Curious Coincidence?

After writing this morning on watered down curriculum because of games and films, I spent this afternoon showing videos of Kim Possible and Spounge Bob Squarepants. Granted I was the sub for the recess attendent, and it was raining.

Schools abandon the Block system

While there are still schools happy with the block system, I suspect the pendulum is swinging back towards the 7 period day. The reason can be found in the link I just provided, namely, "Those teachers who haven't changed teaching styles and still rely heavily on lecturing were least happy with the block, as were students in their classes." The 90 minute block system works best when you take a topic and cover it from three directions, using a combination of lecture, activity, and multi-media. That might be 30 minutes of lecture, 30 minutes of video, and group colaboration, or it might mean Adler style socratic method involving 10-15 minutes of lecture followed by 30 minutes of discussion and debate, either covering two topics, or followed by video, computer research, or some other activity.

Instead, Springfield students and administrators are telling me that too many teachers are still teaching as if they had a 50 minute period. Some just stretch the teaching they would do for 50 minutes longer, others just leave the rest of the time for homework. Students with experience in both systems prefer the block system because their is less homework, because teachers routinely don't fill the classroom time with teaching. Administrators argue that they did not go to a block system to create mini-study halls. They point to a lack of change in the test scores of the district indicating no change taking place between block and period. And block systems require a handful more teachers. In periods of financial stress, keeping the block system with no percieved benefit seems like bad judgement.

Opponants of the block point to these issiues:
Longer classes are incompatible with the attention spans of most students (20-50 minute attention spans are commonly cited)
Instead of trying to cover twice as much material in a longer class period, the natural tendency is to water down the material to maintain interest, resorting to movies, games, doing homework in class.
Students may experience a gap of 8 to 13 months before taking the next course in that series
Transfering from a district using block to one using periods or vise versa can be tough.

There are more comlaints at the site linked to but I don't take most of them seriously or regard them as technical issues. Lets look at the four charges above.

Attention span of 20-50 minutes: while this may seem to favor the 50 minute period, it should be remembered that the block is supposed to be 3 units of 30 minutes of different teaching style activites on one to three topics. For example. One day in my own Vietnam unit I lectured for about 20 minutes on problems of mobilization, identifying the draft, the use of reserves, and the expansion of the army. Then I presented a list of all the strategies urged by the services, political leaders, and other influential groups in the conduct of the war. Students were grouped and ask to play the role of presidential advisors choosing a policy for winning the war and being able to defend it. (I always like teaching strategic thinking because it benefits so many areas - financial planning, career planning, business planning, &c.) The last 20 minutes we watched a video segment of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident taped from the History Channel's episode of presidential scandals. In practice, this lesson had 20 minutes of lecture, 40 minutes of group work and presentation, and 20 minutes of video, as well as about 5 minutes of administration before class and 5 minutes of down time afterward during which I took questions on the unit test. The needs of attention for novelty were satisfied by the variation of teaching styles, despite the fact that our topic remained the early phase of the Vietnam War.

This brings up the second charge. Watering down material by adding games and movies. Is that what I described? No, but I am an advocate of block, and hopefully do a good job with the block. So some of this criticism may just be a mischaracterization of what I did as games and movies, when I think its pretty clear that genuine learning took place. I also have the summary reports students handed in advocating their strategy and know that there was higher level thinking applied to strategic consideration of a real historical problem. As a side note, the students favored various combinations of the marine corps approach to winning the war often combined with the Army's special operations counter insurgency doctrine.

However, I give real credibility to the complaint that much material is watered down with games, videos, and by allowing homework to be done in class. I see it and hear about it all the time. While good teachers know how to use the block system and how to keep learning progressing during 80-90 minutes, to many just teach the way they did in the 50 minute period and fill out the other 40 minutes with fluff. In the humanities classes this often means superfluous videos, or videos that could be valuable not used to challenge students to think. Math class is the worst offender in putting homework into the classroom, though all are guilty of it. One of the comlaints not mentioned so far is that some students and some subjects require routine learning. Languages and math (itself a language) are the obvious candidates. Homework should be the opportunity for students to look at their material between classes to get that practice. Part of the purpose of homework is to get students to crack the book at home. The more self-teaching students are the more self-teaching they will do. Abandoning homework for classroom filler turns students into empty vessals which need a teacher to do the filling. There is also the idea that school should be entertaining. If learning can be so, great. But when it cannot, we should not provide empty entertainments because the kids expect it, because we want them to like us, or because we don't know what else to do. Games and videos (as well as the combination of them - the video game) must always be educational first, or they don't belong in the school. Ultimatly this criticism is what is undoing the block schedule in many districts.

