Certificate Chase: Education Gone Awry

For the last 50 years the older generations have complained about the education of that the younger generation is receiving.  Much of this is groundless, but there is a growing problem in public education both at the secondary and post-secondary levels.  The problem as I see it, is different than most.

During my high school years in the '60s the general complaint was that we were not keeping up with the Russians and that our parents needed to jump start their kids.  The Pontifications of the Harvard School of Education was that we needed big schools, more math and more science.  The idea was that if we had bigger schools then the students at the top would be drive each other to greater and greater knowledge.

So started the school consolidation craze of the '50s and '60s.  Did it work? Nope.  What did it accomplish?  What it accomplished were some dynamite football and basketball teams.  And in addition, the education of the average Joe and Jane kind of floundered because there were only a few rocket scientists (and that was literally what we were trying to incubate) in any given community.  It didn't take much to send my generation into complete educational and cultural revolt -- and the Viet Nam war more than fit the ticket to get the revolt train moving.

There was then a kind of lull as the nation tried to catch its breath.  During this lull somebody managed to notice that we were locking up or hiding away a fairly large segment of our population who had various forms of physical, mental, and/or emmotional disabilities and disorders.  It occurred to someone out there in the world of caring people that it really was not a very humane way of dealing with such individuals.  And, wallah!  Special education, accessibility, and mainstreaming became a part of the jargon of education -- and schools took over responsibilities previously shouldered by other agencies and/or the individual's family. 

It was the right thing to do -- well, most of the time it was the right thing to do.  But, it wrought tremendous change in the cost of operating public schools.  So at Town meeting our parents who were now grandparents would show up to complain that given the massive increase in education spending you would expect a massive increase in the academic abilities of their grandchildren.  They tended to forget that the schools were now trying to care for, babysit, and teach children with severe problems that during their generation were basically institutionalized or hidden away at home.

And then, the business obsession took hold of America.  The idea that everything could be analysed in an objective manner as long as you quantified it.  The business community was now fully on its knees worshipping Mammon through studying their holy writ of laissez faire free market economics.  So you needed to have the instructors certified and then you needed to have the children certified.  Certification of course normally comes as a result of two things: a standardized course of training and testing.  Which is fine, I suppose, as far as it goes, but there are a couple problems that a broad minded analyst would tend to acknowledge right away.  First, whoever determines what is to be tested and how it is to be tested, determines what the standardized course of training is to be.  Second, whatever type of education which is amenable to testing is going to be taught, and whatever is not easily amenable to testing is not.

So? You say.  Well, almost by definition, art and music are not easily amenable to testing.  The real humanities are also not easily amenable to testing -- but rote memorization of dates, events, and vocabulary are.  What that translates into is the teaching of history by rote memorization of dates and events stripped of the meaning which history tries to convey to later generations.  In other words, it is not worth crap -- other than it would be nice if people knew who George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were.  Almost over night then, the arts and humanities take a major hit and anything which requires creative thinking and the ability to see patterns not yet recognized get repressed and stifled.

But that is not all,  the business community which, if it could, would reduce everything to a form of production as is understood by industry, begins to look at students as products.  You start hearing businessmen complain about the schools not providing them with the employee product they need.  Along comes Reagan whose education advisors start talking about standardized testing and holding teachers and schools accountable.  Bush II then comes along with the misnamed "No Child Left Behind" and requires everybody to get certified and quantified and measured and most likely found wanting.  Quietly, almost under the radar -- schools are being pushed to train hard-working punctual and docile employees, who can do math or the sciences.  Teachers have to be certified and schools are certified and students are certified, all in terms that business leaders can understand.

Where this will eventually lead, is just about anyone's guess -- where it will not lead is to well educated Americans capable of understanding democracy and our Constitution and cultural traditions.  So the question, we should be asking ourselves -- just what are we certifying? and why is it that we bother with public education in the first place?  But, never mind, we will expect them certified in any event because if they are not certified we cannot compare them on a national basis -- and comparison, well that is like competition -- and in the religion of Mammon, competition is the heart, soul, and purpose of humanity.

Which brings to mind a skit one often sees performed at Boy Scout Camps.  The skit goes like this.  A boy is walking around under a light pole looking at the ground.  Another boy comes up and asks what he is doing.  The first boy says he is looking for his keys.  The second says "where did you drop them," the first then replies "over there" -- pointing some distance away. The second then says, "then why are you looking over here?"  To which the first replies, "the light is better over here."  The point is simply this.  The most important education in anyone's life is not easily quantifiable especially after the primary education level.  But, the search for whether a person has "got it" in terms of education is dependent upon tests which actually reveal that which is actually quantifiable.  So the question is?  are we sending teachers off to work in the light while the keys are laying over there in the dark? and what keys are we looking for in the first place.