This week, we had a lively chat about the American culture war theme in this election.
My final impressions are that much of the culture war divisions are not real. The assumption that the urban/liberals/technocracy is sneering at the nonurban/old economy/conservatives/moderates/religious folk is a political fiction. Most urban dwellers come from other parts of the country. Before my husband moved to NYC, he lived in Cleveland. Urban dwellers have family that go to malls, live in small towns, and go to church. There are misconceptions that the liberals in cities want to teach 12 years olds about sex education and want to undermine other ways of life. I think that the culture war is really about a painful transition to a new economy and there are those who really being left behind in this process.
Please read Tim Burke for a more nuanced discussion. I really must read Nixonland.
Apt. 11d 
Still seems to me to be there, and to be big. My dem precinct captain referred to Palin as ‘this Gidget McCain has picked’. Phoebe Malts has been fulminating about flyover types for a good while: http://whatwouldphoebedo.blogspot.com/2008/09/insult-to-injury.html and a lot of the quoted Palin backers have been saying something that sounds a lot like ‘take that, Princeton swells!’…
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Maltz, sorry.
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But, Laura’s comment says “that much of the culture war divisions are not real”, not that people aren’t still using them. She said a lot of the urban elite are closely tied to the rural/small town/world, that they do and say the same things that the “hockey moms” do, including, for example, to “choose” life by bearing “inconvenient” children. I myself grew up in Ohio, across the street from a cornfield, and have been married longer than Sarah Palin (though I’m younger).
And, I think I said that a lot of the small town folk actually do a lot of what they associate with urban America — most notably, Cheney’s grandson with two moms, pregnant teenagers.
But, Laura, did you notice that you are reprising Obama’s message from 2004? It was a plea, a refusal to those who would divide us.
“It is that fundamental belief — It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum: “Out of many, one.”
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us — the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of “anything goes.” Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an “awesome God” in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”
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I think that the culture war is really about a painful transition to a new economy and there are those who really being left behind in this process.
I think this is significantly true. I think it would be even more true to say “to a new political economy”; I think many of the people upset about losing relative status (being left behind) see their losses in terms of social, not economic, power.
It is, I think, undisputable that Joe Anycitizen has less control over his town library and his town school than he did in 1950. He ALSO has less power over his town grocery store.
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OK, from Slate: “Red or Blue, Which are You?”
http://slate.msn.com/Features/040712_RedBlueQuiz/quiz.html#
I liked it — no over abundance of nascar questions.
Of course, I came out 50/50.
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I came out about 30/70 (mostly red). It didn’t give me a number, just an arrow on a spectrum. I think it must have been based on the movies I would buy. I’ve gotten around enough that I don’t think there was much of a difference for the actual knowledge questions.
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I was about 60/40 Blue. I blame it on the fact that I know a little country music and have actually fired a gun.
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Well, I think my 50/50 means that I’m actually from the geek culture (or maybe that I’m originally from the midwest well, or that I’m not a white American of any color). I didn’t know what most of the blue stuff was or most of the red stuff. Avenue Q? A 3 with wings?
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Oh, bj, I wish you could meet my girlfriend. You know, my girlfriend who lives in Canadaaaaaa.
I scored slightly red. I said I wouldn’t put any of those movies in my video library, mainly because I don’t have a video library. Too much clutter!
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A little redder than blue. But then again, where I grew up they taught us in school the right way to shoot a rifle. Plus I wouldna bought any of the durn videos. Where’s my copy of Buckaroo Banzai?
And I vote like a Yellow Dog.
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I think that the culture war is really about a painful transition to a new economy and there are those who really being left behind in this process.
That could explain why the MSM is coming unhinged . . .
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Tex, if you’re suggesting that the MSM is freaking out over its demise, you’re probably right. I have friends at a FL newspaper, and when I saw them in May, really, most of what they were thinking/talking about was how uncertain their future is in journalism.
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I only skimmed Burke’s nuanced explanation, perhaps confirming some of his theories on the culture war issue. Then I browsed over to his “From the Gut” post, which struck me as a heaping serving of “don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” whining.
Sneering? Not sure, but the condescension just flowed as he tried to explain how righteous intellectuals are not at fault when they try to share their wondrous knowledge with the unwashed masses.
It’s possible to realize, many years later, that what you intended to say in all innocence, deeply wounded someone else because of their insecurities, their own baggage.