Another criticism is that students may have long breaks in which they don't see a subject. One of the ideas behind the block is that it would facilitate inter-disciplinary lerning by encouraging coordination between teachers. I know that a lot of science gets worked into my world history plans and a lot of math into my US history plans. In a block, its easier to spend the time doing a 30 minute section on voting analysis (a new use for percentages!), the business cycle, or demographics. If that math comes after a video of the same topic and is followed by a discussion of the evidence from text, video, and the numbers, its much easier to do it than if you have a 50 minute block. Unfortunatly, the block has done little to foster interdisciplinarity or other kinds of extra-curricular goodies (I like to use art history, for instance).

Transfering is a problem, but its more a problem of variation between districts than it is of the block system. I would actually increase variation in a market based approach to schools which would tend to increase consumer (that is parent) control of the school, which would tend to increase this problem. The solution is for a teacher to spend a little time and devise a program of integration for the new student, so the student can quickly get to a place where the classroom is afterward profitable.

Blackout in Italy

When Goldfinger left Bond after their golf course he said , once is happenstance (refering to Bond's interference with his card game), twice is coincidence (refering to the golf game), but the third time is enemy action.

When the power went out first in the American NE, then in London, I thought little of it, other than the power grid needs to be maintained. But now Italy. Three leading countries that argued for the removal of Saddam. Coincidence or enemy action? It would not be unwarrented to keep this counterintelligence file open and see what leads develope.

Cubs NL Central Champs

Cubs!

Andrew Sullivan on Dennis Prager

Andrew Sullivan, whom I have read since he write the TRB column at the New Republic, is on the Prager show (1-2 am, presumably 10-11am yesterday on KRLA) and its one of the most intelligent and interesting discussions of the question of the proper extent of marriage as I have encountered thus far. For those who have just fallen off the turnip truck, Sullivan is pro, Prager is con.

KIDS crowding out KRLA

My listening to local KIDS has been overtaking So-Cal KRLA. The cause? Summer's over, daytime listening has dropped way off, and KIDS has a familiar line up (Hewitt 5-8, Prager 11-2, Gallagher is on during the day, Medved is replayed on the weekend, and may well be on other times). So, regardless of where I start out after I get back from teaching, I get to KIDS by 7pm (since I get the 3rd hour on the radio right away rather than waiting until 10pm) and when KRLA is playing health and self-help, KIDS is doing a computer show, and then on to Prager. As a side note, I don't see much radio discussion on blogs (though much "what I am reading"). Locality of radio can be an issue here, but not entirely as my listening to KRLA reveals.

Too busy to blog?

Its not that I don't have things to write about, but work plus school has been crowding out the blogging of late. Those ideas will hit the bloggosphere this weekend.

Illegal Operations opens its doors

Matthew Stinson of A Fearful Symmetry has started a new blog on gaming issues. That looks like fun. Check it out here.

Instapundit Predicts the Recall will go ahead

Instapundit writes, "Unless there's some awfully compelling legal principle that's not making it into the press accounts, I predict a reversal on this one. It's just too explosive."

I certainly hope so, or I have suddenly shifted to a much more radical position on whether or not our system is broken. In any event its time to start some serious activity to end legislation from the bench. Legislating is for legislators. Those elected representatives facing recall every couple of years, you know, not the appointed lifers on the bench.

How Conservative do you have to be to react with hostility to school lunches?

Lileks has linked twice to A Small Victory in a previous week (catching up). So I have been reading the whole thing. In this post, a review of another blog appears. John Hawkins complains about school lunches, and Michele Catalano at A Small Victory defends them. A comment on the boards at A Small Victory by Matthew Stinson summarizes his post here.

