Stanford 9 scores repudiate educationism

by Greg Swann

I can remember as a small boy sitting at the dining-room table after Sunday dinner, listening to my grand-uncles arguing about trigonometry. They would defend their positions with figures and calculations lightly penciled onto the tablecloth. I had no idea what they were talking about, but the depth of their knowledge was amazing to me.

How well educated my grand-uncles must have been, right? Not really, not by their standards. They were all factory workers, the sons of farmers and coal miners. They got a perfectly ordinary schooling at a perfectly ordinary public school in a tiny little town in the midwest. Their advantage, their inestimable advantage, was that they were educated before the public schools were taken over by the likes of David Berliner, Dean of the Arizona State University College of Education.

Berliner is most famous as an apologist for the poor—and steadily poorer—performance of the public schools. With Bruce Biddle, he wrote a book called “The Manufactured Crisis”, which insists that public schools are not only doing a fine job, they’re getting better all the time. My grand-uncles could do trigonometry and today’s high school graduates can’t make change, but that’s the kind of evidence that Berliner and his fellow purveyors of educationism prefer not to notice. And they fervently hope you don’t notice it, either.

Educationism is a term of art coined by Richard Mitchell, who is quoted at length in the accompanying article. Mitchell wrote four compelling books on the theories of the lecturing classes, picking apart the festering corpses of their corpus, demonstrating with wit and grace that the very last thing the Berliners of our culture want is an educated, literate population.

Do you doubt this? This is Dr. Berliner speaking in his own behalf. The italics, astoundingly enough, are his:

[T]he U.S. public schools have done a good job of producing large numbers of literate Americans should that level of literacy be needed in their lives.

“Should that level of literacy be needed.” My uncles could do trigonometry. They probably rarely had need for it, but when they did, for work or for intellectual play around the dining-room table, they had it. A literate adult can read Richard Mitchell, which is a level of literacy Dr. Berliner might opine no one needs.

Of course there is no such thing as a level of literacy. One can either read—which means read Mitchell or Melville or Shakespeare—or one cannot. It’s no accident that Berliner’s book, tendentious and dull, was ringingly reviewed, while Mitchell’s books are all but out of print: Innocents imprisoned in the levels of hell below literacy rather like to be told that their condition is heavenly, substantially better than the awful fate of people who can read, make change—even do trigonometry.

This would make for a rousing farce, were it not for this: Educationism is holding our children hostage. The objective evidence against the Berliner model of public education is indisputable: Our children don’t learn math, they don’t study Latin nor do they master any foreign languages, they don’t read literature, they don’t learn the art of logic. Huge numbers of them never learn to read at all. This is borne out in test scores, which Berliner tries to dismiss, and, of course, it is borne out in the inability of many high school graduates to function in real life. We surrender twelve or more years of their lives and vast hordes of our treasure so that the furtive freebooters of educationism can rob our children of an education.

The school that my grand-uncles were lucky enough to attend insisted that every student could do serious academic work, even if some of them had to work at it harder than others. The philosophers of educationism argue that virtually no one can do serious academic work, and therefore no one should work very hard at all—least of all the teachers. I wish I were joking, but I’m not.

Luckily, the traditional schools movement has arisen to erase the ugly mess the educationists have made on the blackboard. Often referred to as “back to basics”, traditional schools aren’t actually back to anything—except back to the classroom after the decades-long educationist recess. Traditional schools uphold serious, rigorous academic standards, and they expect students to meet and surpass those goals. It will come as a surprise to no one but the minions of Dr. Berliner that they do.

The Stanford 9 scores released in July show that the Alhambra Traditional School is the best public school in the Valley of the Sun, the cities comprising metropolitan Phoenix. Berliner and his fellow professors of educationism advise us that we should not trust test scores—since they are mere objective measurements—and in any case, we should expect scores to be high where mobility is low and where parents speak English and make a lot of money. Educationists are wise to mistrust objective evidence, since it so often disproves their claims: Alhambra is at 37th Avenue and Osborn Road on Phoenix’s decaying West Side. In the Alhambra school district, mobility is 32 percent, parents speak 32 different languages and 87 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

The difference between Alhambra and a normal public school—the difference between a real school and a Berliner-style play-prison—is the curriculum. The students at the Valley’s traditional schools—Alhambra, Phoenix Magnet and Abraham Lincoln in Phoenix and the three Benjamin Franklin campuses in the suburb of Mesa—are expected to master difficult material as a means of taking mastery over their minds. Using “The Writing Road to Reading” by Romalda Spalding, students learn to read—which means to read Mitchell or Melville or Shakespeare. They are expected to work a grade-level ahead in math. They have homework every day, and it’s not the play-prison kind of busy-work.