The part of his post where he referred to his deep knowledge of ancient Sumerian history at the age of 10 was quite ironic to me. That’s because, thanks in large part to members of the education elite, there ain’t much teaching about Sargon the Great going on in our public schools. I say that after my latest revelation while “aftershooling” my kid as I continue my efforts to remediate the gaps in her $20k/student public school education. While we were covering ancient history, I learned that my kid had NEVER been taught the stories of Sargon, Hammurabi, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great or countless other notable historical figures. The curious and sad thing was that almost the only ancient history she WAS able to recollect from her school lessons had to do with stories from West Africa.
Social justice teaching – Bill Ayers – AERA – education elite/intellectual – curriculum – crappy public schools
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“While we were covering ancient history, I learned that my kid had NEVER been taught the stories of Sargon, Hammurabi, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great or countless other notable historical figures. ”
Oh noes! I am dum!
Uh, Tex. No one ever taught me that stuff either. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever heard/read the name “Sargon” before I read it in your comment.
Blah blah blah I blah PhD and obviously blah not blah blah blah. I’ll skip the self-justifying crap.
Here’s the deal: There’s a fucking lot of information out there. In 12 years, We Cannot Cover It All. The best we can do (I say “we” meaning American citizens in association with public schools) is teach kids to love learning. Some day, your kid is going to wake up at age 40 and find out there’s something s/he didn’t learn in school, and then s/he will learn it. And it will feel damned good.
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Tex, wait til your kid gets to Western Civ in high school. That’s where the bulk of the stuff you are talking about is relayed.
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If your high school teaches Western Civ, and if your child chooses to take the course. If she can fit it into her schedule, and doesn’t have to take Health or PE that period instead, to fulfill state requirements for graduation.
Our local public school does cover ancient civilizations, and Greece and Rome, in middle school. The Core Knowledge curriculum seems to cover such topics in early to mid elementary school, but I don’t think you can go into great depth with first and second graders.
There’s always the problem of retention of knowledge. Ask any K-12 teacher how much students forget over summer vacation.
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Sargon was the guy who died when Gollum fell into the volcano with the Ring. My school (Catholic) covered that ancient history, especially Western Civ, fairly well. However, we never did get cover WWII. My senior year the teacher deliberately skipped it so that we would have time to cover Vietnam. However, my dad watched “The World at War” on PBS, so I pretty much knew that one.
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Nicole Karras put up a very swell post on the Iqra’i blog http://www.nazg.com/iqrai/index.php/2008/09/06/lets-dedicate-ourselves-to-what-the-greeks-wrote-so-many-years-ago/
in which she says that the left-academic-deconstructionists have engendered, deserve the resentment they face, by going into sterile and pointless byways. She says nice things about Bobby Kennedy, too.
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The best we can do (I say “we” meaning American citizens in association with public schools) is teach kids to love learning.
See, that’s an example of the difference between what I want from public schools and what the leftist(?) ed school elites are pushing, to the detriment of our nation’s high school graduates. I want content, and they want to teach “love of learning”. Oh, well. Maybe Laura’s theory is right, and I’m just angry about being left behind.
And if my teen’s history courses are an indication, the typical high school Western Civ. course these days is taught within the theme of white men=evil, everyone else=victims. This thematic approach used in K-12 schools, applying values that many parents oppose, is hurting education, IMHO.
Obviously, I have public school issues.
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No, I think you’re angry, Tex, because you spend too much time on conservative talking points websites and TV stations that make gross generalizations and sweeping judgments without anybody questioning them.
I love that “leftist (?) ed school elites” slur. Hah! I think we can do better than that. How about the leftist, ed school, elite, brie-eaters, BMW driving, Ivy League, Martini drinking, stick up the butt, bad, bad people. I think if we’re going to draw straw figures, we should really go for it.
I’m happy to critique education policy. I’m not a big fan of ed schools. But when we start hauling out the cliches and attributing some theories of education with all liberals, then it just kills discussion.
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Love of learning *is* content. It’s the strategy by which content is learned/integrated even outside of the walls of the school.
OK, I’ll get self-referential for a minute. Here’s my story: I got a PhD in English without studying a single Shakespeare play in grad school. I studied one Shakespeare play in college, and that was in a theater class. I read R&J, MacBeth, and Lear in HS. I might have read Shrew on my own. I remembered next to none of it when I got to the point where I had to start teaching Shakespeare in gen ed lit courses.
