GEORGE TEMPLETON
COMMENTARY
[Gazette Editor's note: This is the last of Templeton's two part educational series. To read the first part, click on the GEORGE TEMPLETON tab at the right.
By George Templeton
Gazette Columnist
"...the world’s important problems are our children’s
more than ours. Regardless, parents will best defend their values by
looking at their own thinking and living their values."
Common Core
Consensus
Lyndon Johnson insisted, “The biggest danger to
American stability is the politics of principle… Thus it is for the
sake of nothing less than stability that I consider myself a consensus
man.” The Common Core is a five year voluntary consensus, but at
the last minute its opponents are trying to hijack it. By definition, the
“wrong side” has to lose for the deeply rooted “right
side” to win. There are no winners in this sort of argument.
Making the Common Core educational standard work is far more important than any
imagined alternative.
Left Behind
In an increasingly complex and interdependent world that
requires nimble adaptation, we have met the challenge with superficial blogs
and strident tweets promoting unbalanced views. Amateurs and the internet
let information, communication, entertainment, and unfettered democracy out of Pandora’s
Box. They banished the professional expertise and vetting of journalists,
scientists, publishers, reporters, newspapers, and magazines. We traded
truth and honesty for sociopathic paranoia typified by the progression of talk
show reference from liberal Democrat, to Democratic Socialist, to Democratic
Marxist as the 2012 election approached.
We must cope with this reality or America will be left behind.
Liberal Education
The de-industrialization of America and the need for technical
training to serve specialized jobs has been challenging the American ideal of liberal
education that promoted thought about justice, religion, culture, and liberty. Anti-intellectualism
regards nuanced thought as existing only for its own sake. Traditionalists
object to the alleged “brainwashing” of the public schools that
supposedly “teach” Atheistic Humanism.
The Rev. Tim LaHaye claims that “Humanists are the mortal
enemy of all pro-moral Americans …” But Humanism’s roots are
religious, going back to Sixteenth Century century Desiderius Erasmus, who
dedicated his life to correcting translation imperfections in the Latin Vulgate
Bible. The humanities are not atheistic, though they inform a broader
perspective than a single religious faith encompassing all life.
Philosophy books list Max C. Otto, who refused to sign the
1933 Humanist Manifesto, Roy Wood
Sellars, and John Dewey as contemporary religious humanists. Their God was not
traditional. Otto felt that Humanism could not be proselytized but
instead had to be found. Sellars saw it as an evolutionary becoming that
was not biological but included abilities and character such as faith and
reason, justice and mercy, so that the spiritual came from within. For
Dewey, what mattered was not a historical absolute conceptual truth, but rather
how religious experience brought about a better, deeper adjustment.
Atheistic Humanism comes from Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who
founded Positivism and the science of sociology. It lacked a recognized
theology, substituted ethics for dogma, and claimed love as its principle.
Conservatives don’t like Positivism, but they cuddle up to Ayn
Rand’s Atlas Shrugged,
and her libertarian Objectivism, that argues for reason, individualism, makers
above takers, and a man’s own happiness as his moral imperative.
Linda Rae Hermann’s book, Winning the Culture War, describes how “revealed
religion” merges Communism, “us versus them”, and salvation
with her hostile delusion that secular Progressivism in our pagan schools is a
Satanic, anti-God conspiracy to corrupt the pure. She asks politicians
for permission to impose her interpretations on everyone, but Jesus is not
confined by ideology.
Jim Wallis, the evangelical founder of Sojourners, theologian,
and author has a view differing from Linda’s. He wrote, “We
are dismayed by those who would undermine the integrity of religious conviction
that does not conform to a narrow ideological agenda… It is important
to recognize what an historical aberration the Religious Right
represents. For biblical religion to be put at the service of the rich
instead of the poor, the powerful instead of the oppressed, of war instead of
peace, turns Christian teaching upside down. For evangelical religion to be
used to fuel the engines of racial and class division, to block the progress of
women, to undermine the care for the creation, to fight the banning of assault
weapons, to end public legal services to those who can’t afford them, and
actually encourage a public policy that abandons our poorest children runs
counter to Christian Scripture, tradition and history.”
The (RRR) Radical Righteous Right wants a replacement
curriculum that is not too professorial and challenging to their ideological
certainty. Answers in Genesis has
their own teaching materials for history, biology, and earth science that they
would like to have taught in public schools, but history and science cannot be
founded on the supernatural. By definition, the scientific method relies
on the idea that material effects have natural causes. Supernatural
causes are not constrained and cannot be falsified, excluding them from scientific
thinking.
