America's Secret Education War

The essay below was my second published op-ed piece. It ran in August of 1999 in the South County Journal (Kent, WA) and the Eastside Journal (Bellevue, WA) under the editor’s title, “Hang Down Your Head, John Dewey.”  Have things changed for the better in the intervening years?  My writing career was just beginning.  My teaching career had less than a decade left.

FAS

America’s Secret Education War

The most important war nobody noticed began in 1968. Its first hero was Dr. S.I. Hayakawa, president of San Francisco State College. Armed only with the courage of his convictions and a small bullhorn, the diminutive linguist stood alone against a mob of protesting students bent on shutting down the school. The Battle of the Little Bull Horn was a Hayakawa victory, but it became traditional education’s last stand.

In the thirty-one years since, the enemy has won decisive victories on every front. The enemy is progressive education. Inspired word, progressive. Who could be against progress? John Dewey’s progressive model empowers the child. Traditional classrooms with authoritarian taskmasters were just too demanding, too achievement oriented. For Dewey, learning was a natural outgrowth of each child’s innate curiosity. Little wonder why his ideas still appeal. What child would choose drill over play? Though Dewey’s methods failed in experimental schools, a progressive underground survived.

It took the turmoil of the Vietnam War to provide Dewey disciples with the smoke screen they needed to infiltrate college campuses. America’s sons faced death in Vietnam daily. On the home front, the youth of the ’60’s challenged every American tradition. With America’s social fabric being torn apart, who could worry about curriculum?

Required courses were the first casualties in the education war on America’s campuses. The revolutionary battle cry was, "Give us ‘relevant’ courses." Inspired word, relevant. It quickly made converts; especially when students learned relevant was just a euphemism for easy. Soon traditionalists found themselves out-numbered or at least out-shouted. Pandemic rioting forced curriculum surrender. Progressive-inspired anarchy replaced traditional standards on American campuses. Students gained the foothold Dewey zealots needed.

Undergraduates stopped learning facts and started sharing feelings. Rebellious protesters held group therapy "seminars" and called it learning. Empowered by their curriculum victory, hardcore progressives expanded the battlefront. They set their sights on the next generation of teachers. When protesters from the ’60’s became education professors, the hallowed halls of traditional education came a tumblin’ down. Dewey’s ideas now had clout. Traditional education was doomed. Capitulation soon followed.

Structured classrooms were purged. Student-centered learning environments were promoted. The format clicked at the college level. Why stop there? Soon teachers at all levels metamorphosed into facilitators. The new "guide on the side" emerged from the old-fashioned "sage on the stage." Educators everywhere chanted, " I don’t teach subjects. I teach children." Few saw the ironic half-truth of their mantra. Most couldn’t teach grammar, for instance, because they’d never learned any. Traditional requirements for education degrees no longer existed.

Now-a-days memorization is a relic; discovery is the future. Educators eagerly embrace higher level thinking skills—even in primary grades where kids aren’t ready to analyze or synthesize. Everyone blindly accepts that children naturally want to learn. Everyone eagerly agrees that each student must learn at his own pace, in his own learning style. John Dewey’s ideas have won.

Progressives are in charge from the federal level to the local level and most union positions in between. Most traditional teachers have quit or retired by now. A wise minority switched to church schools or private schools. The isolated few who remain in public schools have become the Neanderthals of education.

So why are home-school numbers at an all-time high? Why are most Americans fed up with public education? Because thirty-one years of frivolous fads and techno-panaceas have made NO progress. The work I did in high school thirty-three years ago would pass for college work today. I’d call that REgressive, not PROgressive education.

The latest silver bullet, universal testing, won’t change a thing. My state’s test, the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), is a sham because progressives concocted it. Progressives also evaluate it, and public schools will teach to the test until the results prove kids ARE learning what progressives value. It’s a self-fulfilling heresy, and it’s shameful.

If my nine-year-old daughter doesn’t understand the symbolism of the poem on the state-mandated test, I DON’T care. Can she spell? Can she punctuate? If she fails to explain a mathematical process in her essay, so what? I really DON’T care. She’s just a fourth grader! I want her to know her times’ tables. I want her to do her arithmetic without a calculator. The WASL doesn’t test the skills I value.

It’s time for those of us who still believe in traditional education to fight back. Though we seem outnumbered, and we face an entrenched bureaucracy, perhaps our time has finally come. We should start by confronting those addicted to progressive ideas. They need to admit they have a problem. Their methods have never worked.

We should be prepared for widespread denial. Our best intervention tool is Project Follow Through, the most comprehensive education study in history. It PROVES progressive methods don’t work. Follow Through covers the years 1967 through 1995, that is, from around The Battle of the Little Bull Horn until mid-Clinton. Could the timing be more perfect?

Progressives will find it hard to argue with the cold, hard facts. Whole language does NOT work; traditional phonics does. New math does NOT work; traditional drill does. The billion-dollar study says direct instruction gets the best results. Student–centered classrooms flunk. So says the study. So what are we waiting for?   

Public education has sacrificed America’s sons and daughters on the altar of John Dewey’s specious dream. Progressive education has been a monumental mistake. To have a future, the entire system must change. We must re-establish proven traditional methods. We need subject experts in structured classrooms using direct instruction. We need a balance between content and process, and we need high standards. Not everyone will earn an A. Not everyone will have fun. Learning will require hard work. Who said growing up would be easy? Who said life would be easy? Saving public education won’t be easy either.

Great American leaders have always rallied this country behind the great causes of our past. At the beginning of a new century, we need a new leader to rally the public around the great cause of our present. Traditional America must reclaim the public education system. When our public schools abandoned tradition in the sixties, they turned to the left to follow progressives. We’ve been herded their way for over thirty years. Enough! To save our schools, we need to return to traditional methods that we KNOW have worked. That return will require a focus to the right. It’s not just a question of politics. It’s the right course for all Americans. It’s not just the future of American education at stake. It’s the future of America.