Does that mean I’m dumb or uneducated? Is my intellectual life impoverished? Shakespeare’s plays have now become a wonderful discovery for me post-30. I teach Othello and Tempest now, with joy and enthusiasm.
Why? I love learning. If someone tells me about something I don’t know, and I want to talk to them about it, I learn about it. If I have to teach something, I learn aboutit, even if it’s not my area of expertise (I actually love subbing for my colleagues because it forces me to get out of my comfort zone now and again).
We’re not going to know everything. We can’t. I have an incredible memory, and even I can’t remember and retain everything. There was a time I knew everything about Major League Baseball statistics of current players and a lot of the famous players of the past. That’s gone; Shakespeare is in. Some day Shakespeare will be out and who knows, maybe Sargon will be in. After you mentioned him, I looked him up on Wikipedia. Because that’s what you do when you recognize you can’t know everything, and sometimes it behooves you to learn things, even after HS.
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Addressing Laura’s point about the conservative talking points: as I’ve mentioned, I’ve been battling with my school district over a residency policy. My biggest supporters have been Republicans! And it’s not just “schools are evil” stuff. On substantive issues surrounding privacy and civil liberties, Republicans and I in my town have found common ground.
I think part of it is because Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity don’t care about our local issues, so the same people with whom I would disagree about John McCain or “white-male-hating curricula” have no one telling htem what to think about whether or not a residency affidavit should be notarized. They have to look inside at their *real* values and beliefs, not the ones they’re told to believe.
Oh crap, I have 9 year old tantrum issues going on. Can’t finish the thought, but there is more.
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Wendy, I’m guessing that your local Republicans have ‘real’ values that tend them toward a generalized disdain of bureaucratic rules. Anyway, local politics are usually a bit eccentric. In Pittsburgh last mayor election, the Republican candidate got the support of all of the bloggers who are now pushing for Obama. Based on the neighborhoods he won, he also got the support of most of the actual liberal Democrats. He also lost, but that’s another story.
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“Shakespeare’s plays have now become a wonderful discovery for me post-30. I teach Othello and Tempest now, with joy and enthusiasm.”
“Why? I love learning.”
And you have the vocabulary of an educated person, and you’ve probably read quite a few works of similar vintage along the way as part of your academic work. If Joe Shmoe came at Shakespeare at 30 with no intellectual preparation but a naked love of learning, the odds are he won’t get very far. (He might have some success if he starts with going to plays or watching filmed versions of Shakespeare, but I’m convinced that the venture would be almost certainly doomed if he had only the printed page to work with.)
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“I love that “leftist (?) ed school elites” slur.”
How many conservatives teach in education schools, Laura?
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“I think that the culture war is really about a painful transition to a new economy and there are those who really being left behind in this process.”
Viewed from the other side, maybe it’s about privilege. If you (that’s the generic you) have the power in certain institutions (schools, universities, libraries, etc.) the situation seems perfectly natural. People like you have power and people like them pay the bills and send their kids to your institutions. And that’s as it should be. What is horrifying is when “they” think that they deserve some input. It’s not a surprise that it’s hard for the privileged to understand the nature of their privilege–privilege is nearly invisible to the people who have it.
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I don’t doubt that there is an amount of content that should/could be learned. You do that through exposure to literature/history/etc., and you do that by teaching skills so that students can go pursue anything they’re interested in on their own.
I’m not saying we *shouldn’t* teach Shakespeare. I’m saying we don’t have to teach Shakespeare; we can teach other stuff that is (well, I hate to say just as good) good enough so that someone can pursue learning about Shakespeare later.
For the record, by the way, I’m not really enjoying 9 the way I did the first 8 years. Or maybe that’s the whining of a mom trapped inside with two tired kids for two rainy days.
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Amy, I don’t know how many. Do you?
Exact #s, please, as I assume you’re asking because you know.
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“How many conservatives teach in education schools, Laura?”
I have no idea. Please tell me. I will take any form of evidence. It doesn’t have to be a study with a large N. I’ll take anything. I’ll take some focus groups. Just something more than my aunt once took a class at a teachers’ college and the teacher hated George Bush.
While you’re at it, please research how many liberals are vocal critics of teachers’ education, whether there is one consistent message coming out of all teachers schools, exactly how many students are really getting zero education on western history, and that students are really dumber than they used to be. Please define some terms, ie conservative, liberal, elitist, since we’re using them so freely. If you could define a liberal view of education policy that would be cool, because I have no idea what it is. I bet Harry b would be pretty curious, too.