In exchange for the time and effort and money set aside for their education they obtain an education. Not an excuse. Academic rigor has only recently returned to the public schools, but it has already completely refuted and repudiated the teachings of Dr. Berliner and his educationist cronies.

When my grand-uncles were in school, if someone had argued for giving children a ‘level’ of education, for giving them anything less than the best that could be provided, he would have been tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. David Berliner has yet to suffer this fate. But, of course and obviously, people were much better educated in those days...

From “Less Than Words Can Say”

by Richard Mitchell

A colleague sent me a questionnaire. It was about my goals in teaching, and it asked me to assign values to a number of beautiful and inspiring goals. I was told that the goals were pretty widely shared by professors all around the country.

Many years earlier I had returned a similar questionnaire, because the man who sent it had promised, in writing, to “analize” my “input.” That seemed appropriate, so I put it in. But he didn’t do as he had promised, and I had lost all interest in questionnaires.

This one intrigued me, however, because it was lofty. It spoke of a basic appreciation of the liberal arts, a critical evaluation of society, emotional development, creative capacities, students’ self-understanding, moral character, interpersonal relations and group participation, and general insight into the knowledge of a discipline. Unexceptionable goals, every one. Yet it seemed to me, on reflection, that they were none of my damned business. It seemed possible, even likely, that some of those things might flow from the study of language and literature, which is my damned business, but they also might not. Some very well-read people lack moral character and show no creative capacities at all, to say nothing of self-understanding or a basic appreciation of the liberal arts. So, instead of answering the questionnaire, I paid attention to its language; and I began by asking myself how “interpersonal relations” were different from “relations.” Surely, I thought, our relations with domestic animals and edible plants were not at issue here; why specify them as “interpersonal”? And how else can we “participate” but in groups? I couldn’t answer.

I asked further how a “basic” appreciation was to be distinguished from some other kind of appreciation. I recalled that some of my colleagues were in the business of teaching appreciation. It seemed all too possible that they would have specialized their labors, some of them teaching elementary appreciation and others intermediate appreciation, leaving to the most exalted members of the department the senior seminars in advanced appreciation, but even that didn’t help with basic appreciation. It made about as much sense as blue appreciation.

As I mulled this over, my eye fell on the same word in the covering letter, which said, “We would appreciate having you respond to these items.” Would they, could they, “basically appreciate” having me respond to these items? Yes, I think they could. And what is the appropriate response to an item? Would it be a basic response?

Suddenly I couldn’t understand anything. I noticed, as though for the first time, that the covering letter promised “to complete the goals and objectives aspect of the report.” What is a goals aspect? An objectives aspect? How do you complete an aspect? How seriously could I take a mere aspect, when my mind was beguiled by the possibility of a basic aspect? Even of a basic goals and basic objectives basic aspect?

After years of fussing about the pathetic, baffled language of students, I realized that it was not in their labored writings that bad language dwelt. This, this inane gabble, this was bad language. Evil language. Here was a man taking the public money for the work of his mind and darkening counsel by words without understanding.

Words never fail. We hear them, we read them; they enter into the mind and become part of us for as long as we shall live. Who speaks reason to his fellow men bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen. There must be some minimum allowable dose of inanity beyond which the mind cannot remain reasonable. Irrationality, like buried chemical waste, sooner or later must seep into all the tissues of thought.

This man had offered me inanity. I had almost seized it. If I told you that this little book would provide you with general insight into the knowledge of a discipline, would you read on? If so, then you had better read on, for you are in danger. People all around you are offering inanity, and you are ready to seize it, like any well-behaved American consumer dutifully swallowing the best advertised pill. You are, in a certain sense, unconscious.

Language is the medium in which we are conscious. The speechless beasts are aware, but they are not conscious. To be conscious is to “know with” something, and a language of some sort is the device with which we know. More precisely, it is the device with which we can know. We don’t have to. We can, if we please, speak of general insight into the knowledge of a discipline and forgo knowing.

Consciousness has degrees. We can be wide awake or sound asleep. We can be anesthetized. He is not fully conscious who can speak lightly of such things as basic appreciations and general insights into the knowledge of a discipline. He wanders in the twilight sleep of knowing where insubstantial words, hazy and disembodied, have fled utterly from things and ideas. His is an attractive world, dreamy and undemanding, a Lotus-land of dozing addicts. They blow a little smoke our way. It smells good. Suddenly and happily we realize that our creative capacities and self-understanding yearn after basic appreciations and general insights. We nod, we drowse, we fall asleep.

