Website owner:  James Miller

Assorted Dogmas in American Education

The following is from:

Thomas Sowell. Inside American Education. Chapter 4. Assorted Dogmas.

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AMONG THE MANY dogmas prevailing in American education, most can be divided into two broad categories—dogmas about society and dogmas about education. The most widespread of the social dogmas revolve around "multicultural diversity" and the educational dogmas include "relevance," educating "the whole person," and a general de-emphasis of authority. Not all these dogmas are exclusively American. Some have gotten a foothold in the educational systems of some other countries, usually with the same disastrous consequences as in the United States.

"MULTICULTURAL DIVERSITY"

 Few catch-phrases have been so uncritically accepted, or so variously defined, as "multicultural diversity." Sometimes it refers to the simple fact that peoples from many racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds make up the American population. At other times, it refers to an agenda of separatism in language and a revisionist view of history as a collection of grievances to be kept alive, and a program of both historical and contemporary condemnation of American society and Western civilization.

Despite frequent, chameleon-like changes in the meanings of multiculturalism, its basic components are three: (1) a set of ideological beliefs about society and the world, (2) a political agenda to make these beliefs the basis for the curriculum of the whole educational system, and (3) a set of beliefs about the most effective way to conduct an educational system.

Many critics of multiculturalism, such as former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, have done battle over the ideological beliefs of the multiculturalists . What is most salient educationally, however, is the attempt of multiculturalists to make these beliefs a new orthodoxy, to be imposed institutionally by the political authorities. What is also salient are the multiculturalists' educational methods, geared toward leading students to a set of pre-selected beliefs, rather than toward developing their own ability to analyze for themselves, or to provide them with adequate factual knowledge to make their own independent assessments.

The ideological component of multiculturalism can be summarized as a cultural relativism which finds the prominence of Western civilization in the world or in the schools intolerable. Behind this attitude is often a seething hostility to the West, barely concealed even in public statements designed to attract wider political support for the multicultural agenda. That such attitudes or opinions exist, and are expressed by some people, is to be expected in a free society. It is not these beliefs, as such, which are the real problem. The real educational problem is the attempt to impose such views as a new orthodoxy throughout the educational system, not only by classroom brainwashing but also by institutional power—expressed in such things as compulsory indoctrination programs for teachers, making adherence to multiculturalism a condition of employment, and buying only those textbooks which reflect multiculturalism in some way, even if these are textbooks in mathematics or science.

Some or all of these patterns can be found in public schools across the United States, in leading American colleges, and in educational institutions as far away as Britain and Australia. In all these settings, what the general public sees are not the ideological foundations or the institutional mechanisms of multiculturalism, but only their educational arguments. These arguments fall into a few standard categories:

1. Multiculturalism is necessary to enable our students to participate in the emerging global economy.

2. Multiculturalism is necessary because an increasingly diverse population within the United States requires and demands education in a variety of cultures.

3. Intergroup relations are better when people are introduced to each other's cultures in school.

4. Education itself is better when presented from various perspectives, derived from culturally different social groups.

Whatever the plausibility of any of these beliefs, supporting evidence has seldom been asked or given. On the contrary, evidence contradicting each of these claims has been ignored.

When a 1991 commission report, prepared for the New York state Commissioner of Education, referred to "the need for preparing young people to participate in the world community," it was echoing a familiar theme in the multicultural literature. Yet neither argument nor evidence was offered to show how the particular things being done as part of the multicultural agenda would accomplish that purpose, which was itself left vague. It would be hard to think of a more monocultural, insular and self-complacent nation than Japan—and yet the Japanese are among the leading participants in the international economy, in international scientific and technological developments, as well as in international travel and tourism. This is not a defense of insularity or of the Japanese. It is simply a piece of empirical evidence to highlight the non sequitur of the claim that international participation requires the multicultural ideology or agenda.