Look, if you want to critique a particular program or educational approach, that’s fine with me. If you want to say that some systems don’t allow for enough input of parents, I’ll be totally with you. If you can provide evidence that’s cool, but I know that it’s the blogosphere and we’re just dashing out thoughts. But before these same old tired accusations get thrown out, just qualify them. Recognize that you don’t have all the facts. Question them a little bit.
And yeah, I’m sure there’s a power dynamic going on. I don’t think it’s the poor working dudes paying the bills, while the rich elite live off the gravy. I think the poor working dudes don’t have a job to pay the bills. They see their kids moving away to the city where all the jobs are.
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About my community: no, it’s not bureaucratic disdain. That’s what has been so cool about this whole thing to me! It’s about genuinely sharing a belief in the right to privacy, fears about the abuse of power by those in authority, ideas that the ends don’t justify the means. We’ve been talking about the 4th Amendment.
Without the specter of terrorism hanging over us, and without the constant drumbeat of Opinions You Must Hold To Be One Of Us, people are finding common ground. It’s been quite interesting and even inspiring.
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I did not intend “leftist” to be a slur, but as a useful label. I placed a question mark beside it because most of the views I see espoused by ed schools appear leftist to me, but I don’t happen to know about actual data supporting this. If that type of comment is not permitted here, I hope that standard will be applied to all.
Although, the fact that Bill Ayers handily won election as AERA curriculum vp seems like a strong data point . . .
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We’re not going to know everything. We can’t.
Straw man. Never said that. And of course, as you say, you’re not opposed to some content. My observation, and that of many others, is that schools are shrinking content in favor of things like character education and other more squishy curriculum.
Learning is easier and more enjoyable when a person possesses sufficient background to incorporate new information into an existing domain of knowledge. This is true for reading comprehension, studying history, learning math and most other fields.
Who is more likely to love learning calculus? The student with strong arithmetic and algebraic knowledge, or the one that must rely on a calculator for the answer to 7 X 9?
Our public schools are doing a major disservice to our kids by trying to teach them “love of learning” while bypassing critical content and skills. That’s my opinion.
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“Our public schools are doing a major disservice to our kids by trying to teach them “love of learning” while bypassing critical content and skills. ”
Now you’ve created a straw man. I’m not advocating teaching only love of learning. Skills are crucial, too.
We’re always going to disagree over what “critical content” is, mainly because there’s so much to choose from and relatively little time. But that’s a battle that’s been fought for years. (I studied canon formation in grad school–fascinating stuff.)
“Learning is easier and more enjoyable when a person possesses sufficient background to incorporate new information into an existing domain of knowledge. This is true for reading comprehension, studying history, learning math and most other fields.”
Sure. I’ve heard that referred to as “scaffolding,” a concept brought to me by those leftist educators.
I see character education as related to classroom management. You can’t teach kids who are being bullied, who are being unkind to each other, who don’t know how to behave. Maybe I’m wrong, though.
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“And if my teen’s history courses are an indication, the typical high school Western Civ. course these days is taught within the theme of white men=evil, everyone else=victims. ”
See, it’s really about what content is being taught — cause this doesn’t sound like no content. One of my favorite moments in this ridiculousness we are now calling a “campaign” is when Whoopi Goldberg called McCain on “interpreting the constitution as it was written” and pointing out that (without amendments that came much later) that meant slavery. Teaching that at it’s founding, the greatness of our country was simultaneous with that evil (rather than the sanitized version) is teaching content (rather than fantasy).
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“And if my teen’s history courses are an indication, the typical high school Western Civ. course these days is taught within the theme of white men=evil, everyone else=victims. ”
And, thes converstaions makes me understand SamChevre’s point about the “loss of power” (not just economic, but status).
The world *and America) has changed, and the culture wars are about people trying to hark back to a past when they held excess power, by suppressing minority viewpoints (and those who held them). If so, we really are in a war, because, those who want to talk about slavery (or any other ugliness) with which our nation originated are not going anywhere else.
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So, is there any data that those who are taught 7 X 9 do indeed to do better in calculus (as a matter of causation)? It’s probably true that folks who understand calculus (a minority in America) can also do the arithmetic. But, there’s no real reason to imagine that memorizing the calculation is on the way to the concept of calculus.
