Here is a
New York Times review of several then new books on education that came out in 1993 (the year
Character First: The Hyde School Difference was first published). I am posting the whole piece in case any one is interested; I have highlighted the more pertinent sections in blue.
Dr. John Allen Paulos, the author of this review, is not especially persuaded by Joe's insistence that the be-all and end-all of education resides in character, and moreover, spelled his name wrong to boot! Apparently it took a number of communication attempts for Joe to get Paulos to attach a note of correction to the end of the piece. The only other change I was able to find in the whole article was Paulos's combining the "Gault" paragraph with the one immediately preceding it (the one which includes the George Bernhard Shaw quip of "The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mold a child's character.").
I have copied here the original version of the article, plus added the note of correction which comes with the second version. Here are both links; if someone can find any other differences between the two, please chime in!
original version ||
"corrected" versionI might also point out -- for context, in case anyone is interested -- that the book
Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong (Simon & Schuster, $23), by William K. Kilpatrick, is listed as recommended by the decidedly conservative
Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character at BU. We first came across them not too long ago in the "The Ten Priorities" thread, as the founder of CAEC, Dr. Kevin Ryan, saw fit to give a favorable review to Laura and Malcolm's book
The Biggest Job. See
HERE to jump into that discussion.
Also, William J. Bennett (author of another book emphasizing character and sundry virtues) has a whole screenful of conservative causes linked to him to the tune of over a million bucks thrown in his direction. Copy and paste his name into the SEARCH box at
Media Transparency for the page of their summarized links.
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If Everybody Knows So Much About Education, Why Doesn't Education Work?By JOHN ALLEN PAULOS;
Published: November 14, 1993I RECENTLY heard of a foreign con artist whose lure was that he could help students enter a very competitive national university. The man bragged that he knew the arcane details of the admission process, had contacts with the appropriate officials and so on. After gathering detailed information, he collected an exorbitant fee, promising to return it if the student was not admitted. Every year he threw the information out; every year some of the students got in. Their fees he kept.
In my more cynical moments, I think that our preschool through high school system is no more effective than that charlatan in preparing students for college, a job or both. The drumbeat of dismal test scores (not the baseball caps worn backward) may be cited as warrant for my cynicism. (The latest literacy statistics are just as depressing: nearly one-quarter of American adults are either illiterate or functionally so, according to the Department of Education.) Whether the recent books proposing solutions to this plight offer reason for hope, the reader can decide.
In "Overcoming Math Anxiety" (a new edition of this 1978 manual is forthcoming), Sheila Tobias wrote that members of the laity sometimes have trouble with mathematics because they add more variables to a problem than are there, wondering irrelevantly, for example, why Waldo works three times as fast as Oscar does. They simply aren't accustomed to the austerity of mathematical problems. A mathematician confronting educational issues, I feel flummoxed for the opposite reason. The problems are staggeringly complex, with psychological, social and ideological dimensions, and these books seem to mirror the confused, uneven and dismaying state of school reform. If education theorists as diverse as Plato, Rousseau, Dewey and the proverbial bartender are correct in thinking that schools shape the ambient society, we're in trouble. In any case, the nature of the educational enterprise provides some warrant for the opinions scattered below.
The angriest book -- and the one that's most fun to read, even if one doesn't agree with its analysis -- is Myron Lieberman's PUBLIC EDUCATION: AN AUTOPSY (Harvard University, $27.95). Mr. Lieberman, an education writer and consultant, argues strongly that profit-making schools (like those envisioned for Chris Whittle's Edison Project, a design for technologically advanced private institutions) should be allowed to assume a role coordinate with that of public and nonprofit private schools, as was the case for much of the 19th century.
Mr. Lieberman's suggestions are more radical than simple school vouchers, and his indictment more pointed than the standard lament. He maintains that the financial information on the cost of public education released by teachers' unions is misleadingly self-serving and significantly underestimates what is being spent on schools. He decries bureaucratic regulations and uniform pay scales and seems to see the public schools as one of the last vestiges of socialism in the world, a recalcitrant remnant that will soon go the way of the old Iron Curtain governments. Grade inflation and the breakdown of assessment procedures in schools are likened to currency inflation and the loss of economic discipline. The public schools haven't been able to raise the performance of minority students and, Mr. Lieberman asserts, have been unwilling to make this fact clear, and so have one more reason to be reluctant to implement national testing.
