Unifying the Country Starts with the Education System

This sounds a bit like a Prussian view of education. Is a unified country really a good thing? Libertarians would argue not. At the risk of sounding Leftist, diversity might be better. "Diverse" just means "black" in the Leftist lexicon so we should not let that abuse of language detain us.

It is true that America is badly divided at the moment and that is certainly in a large part the fault of the educational system. But that is precisely because an American education these days is NOT diverse. It is a Leftist monoculture. What is preached is a totally unbalanced message of hate for America.

So the educational system is indeed badly in need of reform but the reform needs to take the shape of depoliticization, above all


Jenna A. Robinson

For many years, E.D. Hirsch has been an outsider in education circles. While the education establishment focused on critical thinking, child-centered education, and skills instruction, Hirsch insisted that content matters. Hirsch’s new book expands on that theme. In it, Hirsch repeats the evidence he laid out in his previous works on how the teaching of content affects learning outcomes—including reading comprehension—and student success. But he adds that teaching shared content has another benefit: It gives students a common understanding of our shared history and culture as Americans.

Such commonality would go a long way to healing the great rifts that have developed within our nation.

Although most of Hirsch’s book centers on K-12 education, reform must start with higher education: Specifically, in our schools of education, where the majority of K-12 teachers learn from the same misguided playbook. Hirsch calls it educational romanticism, “the idea that education should be individualized to accord with the child’s nature” and allow them to “construct their own knowledge.” Hirsch is unrepentant in his criticism of ed schools: “The dominant, child-centered idea has been so well indoctrinated in teachers-to-be by our education schools that child-centeredness has wielded an intellectual monopoly.”

It was this philosophy that gave us “whole language” instruction instead of phonics, social studies instead of history, and culturally sensitive math lessons. None of those methods work. And at the same time, they prevent students from assimilating the common language, knowledge, and values that could tie them together as fellow citizens.

Hirsch has written at length about cultural literacy, beginning with a book of that name written in 1987, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Hirsch defines cultural literacy, broadly, as “the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world…extending over the major domains of human activity from sports to science.” He sees such information as neither narrow nor elitist. Instead, it is unifying.

America’s founders, who embraced Enlightenment rather than Romantic values, knew this to be true:

The Enlightenment, with its faith in logic and science to advance the human condition, had created the United States. Jefferson and Franklin had been its children. The Enlightenment has also produced the common school, under the logical view that a common system of language, laws, and ideals would enable the new person—the American—to weaken or break the old ethnic bonds and form a thriving new nation.

Hirsch credits Noah Webster with the creation and maintenance of national cohesion when America was young. “He foresaw that the modern style of American democracy would have to be a manufactured thing, founded on a common system of laws, values, ethics, and a shared print language—what we call ‘culture’ and that he called ‘manners.’” Webster’s Speller, “a small guide to American spelling filled with moral tales and sentiments and factual information about the new nation,” provided a common starting point for all schoolchildren. Later, the McGuffey readers filled that same role.

But commonality has its detractors. The last time the federal government tried such an approach, we got Common Core, which has failed spectacularly. Among conservatives especially, federalism, decentralization, and local control have been the watchwords.

Content, too, can be controversial. Because as soon as schools teach content instead of generic skills and capacities, someone must choose which content to teach. Will it be 1619 or 1776? Hirsch recognizes this difficulty: “Trying to get nationwide or statewide or even district or schoolwide agreement about specific grade-by-grade subject matter in history, literature, or the arts is like touching some poisonous object.” But it’s worth doing and, Hirsch believes, it’s possible. He outlines some ideas of how to get there in Part III of the book, “American Ethnicity: Will the Common School Make a Comeback?”

If all goes well, maybe we can return to education as Hirsch experienced in it the 1930s:

I was born in 1928. I went to elementary school in the early 1930s, before the new wave of romanticism had reached as far as Memphis, Tennessee. The curriculum I received was nation centered, not child centered. We learned US history. We honored American founders. We learned by heart the preambles to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We learned about the Civil War. We memorized not only the Pledge of Allegiance and the “Star-Spangled Banner,” but also the Gettysburg Address. We learned the parts of speech…My generation experienced elementary education that was more or less the same across the land.

This kind of shared, unifying, patriotic education is needed now more than ever. Reading Hirsch’s new book is a good starting place.

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2020/11/unifying-the-country-starts-with-the-education-system/

University Of Miami Official Demands Removal Of Pro-2A Sign

A University of Miami official demanded that the campus College Republicans club take down a sign that read “I’m Pro-Choice. Choose A Gun” from a public display that the group had set up on campus, claiming that the sign violated university policy.

The Miami Hurricane student newspaper reported on the incident on Friday as part of a larger story on the current “debate” over free speech on campus, which in actuality seems like less of an actual debate and more demands from the Left that conservatives and Republicans should only be able to say things that the Left agrees with.