Another equally reckless claim is that the ethnic diversity of the American population requires multicultural education. The United States has been ethnically diverse for more than a century. Yet successive massive waves of immigrants have arrived on these shores and become Americans without any such programs as have been proposed by the multiculturalists. Nor is there the slightest evidence, whether from the United States or from other countries where similar programs have been tried, that the transition has gone better as a result of multiculturalism.

Perhaps the most tendentious aspect of the claim that ethnic diversity requires multicultural education programs is the assertion that this demand comes from the various ethnic groups themselves—as distinguished from vocal activitists. Non-English-speaking parents, for example, generally seek to get their children to be taught in English, rather than in the foreign-language programs promoted by activists under the label of "bilingualism." Asian Americans, as well as Hispanics, have been found in polls to prefer to have their children educated in English, and bilingual activists have had to resort to pressure and deception to maintain enrolments in bilingual programs .

The claim that groups will get along better when they are given multicultural education is a straightforward claim which might be straightforwardly tested against the facts—but it almost never is. Wherever group separatism appears or group animosity erupts in the wake of multicultural education, these are automatically attributed to the influence of the larger society. The educational benefits of multiculturalism are likewise often proclaimed but seldom documented. There is no a priori reason to believe such claims, especially in the face of multiple evidences of declining educational quality during the period when multiculturalism and other non-academic preoccupations have taken up more and more of the curriculum.

Multiculturalists themselves are quite clear that they do not see their philosophy as just one of many philosophies that different people may entertain, or as something to be optional in some parts of the school curriculum. "Multicultural perspectives should infuse the entire curriculum, prekindergarten through grade 12" (emphasis in the original), according to the official report to the New York state Commissioner of Education. Because this report considered "commitment to multicultural social studies education" to be crucial, it called for extensive staff development" which 'would "address attitudes"—i.e., indoctrination—and which would extend even to the schools' clerical staffs and bus drivers. In short, the call for cultural "diversity" is a call for ideological conformity.

This pattern is not peculiar to New York state or even to the United States. A study of a multiculturally oriented school in Manchester, England, found the very same buzzwords—"sensitive," "child centred," —as well as a determination not to "bend to parents' prejudices," a similar disregard of teachers who criticized what was being done in the name of "multiculturalism," and a hiring and promotion of new teachers more in tune with the multicultural dogma. In Australia as well, there is the same dogmatic sense of exclusive rectitude in a multicultural educator's dismissal of "assimilationist and melting pot thinking from some reactionaries."

There are many variations on the theme of multiculturalism, but their basic ideological premises, political modes of implementation, and educational practices show a recurrent pattern, whether at the school level or the college level, and whether in the United States or abroad. In all these settings, a major ingredient in the political success of promoters of multiculturalism has been a concealment of both their ideological agendas and their educational results. One of the most politically successful of these "multicultural diversity" programs in the United States, so-called "bilingual education," has owed much of its political success to concealment of its educational reality.

"Bilingual Education"

The theory behind bilingual education is that youngsters who do not understand English can best be taught school subjects in their native language, taking English classes as a separate subject, rather than be subjected to an all-English education from the first day. The children of immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries have been the principal focus of bilingualism, but once the idea caught on in the political arena and in the courtrooms, it expanded to include school children of Asian, Middle Eastern, and other backgrounds, and ultimately drew into its orbit even native-born American children whose only language was English. While most of the bilingual programs have featured the Spanish language, some have been in Chinese, Armenian, Navajo, and more than a hundred other languages.'

A landmark on the road to bilingualism was the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols that it was an unconstitutional denial of equal protection to provide only an English-language education to non-English-speaking school children. While the Supreme Court did not specify what alternative education must be provided, organized ethnic activists now had leverage to push for bilingualism, using the threat of lawsuits and political charges of discrimination and racism against school systems which resisted the activists' agenda.

Both legally and educationally, there were many possible ways of dealing with the language difficulties of foreign school children, and both school officials and parents might have been given discretion to choose among various options. For example, the foreign students might have been given a course on English as a second language, while taking their other school subjects in English as well, either immediately or after a transition period. At the other end of the range of possibilities, the children might be taught in a foreign language for years, perhaps with only token gestures toward making them English speakers. The relentless political, pressures of ethnic activists have been directed toward the latter system—that is, establishing whole programs taught in a foreign language.

