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Exploring the Education Enigma
June 3rd, 2009
By Cambridge Who’s Who Contributing Author Bruce Deitrick Price
Here’s an odd thing to confess: I have been writing about education for 30 years. It has been an exciting adventure; it has also been at times totally mystifying.
We have grown to expect that there are faster, more pleasant ways to accomplish any task; conversely, there must be slower, ineffective ways of doing so. It is the second methodology that the education establishment seems to prefer. Our public schools appear almost intentionally designed to perform at a mediocre level. How can this tendency be explained?
When you look at the statistics and surveys, you will notice that they paint a consistently bleak picture. We spend billions every year on public education, yet SAT scores continue to fall. Our top students do not compete well with top students from other countries. The general public seems to know barely enough to read a daily newspaper. And then there is the really big mystery of 50 million functional illiterates. Who let this tragedy happen?
To answer these questions, I researched further back in history. I tried to understand how the early educators from a century ago looked at life, children and this new field they had created. The unexpected reality is that they were not primarily focused on education as most of us understand the term, but were preoccupied with social engineering. Education was a set of tools with which they intended to build a new, more leveled society.
Many of the articles I have written attempt to explain where and why our educators got off track. I have been especially fascinated by the Reading Wars, a significant conflict in American education and a clear illustration of what can happen when elite educators lose their way. Basically, phonics was scorned; a flawed method called whole word was enshrined and literacy promptly started to decline.
As I gained more understanding about the damage caused by bogus reading methods, I began to have a clearer sense of what we need to do across the board to improve our public education system. We simply have to identify the failed ideas and get rid of them.
Education reformers typically try three other approaches: spend money, recommend new policies or point out best practices. I do not think these techniques will work now. The problem is that the education establishment is married to its bad ideas; these people are set in their ways. We need an intervention.
Oddly enough, we are engaged in an education war with our own educators. I want to persuade the public that this is an intellectual war – we must fight the bad ideas with good ideas. I do not think we have any hope of improvement unless we confront what happened to American education: namely, that our schools were made ineffective by design.
So now we have to move in the opposite direction: discard the gimmicks that were smuggled into the system; then restore basics and academics to their proper prominence, albeit taught in the most ingenious ways. Our first job is to zero in on the dozens of overhyped “progressive” innovations that turned out, in practice, to be destructive and regressive. We will be better off without Whole Word, Reform Math, Constructivism, No Memorization, Self-Esteem, Bilingual Education, Cooperative Learning, Fuzzy Anything and a dozen others.
Many people like to believe that our educators are clumsy or befuddled by fads. No, I am afraid not. You would have a much clearer sense of what happened if you were to imagine a bunch of guys like John Dewey seated around a table discussing their ideological goals, devising tactics, and trying to keep the public from interfering. I know people who shy away from the word “conspiracy,” but let’s be realistic. This track record goes back nearly a century. Let’s show respect for those 50 million functional illiterates who spent their lives in a twilight zone, thanks to John Dewey and his pals. You cannot create this kind of disaster in a few years or by accident. No, the perpetrators have to keep plugging away, decade after decade. I think the evidence proves that our education establishment did just that.
It is painful to deal with such an unpleasant history, but it is also very liberating. Suddenly, everything makes sense. Dewey and his friends were socialists; they were trying to create a socialist America. This goal is clear in their writings. For them, the obvious first step was to reduce individualism and to raise more cooperative children. How do you do this? Dewey’s answer–and it is still in play–is that you drastically limit the time spent on reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, etc., while giving much more time to group activities. And when you do teach substance, you teach it in muddled, ineffective ways. There is the whole agenda in a nutshell. It is only a matter of time before everybody knows a lot less and thinks much less clearly.
I should mention, by the way, that I never criticize teachers. I am concerned only with top education theorists, administrators, etc. These people are responsible for what happens in American education. Teachers are as much the victims of these educators as the children and parents are.
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Bruce Price deals with all of these topics on his website Improve-Education.org and in his fifth book “THE EDUCATION ENIGMA – What Happened to American Education.”
Cambridge Who’s Who Contributing Author Bruce Deitrick Price
May 15th, 2009Bruce Deitrick Price’s Biography
Cambridge Who’s Who member Bruce Deitrick Price is an outspoken artist, novelist and education advocate whose numerous creative works can be viewed online. He is the owner of Word-Wise Advertising, a creative and intellectual consulting firm based in Norfolk, Virginia, that he founded in 1980. Services offered by Word-Wise Advertising include copywriting, corporate identity, brochures, mailings, logo designs and marketing consulting.
For his site Improve-Education.org, Bruce Deitrick Price has written approximately 40 articles on education-related topics. While education reform is the main subject of many of these essays, he also writes about robots, sophistry, Latin, phonics, George Orwell’s 1984, Ivan Pavlov, English usage and design. One of his favorite themes involves “the foolish things that our elite educators do,” although he is quick to point out that he is not criticizing teachers. For his Cambridge Who’s Who Contributing Author article, Bruce Deitrick Price explores the negative impact that flawed education ideas have had on today’s schools.
Lit4u.com is Bruce Deitrick Price’s creative writing outlet; it showcases his ability to compose original short fiction and essays. There you can find information about “Too Easy,” his novel published in 1994 by Simon & Schuster. Additionally, you can read excerpts from two of his unpublished novels, titled “In the Shadow of the White House” and “Two Will Die.” He is particularly proud of his long poem “Theoryland.”
Throughout his artistic career, Bruce Deitrick Price – who received Honors in English Literature from Princeton University – has presented original work in more than 40 exhibits. He is known for his abstract, modern and hip approach, as best witnessed in his collection named Small Universes. “The goal is that each [painting/construction] should contain the maximum amount of creativity, energy and beauty, i.e., each is a universe,” he describes.
For those interested in viewing Bruce Deitrick Price’s work as an artist in the traditional and digital disciplines, you can visit http://www.artnorfolk.com. If you are in the Norfolk area, be sure to visit his art gallery, Word-Wise Modern,which was recognized as the Best Place to Discover New Art in the Spring 2008 issue of Hampton Roads Magazine. Bruce Deitrick Price, who is well-versed in digital art, has curated a major show featuring the work of other digital artists.
To learn more about Bruce Deitrick Price’s education crusade, visit his blog: “Education Improved”
Cambridge Who’s Who Resource Center Article(s) by Bruce Deitrick Price
