consumed by tangential issues, then it is no wonder the public schools have collapsed.

In 1954, when the SCOTUS decided Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, one could argue that integration was the only way to break the back of real institutional racism.  Astonishingly, that was not the argument.

Beginning with the amicus curiae brief by the Justice Dept (sic!), arguing that segregated schools hurt the American effort in The Cold War, the court considered cultural assimilation, states' rights, judicial activism, the psychological effects of segregation, and I don't know what else.  It seems they considered everything, not including the education of children.  And you could see that in the final decision,

"Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. ...
"Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children."

"Upon the colored children."  Why not also upon the White children?  This was the beginning of the magical White child.  It seems that something magical happens to Black children when they sit beside White children.  And integration became a fetish.

Please understand, I am not against integration.  It's just that I care about education more.  Since the 1954 decision, however, rather than taking care of business, rather than grappling with the really difficult issues of teaching children, politicians and education theorists and  school administrators have succumbed to the toxic distraction of racial integration.  I would be all for integration, if the Education Mafia were taking care of business, but they dissipate their time and energy, and large sums of public funds, in this and other issues that have precious little to do with teaching and learning.

And it shows.