Understanding the concept of multiplication — yes. But, repeating the rhyme? Not impossible, but also not the same.
I often feel that a lot of this debate is parents wanting kids to learn something that they can judge, so that *they* can tell they’re kids have learned something. But, our children are not growing up in our world.
My dad and I, for example, had a long running debate about handwriting — which he thought was very important. It took me many years, but I finally realized why. When critical information was available only through handwriting, when your grandfather re-copied textbooks for you, because books weren’t available (which my great-grandfather did), handwriting mattered. It simply doesn’t matter the same way my world, and this transition has changed our own children’s world enormously.
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“How many conservatives teach in education schools, Laura?”
‘I have no idea. Please tell me. I will take any form of evidence. It doesn’t have to be a study with a large N. I’ll take anything. I’ll take some focus groups. Just something more than my aunt once took a class at a teachers’ college and the teacher hated George Bush.’
The thing is, it’s killing me trying to come up with the names of conservative ed school professors. E.D. Hirsch (according to Wikipedia) was until his retirement UVA’s “University Professor of Education and Humanities, but I’m not sure if that makes him a real ed school professor. Worse yet, Wikipedia says that “Although himself a liberal, he was attacked as a neo-conservative and advocate for a conservative…” So we can’t count him, even though he’s an icon to many conservatives. Diane Ravitch does teach at an ed school, but according to Wikipedia, “she is not easy to characterize politically as she was appointed to public office by both President of the United States George H. W. Bush and his successor Bill Clinton. In her political views and in her record she is independent.” I looked her up at opensecrets.org and she hasn’t made any donations during the 2008 cycle. Siegfried Engelmann (the Direct Instruction guy) doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry of his own, but is a University of Oregon education professor. I’ve been looking high and low just now, but unable to find his political affiliation. I have a vague recollection that he’s a lefty. In any case, he’s not an obvious conservative, and I came up dry when I tried to check his campaign contribution history. I’ve been at my wit’s end trying to come up with the names of any conservative education professors. The only one I can think of right now is Chester Finn (he donates to Republican politicians), but he isn’t even technically an ed school professor right now, although he was until 2002 (according to Wikipedia).
Earlier today (before I got to work on this), I was originally hoping to just type in “Teachers College Columbia University” over at opensecrets.org and have party affiliations drop into my lap, and then follow up with Washington State, UT Austin, Texas A&M, and so forth, but I wasn’t able to get the quick results I wanted (or maybe I was just doing it wrong). I could have worked backward and gone through the faculty lists at a couple ed schools and run them through opensecrets.org, but that seemed a bit obsessive, as well as subject to accusations of cherry-picking.
“And yeah, I’m sure there’s a power dynamic going on. I don’t think it’s the poor working dudes paying the bills, while the rich elite live off the gravy.”
There are different kinds of elites. I would personally hesitate to use the term without a lot of explanation, since it means too many different things and the categories overlap. There’s the lifestyle elite, AKA the “Stuff White People Like” elite, who are defined by what they consume. There’s an elite that’s defined by actual excellence (talented actors, athletes, filmmakers, scholars, etc.). Thirdly, there’s the power elite who run our institutions, who may or may not have elite consumer tastes, and who may or may not be very good at what they do. That’s not an exhaustive botanization of the different categories of elite, but it’s a start.
I think the reason that this thread has lead to so much heat was your original formulation that “the culture war is really about a painful transition to a new economy and there are those who really being left behind in this process.” It’s hard to overemphasize how aggravating that formulation is. None of the people here who have been participating in the culture war threads on the conservative side seem to be economically left behind any more than their liberal brethren, so I think you need a different formula.
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I think I should define terms better. I’m not defining culture wars as divisions about actual policies. I respect conservative who vote Republican because of actual policies, abortion, sex education, gay marriage, tax policy, whatever. I may not agree with their positions, but it’s logical and smart to make decisions based on those criteria. I can deal with conservatives who are voting w/Palin or McCain, because they remind them of themselves. Identity politics is pretty shallow, but everyone does it, so there’s no point in singling out conservatives for that.
What really irks me is the new flavor of the old culture wars. It has zero policy content. It’s the evil love child of identity politics and the older culture wars. It’s based on strange conspiracy theories that the eggheads in the city are out to get them, steal their money, tell them what to do, make them feel stupid, laugh at them, and destroy their way of life. Look, I don’t like to think people are stupid, so I’m looking around for alternative explanations.