As mind readers and very close readers of this weblog will have sensed, I am a Hamiltonian. As Hamilton and his successors knew, there are times when it is wiser to pry a few tax dollars from the reluctant grip of Americans. Investing in the human and material capital (and by investing I mean we reasonably expect a return on investment at some point) generally meets the approval of Hamiltonians. That may mean a tarriff to stimulate industry (Hamilton was a tarriff man for these reasons), internal improvements, like canals, to encourage transport and commerce, and school lunches. I have little doubt that I live in a better society because of school lunches, not in some soft compassionate way, but because 1) its a waste of the education funds spent on a student who gains little or no benefit because he is too hungry to learn. I'd rather toss an extra $2 a day on the pile of ed money rather than see the $40 a day already spent go to waste. 2) What social benefits (say in terms of productive labor and future tax paying) can be expected from a well educated youth who was raised in poverty compared to a poorly eduacted youth? What additional costs are incurred by the poorly educated youth in terms of police, court, prison, or even just social services costs that do not accrue to his well educated fellow? Every good Hamiltonian will support any expenditure which saves him money or produces additional money beyond the investment. Hamiltonians will begin to demure as the expected return on the investment falls, though we are not above some consideration of non-fiscal benefits. And we have a phrase to decribe those conservatives who so jealously guard their earnings that they will not: penny wise and pound foolish.

By the way, Hawkins responds to A Small Victory and the comments there and digs a whole for himself even farther down. His mocking sign off, the same as A Small Victory is almost malicious.

As a final note, I am impressed with A Fearful Symmetry and will be making repeat visits.

Metaphysics before everything

I have been having a problem running into people who are putting their aestheics before their metaphysics, and its bothering me. People do this all the time, but I often don't have to see it, so the problem at hand its the running into. I would prefer that people put their metaphysics first all of the time, but I would prefer a lot of things in the way people reason and act.

What am I talking about, you ask? Metaphysics is the part of philosophy where we ask "what is the nature of things" or as Wittgenstien like to put it, "what is the case." I would argue that if what know what is, we develop a critical apparaus with which to examine our world, and when we encounter people with different values and aesthetics, we appreciate the difference, expand our understanding of the world, and happily go on our way. When you encounter someone who has a an explicit cosmology (their world view) and a well articulated ontology (their definitions of the concepts they use) its easy for you to see the world they see. When further, they start with a cosmology, so that its not yet determined by what they want it to be like, its open to new data. So for example, you might encounter someone who has not yet read a book, describe the book, and they would be interested in taking this new information (which may or may not agree with their ideas about things) and examining it, integrating it both by attacking and accepting various parts of it.

On the other hand, consider someone who begins with epistomology (they ask the question how do we know what we know) and then forms a metaphysics. Because they are aware of a lack of certainty of some kinds of knowledge, they will not include this knowledge in their metaphsyics. For example, say a person decides they cannot know the minds of others, they can only know themselves, and then forms a world view based only on themselves. This is narcisism. We may not have the same kind of knowledge about the various parts of the world, but the whole world, even the parts we cannot really understand must be included in our world. Once we have as good a notion of the world as we can get, we can form a philosophy and begin to refine our cosmology with a method. So I can begin not knowing about distant planets or the world beneath the oceans, but I can construct a way of knowing that I regard as reliable and begin to examine these little known places with that method. The same is true if we are talking about the nature of good and evil, as much as a place.

Most vexing of late has been the primacy of axiology (values) especially aesthetics (judgements about beauty and pleasure). Putting any axiology first and then to construct a metaphysics afterword is to decide how you would like the world to be, and then to pretend it really is that way. When we think this way, people who disagree with us are idiots because they disagree with the way the world is. This is the kind of thinking that totally shuts down thought. One decided what is true and then assumes they are right.