Although demographic and social changes have hastened the decline in public education, a more profound explanation for its disintegration, according to Mr. Lieberman, is an undermining conflict of interest. Government should be a watchdog for the education consumer, yet it is a near-monopoly producer of education. It is as if the Food and Drug Administration not only policed the drug industry but was the primary manufacturer of drugs as well. Eliminating public-school primacy, he maintains, will also lead to a reduction in social dissension. Schools would not be hobbled by a misguided sense of egalitarianism that rules out programs and proposals that would benefit one class of students more than another.
MIRACLE IN EAST HARLEM: The Fight for Choice in Public Education (Times Books/Random House, $23), by Seymour Fliegel (written with James MacGuire, a fellow at the Center for Social Thought, a public-policy research center in New York City), also deals with school choice but within the more limited framework of the public schools. Mr. Fliegel, who has been a teacher and an administrator in the New York City public-school system, tells the instructive story of the development over the last 20 years of successful alternative schools in East Harlem. He describes the autonomy and consequent enthusiasm of teachers, the increased parental and community commitment, student projects, the much improved test scores and the byzantine politics of the New York school board. And he acknowledges the pivotal roles of Anthony J. Alvarado, who was forced in May 1984 to resign as Schools Chancellor of New York City because of a financial scandal; Deborah Meier, a principal of an East Harlem high school, and other school officials.
The establishment of such new and generally smaller schools has spread far beyond East Harlem and has fueled the public-school choice movement that for the moment is being supported by the Clinton Administration. Since the public schools are, in my opinion, an institutional embodiment of American ideals, I see public-school choice as an encouraging prospect (for some districts) and not, as Mr. Lieberman does, as an oxymoronic nonstarter. Nevertheless, there are difficulties, among them transportation costs, dissemination of the requisite knowledge about available alternatives, allotment of spaces in popular schools and a dubious assumption: that people will choose schools with rigorous standards.
William J. Bennett, a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration who has flirted with running for President in 1996, escorts us from the issue of school choice to the not unrelated one of character formation. His anthology THE BOOK OF VIRTUES: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (Simon & Schuster, $27.50) is well stocked with inspirational writings taken from the Greeks (Aesop, Plato), the Bible (David and Goliath, Ecclesiastes), American folklore (Washington and the cherry tree), allegorical stories (Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does a Man Need?"), Shakespeare, Grimms' fairy tales, and writings by Goethe, Longfellow, Robert Frost, Oscar Wilde (oddly) and numerous others. Many of the stories are adaptations of the originals, a few are from non-Western sources, and most are only a few pages long. Unfortunately, the organizational principle is weak. Each chapter is devoted to one virtue -- responsibility, self-discipline, compassion, friendship, perseverance, courage, faith, loyalty, honesty and work -- and the pieces are chosen to illustrate the relevant quality for the book's young audience.
Providing only an introduction and a prefatory snippet for each virtue, Mr. Bennett, never shy about appearing to speak his mind, is surprisingly not much of a presence in his own book. The argument implicit in the selections seems to be that students exposed to these stories early in their lives will more likely develop the character and moral foundation needed for both their own personal success and for the cohesion of society.
WHY JOHNNY CAN'T TELL RIGHT FROM WRONG (Simon & Schuster, $23), by William K. Kilpatrick, a professor of education at Boston College, expands upon this thesis for adults, insisting that the connection between narrative and morality is an essential one, and that teachers and parents should read worthy stories to the young. But stories are not just a means for imparting abstract moral principles to unsophisticated people; Mr. Kilpatrick tells his presumably more worldly readers we all need them to understand ourselves, and to clarify and strengthen our values and ideals.
Whatever one's political persuasion, it's hard to deny any of this. Character does matter, and what children (and adults) read, watch and listen to certainly affects their attitudes and behavior. Why else do people bristle at violence in entertainment and on the news, or at references to their group that fail to enhance its self-esteem? Nevertheless, skepticism, a virtue Mr. Bennett doesn't mention, compels me to doubt that much school time should be devoted to cultivating virtue in our children. More hyperbolic misgivings are expressed in George Bernard's Shaw's quip that "the vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mold a child's character."
