Inside American Education (1992) - Plot & Excerpts
Thomas Sowell presents clear, commonsense arguments for why American public education at all levels has gone down the toilet in recent years. He spends far more time then I would have liked discussing higher education, but the chapters on K-12 are particularly good. When my child enters school in a few years, you can bet I'll know exactly what's going on in my kid's classroom. At the end, Sowell discusses ways to improve education at all levels, including the inane bureaucracy that rewards seniority rather than outcomes. Some of the ideas and practices he points out were a major part of my educational experience, both as a student and teacher. Forgive the long-winded review, but I just had to include some gems:p. 55: "The 'objective' specified in one part of a so-called 'gifted and talented' curriculum is: 'To be a risk taker by having the courage to expose oneself to failure or criticisms, to take a guess, to function under conditions devoid of structure or to defend one's own ideas.' The epigraph to this handbook is: Better one's own path though imperfect than the path of another well made.' This motto is offered, not to seasoned and mature adults, but to children in grades 4 through 6." My 2nd grade teacher was really into "risk taking." I remember writing something about myself saying that I was a risk taker. Uh, no. I was exactly the opposite of a risk taker. Fast forward fifteen years as I'm subbing in a suburban Chicago high school. There's a poster in the hall that read, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" What? Kids need to know there are consequences, both good and bad, to any decision. Telling kids to take risks without weighing the consequences is doing them an enormous disservice.p. 67, regarding non-academic curriculum that developers don't want parents informed about: "It is precisely the pervasive pattern of undermining parents which makes [these] programs dangerous beyond their particular subject matter.... Even youngsters who develop no problems in these particular areas may nevertheless have their ties with their parents weakened, confused, or otherwise made insecure--especially during the crucial and dangerous adolescent years. The constant conditioning to act independently of parents, and to use similarly inexperienced peers as guides, is an invitation to disaster in many ways...."Parents are not simply a source of experience from their own lives; they are a conduit for the distilled experience of others in earlier generations, experience conveyed in traditions and moral codes responding to the many dangers that beset human life." He goes on to point out that parents actually have a stake in their children's future, unlike the developers of such curriculum. While I was at SUU, there was a big debate between two professors. One was very conservative, the other very liberal and advocated experimentation rejection of traditional values. At the end of the debate, the conservative professor said, in essence, "You'll hear all these ideas that tell you to experiment and that your parents are wrong, but in the end, you ought to listen to the people who have the most to lose should you make self-destructive decisions. Your professors won't be there to bail you out, but your parents will."p. 88 has a quote about a "diverse" school in San Francisco at lunch. The white kids are in one corner, the black kids in another, the Asians hanging out in their own group, and the Latino kids by themselves. "'SF 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.'" This was true at my Chicago school. The administration even went as far as to have a week where students were encouraged to talk to someone new at lunch and were provided conversation starters. It went over like a lead balloon. Even in the most diverse schools, students gravitate to others like themselves.p. 218-19 on classroom visits: "Those who believe that a classroom visit is likely to be a great source of information about teaching repeat the fatal fallacy of education professors, that there is such a thing as teaching, separate from the substantive knowledge being taught. The conveying of that knowledge, and of the intellectual skills and discipline which give it meaning, is ultimately what teaching consists of. If these things are conveyed from one mind to another, then the teaching has been successful, no matter how chaotic and clumsy the classroom management may be. By the same token, if it fails to happen, then teaching has been a failure, no matter how smoothly or impressively the classroom has been managed, or how happy or inspired the students feel." I wish more than anything someone had taught me how to teach.p. 288-89 on education courses: "The biggest liability of the American public school system is the legal requirement that education courses be taken by people who seek careers as tenured teachers. these courses are almost unanimously condemned--by scholars who have studied them, teachers who have taken them, and anyone else with the misfortune to have encountered them. The crucial importance of these courses, and the irreparable damage they do, is not because of what they teach or do not teach. It is because they are the filter though which the flow of teachers must pass. Mediocrity and incompetence flow freely through these filters, but the filter out many high-ability people, who refuse to subject themselves the the inanity of education courses, which are the laughing stock of many universities." My education classes were mostly worthless. When you did something incorrectly, you were not given a failing grade; you were told to redo it as many times as you need to in order for you to get it right. I had to make a diagram of my classroom (before I was assigned to a teacher) and reflect on my lesson plans (before I gave them). I had to sit through presentation after presentation by future teachers who didn't know how to project their voices or explain something clearly in a set amount of time. I had no idea how to manage a classroom. I had little idea how to present information to high school students. I learned a lot about how to make accommodations for theoretical ESL and special ed students. I learned how to jump through their stupid hoops. And like many in my profession, I was gone before my third year.