So I find myself in the public schools, hallowed halls of learning. I am interested in Virginia Postrel's new book The Substance of Style. I am teaching art. After school I wander across the hall to another art teacher and strike up a conversation about Postrel's book. I am myself still wrestling with the ideas within, and so have no firm judgement about the book, except that it is interesting. It is the aestheic argument, that people are capable of creating a valid aesthic for themselves and that their consumer choices are not decadent or vulgar that makes me think that an art teacher would be interested in this. Instead, I am confused by the responce I get: "Why would anyone make such an argument?" I reply, "Why would anyone make any kind of argument at all?" I see the posing of an argument as an attempt to refine my cosmology by use of a reliable rational and/or emperical method. So I take information, compare it to my experience as a test for validity. If the information differs from my experience, I attempt to either falsify one of them or synthasize them, depending on which seems to best explain the observable world. This teacher did not operate this way, and I was initially confused by it. This teacher had an aesthetics and Postrel's book disagreed with it, so the book was silly. As I mentioned this conversation to other people, they either humored me (because I am interested in the most esoteric things like how we philosophize) or they defended the ascetic aesthetic which Postrel attacks. I found myself replaying the conversation in different forms with different evidence. But what I kept encountering was the idea that we are destroying the planet, that technology is moving too fast, and that America is the worst offender. I think these analyses are wrong, but I am open to evidence to the contrary. The reverse was not true. People have decided that they don't like the way America consumes so it must be harmful. I don't like the way America consumes, so I don't consume that way. I recognize that my preference is a matter of taste. As for harm, I look for evidence in the outside world, not in my sense of what I perfer. I think people are making rational choices based on values different from mine. The evidence suggests that there are benefits and costs to the action of various people, and so I assume that their weight of the costs and benefits is rational unless I have some evidence to suggest otherwise. Overall I see a prosperous, healthy society that constantly improves itself. This only happens because it is acting consistently with reality. Pretending that things are they way they are not produces failure. Looking at the way things work closely, looking for cases that reveal the way things are, suggests to me that Americans are living reasonable and rational lives, and that they make reasonable choices.

What Free Speech?

Virginia Postrel writes, "cable shows don't suffer from the same constraints. Like print, they're free to provide whatever interviews, information, and entertainment, they think will serve their audience, without government editors telling them what to include or omit. That's called freedom of speech and the press."

The old rules made sense when there were two or three channels on TV, and just a handful of radio stations that did news and talk. Now that there is cable and the internet, as well as satalite radio, and talk of new delivery sytems out there, "equal time" makes no sense. When the market has high barriers to entry and few players you have an oligarchy, and its in the public good to keep a close eye on them. When you have substantially lowered the cost of entry and the number of players is huge , you have a free market, and then government has little useful to do, and is best advised to get out of the way.

Dennis Prager woke me up

Hugh Hewitt's first two hours run together on KRLA and KIDS, but KIDS runs his third hour after the second, so I have migrated from internet streaming to radio sometime between the begining of the show and the begining of the third hour. Afterwards, a fine show on computers comes on KIDS, so I left it on when I went to sleep. At 11pm, KIDS runs the Dennis Prager show. I kept waking up and was too interested in Prager's show to get back to sleep. I haven't heard the show since Tuesday (been teaching). So here it is 2am, and I am wide awake. Thanks Dennis.

Alfie Kohn a species of Marxist

I have finished reading Kohn's book, and looked into some of his earlier work. The Case Against Standardized Testing is actually a book which attacks the notion of choice and judgement neccesary to make choices. Kohn doesn't want us testing (or grading) because he doesn't want us to be able to compare students, teachers, or schools. The reason we ultimatly must not compare is because if we were to excercise such judgement we might choose to alter the schools, teachers, or classes for our students. Doing so implies adding market principles to schools, first through vouchers or other forms of choice (charter schools), and ultimatly perhaps privatization. It is privatization that earns Kohn's greatest hostility, because of the corruting influence of profit. Elsewhere, Kohn has attacked the whole idea of incentives, the basis of free market thinking. And so we see that Kohn rejects free market forces like choice and incentive, he attacks profit, and he is a radical egalitarian (another reason not to choose is because choice is false, we are all equal). That makes him a species of Marxist.

Is Testing a Conspiracy?

Reading Alfie Kohn's 2000 book, The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising Scores ad Ruining the Schools. Pretty easy to see where Kohn comes down on the issue. Why do we test as much as we test? Kohn identifies the following groups - those determined to cast the schools in thw worst possible light as a way of paving the way for privatization", "corporations that manufacture and score the exams", "politicians to show they're concerned about school achievement", and those members of the public who want accountability, measurements, or "tradtional 'back to basics' instruction." The privitizers and corporations are tricking us, and the rest of us are misguided.