The political clout of these ethnic activists was reflected in Congress' restrictions on what percentage of federal spending in this area could be on programs teaching English as a second language, rather than on programs taught in foreign languages and given the label "bilingual." During the Carter administration, only 4 percent of the money could be spent on programs featuring English as a second language. Even under the Reagan administration (which was more critical of bilingualism) this rose only to 25 percent. In short, parents and school officials alike have been restricted in their ability to choose how to deal with foreign students' language problems, if their choice did not coincide with that of ethnic activists.

These ethnic activists—the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Council of La Raza, and others—have developed a whole agenda, going well beyond the language problems of school children. They argue that the "societal power structure" of white, Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking Americans handicaps non-English-speaking children, not only by presenting education in a language with which these children will have difficulty, but also by making these children ashamed of their own language and culture, and by making the abandonment of their ancestral culture the price of acceptance in the educational system and in American society. Consistent with this general vision, the educational deficiencies and high drop-out rates of Hispanic students, for ample, are blamed on such assaults on their culture and self-esteem.

Given this vision, the agenda of the ethnic activists is not one of transitional programs to acquire English-language skills, it rather a promotion of the foreign language as a medium of instruction throughout the curriculum, promotion of the study and praise of other aspects of the foreign culture in the schools, and (whether openly avowed or not) promotion of a sense of historic grievances against American society, both on their own behalf and on behalf of other presumed victims of American and Western civilization, at home and around the world. In short, the activist agenda goes well beyond language education, or even education in general, to encompass political and ideological issues to be addressed in the public schools at taxpayer expense—and at the expense of time available for academic subjects. This activist agenda has provoked counter-responses by various individuals and groups, including school teachers, parents, and such civic organizations as "U.S. English" and "LEAD" (Learning English Advocates Drive). The resulting clashes have ranged from shouting matches in school meetings to legal battles in the federal courts. Bilingual education has been characterized by the Washington Post as "the single most controversial area in public education.'

Studies of the educational effectiveness of bilingualism and of alternative approaches have been as much shrouded in controversy as every other aspect of this issue. Yet the preponderant weight of the political system and the educational system as been solidly behind bilingualism, just as if it were a proven success, and its advocates have kept bilingual programs well-supplied with school children, through methods which often circumvent the parents of both foreign and native-born children.

In San Francisco, for example, thousands of English-speaking children with educational deficiencies were assigned to bilingual classes, blacks being twice as likely to be so assigned as whites. Hundreds of other youngsters, who in fact had a foreign language as their mother tongue, were assigned to bilingual classes in a different foreign language. Thus a Chinese immigrant child could be assigned to a bilingual program because of speaking a foreign language—but then be put into a Spanish language class. Similarly, a Spanish-speaking child might be put into a Chinese language class—all this being based on where space happened to be available, rather than on the actual educational, needs of the particular child. "Bilingual-education classes," according to the leader of a Chinese American organization, have also been "used as a 'dumping ground' for educationally disadvantaged students or students with behavior problems."

In short, maintaining or expanding enrollment in bilingual programs has clearly taken priority over educating children. Moreover, the deception common in other programs promoted by zealots has also been common in bilingual programs. District administrators interviewed by the San Francisco Examiner "downplayed the number of black students assigned to bilingual classes, first estimating the number at three"—an estimate subsequently raised to about a hundred, though the real figure turned out to be more than 750. A civil rights attorney representing minority children characterized the whole approach as a "mindless" practice of "assigning kids to wherever there is space." It is not wholly mindless, however. Children whose parents are poorer, less educated, and less sophisticated are more likely to be assigned, or to remain, in bilingual programs. "More vocal white parents manage to maneuver their kids out of bilingual classes," as the civil rights attorney noted.