“I do feel like there is a time and a place,” said UM senior John Cuddihy. “That’s where I think maybe it was too much on a college campus…I think there’s a distinction between glorifying assault rifles and just being pro-gun in general.”

Too much speech for a college campus? This isn’t daycare, this is a university for crying out loud. As for any distinction between “glorifying” semi-automatic rifles and “just being pro-gun,” as far as the First Amendment is concerned, it’s a distinction without a difference.

Hefley said that while tabling, UMCR received a call from the Director of the Student Center Complex saying that their sign violated university policy.

“I’m very confused because it’s just pictures promoting the Second Amendment,” he said.

Other students, including junior Nathaly Gonzalez, were adamant that UMCR was intentionally instigating public discord.

“They are purposefully making the campus an uncomfortable place to exist,” Gonzalez said.

How exactly are they doing that? By sitting at a table with signs that express political points of view that are different than yours? Frankly, if that makes you uncomfortable, that’s a good thing. College is supposed to be a place where you are exposed to new ideas and thoughts. You don’t have to agree with all or any of them, but if you’re only hearing things you already agree with, you’re doing college (and life) wrong.

As a private institution, the University of Miami can establish whatever speech code it wants, but just because they can coddle the minds of students doesn’t mean that they should. Nathaly Gonzalez says, in essence, that College Republicans should shut up because what they say makes her uncomfortable. Don’t you think they could say the same thing about her political opinions?

The controversy over the pro-2A signage is just the latest in a series of recent attempts to target conservative speech on the campus. A Trump sign was recently vandalized on campus, and some students are demanding a ban on banners or signs for political candidates entirely.

Student Sen. Randy Fitzgerald advocated for the rights of student organizations to display partisan banners on campus during the senate meeting.

“I don’t believe Student Government should be in the business of commenting as an organization on major parties’ nominees to the extent that we should attack the president of the United States, and consequently, our colleagues on this campus who support him as ‘racist, homophobic, and bigoted’,” Fitzgerald said.

For the moment, Fitzgerald’s view seems to have prevailed, and there are both Biden and Trump banners outside of the campus bookstore that put up by the College Democrats and College Republicans. The attempts to curtail conservative speech continue, however, and the “pro-choice, choose a gun” sign, remains tucked away out of sight instead of on display near the university’s Student Center.

https://bearingarms.com/came/2020/10/31/miami-official-removal-2a-sign

Australia: NSW Education Department: 2394 teachers leave, 321 sacked for abandoning students

A record number of dud teachers have finally been put out to pasture this year following a Department of Education review into its human resources practices.

A total of 321 teachers have been terminated so far this year after the “Workforce Transition team” undertook a review of staff who had effectively deserted their positions.

“This review resulted in a large number of staff being deemed as having abandoned their employment and were terminated as a result,” a note accompanying the data said.

By comparison, last year only 10 teachers were terminated by the Department of Education.

Parent groups welcomed the surge in sackings of teachers who were in a kind of education purgatory -- no longer teaching in classrooms nor officially fired-- saying it will free up space for enthusiastic young teachers to secure a permanent job.

This year a total of 2394 teachers left the job including those who were terminated, along with 850 public school teachers who resigned so far this year, 1,152 who retired, 44 who were medically retired and 26 who died while still employed as a teacher.

NSW P and C Federation president Tim Spencer said the highly unionised workforce meant it was difficult to get rid of dud teachers and welcomed the push which would clear the decks and give young enthusiastic teachers the opportunity to get a permanent job.

“It is challenging for a principal to deal with staff who either just don’t turn up to work or go on prolonged stress leave, they have to replace them with casuals,” he said.

“(There) has to be a reasonable and rational discussion as to why that person is not performing their role just like it would be in any other workplace and dealing with it appropriately.”

Central Coast P and C president Sharryn Brownlee said the move could save thousands for the Education Department if the teachers had been still getting paid while on leave, at the same time principals had to pay another casual teacher to take their classes.

“It is long overdue… dragging things out for long periods of time is stressful for the individual and the school,” she said.

Secondary Principals’ Council president Craig Petersen said some teachers simply would never return from annual leave and the Department of Education had no mechanism to fire them. “These are people we haven’t seen for months and terms and in extreme cases, years,” he said.

A Department spokesman said they wrote to the teachers seeking explanation for their unauthorised absence this year. “The teachers who did not respond, or did not provide a valid reason for their absence, were terminated,” he said.

Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the Department had done a great job reviewing unauthorised absences. “Freeing these positions allows our principals to fill permanent roles with high quality teachers,” she said.

Shadow Education spokeswoman Prue Car said more needed to be done to keep good teachers in schools following the resignation of 850 teachers this year. “It’s concerning there is no proper plan to keep our best and brightest teachers in our schools,” Ms Car said.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/nsw-education-department-2394-teachers-leave-321-sacked-for-abandoning-students/news-story/0853782fc20729c2f72ded4c8d4a4001

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