His view of the move towards privatization is hostile: "After all if your goal was to serve up schools to the marketplace, where the point of reference is to maximize profit rather than what benifits children, it would be perfectly logical for you to administer a test that many students would fail." Its a capitalist plot. Those who apprently want privatization are a small enough group that they cannot do so legislatively, so they aim to trick everyone else with testing designed to fail. So they are very clever and powerful, but not powerful enough. Sounds like the classic conspiracy. Unfortunatly, a substantial minority of citizens favor privatization of some kind, probabaly a third. So the suggestion that testing is designed to fail to advance the cause of privatization means that this third is more commited to their notions of privatization than they are to the quality of schools of what ever cast they may be. I find this very hard to swallow. Is there someone out there that is so dedicated to market solutions to every problem that they would destroy the schools in order to save them? Certainly someone, somewhere feels this way, but its no where near the numbers that support privatization. This argument is a straw man intended to discredit this substantial minority of Americans. You can find people who want to privatize anything, including the police departments. Somehow we are able to avoid being tricked by their insidious conspiracies. Privatization is a serious issue and should be treated as such.

Its the corporations. The perpetual bugaboo for the Left. Somehow we are made to believe that the corporations have tricked us into purchasing a service we do not need (and without advertising and sexy models) and we can't figure it out. My we are stupid. How did the corporations trick us so? Is there a history of this pernicious influence? Can it be traced, or is it just sufficient to blame the corporations and expect us to uncritically accept the claim. This claim requires that in all the states that use testing government corruption is responsible for the current testing boon, and no one has noticed.

Poiticians want to look good. For whom? On the to next group, members of the public who want accountability, measurements, or "tradtional 'back to basics' instruction." Politicians want what the public demands. With the exception of election law, this is the end of the story. There is the possibility that the public wants wants better schools and the politicians grab onto testing as way to look good quickly, but this argument conflicts with the idea that tests are supposed to make schools look bad. If politcians invented testing to make themselves look good it would be easy to score well. Alfie's whole point is that its hard to score well and that the drive to do so is ruining our schools. So why does he include politcians? He's engaged in conspiratorial thinking and its easy to include politicians in the conspiracy, since they have few defenders as a group. So, we are left with the public, or some portion thereof sufficiently large to spread testing far and wide. So why do they do it? Mostly, Alfie tells us, because they don't know what they are doing.

In fact it works this way. The public demands higher standards and a return to teaching useful knowledge (rather than say, how America is a racist society). The question immediatly follows, how do we know teachers are doing this? Testing is best understood as an institutionalization of parents blaming teachers for low achievement. So a test is designed to measure whether the students are meeting the standards. We are, after all curious. Look at Missouri's standards for Social Studies and ask, should students know this, is it reasonable to expect these concepts be learned? I think its hard to argue that sudents should not or that the concepts are unteachable. Since pundits often shake their heads at studies that show how few of America's students can identify the civil war in even a rough chronology, perhaps they are in on the conspiracy too.

Matthew moves, his story blogged

My brother has moved. His story is on-line. Take a peek. Some scrolling will be helpful to find the whole story. At this time his past three posts have been about the move, I presume more will follow. Getting into the new place, learning a new city. You know the score.

He has yet to post on the drive to collect his U-Haul as he said he would. I collect the mail. I subscribe to a wide variety of magazines. As we wait for Matt to collect his last check, his U-Haul, &c, I read The New Republic on tax policy my sister reads the Fall Season Preview in Entertainment Weekly. This strikes him as both funny and utterly typical.

Navy Wants a Bush Carrier, and why we should never have a USS Clinton

CBS reports that the Navy seeks a Nimitz class carrier named after George H.W. Bush, the 41st President. Bush was a WWII war hero, negotiated the trecherous post-Cold War, lead the first Anti-Saddam Coallition, and was well regarded by the military. He makes a better candidate for a carrier the Ronald Reagan, who none the less strove to build a 600 ship navy.

William Jefferson Clinton had no military service, avoided foriegn policy, showed no backbone in Somolia, and was generally disliked by the military. If we are ever handed a USS Clinton by a democratic administration, I think we should demand equal time and insist on the Richard Nixon School of Journalism at the most liberal university in the Ivy League.