The San Francisco situation is by no means unique. A national study of bilingual programs found large numbers of English-speaking minority students in programs taught in foreign languages and ostensibly designed for youngsters unable to speak English. Only 16 percent of all the students in such programs were students who spoke only Spanish—the kind of student envisioned when bilingual programs were instituted. A study in Texas found that most school districts automatically categorized as "limited English proficiency" students—eligible for bilingual programs—even those Hispanic children who spoke only English and whose parents only occasionally spoke Spanish at home. The study concluded that English was "the dominant language" of most of the students participating in the bilingual programs surveyed. Again, the whole thrust of the policy was toward maximizing enrolments.

Hispanic youngsters are not spared in the ruthless sacrifices of school children to the interests of the bilingual lobby. American-born, English-speaking students with Spanish surnames have often been targeted for inclusion in bilingual programs. Forced to speak Spanish during so-called bilingual classes, such youngsters have been observed speaking English among themselves during recess." A bilingual education teacher in Massachusetts reported speaking to Puerto Rican children in Spanish and having them reply in English. Research in several California school districts showed that children classified as "limited English proficient" ranged from being predominantly better in Spanish than English in districts closer to the Mexican border to being predominantly better in English than in Spanish in districts farther north, with about two-thirds being equally proficient (or deficient) in the two languages in the intermediate city of Santa Barbara. A large-scale national study of bilingual programs found that two-thirds of the Hispanic children enrolled in such programs were already fluent in English, and more than four-fifths of the directors of such programs admitted that they retained students in their programs after the students had mastered English.

While the rationale for so-called bilingual programs has been presented to the public in terms of the educational needs of children whose native language is not English, what actually happens in such programs bears little relationship to that rationale. It bears much more relationship to the careers and ideologies of bilingual activists. A study of Hispanic middle-school students in Boston, for example, found that 45 percent had been kept in bilingual programs for six years or more . The criteria for being taken out of such programs are often based on achieving a given proficiency in English, so that students are retained in bilingual programs even when their English is better than their Spanish. A bilingual education teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts, reported her frustration in trying for years to get such students transferred into regular classrooms:

Each year we had the same disagreement. I argued that the students, according to test scores and classroom performance, had made enough progress in English to be able to work in a regular classroom, with some further attention to their reading and writing skills. The department head argued that they must remain in the bilingual program as long as they were not yet reading at grade level. It did not matter when I countered that many American students who speak only English do not read at grade level, or that after six or seven years of heavy instruction in Spanish without achieving good results it was probably time to try a different approach.

Students retained in bilingual programs for years, without mastering either English or Spanish, have sometimes been characterized as "semi-lingual," rather than bilingual. The bilingual label is often grossly misleading also in terms of the token amount of time spent on English—perhaps a couple of hours a week—in programs which are predominantly foreign language programs, where students may spend years before taking a single subject taught in English.

The great majority of Hispanic parents—more than three-fourths of Mexican American parents and more than four-fifths of Cuban American parents—are opposed to the teaching of Spanish in the schools at the expense of English. Many Asian refugee parents in Lowell, Massachusetts, likewise declared their opposition to bilingual education for their children. In Springfield, Massachusetts, the Spanish-speaking bilingual teachers themselves put their own children in private schools, so that they would not be subjected to bilingual education. Parents in Los Angeles who did not want their children enrolled In bilingual programs have been pressured, deceived, or tricked into agreement or seeming agreement. By and large, ethnic activists oppose giving parents an option.

That the wishes of both majority and minority parents have been over-ridden or circumvented suggests something of the power and the ruthlessness of the bilingual lobby. Much of this power comes from the U.S. Department of Education, where ethnic activists have been prominent among those writing federal guidelines, which go much further than the courts or the Congress in forcing bilingual programs into schools and forcing out alternative ways of dealing with the language problems of non-English-speaking children. However, bilingual activists have also been active in state and local agencies, and have been ruthless in smearing or harassing those who do not go along with their agenda.

