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The Case For Lower Academic Standards
In any discussion of education reform, it’s only a matter of time before someone says we need to raise standards. It’s become such a commonplace suggestion that people repeat it without giving it any thought. Regardless, it’s being put into practice; many states, for example, now require Algebra II for graduation. Well, here is an inconvenient fact that seems to have escaped the notice of most reformers: Half of the students are below average — well, technically, below median — in academic ability. Those below-average students will not learn Algebra I, much less Algebra II. (Some of them may pass, but that is an altogether different proposition.)
And it’s not just algebra. Below-average students are not going to figure out the theme of Great Expectations, nor will they be able to explain complex metabolic processes in detail. Telling them that failure to do so should sentence them to a lifetime of poverty is an act of cruelty. This is why we should lower academic standards.
Or, rather, have more flexible standards that account for varying levels and kinds of ability. All but the least-talented should be able to write a simple paragraph that is clear in meaning and reasonably free of errors. They should be able to do the basic arithmetic that comes up in everyday life, including the ability to balance a checkbook and figure a percentage. They should have a basic understanding of how to interpret graphs and charts. They should know basic facts about science necessary to make better choices regarding health and public policy. They should know the basics of history and government necessary to citizenship. Their time in school should be spent on mastering these and similar matters, rather than having them pretend to read Paradise Lost or trying (and failing) to prove a theorem. And once they master these skills, they should be able to opt-out of school with no stigma to pursue vocational training or take a job.
An enormous amount of time in high school is spent trying to teach below-average students skills that will not be useful to them or that are simply beyond their reach. It serves only to render school a place of daily humiliation and misallocates significantresources. Reserve those resources for students that can benefit from them and let the others get on with their lives.
Published in Education
If they can’t work their way around a right triangle, circle and square. Yes.
Too many posts here and I don’t have time to read them all, so forgive me if someone else has made these points.
The fallacy in our High School education system is that everyone should take a College Preparatory track. Below average students should be gently persuaded to consider vocational training. In some other countries students are forcibly placed into different tracks (college / vocational) and they have better results than we do.
The other factor we have to address is the environment in some schools. Students who have the mental ability to succeed are prevented from doing so by a culture that tells them doing homework and getting good grades is for nerds and losers. In many cases they are also victims of bullying. Public schools do not have the tools they need to provide a safe environment for students who really want to learn. Teachers are sometimes assaulted by students and if they fight back they get fired. The inmates run the asylum. Trouble-makers and bullies should be sent to remedial schools and given vocational training. In prison, they use solitary confinement or different “tiers” to isolate bad eggs. Public schools need to do something similar.
Two thoughts:
First, so long as the education of your children is in the hands of government the results will be disappointing.
Second, whatever method or tools are used, teaching analytical thinking and preventing groupthink are critical to our survival as a people.
In international PISA surveys on students, Finland always is in the top five, always outperforming the US. One reason is that in Finland, high school is actively discouraged. Yes, you heard that right, discouraged.
This is because there is an elaborate network of vocational schools for every imaginable trade that doesn’t require a degree. High school is viewed only as a prep school for university. If you are not intending to go to university the attitude in Finland is that you have no business going to high school.
In North America, a high school or college diploma is viewed as a status marker and pursued for reasons of vanity rather than academics. In Finland this kind of thinking is actively discouraged.
The enforcement mechanism comes in the form of unemployment insurance. If you go to vocational school but don’t get a job in your chosen vocation, you are eligible for unemployment insurance benefits, but if you finish high school but don’t get accepted into university, you aren’t. The idea being, it’s not society’s fault that you attended high school when you had no business doing so.
I agree completely. And our public school system DID exactly what you’re proposing for years. Everyone, except kids with intractable learning disabilities, got to, say 5th grade being able to read, write and do basic math. (Kids with such learning disabilities, incidentally, were often tacitly permitted to perform other tasks, which at least gave them some sense of self worth, unlike now when they’re dumped in the rubber room). These things were taught in a clear, comprehensible fashion, with lots of repetition and practice.
After all, kids were, and are, in school for a whopping 30 hours a week, nearly 9 months a year–that is more than enough time to teach them proficiency in these basics.
That was and would still be, an accomplishment to be lauded. Yet, now, we don’t do it. From various things I’ve read it looks like NOTHING is actually taught now; the emphasis is on creating a “learning environment” in the service of ideological goals.
Another boondoggle, as you say, is the idea that everyone must go to college, with its corollary that NO ONE in America can possibly be happy, or should be content, to be “working class”.
The working class is invisible in this country ( except very lately, when they’re hauled out to be sneered at and blamed because of Trump’s popularity).