Hamas recognized as terrorist by EU

The Europeans have figured out that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Experts predict that the EU will shortly identify the duck as a variety of bird, and will catagorize the automobile as a type of vehicle.

Perennialists and Essentialists in Education

Having covered Social Reconstructionism a few days ago, I now turn to Perennialism and Essentialism. Depending on how broadly one wanted to group educational theory, Perennialism and Essentialism could be identified as a single theory based on the great books and engaged in transmitting the Western tradition. I, however, will argue that it is more useful to regard them as two related theories, Essentialism being an offspring of Perennialism. The Perennialist tradition goes back to Scholasticism. Its is still with us, though I think its bastions are in academia, Catholic parochial schools, and in the practitioners of the liberal arts who embrace the dead white male. Perennialism is not a theory interested in content, its a process oriented theory. You go through a course of education designed to sharpen and prepare the mind so that no problem, social, political, philosophical, scientific, or what have you, remains elusive to the educated person. Its fundamental purpose is to create critical thinkers who know who to reason reliably, who are familiar with past problems and their solutions as a guide to confronting future problems. Study of the great books, the Western canon, is the most effective way of producing such an education.

Perennialism's basic assumptions were not altered by the rise of Humanism. The Humanists shifted the emphasis in education, but they agreed with the Scholastics in the fundamentals - the purpose of education lay in teaching students how to think. The first great challenges to this notion arrived when education began to shift from an elite endevour to a mass instituition. In Europe and America, advocates for working people saw the Perennialist education as suitable for gentleman (and hence outdated in societies of mass participation, mass governence, and modern character). They advocated a new theory of education we now call vocational education, namely that school should prepare you for a trade (anything from carpentry to phyiscs to adverstising). Here the idea was, and is, that you need not study history, the history of ideas, or how to reason universally. You needed to solve specific problems tied to your profession or craft, and to learn the problems and methods of your profession or craft alone. The ability to sit back and reflect on he nature of things was regarded by the vocational advocates as impractical. From this movement, along with other intellectual challenges to the Western tradition, such as Pragmatism and Socialism, emerges John Dewey. Dewey changed two fundamental things in the school, its model of the classroom and its curriculum. The classroom, in Dewey's view was to be democratic and practical. The hierarchical model of the old (Perennialist) school, Dewey regarded as undemocratic, and its tradition, indoctrination. Rather than viewing the teacher as an expert in the classical texts, someone who would supervise and facilitate learning. Where the Perennialists saw the Western canon as the best pedagogical tool, Dewey favored projects, especially group projects, with a practical application of useful and relevant knowledge aquired by direct experience. Dewey was a leader in educational theory and provided an alternative to Perennialism that included an intellectual challenge to Perennialist assumptions. He taught at both the University of Chicago and Columbia University, where much of American educational theory has been produced. Some of his followers went to to become the Social Reconstructionists. Other followers, who remained closer to Dewey's own approach remained outsiders until the 60's and 70's when it might be possible to say they where the leading theory of education. While Dewey's approach waned in the face of Essentialism, many of its assumptions, especially on the practical and experientian nature of learning, remain part of many teacher's understanding regardeless of their broader theoretical approach.

In responce to the followers of Dewey and the Social Reconstructionists, there arose a reaction that wanted a return to Perennialism, or a modified Perennialism. These are the Essentialists. They come in two varieties. One kind is academic and looks a lot like the Perennialists, except that they are self-consciously engaged in restoring the Western tradition to its proper place, against the threats of its intellectual challengers. The Perennialits today are largely engaged in advocating the Great Books, a rigorous and critical approach to reasoning, and the transmission of the Western tradition. The Essentialists want to do that all the while combating the influence of Dewey and his followers, especially the Social Reconstructionists. As such, they have gotten political. They advocate in the political arena for the codification of an approach that supports the Western tradition. Its very hard to codify critical thinking, so the regulations handed down, mostly by state departments of education, tend to require certain facts or ideas be learned. To verify this learning, Essentialists have embraced an invention never interesting to the Perennialists- standardized testing. Essentialists are the great testing advocates. Its not sufficient to require the Great Books be included in the curiculum because Social Reconstructionists will deconstruct them to make the point they want to anyway. Hence, it is neccesary to make sure ideas taht are part of the Western tradition are transmitted too. Standardized testing in this regard has made considerable advances in the past decade. Once largely confined to multiple choice testing, current testing now asks students to explain their answers, and so hopes to encourage critical thinking as well. Many teachers today are remote from the Perennial tradition and are at a loss to 'teach to the test' because it doesn't require coverage of a discreet body of facts, but wants students to engage in ideas. This is because Essentialists have their roots in the Perennialist interest in knowing how to reason.