Dr. Steven Novella’s DVD class, Your Deceptive Mind, in The Great Courses series, provides a
scientific guide to the critical thinking skills that extremists don’t
use.
Imaginary
More in need of diagnosis than the schools they criticize,
fault-finding fanatics (FFF) invent a sensational reality. Their egoism
fuels an absurd myth that public education and Common Core (a UN takeover) will
build a database containing the DNA code of all students, parents’ political
party, religion, and gun ownership.
The gulag bound
website imagines that DNA can reveal the future of students, their
intelligence, mental, and physical health. Supposedly, teachers
won’t have to deal with classroom discipline because Common Core will
make students into submissive mind-controlled subjects. Facial expression
cameras, posture analysis seats, and wireless skin conductance sensors are tools
that teachers allegedly will use. But these are educational methods, not
standards. For information about the promises and challenges of
educational technology, the reader is referred to the August 2013 issue of the Scientific American.
Perception is not just seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling,
and tasting. It is a construct of the mind and thus can become a story
that is a fiction. Patterns help us to think more easily, but we can
imagine things that are more inside us than in external reality.
Conversely, the seeing derived by the scientific method is more than unfounded
circumstantial evidence. The greatest benefit of the scientific method is
the compensation that it brings to flawed human thinking, perception, and
memory.
Faulty perception accepts a briefly stated, possibly
incorrect, premise and then builds on it with logic to reach a ridiculous
conclusion. We should recognize that perception intends to avoid
difficult thinking if possible, and that it relies on assumed patterns.
Such patterns can become like a rut in a dirt trail that becomes eroded by rain
so that the drainage always follows the path of least resistance. Once a
feeling about reality becomes established, it is reinforced by future opinions
following the same path.
Factual
Less extreme are the claimed non-political assertions of the
tax exempt Heartland Institute. Lacking discrimination, they see nothing
of value in the Common Core. Small minds find it easier to engage in destructive
criticism than to make helpful suggestions because both sides of an argument
can be attacked.
A policy brief, The
Common Core: A Poor Choice for States warns about lessons
tainted by ideology. It refers to the standard’s suggested lists of
literature as “piles of trash”, but lacks the courage to give
alternatives. It neither appreciates nor respects teachers, claiming that
the best education research comes from psychologists, political scientists, and
economists because “…colleges of education are considered vast
wastelands of mediocrity…”
No standard can control your school choice, write the table
of contents for all books, or control college entrance exams as claimed.
But it is disingenuous to carry on about government interference, make unfounded
allegations about the rigidity of the Common Core, and then criticize the
government for not publishing a procedure for states to follow to make changes
they feel are necessary. The government had nothing to do with creating,
writing, approving, or mandating the Common Core standards.
We are told that standards have been scientifically proven to
have absolutely no effect on student achievement. Confusing identity with
equality of opportunity, Heartland’s arguments promote parental envy,
claiming that the Common Core could motivate schools to create gifted and
talented programs, place students in them, and thus discriminate against
minorities.
The Common Core is criticized because “it has never
been tried”, forgetting that everything has a first and that it comes
from the best experiences of educators. They are experimenting with computerized
learning that will personalize instruction.
We are told that a one-size-fits-all model will make students
identical, discouraging creativity, and that it moves education from the
pursuit of knowledge to social engineering. But learning involves
behavioral changes as well as facts. Should education teach only facts,
and leave the student to discover how to use them, thus hoping to avoid
controversy? Unfortunately, facts are not effective motivators.
Information does not change behaviors or decisions. Those depend on
beliefs, habits, and emotions.
We stereotype to simplify reality. In the extreme, it leads
to bigoted mindsets. Educators are demonized as overpaid, elite
ideologues who believe that the general public is too stupid to make informed
choices. Distrust credits the actions of others to internal motives
instead of external objectives. Even when we learn that information is
false, we forget that, remembering instead the story that corresponds to our
emotional reality. Facts wane insignificant when a cleverly crafted,
dramatic story appeals to blind emotion and wishful thinking. There is a
difference between how we think and what we think. The former does not
take us in a particular direction.
The standards recognize the logical fallacies, mob rule and
crowd wisdom of the wild-wild web. It is like a mirror. A fool
looking into it should not expect to find a sage looking back. We are
living in the age of misinformation that tries to undermine our sense of what
is real. We must recognize the importance of evaluating opposing opinions
and analyzing the intentions of authors.
