Many commentators, perhaps most notably Thomas Sowell, have written about the public education establishment recently. Among the common complaints are that education majors are the weakest academic group on campus; that education programs teach primarily faddish education theories and devalue subject matter expertise; and that teachers' unions work only to preserve teachers' jobs, and do not prioritize improving education. All these points are easy enough to confirm. There are other considerations that have not been as well covered by most of the recent commentary, however, and they shed more light on the problems with public education.
To see what education departments have to say about themselves, I studied the education programs at University of Alabama (my main alma mater) and Oregon State University, because it was as far away geographically, and probably culturally, as you could get from Alabama. I was interested mainly in public universities. UA admits undergraduate education majors competitively on the basis of the usual things – test scores, grades, extracurricular activities – plus "the applicant's understanding of, and commitment to, teaching as a profession…." Such a commitment, whatever it means, is not required of engineering majors, or even of those pursuing a PhD in clinical psychology at Alabama. I was intrigued by another peculiarity of the education program: While the engineering and psychology departments outline their courses of study in the general catalogs, the education program notes that it chooses not to do so, but makes degree requirements available only through individual counselors in the program.
Oregon State does not appear to offer undergraduate programs in education, but their introduction to the graduate program is a primer in political correctness. As at Alabama, "commitment" to the profession is required for admission. Early in the introduction, the program claims to be committed to diversity of ideas, but this claim is belied as you read further. They "challenge dogmatic opinions," but this is code for conservative or libertarian opinions, because further on they commit to a "progressive social vision," which is not even code for statist social engineering. This is later confirmed, as they proudly adhere to "issues of equity and diversity in learning communities," with "diversity" being defined still later as "diverse populations," which of course means skin color. "Equity," as we know, means preferences in admissions and hiring.
The OSU School of Education finishes its introduction with a flourish: Their goal is to "Influence programs and policies of professional groups that represent policy makers and professional and state bodies that enact and implement licensure, accreditation, program approval and certification standards and procedures." Can anyone imagine an engineering, psychology, or even political science department saying such a thing? OSU is at least honest, as all across the nation teachers' unions and university education departments work together to intimidate legislators through block voting. Remember they were powerful enough to force Al Gore and everyone else in the Democrat Party to vote against school vouchers when most Democrat luminaries seem to have their own children in private schools. (I am not quite endorsing voucher programs, however; many analysts from the Right have noted the potential for vouchers to institute national government control of private and religious schools.)
So how do these people present themselves in the classroom? Given my own experience, every derogation of the competence of education specialists is plausible. I took a graduate course in "music research" taught by an EdD. For whatever reason, our teacher and the textbook took it upon themselves to instruct us on logic and psychology. The textbook's distinction between inductive and deductive logic was the obsolete and incorrect general-to-specific-and-vice-versa criterion, which has been touted for generations by logicians themselves as meaningless. I knew this because I studied logic at Alabama, and our logic textbook was written by a logician. I checked: All other logic texts I could find at the library agreed that the proper distinction was between logical necessity (deduction) and logical probability (induction) of the conclusion of an argument.
The textbook also subdivided the general field of psychology in a nonsensical way, and got completely wrong the definition of psychological test validity, a crucial concept in the field. I knew this because at the time I had just completed an MS in industrial psychology. At my graduation from the music program, I sat next to a student who had just completed his PhD in chemistry. He was laughing, and when I asked what about, he said "the education majors over there." I learned the chemist had taken a graduate chemistry course in the education department, and he reported they were teaching false and obsolete information there, too (!; about chemistry?).
How do the educators respond to course-content criticisms? As my final paper in that music research course, I chose to document the problems with the textbook. For example, I provided the proper way to distinguish between induction and deduction. I referred to logic textbooks, and the page numbers cited all were in the single digits, signifying that logicians consider this basic, introductory material. To my surprise, after the semester the teacher sent my paper to the author. The textbook had not yet been published – we were using a prepublication draft – so it was possible that my comments would make the author review some primary sources. Three years later, I saw another student with a more recent draft of the same text, so I looked inside for coverage of the logic issue. The author was still using the obsolete and incorrect general-to-specific notion, demonstrating a baffling belligerence in the face of plain truth about uncontroversial, technical terminology.
Home school your children.
March 12, 2001
Brad Edmonds, Doctor of Musical Arts, is a banker in Alabama.