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The Flow of Racism

One of the claims for multicultural programs in schools and colleges is that they reduce intergroup conflict by making all groups aware of, and sensitive to, racial, ethnic, and cultural differences—and more accepting of these differences. Whatever the plausibility of these claims, they are seldom, if ever, backed up with any evidence that schools or colleges with such programs have less intergroup conflict than institutions without them. The real dogmatism of such claims comes out most clearly, however, where mounting evidence of increasing animosities among students from different backgrounds, in the wake of multicultural programs, is met by further claims that this only shows the racism of the larger society overflowing into the schools and colleges.

An editor of The American School Board Journal was all too typical in asserting—without a speck of evidence—that "the affects of society's racism are spilling over into the schools," and adding (also without evidence), "public schools are society's best hope of battling racism." He urged adding multicultural programs to the school curriculum and quoted an education professor who said: "Few other instructional techniques promise to make such improvements." That statement is no doubt true enough in itself. The real question is whether multiculturalism delivers on that promise—or whether it in fact makes racism worse. That empirical question is not even asked, much less answered, either by this editor or by numerous other advocates of "multicultural diversity."

This dogmatism by multicultural zealots is found from the elementary schools to the colleges and universities. It stretches across the country and internationally as well.

The chairman of a committee of inquiry into a race-related murder on a school playground in Manchester, England, reported: "At several stages of our inquiry, we were told that racism in school derives from racism in the wider community." Yet, after reviewing the zealous "multicultural" and "anti-racist" policies of the schools—policies which the committee chairman generally favored—he was forced to conclude that, in this instance at least, the actual implementation of these policies was "one of the greatest recipes for the spread of racism from the school into the community." The very possibility that racism is flowing in the opposite direction to that assumed is never considered in most of the vast literature on multiculturalism."

The Manchester multicultural program was instituted despite a warning that such programs in the London area had proved to be "a fiasco," and "divisive," and had created "suspicion" and "squabbles." Ordinary people in the neighborhood near the Manchester school, where a Pakistani boy was (flied by a white boy, also had no difficulty considering the possibility that multiculturalism could be counterproductive.

"I feel that this enforced focus on multiculturalism produces prejudices," one said.

"I feel that the best way to bring about avoidance of racial hostility would be to ignore people's ethnic origins and characteristics," another said.

Double standards in treating students were cited among the counterproductive fruits of multiculturalism: "The teachers are scared, they are frightened to take the white side in case they are accused of racism." Such complaints of double standards, favoring non-white students, also came from white students in the school—and were confirmed by the predominantly, non-white committee of inquiry, dominated by Labor Party members. This panel's findings could not be dismissed in the usual way by labeling them white male conservatives.

Some of the criticisms of multiculturalism as a counterproductive factor in race relations may be only statements of plausibility—but so are the opposite statements of the multicultural zealots. Yet these zealots operate as intolerantly as if they had the certainty of a proven fact. Belief in multiculturalism became a litmus test for applicants for teaching positions in the Manchester school, for example, and initiatives from the principal and other multicultural zealots "were presented in a way that assumed everybody was racist." None of this was peculiar to Manchester or to England. Such things as enforcement of ideological conformity, a priori accusations of racism, and double standards for judging students' behavior are common features of multicultural programs in the schools and colleges of the United States. So too is trying to force people to take part in foreign cultural experiences—in religion, food, and a useless smattering of foreign words, for example—whether they want to or not, and regardless of the academic or other costs.

"Why do we have to eat their food?" a student in Manchester asked. Their parents' questions included: Why are English children being taught to count in Punjabi, when they are having trouble counting in English? Why are they being forced to take part in Moslem religious rites? Similar questions can be raised wherever multicultural zealots gain dominance—and such questions are likely to be ignored elsewhere, as they were in Manchester.

In the United States, multiculturalism not only covers the kinds of practices and attitudes found in England. In the U.S., the very pictures in textbooks must reflect the multicultural ideology. As one education writer noted:

. . . the textbooks teachers rely on are required to reflect the growing insistence on inclusion of "underrepresented populations"—mainly racial and ethnic minorities, women, and the handicapped.