The part of this book that stayed with me was Sowell's description of death education in the public schools. Students are asked to discuss the deaths of their family members, and to practice writing suicide notes and their own obituaries. Sometimes, they even have field trips to the morgue and are encouraged to touch the corpses. Perhaps there is a place in public education for learning about sex, religion and death, but it should be done in an objective and unemotional manner. Children should not be subjected to such a great invasion of their personal privacy. Sowell compares these desensitizing experiences to brainwashing techniques. I see a similarity to the sexual histories that Alfred Kinsey attempted to take from most of his visitors.
What do You think about Inside American Education (1992)?
Another solid effort by T Money Sowell. This is a fascinating glimpse inside the problems of education in public schools as well as public and private universities. Tread carefully; the inside is a nauseating place.A disturbing trend in today’s society is that analysts and the general public will look at something that is not a free market, assume it is a free market, and then blame free market principles for the shortcomings of the system. Sowell shows how many of the institutional problems that are ruining education in America are doing so because they create a market that is not free. There is collusion, price discrimination, insulation from accountability, unionization and subsidization. This is not a free market so of course there is mediocrity. One thing that’s not so great about Sowell’s writing is the structure and outline of the chapters. For example, he’ll list three main reasons for something: tenure, research, and faculty self-governance. Then he’ll give subheadings to the first two topics but tuck the third one under the second, rather than make it a third subhead. So as you’re reading along you expect to hit that third subhead that let’s you know he’s changed topics and realize instead that the chapter is over. You realize that he’s been touching on the third topic, but you’re expecting more. Then you have to go back and review that third topic because nothing more is coming and that’s all you get – a few paragraphs.Also, he refers to himself in the third person in his own book, saying, “Among the early warnings was one in an article…by a black professor named Thomas Sowell.” Kinda lame, Tom.My only other complaint is that Sowell thinks hockey has halves: “At the end of half-time in a hockey game…” Where is his editor on this one? Are they both such nerds that they’ve never watched hockey? Come on.Here are a few of my favorite points:Minority students don’t want affirmative action:“A survey of 5,000 students at 40 colleges showed that, at predominantly white colleges, 76 percent of black students and 93 percent of white students agreed that all undergraduates should be admitted by meeting the same standards. At predominantly black colleges, more than 95 percent of the students of both races agreed.”Universities lack quality control:“There is probably nothing else purchased which has such a large impact on family finances, or on the future of the next generation, which has such lax quality control.”Universities spend too much money on non-academic endeavors:“In an academic context, the phrase ‘costs have risen’ often has exactly the same meaning as the phrase, ‘we have chosen to spend more money.’”Georgetown is awesome; Memphis State sucks:“Credit is due to some institutions like Georgetown University, where 90 percent of the basketball team graduated, but such institutions are more than counterbalanced by places like Memphis State, where no basketball player graduated for an entire decade.” Liberals are condescending toward minorities:“Despite paternalistic concerns expressed that disadvantaged minority children might be left behind in various parental choice schemes, due to the apathy of their parents, polls have repeatedly shown that support for parental choice has been higher among blacks than among whites.”Scholarships are bogus:“Scholarships are no longer a reward for being a scholar. They are part of a larger scheme of price discrimination and subsidization of colleges.”Even college presidents admit this is not a free market. Wouldn’t this be nice?!:“If colleges were required to assess students’ need independently, we might be dragged into a ‘bidding war’ for the best students – making conservative estimates of the amounts their families could contribute and then beefing up their aid packages.” William R. Cotter, President of Colby CollegeMoney has nothing to do with school performance:“One of the few rises in test scores occurred after one of the few declines in the real income of teachers.”Tenure sucks:“Given the degree of insulation from accountability, the degree of self-indulgence found among academics can hardly be surprising.”
—Jeremy
Although I don't remember specifics about this book, I do remember it being a fascinating breakdown on what has gone wrong with our education system. It's broken down into 3 parts. The first part (elementary schools) discusses the brainwashing of children and the promoting of the education system's ideologies at the expense of parental ideologies. The second part (colleges and universities) deals with admissions criteria, "preachy" professors, double standards, and athletics. The third section is an assessment of where we are heading and what we can do about it.My only criticism (of myself rather than the author) is that Sowell writes over my head. I have three of his other books (The Vision of the Anointed, The Quest For Cosmic Justice) that I couldn't finish because they were too difficult to understand. I find myself reading sentences and paragraphs several times because I hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about. What can I say, I like conversational writing as opposed to a master's thesis.
—Kevin Kirkhoff