JOSEPH W. GAULT, founder of the Hyde School, a private secondary school in Bath, Me., disagrees. In CHARACTER FIRST: The Hyde School Difference (Institute for Contemporary Studies, $18.95), he avers that character (as delineated in his five-part definition: "destiny, humility, conscience, truth and brother's keeper") is more important than academics and tells of his days at other New England boarding schools with their dispiriting emphasis on scholarship. The Hyde School is open to students who have not done well elsewhere. The parent-child bond and the setting of an example, Mr. Gault notifies us, are also of crucial significance, and he relates how he felt compelled to overcome his fear of heights and climb across a narrow mountain ledge or else lose his son's respect. Coincidentally, the day I read this I was climbing in Maine with my son, and we both decided, wisely and with full respect for each other, not to continue a potentially dangerous climb. A quibble, certainly, but it illustrates the multifaceted and subjective nature of character, and the consequent trickiness of basing a school's philosophy on its inculcation, especially on a large public scale. The book comes equipped with a testimonial foreword by Cher, whose son is a student at the Hyde School.The problems for the students in Madeline Cartwright's school in Philadelphia's Strawberry Mansion district were even more basic than those of character. They involved physical necessities like food and clothing. In FOR THE CHILDREN: Lessons From a Visionary Principal (Doubleday, $19.95), written with Michael D'Orso, a reporter for The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in Norfolk, Va., Ms. Cartwright relates how as principal she transformed this predominantly black elementary school through a combination of tough love and material provision. She did her students' laundry, scrubbed the bathroom floor, bought students shoes and provided them with haircuts, insisted on committed teachers familiar with the neighborhood, involved families and the community, and answered her own telephones in the morning to embarrass people calling in to take the day off. Except for the last, possibly, her actions were heroic and turned the place around. But can we reasonably expect as much from other teachers and principals, many already overworked?
More generally, what do we get from accounts of charismatic teachers and principals? Inspiration is one answer, of course, and it's telling that education, unlike other disciplines ranging from physics to movie making, lacks a pantheon of great practitioners. Still, without some feasible directives and formalizable insights, a more likely effect may be a feeling of inadequacy.
In THINKING ABOUT OUR KIDS (Free Press, $22.95), Harold Howe 2d, a former United States Commissioner of Education who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, repeats the bromides about the role of parents and communities and pleads for schools to respect diversity. His recommendations are reasoned and earnest, almost bland in their level-headed kindness. He is more interesting and controversial when he discusses the financing of K-12 education. Because schools are supported primarily by property taxes, poor children generally go to the schools that are underfinanced, and thus, like Ms. Cartwright's students, don't have the material support needed to learn. Mr. Howe suggests that to rectify this imbalance we should eliminate tax breaks to the middle class, like the mortgage interest deduction and subsidies for state colleges and universities. In their stead, every family would be eligible for other benefits, like child support payments. That would, he appears to think, make the middle class more amenable to his suggestions.
Financial proposals more in the mainstream are found in HEAD START AND BEYOND: A National Plan for Extended Childhood Intervention (Yale University, $20), edited by Edward Zigler and Sally J. Styfco, psychologists at Yale. They and their co-contributors colorlessly evaluate various Federal education programs for young children. Head Start is the most successful (President Clinton said earlier this year that he'd like to spend more money on it) and deservedly the best known. Children who have gone through that preschool program have better health and nutrition, smoother social adjustment and lower levels of delinquency. Alas, sequels usually fail. As the book shows, two small programs, Follow Through and Transition Project, attempted unsuccessfully to extend Head Start and its benefits to the school-age population. Meanwhile, the $5 billion a year in spending under Chapter I, which offers tutoring and remedial education to poor children, has gone primarily to supplement local education budgets.
Mr. Zigler, one of Head Start's founders, cites the reasons for its effectiveness: comprehensive assistance, family involvement, constant fine-tuning, informative evaluation procedures and an attempt to insure developmental continuity. This last factor leads to his recommendations that the Johnson-era Chapter I program (originally Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) should refocus itself and become the school-age version of Head Start, which should itself be more adequately financed.
In HEAD START: The Inside Story of America's Most Successful Educational Experiment (Basic Books, $27.50), Mr. Zigler, this time with Susan Muenchow, a child care and education administrator, provides a more anecdotal account of some of these important initiatives, and of how they have been paid for, providing, for example, a nice account of the substantial support provided by Caspar W. Weinberger when he was President Nixon's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.
After choice, character formation and financing, it's a relief to report on two books that deal with pedagogy, albeit in contrary ways. In THE CHILDREN'S MACHINE: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer (Basic Books, $22.50), Seymour Papert, the author of "Mindstorms," a book on technology and education, and inventor of the children's computer language Logo, deals again with the use of computers in instructing children. Mr. Papert is not primarily interested in teaching facts or even skills, but rather in imparting certain metaskills, in particular the ability, increasingly vital in an information-drenched world, to learn how to learn. He coins the word "mathetics" for these higher-level skills and intends them to include problem-solving techniques (working backward from an assumed solution, examining similar problems, dividing a problem into doable pieces), ways of monitoring one's comprehension, facility in generating enlightening discussions and a variety of more general learning strategies.