In the two biggest textbook markets in the country, Texas and California, committees of the state legislature have "set up exacting goals for depicting these groups in a book's stories and illustrations." One free-lance artist stopped illustrating children's readers after receiving a set of "multicultural" instructions running to ten pages, single-spaced. As she described the pictures resulting from these instructions:

The hero was a Hispanic boy. There were black twins, one boy, one girl; an overweight Oriental boy, and an American Indian girl. That leaves the Caucasian. Since we mustn't forget the physically handicapped, she was born with congenital malformation and had only three fingers on one hand.

The Hispanic boy's parents could not have jobs that would seem stereotypical, so they had to be white collar workers and eat non-Hispanic food—"spaghetti and meatballs and a salad." The editor even specified to the artist what kind of lettuce should be in the salad: "Make sure it's not iceberg: it should be something nice like endive." There also had to be a picture of a "senior citizen"—jogging. Such nit-picking is neither unusual nor the idiosyncracy of a particular editor or publisher. A specialist in textbook production pointed out that virtually every textbook "has to submit to ethnic/gender counts as to authors, characters in stories, references in history books, etc. Even humanized animal characters—if there's two boy bears, there have to be two girl bears."

Part of the double standards of multiculturalism often involves a paternalistic sheltering of disadvantaged minority children from things remote from their immediate experience. As one former teacher on a Wyoming Indian reservation put it, in asking for "textbook relevance" for his Indian students:

The concept of an ocean would be foreign to them. The children of Wind River know Ocean Lake, so named because of its considerable size, and the occasional wind driven waves. They couldn't fathom the idea of a real ocean.

No such claim was made for the white children in Wyoming, or in any of the other land-locked states of the United States. More fundamentally, it did not address the question whether education is meant to open a window on a larger world or to paint the student into his own little corner.

With so many people bending over backward to be "sensitive," with so much attention to mixing people from different groups, not only in real life (through "busing" and the like), but even in textbook pictures, what has been the net result? A San Francisco high school presented a lunchtime scene all too typical of many American schools and colleges where "multicultural diversity" is only statistical:

In the brick-lined courtyard, a group of black students gathers on benches. Outside a:second-floor classroom, several Chinese girls eat chow mein and fried rice from takeout cartons. Inside the dreary cafeteria, a clique of Vietnamese students sprawls across two tables—where they have spent every lunch since September. Against the back wall, two lone Russian boys pass lunch in conversation.

San Francisco schools have spent two decades and more than $100 million on integration programs. Yet outside the classroom—at the lunch counters, on the playgrounds and in the hallways—many ethnic groups still mix as well as oil and water.

It should be noted again that California is one of the states where the very textbook pictures must conform to the multicultural ideology. Moreover, it is not at all clear that there was , this much ethnic separatism in multi-ethnic schools in times past. This is not simply a California problem, however. Researchers around the country report internal self-segregation among students in schools racially "integrated" statistically. A two-year study by a professor at the University of Pittsburgh found that, on a typical day at a school being studied, only 15 out of 250 students ate lunch sitting next to someone of a different race, even though the school had equal numbers of black and white students.

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“Whole person” philosophy

Educational theory too often focusses on the desirability of doing something, to the complete exclusion of the question of our capability of doing it. No doubt it would be far more desirable to travel through the air like Superman, instead of inching along in a traffic jam. But that is no reason to leap off skyscrapers. Our educational system is full of the results of leaping off skyscrapers.

Other countries whose educational systems achieve more than ours often do so in part by attempting less. While school children in Japan are learning science, mathematics, and a foreign language, American school children are sitting around in circles, unburdening their psyches and "expressing themselves" on scientific, economic and military issues for which they lack even the rudiments of competence. Worse than what they are not learning is what they are learning—presumptuous superficiality, taught by practitioners of it.

