The Role of 'Educators' (Thomas Sowell)

Many years ago, as a young man, I read a very interesting book about the rise of the Communists to power in China. In the last chapter, the author tried to explain why and how this had happened.

Among the factors he cited were the country's educators. That struck me as odd, and not very plausible, at the time. But the passing years have made that seem less and less odd, and more and more plausible. Today, I see our own educators playing a similar role in creating a mindset that undermines American society.

Schools were once thought of as places where a society's knowledge and experience were passed on to the younger generation. But, about a hundred years ago, Professor John Dewey of Columbia University came up with a very different conception of education — one that has spread through American schools of education, and even influenced education in countries overseas.

John Dewey saw the role of the teacher, not as a transmitter of a society's culture to the young, but as an agent of change — someone strategically placed, with an opportunity to condition students to want a different kind of society.

A century later, we are seeing schools across America indoctrinating students to believe in all sorts of politically correct notions. The history that is taught in too many of our schools is a history that emphasizes everything that has gone bad, or can be made to look bad, in America — and that gives little, if any, attention to the great achievements of this country.

If you think that is an exaggeration, get a copy of "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and read it...

One way is doing what I do, which is to run for and serve on your local school board. Although our options are extremely limited by the legislature, there are still opportunities to review curriculum and and try to advocate for teaching of traditional American history and values, correct language and grammar as well as rigorous math and science.
It is an uphill struggle, but if we don’t fight, we are guaranteed to lose the battle.

I served on a Texas textbook review for high school physics books once. We were provided with this very long checklist that looks like a committee sat down and thought of everything they could write down about physics. Then, the textbooks arrived from some 20 different publishers. With all of the related material, teacher's books, workbooks, etc., I filled an unfurnished spare bedroom wall-to-wall with physics texts.

I was the only non-teacher on the committee. I was four years out of college, had a job as an engineer and was going to grad school at night, which limited the amount of time I could spend on the committee. I gave up on the checklist, which I thought was missing the bigger picture about which texts best prepared the students for college physics.

I went through every student text book with an eye towards answering two questions:

1. How well did it explain the concepts?

2. How well did it prepare the students for college?

I came up with my ranked order list, explained how I arrived at the list, and sent it in. When I was sent the committee's official recommendations, I was stunned. It was nearly identical to my list, but in reverse order. The best books were at the bottom. The worst were at the top.

Perplexed, I went back through the books the committee selected at the top and the ones I selected. Then, I figured it out. The committee's recommendations were based on how easy the books were for the teachers. Their preferred text didn't have a single physics problem. You didn't even need to know basic algebra to teach the text.

This wasn't history. This was physics. There were no politics in it (at least then, before Algore discovered global warming). There was a bunch of lazy teachers.

I spent a lot of time coming up with my recommendations. I felt like they were totally ignored and that I was only on the committee so they could claim input from a real world practitioner. It was a complete waste of time, though surprisingly I did fetch several hundred dollars when I sold the room full of physics books and related material.

I concluded that the schools can't be saved until we change how we hire teachers and that they don't want and will resist involvement by anyone that makes their lives the slightest bit more strenuous. Getting involved is like wrestling pigs. All you do is irritate the pigs and feel dirty afterwards.

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