There is another group of Essentialists, and these are the non-academic, unintellectual (not neccesarily anti-intellectual, but there is some of that), who have no deep connnection to the Great books, but see that the Social Reconstructionists as well as the the Dewey methods are not transmitting their values, and sometimes seems to reject their values. So they construct a remembered past. They were taught under some variety of Perennial theory, but don't have any working understanding of the theory, its assumptions, or purpose. They want their values and the Western tradition taught. They oppose the values and purposes of the Left in education. So they favor testing, prefer teachers who are authorities in their fields, and who teach the facts, not subjective interpretations. The fact, for example, that Platonists and Aristotelians (you may know them as Rationalsts or Empiricists) will disagree, is an esoteric quibble. They don't want they world turned upside down so that the American people is evil and its enemies are heroes. They don't want traditional social roles inverted. They don't want queer theory in the schools. They want patriotism, they want conservative social values, they want democracy and capitalism taught in the schools. They want they produce of the Western tradition. They are less concerned about how we got here. This second wing of the Essentialists is a large, politicized group of parents who mobilized as a part of the New Right in the 1970's to take American back from the Left, both the Old and New Left. During the 1980's the Essentialists won politically, producing far larger numbers of supporters in American society than any rival theory. While the intellectual leadership of the Essentialists comes from academics or other kinds of intellectuals, such as Allan Bloom and William Bennet, whose programs are largely Perennialist, the success of the Essentialists rests with mobilized middle America. Essentialists of both kinds fear that the other theories of education (mostly Dewey and the Social Reconstructionists, since they are the main alternatives) have diluted the quality of education by focusing on everyday experience or social reconstruction and produced children who can't even read or write. They want to abandon the school as a labratory for democracy or socialism and get 'back to basics'. Teach students to read and write, to have basic competencies in basic knowledge of the language and history, or math and science, and many Essentialists are satsified. They might want excellence, but its excellence in basic skills. Other Essentialists still regard excellence as including critical thinking and a working knowledge of the whole history of the Western tradition, not just its present.

Interestingly, while the broader culture is strongly Essentialist, and a fair (though minority) portion of the academy is Perennialist, these two theories are rare in the public school. They are largely imposed from outside by the political process or social pressure. I have mentioned in earlier posts that teachers tend to run the whole political spectrum, but they don't generally embrace testing, critical thinking of the classical model (debate teachers aside), a canon of great books, or the socratic method. Further, few of them could claim to be authorities in their subject area. The dominant theory held by most teachers is some species of Dewey's philosophy. Its based on the interests of the child (make it relvent to the learner) not on some objective assessment of what the student ought to know. Learning should be a hands on process of experimentation during the course of projects, especially cooperative group projects. And that, as Rouseau supposed, children will learn on their own what they need to know and will develope into the people they need to be. All a teacher has to do is facilitate the process.

Local school officials close barn door after the horses escape

A 6th grade boy was killed in front of his school in a traffic accident. Here is the coverage of the contraversy in the local paper. Notice there is no discussion of the driver's culpability in the death of the 6th grader. What is not mentioned, but was covered on local TV, the boy crossed one way, realized he had forgotten his lunch, turned, got waved across by a west-bound driver, and then got hit by the east bound driver. I drove the area, and the presence of a school and school crossing are clearly marked, a flashing yellow light marks the crosswalk in question, so I cannot see how the driver can get away with anything better then negligent homicide, if not worse (no determination has been published regarding the driver, his speed, when or if he applied his breakes). Some of this can be found on their website. The burden for protecting children belongs to the community obeying laws around school zones and school busses. (See a story yesterday updating us about a death at a school bus from last spring.) The people blaming the school district are enemies of the public good (the best being the enemy of the good).