The "whole person" philosophy is not 'simply a theory of education. It has become an open floodgate through which all sorts of non-educational activities have poured into the schools, relieving many teachers of the drudgery of teaching, and substituting more "exciting" world-saving crusades in place of the development of academic skills.

Whether the crusade concerns the environment, AIDS, foreign policy, or a thousand other things, it is far more often pursued as a crusade than as an issue with arguments on both sides. Moreover, it is not sufficient that the students be propagandized in the classroom; they are taught to act on the one-sided superficiality they have been given. At one time, the President of the United States received more letters from school children fulfilling classroom assignments on nuclear war than letters from any other group on any other subject."

In the San Francisco public schools in 1991, teachers organized a letter-writing campaign in which thousands of students sent letters to elected state officials, protesting cuts in the school budget. One letter from an elementary school student said: "I hate you. I would like to kill you." Another letter asked about the official's wife and children and said, "I'm going to set your house on fire and get my hornies to beat you up!" In response to public outcry and to angry officials, California's State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Bill Honig, sent out a memorandum to county and district superintendents, warn-that "it would be legally safer to avoid such activities." As for the ethics and propriety of using the children in this way, a spokesman for Honig's office was quoted in the San Francisco Examiner as justifying such school assignments:

"It's appropriate to have kids responding to a current issue directly involving their lives," she said. "So having kids use class time to address public officials on current events is appropriate.' ^'

Those who emphasize the teaching of "issues" rather than Academic skills fail to understand that "issues" are infinitely more complex and difficult to master than fundamental principles of analysis. The very reason why there is an issue in the first place is usually because no single principle can possibly resolve the differences to the mutual satisfaction of those concerned. Innumerable principles are often interacting in a changing environment, creating vast amounts of complex facts to be mastered and assessed—if one is serious about resolving issues responsibly, as distinguished from generating excitement. To teach issues instead of intellectual principles to school children is like teaching calculus to people who have not yet learned arithmetic, or surgery to people lacking the rudiments of anatomy or hygiene. Worse, it is teaching them to go ahead and perform surgery, without worrying about boring details.

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“Role Models”

One of the most widely accepted—or at least unchallenged—dogmas in American education today is that students need "role models" from the same social background as themselves. From the kindergarten to the colleges and universities, the dogma holds sway that students are taught more effectively by people of the same race, ethnicity, culture, and sex as themselves. Empirical evidence is almost never asked for, much less given.

Many of those who espouse this doctrine have the most obvious self-interest in doing so. Teachers and directors of bilingual education programs, Afro-centric programs in schools and various ethnic studies programs in college, all preserve jobs and careers for themselves—free of competition from members of the majority population—by using the "role model" dogma. So do feminists, homosexuals, and others. Administrators who have caved in to demands for various enclaves and preserves for particular groups likewise have a vested interest in this dogma, as a defense against critics. Around this solid core of supporters of the "role model" idea, there is a wider penumbra of those who wish to be au courant with the latest buzzwords, or to be on the side of the angels, as currently defined.

Historically, there have been good, bad, and indifferent schools where students and teachers have all been of the same background, where students and teachers were of wholly different backgrounds, and all sorts of combinations in between. There is no empirical evidence that any of those similarities or differences are correlated with educational results, and considerable indications that they are not.

One of the most academically successful of the all-black schools was Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., during the period from its founding in 1870 until its rapid deterioration in the late 1950s, in the wake of new rules for selecting students. In addition to producing good academic results in general during this period, Dunbar also produced an impressive list of "the first black" to enter a number of fields and institutions, ranging from West Point and Annapolis to the federal judiciary and the Presidential Cabinet. Its curriculum, however, was hardly Afrocentric and was in fact so traditional as to include Latin, long after most American schools had abandoned that ancient language. While Dunbar's teachers were black, another equally high-quality black high school, St. Augustine's in New Orleans, was founded and manned by whites of the Josephite order."