Computers, Mr. Papert argues, make such learning easier, since the consequences of one's actions are immediately apparent. And because computers are more flexible and user-friendly than ever, they allow for very different cognitive styles. Were electronic multimedia encyclopedias (knowledge machines) freely available to all students (he doesn't say much about how to pay for the machines), the students could fully explore a subject of interest to them and gradually establish connections to other less palatable subjects.
Mr. Papert describes several cases of technophobic young artists, for example, who flourish using Logo-controlled plastic automatons. The details sometimes get lost in a wordy haze, but what's clear is that children don't learn by passively absorbing inert bits of knowledge. Computer-aided instruction, if used correctly, can tap into their natural enthusiasm for interactive play, collaborative learning and improvisation; Nintendo leads to comprendo.
E. D. Hirsch's diagnosis of our educational ills is quite different. He asserted in "Cultural Literacy," a 1987 best seller, and reiterates in his two newest books that a common core of factual knowledge makes schooling more effective, fair and democratic, and helps to "create cooperation and solidarity in our schools and nation." WHAT YOUR FIFTH GRADER NEEDS TO KNOW: Fundamentals of a Good Fifth-Grade Education (Doubleday, $22.50) and WHAT YOUR SIXTH GRADER NEEDS TO KNOW: Fundamentals of a Good Sixth-Grade Education (Doubleday, $22.50), like their predecessors for each of the earlier grades in the so-called Core Knowledge Series, are compendiums of what children should know in the areas of American and world cultures, language and literature, mathematics, science and geography. Mr. Hirsch does a good job, but it's a safe bet that most fifth and sixth graders (and probably even most adults) don't know what he declares they should about, say, the Boer War (Britain versus the Boers of South Africa, 1899 to 1902) or Mercator projection (how to make flat maps of the round world that sailors can actually use).
WHETHER such inventories are pedagogically effective is debatable, as is the question of ideal curricular choices. Many African-Americans, in particular, would demand expanded treatment of their history, something, perhaps, like PERSEVERANCE (Time-Life Books, $29.95), written by the editors of Time-Life Books. Under Time Warner's plan to buy copies for every high school and public library system in the country, they may get it. The heavily illustrated book, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard, is the first of three volumes under the rubric "African Americans: Voices of Triumph." A straightforward narrative extending from the slave trade to the civil rights movement, it is suitable for classroom use or personal reading.
Criticism about specific content aside, Mr. Hirsch's main claim about the importance of shared knowledge is persuasive; the center doesn't seem to be holding, and for many it's not even visible. In the absence of effective teachers or of Mr. Papert's knowledge machines, Mr. Hirsch's books might be quite useful to students as supplemental reading, to parents as academic benchmarks and to some teachers as texts. Their sheer factuality avoids undue emphasis on either character or self-esteem (of concern to all, but excessively so to "conservatives" and "liberals," respectively).
There are other arguments for basic standards and a minimum core curriculum (whatever their provenance). One is that we won't have to rely completely on the expertise and creativity of each and every local school system across the country. And if school choice is actually adopted, we won't have to worry as much about schools and teachers competing with one another by offering dinosaur exhibits rather than probability lessons, gut courses rather than good ones.
Developing character, instilling self-esteem, involving parents and arranging adequate financing are all necessary, but the deficiencies in factual knowledge and critical thinking skills remain the most troubling and irremediable. It's not surprising that some studies have indicated that despite their miserable performance on international math tests, for example, American students rank near the top when it comes to mathematical self-confidence. If we allow too many of our children to grow into gullible ignoramuses brimming with character and self-esteem, we'll be perpetrating a fraud far worse than the one with which I began this survey.John Allen Paulos, the author of "Innumeracy" and "Beyond Numeracy," is a professor of mathematics at Temple University.Correction: February 6, 1994, Sunday
Because of an editing error, an essay in The Times Book Review on Nov. 14, about books on education, misspelled the surname of the author of "Character First: The Hyde School Difference." He is Joseph W. Gauld, not Gault. A letter of Nov. 17 from Mr. Gauld, asking for a correction, apparently went astray, and Mr. Gauld wrote again on Jan. 4.