Blogger loses a long post, ticks me off

Blogger.com just lost a long post on Dennis Prager's hour on social reconstruction. I have no idea whether I'll bother to re-write it. In the mean time, look for alternatives with a greater reliability if you are considering your own blog.

The state department characterizes "old Europe" as the Chocolate Makers

I heard on Hugh Hewitt that the state department characterized France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxemburg as the chocolate makers regarding thier plan to build an autonomous European military command. The story can be found on-line here. The point made on the Hewitt show was that if the state department, whose job it is to play nice, is making fun of you, you must be absurd.

Germany expands presence in Afghanistan

Karl Feldmeyer suggests that Germany is expanding its role in Afghanistan in order to build raproachment with the US without getting involved in Iraq, where Chancellor Schröder made such a fus about during his election campiagn in 2002. Feldmeyer says that Germany has already tried this strategy by expanding its role in Macedonia. He doubts it will work in Afghanistan for the same reasons. He goes on to predict greater American difficulty in Iraq and American comprimise there. He may or may not have a sense of the electoral risks of continuing difficulties in Iraq for the Bush administration, but I think he underestimates the determination of that administration not to abandon its principles in order to curry favor with the voters. Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz have all recently emphisized our long term commitment there.

U.S. Companies in Germany out perform German firms

Andreas Back tells Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "Another major aspect is the U.S. corporate culture, which usually involves short lines of decision, quick decision-taking, less bureaucracy and a profit- and target-oriented management style. Shareholder value is a more important factor in the management of U.S. companies than in Germany." He goes on to say, "German companies still pursue a far more complex approach where profit is not always the main goal." This is the heart of the matter. Profit will drive innovation and improvement while also being there to pay for it as well. Profit is a push and a pull factor. We seek it, so we innovate, and when we have it we can afford to improve. Spare us from European style socialism. Spare us from any kind of socialism, frankly.

Back: "Many German companies have already introduced a more American management style."
FAZ: "Does this lead to the general conclusion that the U.S. management style also leads to higher profitability?"
Back: "If you want to boil it down to a clear formula and disregard all the nuances, yes, you can say that."

Germany lacks capital surplus to invest in equipment investments

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, equipment investments as a share of real gross domestic product, "has declined markedly in Germany over the past 10 years."

"While a ratio of 22.9 percent still ranked Germany in the upper third of EU countries in 1991, Germany lagged all others except Ireland and France in 2002. At 19.7 percent, its investment ratio was also slightly lower than the EU average of 20.4 percent. "

A falling rate of investment in capital means falling rate of increase in worker productivity. Falling worker productivity means slower overall GDP growth. "Experts now estimate the German economy's growth potential at just 1.5 percent, down from 2 percent in the 1980s." By comparison, the "U.S. economy, however, recorded an increase in its investment ratio to 20 percent from 15.5 percent during the 1990s." Also, "Portugal currently boasts the highest absolute investment ratio in Europe, at 26.9 percent." Go Portugal.

Matt's Blog is getting and addy change

My brother's blog is getting an address change because its host site has moved to a new provider. I'll update the address when I find out what it is now.

From Welfare to Work in the German city of Kassel

In this article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, we the see the kind of shift that took place in America in the 1990's. A reform America took in reasonably good economic times was taken because America largely rejected the nanny state. In Germany it is more the result of what could be called socialist exhaustion. When social benefits rise eventually its acts as a drag on the economy. This eventually forces a cut in social benefits because the weighted down economy can't afford them anymore. The Reagan and Thacher revolutions were a responce to the bad economies of the 70's. The Germans largely avoided the weak economy of the 70s, as did the Japanese and both are forced into confronting reform now, two decades later. Unfortunatly its all the harder when the disfunction has become so entrenched.

"The legislation governing welfare is a federal matter in Germany, and while Hesse Premier Roland Koch has argued for a U.S.-style system that would force welfare recipients to return to the workforce within a fixed period or face a loss of benefits, officials in Germany do not yet have this leeway."

Second Week of School slows blogging

Its the second week of school, both teaching as a substitute, my fifth year, and taking classes at night. Both the time required and appropriation of my mental activity slows blogging. It also can change what I would otherwise write about. Expect more on schools, education, and academia in general, because I have got it comming and going.