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Real quickly here, because my very busy day is about to start, but I think that there definitely is a sense of being left behind being expressed by conservatives here. It comes in the discussions about public education today. Oh noes! No one is teaching Sargon in HS! What I loved and thought was important is something no one cares about any more! DOES MY EDUCATION HAVE ANY MEANING ANY MORE??? I worked so hard to get it! Spent so much money! Did so much hard work? Am I being Left Behind?
It’s not about money, but it’s about capital.
I also don’t think it’s about political affiliation. Some of the most conservative people I know in my workplace are the most student-centered professors, into inspiring a love of learning among our students. And some of the most liberal people I know are the most conservative professors, teaching the canon of Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Hemingway in the most traditional way possible.
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Laura,
Urban areas (for instance in Washington state) do impose very intrusive land-use rules on rural Washington, at least to hear my land-owning relatives tell it. That’s a big, big bread-and-butter issue. The timber wars of the late 80s/early 90s would be another example of urban/rural conflict. Basically, almost anywhere you’ve got an environmental issue, there are going to be people on the other side who see their livelihood being taken away.
And timber issues play out on the ground too, in daily interactions. My parents have a tourist store in western Washington. Periodically, a freshly-minted Seattlite (formerly from another state and now living in a new development in an area that until recently used to have trees and wildlife and who commutes heaven knows how far to work) comes in and starts complaining about clear cuts. Oh, what pleasure there is in explaining that the clear cut he is looking at was the work of the University of Washington, which is partly supported by logging its trust lands.
There’s lots of “tell them what to do” and “destroy their way of life” around, if you just know where to look.
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Why is it just a big Gotcha that UW is cutting down the trees? See, I think what liberals understand that maybe you don’t is that the universities are not bastions of progressive values! Faculty understand that (see Marc Bousquet’s work on IHE). Students understand that. The only ones who don’t seem to be conservative critics of higher ed.
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Wendy,
I’d agree about the character of universities and add that people who live near universities without being members of the community often have an ambivalent relationship with it. They sometimes see it as this huge, badly behaved octopus, throwing its weight around and buying up land.
The reason the UW thing is a gotcha in this context is that when some Seattle-area tourists see clear cuts, they want to blame the local people, rather than reflecting on the revenue requirements that drive the state to log, or on how their own consumption is driving demand (and no, there’s not enough barn-salvaged timber to go around so that everybody can have a Not-So-Big-House or a Katrina Cottage). That kind of finger-pointing generates some of the mutual ill will that was so inexplicable to Laura.
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To put it differently, no one walks into my parents’ store in a frenzy of self-abnegation, beating their breast and listing the ways that they will cut down on their consumption of tree-consuming goods and activities.
(Speaking of gotchas, I wonder how many trees Amazon.com kills every year? That’s a Seattle company, too. I realize that there’s such a thing as recycling for cardboard boxes, but you can’t recycle wood fiber ad infinitum.)
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Oh noes! No one is teaching Sargon in HS! What I loved and thought was important is something no one cares about any more! DOES MY EDUCATION HAVE ANY MEANING ANY MORE??? I worked so hard to get it! Spent so much money! Did so much hard work? Am I being Left Behind?
The characterization of conservatives as Luddites clinging to the old ways because they’re afraid to be left behind sounds condescending to me. In the math wars, it’s similar to educators explaining that dissident parents dislike reform math because it’s not the way we learned it. This type of allegation is tiresome and wrong.
Just sticking to math education, procedural proficiency is not something we’re clinging to in fear. Earlier this year The National Math Panel presented its conclusions after studying the grim state of K-12 math education.
Proficiency with whole numbers, fractions, and certain aspects of geometry and measurement are the foundations for algebra. Of these, knowledge of fractions is the most important foundational skill not developed among American students.
Students should develop immediate recall of arithmetic facts to free the “working memory” for solving more complex problems.
I think it would be hard to find many mathematicians who refute these findings, although you may find plenty of educators who would.
On the topic of handwriting, “evidence is growing that handwriting fluency is a fundamental building block of learning.” http://www.newsweek.com/id/67956
Educators have gone overboard in experimenting with our children, applying unproven pedagogical methods on a captive population with predictably dismal results. Even while ed school research is roundly criticized for its poor quality, public schools, unlike medicine or other disciplines, are exempt from obtaining parental permission when conducting research using students as human subjects. Maybe that’s a valid reason to support school choice?