Reasoning
Edward De Bono in his
Thinking Course states that, “Thinking is the operating skill
through which intelligence acts upon experience.” It has components
of both cleverness and wisdom and can be taught. Intelligence, knowledge,
analysis, and judgment cannot substitute for the creative and constructive
aspects of helpful thinking.
Critical thinking avoids preliminary emotional
judgments. It is not just looking at the pros and cons, but also requires
considering the interesting points, alternatives, and possibilities. It
keeps an open mind, exploring issues outside of a prejudicial framework and
prioritizes process over winning arguments. It weighs all the factors,
assigns priorities, considers others, and balances the long term consequences
of actions and decisions. It is capable of abandoning sincerely held
beliefs that are ultimately destructive. Feelings are important, but not
applicable until after analytic thinking. Certainty is secure and
arrogant. Uncertainty and alternatives are not confusion. Confusion
is the beginning of wisdom. Extremists rebel against critical thinking
because it leads to unacceptable compromise.
It isn’t just the Common Core that is hurt by flawed
thought patterns. Propaganda can mislead.
Propaganda
Bias is human nature but propaganda is human intent. Propaganda
has no desire to solve disputes that are ideologically useful. It uses
logical fallacies to motivate people to reach desired conclusions that may be
wrong. It stirs feelings that are involuntary and subconscious.
Learning about propaganda was acceptable when it concerned the Communist
threat. Today it is politically incorrect because it challenges popular
beliefs. Regardless, teachers must help students think about how they
think.
For example, the argument to combine science, religion,
church, and state, uses a straw man that misrepresents Humanism and science.
Humanism is a selfless devotion to the welfare of others that should not be so
threatening. Science and public schools are secular. The absence of
taught religion does not constitute religious teaching. The absence of
political ideology isn’t indoctrination. Likewise, Stephen
Hawking’s book, A Brief History of
Time, does not teach atheism just because Stephen might be an
atheist. Educators will teach about cheating, stealing, and behavior, not
about Immanuel Kant’s metaphysics of morals. However, education
must promote reflection on the ethical questions that are inherent in most
subjects. It is a logical fallacy to claim that there are only two
choices, that public school fundamentalist Christianity is the better one, and
that we either agree with that or are the enemy.
Procrastination
It was 2/09/2012 when President Obama unilaterally began the
process of getting government bureaucrats out of education by issuing wavers to
the 2002 No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
law’s requirements. Schools could not meet the 2014 goals, and
consequences such as replacing staff and bussing students to successful schools
were likely. NCLB is still the law and some conservative states did not
participate in the Common Core. At the last minute, the House passed the Student Success Act (HR5), eliminating testing
that students and teachers don’t like, thus doing away with
accountability and national objective measures of progress that are necessary
for individualized instruction and student mobility.
Critique
An acceptable standard is an authority that is recognized and
judged to be satisfactory by those who are to use it. It takes years of
transparent, objective work to create one. Differences must be examined,
discussed, and published. When consensus cannot be achieved, the reasons
for disagreement must be clearly documented. Flexibility, cooperation,
compromise, and adaptation are critical if Common Core is to be successful.
How is the Common Core different? What are the new
teaching methods and materials? What is the implementation and
expenditure plan? What is the fallback plan if it is not funded?
The standards lack the assistance of product marketers who
understand selling to the public. Unnecessary repetition makes the
standard cumbersome. There is no point in describing subjective goals
that cannot be measured in the detailed standard. They are important and not
just empty skill sets, but need to be identified with concrete examples.
Common Core has been criticized as creating mathematicians
who can’t add and subtract. Unfortunately, the way that many of us
learned math failed to excite us. We did not realize that math is a
universal, international language, a way of disciplining thinking, a way of
seeing, and a way of understanding. Integrating math into other studies
will help to motivate students by illustrating its relevance. It is not
just arithmetic. When students understand why math works, they will
remember how to perform its manipulations.
Simplicity makes learning boring, novelty and attention
helps, but a more difficult curriculum might not be a solution. If our
students have been failing to graduate, how will Common Core fix the problem?
Motivation does not come from failure. The standards should not ask for
too much. They are a stepping stone to success.
Scholarly
Those who object to “government schools” have the
option of using private schools or teaching their own children, but they should
remember that the world’s important problems are our children’s
more than ours. Regardless, parents will best defend their values by
looking at their own thinking and living their values.
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