I am trying to stay awake.

An oasis in Arizona’s desert of illiteracy

by Greg Swann

Imagine, if you dare, a rosy future in which all Arizona first-graders can read. Read well, with full comprehension. Write well and legibly, with correct spelling.

Imagine that Arizona’s bilingual students can read and write English well by the end of the second grade.

Imagine that Arizona’s large number of semi-literate adults learn to read and write fluently.

Imagine even learning-disabled and special education students mastering the skills of literacy.

Is this a pipe dream? Arizona students score near the bottom on national reading tests. Not as badly as California children, but not even as well as children from Arkansas. How could we possibly hope to improve reading scores significantly anytime soon?

Governor Jane Hull and state school superintendent Lisa Graham Keegan want to spend an additional twenty million dollars on reading. To hire new instructors. To pay for new materials and training for teachers. To extend the school year. We know from bitter experience that these things won’t work, at least not well and not quickly.

So let’s up the stakes. Imagine that we could teach all of Arizona’s non-readers—children and adults, anglo and hispanic, able or disabled—and imagine that we could do it quickly, cheaply and well. Imagine an Arizona where eighty percent—or more—of fourth-graders are above the line of literacy instead of below it.

Imagine that! To be drenched in words in Arizona’s desert of illiteracy... That would require a panacea, a magic bullet, a miracle. Not a mirage but a true oasis. Lucky for us, we have one.

The Spalding Method is a reading curriculum that actually works. Developed by Romalda Spalding and published in 1957 in the book “The Writing Road to Reading”, the Spalding Method is a complete approach to English—reading, writing and spelling—that actually achieves the results claimed for it. Ordinary children learn to read and write in one year—or less. Disabled and bilingual students learn to read and write English in two years. Illiterate adults become literate adults in months.

The Spalding Method really works, and it really works for everyone. Failure rates are negligible, and schools switching to Spalding experience remarkable gains in reading comprehension and writing and spelling skills.

The superiority of the Spalding Method is well established—in university-level reading research, in reading test scores, in parent and teacher testimonials and in the remarkable reading ability of Spalding students. Valley public schools using Spalding include Alhambra and Abraham Lincoln in Phoenix and Benjamin Franklin in Mesa, as well as many private and charter schools.

Better yet, the Spalding “materials” are minimal and inexpensive, and any literate adult with good diction can learn to teach Spalding in a matter of hours.

And that’s the best news of all for Arizona parents. There is no need to wait for the Governor or the state or the school board or the principal to discover that the Spalding Method is not just better but much better than the alternatives. You can get “The Writing Road to Reading” for yourself and teach your children to read—really read—at home. The book is $18 at retail, less at Amazon.com, and you can borrow it for free from the public library.

It would be a wonderful thing if the state and local functionaries who control public education were to discover Spalding. But even if they don’t, you can. The Spalding Education Foundation maintains a web page at http://www.spalding.org/. Better yet, they’re located in the Valley, at 2814 West Bell Road, Suite 1405, Phoenix, AZ 85053. The telephone number is 602-866-7801. You can request information by email at staff@spalding.org.

This is a fact: Your children can learn to read and write English well. So can your neighbor’s. So can bilingual students, special education students and illiterate adults. Whether or not the state does anything about this, you can. The magic bullet is not magic, it’s real. It’s not a mirage, it’s a method, the Spalding Method. “The Writing Road to Reading” is your oasis in Arizona’s desert of illiteracy.

Find out more...

Richard Mitchell’s entire corpus is available on the internet. His books are free on-line, but nonetheless they demand a high payment: You must pay attention. You can find them at: http://members.aol.com/hu4wahz/ug/index.html. Much better news, Mitchell’s books are coming back into print. The Gift of Fire, his finest work, is available in a hand-bound collector’s edition from Bob Shubert. And Less Than Words Can Say, has just been re-issued by The Akadine Press. They plan to publish more of Mitchell’s books in the coming months.

The Arizona Stanford 9 test scores are available on-line in versions of varying utility. The Arizona Republic has the scores in a searchable, graphic form. The Arizona Department of Education presents the complete database of scores as an immense PDF file. Both of these renderings are non-optimal for computer users—which you must be both to visit those pages and this one. Ergo, the ADE PDF file has been converted into an Excel file, searchable, sortable, rankable. You can download that from here. Actual useful information. Imagine that!

There is more about the Spalding Method at: http://www.spalding.org/.

And Dr. David Berliner stands ready to blow a little smoke your way from his web page at: http://tikkun.ed.asu.edu/coe/faculty/berliner.htm.