We’re not making this stuff up; no conspiracy theories here.
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And who are those horrible conservatives who advocate teaching a sanitized version of history that excuses the evils of slavery and represses the minority view? “Please tell me. I will take any form of evidence.”
The point I wanted to make is that I am not alone in believing that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of white male bashing in public schools. I’ve certainly observed it in my kids’ schools.
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Tex, well, the very definition of a “conservative” is someone who resists change.
I don’t think anyone is saying that knowing arithmetic facts is a bad thing. It’s just not the only thing. Case in point, my daughter. I could teach her how to multiply, add and divide fractions till the cows come home. She has a good memory, and if I just show her how and a few tricks, she’ll know it.
She has no clue what a fraction is, though. She doesn’t get the concept. I can probably tell her how to score highly on math tests about fractions, but if she doesn’t understand it, what’s the point.
Fortunately, the leftist math program the school is using will use a variety of methods to teach her. The first one didn’t work.
We also haven’t discussed the extent to which pedagogical strategies reflect current thinking about knowledge. What is differentiated instruction but another form of web 2.0, really?
The stuff on handwriting fluency is interesting if counterintuitive, and I’ll take a look at the link.
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“Fortunately, the leftist math program the school is using will use a variety of methods to teach her. The first one didn’t work.”
Wendy,
Keep an eye on this issue. Fractions is where the math train goes off the tracks for a lot of kids.
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(bangs on table) I want to plug an article I have plugged before, from the LA Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/04/opinion/oe-klein4
Let’s give it up for: Multiplication Tables!
I did a lot of very old fashioned work sheets for my kids, with fractions and Roman numerals and division and multiplication tables. Much whining, but they didn’t get video games or other privileges if they didn’t comply. And they blew the doors off when they got the Virginia standardized tests.
Just saying…
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I don’t think anyone is saying that knowing arithmetic facts is a bad thing.
Well, they are saying (or they were saying until they backed down recently) that it is an unnecessary thing.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics said this in their 1989 report: “The calculator renders obsolete much of the complex pencil-and-paper proficiency traditionally emphasized in mathematics courses,”
The result has been that many public schools have made mastery of procedural proficiency an optional skill. It happened to me when my daughter’s teacher told me not to worry that she didn’t know her math facts, because it was more important that she understand “concepts”.
Hate to break it to you, but “deep conceptual understanding” without procedural proficiency won’t enable you to DO math. And it usually doesn’t become most apparent until middle school or high school. Read dave s.’ poignant story, and it might become clear how this stupidity hurts low-income students more. Folks like us will teach or pay tutors to make sure our kids don’t fall behind.
This kind of crap coming down from the ed schools makes talk about social justice teaching a joke.
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There are freaks of nature, math-wise. My husband has a PhD in math and had about 20 publications in the field before switching over to philosophy, but his grasp of basic arithmetic is shaky. He has to calculate (mentally) fairly basic math facts. He also has a fair amount of trouble calculating times. I’ve mentioned this story a while back, and I bring it up again for the sake of full disclosure. My husband got away with lack of arithmetic in mathematics, but I suspect that his eccentric mix of abilities would not work in engineering or other fields where accurate calculation is crucial. (I don’t know if this is true, but my dad told me that one doesn’t really deal with numbers beyond 1 and 2 in really advanced math.) I also think that outliers like my husband shouldn’t have too much effect on how we educate average children.
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I have no idea what the schools here teach, but being able to calculate in your head or on paper is essential. My suspicion, based entirely on dealing with cashiers, is that the schools are pretty good at drilling addition.
I think this holds true at higher levels. Even though there are canned programs, in grad school we still had to do regression analysis by hand and by programing using matrix algebra. It is the best way to understand what you are actually doing and that SAS isn’t some magical truth-genie that spits out answers.
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“My observation, and that of many others, is that schools are shrinking content in favor of things like character education and other more squishy curriculum.”
Actually, if they were shrinking content that would be a blessing, but the tendency is to just add content without eliminating anything. And this is measurable, either by state standards or textbook lengths or lots of other rubrics. Compare for example, the expectation of 40 years ago that a high school senior should have taken algebra with the the growing expectation that a high school senior should have taken calculus. Ditto language requirements, numbers of years of lab sciences etc.
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