Among the European immigrant groups, the first Irish Catholic children were taught by Protestant Anglo-Saxon teachers, at a time when such differences were very important socially and economically. Later, when the Jewish immigrant children began flooding into the public schools, they were far more likely to be taught by Irish Catholic teachers than by Jewish teachers. Still later, among the Chinese and Japanese children of immigrants, it was virtually unknown for them to be taught by teachers of their own race, religion, or culture. Yet, from all this vast experience, no one has yet produced evidence that ^"role models" from the student's own background are either necessary or sufficient, or in fact make any discernible academic difference at all.

The "role model" dogma is pork barrel politics, masquerading as educational philosophy. That this wholly unsubstantiated claim has been taken seriously in the media and by public officials is one more sign of the vulnerability of our minds and our institutions to vehement assertions—and to strident attacks on all who question them.

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Self-Esteem

The notion that self-esteem is a precondition for effective learning is one of the more prominent dogmas to have spread rapidly through the American educational system in recent years. However, its roots go back some decades, to the whole "child-centered" approach of so-called Progressive education. Like so much that comes out of that philosophy, it confuses cause and effect. No doubt valedictorians feel better about themselves than do students who have failed numerous courses, just as people who have won the Nobel Prize probably have more self-esteem than people who have been convicted of a felony.

Outside the world of education, few would be confident, or even comfortable, claiming that it is a lack of self-esteem which leads to felonies or its presence which leads to Nobel Prizes. Yet American schools are permeated with the idea that self-esteem precedes performance, rather than vice-versa. The very idea that self-esteem is something earned, rather than being a pre-packaged handout from the school system, seems not to occur to many educators. Too often, American educators are like the Wizard of Oz, handing out substitutes for brains, bravery, or heart.

The practical consequences of the self-esteem dogma are many. Failing grades are to be avoided, to keep from damaging fragile egos, according to this doctrine. Thus the Los Angeles school system simply abolished failing grades in the early years of elementary school and many leading colleges and universities simply do not record failing grades on a student's transcript. Other ways of forestalling a loss of self-esteem is to water down the courses to the point where failing grades are highly unlikely. A more positive approach to self-esteem is simply to give higher grades. The widespread grade inflation of recent decades owes much to this philosophy.

While the "role model" dogma is more obviously self-serving than the "self-esteem" dogma, the latter is not wholly free of self-interest. It is much easier to water down academic courses, replace them with non-academic activities, or give automatic high grades for either, than to take on the serious and difficult task of developing intellectual competence among masses of school children. Whatever the intentions of John Dewey or other pioneers of the Progressive education philosophy, its practical consequences have been a steady retreat from the daunting task of making mass education a serious attempt to raise American school children to a standard, rather than bringing the standard down to them.

The history of American education, from the time when high schools ceased to be a place reserved for an academic or social elite, has been a history of a steady displacement, or swamping, of academic subjects by non-academic subjects or academic subjects increasingly watered down. A blue-ribbon committee formed in the 1890s identified 40 subjects being taught in American high schools but, within two decades, the number of subjects expanded to 274. As of the period from 1906 to 1910, approximately two-thirds of all subjects taught in American high schools were academic subjects, but by 1930 only one-third were academic subjects.

Even when the educational reform movements of the 1980s were successful politically in getting academic-subject requirements written into law and public policy, the response of many school systems across the country was simply to increase the number of academic subjects taught at a lower level—including courses taught remedially or even meretriciously, as former non-academic courses were re-named to look academic on paper. Sometimes the proliferation of psuedo-academic courses led to an absolute decline in the number of students taking challenging academic subjects.

The "self-esteem" doctrine is just one in a long line of educational dogmas used to justify or camouflage a historic retreat from academic education. Its success depends on the willingness of the public, elected officials, and the media to take such dogmas seriously, without the slightest evidence. American school children and American society are the ultimate victims of this gullibility.

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So what has happened here? Some egg-headed intellectual comes up with some stupid, foolish idea that a person with good common sense would know would not work. Other foolish eggheads like the idea and spread it. The idea metastasizes and infects the entire educational system.

14 Mar 2024