Look at prime time TV: there are no working class characters, except on the sitcoms and genre shows (cops, nurses). And if one of those blue collar characters is really popular and the show runs long enough, what happens? He or she GOES BACK TO SCHOOL!
Not everyone is bookish, okay? and that’s fine. But we have to stop pretending they are! Every child should be encouraged to consider and admire the path of becoming a skilled tradesman. It should be a goal just as valued and socially-acceptable as pursuit of “higher education”.
But I don’t agree with you that a return to teaching these basic skills would be “lowering” academic standards. I think it would be a BIG. STEP. UP.
Why not try this out in your local school? Maybe it will catch on.
Agree completely. We have this illusion after watching movies like Stand and Deliver that there’s genius in every kid, and all it takes is a good teacher to inspire them.
LOL.
Most people are not exceptional in any way, and that includes kids. That’s normal. That’s to be expected. A high school diploma should simply ensure, at minimum, a basic competency in working math, the ability to read and understand something like a newspaper, and some common cultural knowledge. The really smart kids are going to do well regardless. The best you can do for the rest is let them know resources are available to them to do more, and if their interest is piqued, help them along.
What you are proposing is something that was in effect when I started teaching in the late 1960s, ability grouping. The problem with ability grouping is that the top groups are filled, generally, with White and Asian students. Lower groups are Black and Hispanic. This was seen as essentially racist and disbanded. What took its place was homogeneous grouping which caused the standards for top and mid level students to be lowered to accommodate lower ability students rather than having the opposite effect. Slowly but surely, not just standards but elements of the curriculum once thought essential for a high school graduate were dropped.
When I left teaching four years ago to retire they had begun to call all students “scholars”, completely rendering the word, like their high school diplomas, meaningless. Until we as a nation decide that all people are not created equal in anything but rights and start acting on that premise our educational system is doomed to produce total mediocrity at best.
I sort of agree with the sentiment of this post, but would express it differently: narrow the scope of a high school education.
There is much non-sense that kids have to slog through these days, it seems like no one ever gets around to teaching them the basics that all citizens should have.
For math, I would focus on geometry, arithmetic, basic algebra, basic calculus. Add electives in more advanced courses if necessary.
I think that for science all should have a basic understanding of the main ideas behind biology, chemistry, and physics.
History should be taught, with an emphasis on Western and specifically American history, not ignoring significant military history.
A serious course in civics ought to be required.
Have them learn a little about music, at least how to read it.
Have them study a foreign language, preferably Greek or Latin for a few years.
English should actually teach kids to speak and write grammatically and clearly. Make them read some of the key great books, make them think about them a little; no one needs to become an expert at 16. A little poetry couldn’t hurt.
And that’s all I’d really do. This kind of education would prepare them for college, or to enter the military or a trade.
Stop with all the stupid sensitivity training, all the touchy-feely. Stop with the dumb projects and activities. Stop with busy work. Don’t make them go through silly PE classes, they can play a sport if they choose. No home-ec, they can learn how to cook at home or online. Don’t forget they live in America, the inheritor of the great western tradition, don’t spend more time “comparing” all the myriad cultures of the world.
EK,
Your experience is most relevant. Either we have an idea of Public Education or we don’t. Public Education means just that. We will teach basic knowledge to everyone regardless of background or social class.
Once you give up on the broad standard you might as well give up on Public Education. Your standards will be undermined until you aren’t educating anyone about anything.
I’d rather kids learned the material on-line than be told at some building still called a school that their ignorance was just great. There is no free lunch in education either.
Regards,
Jim
Amen, Amy!
That’s because too many people think that with the internet and google you don’t have to actually “know” anything, you can just look it up.
I am still working on it.
It’s really hard to have respect for teachers when one of my teacher aunts flat out said they don’t need to teach spelling or grammar because spellcheck and grammarcheck exist. Or when one of my teacher friends admits that if she wasn’t teaching 4th grade math, she probably wouldn’t be able to remember how to do it.
I would stop teaching math class and start teaching “how to get rich” class. I would stop teaching logic and rhetoric and start teaching “how to beat a con man” or “don’t be a sucker” class. I can imaging some kids saying my favorite class is “how to get rich” more so than math. Some of it is engaging the minds of your audience, something a sclerotic teachers’ union and education administrations can’t do effectively.
The non-scholastic lessons that schools have been teaching have led to our current and dreadful state of affairs wherein American citizens have no idea what it means to be American, and why our nation is (and should be) exceptional.
In other words, we have raised a generation or three of Idiocrats. Which is why they have been electing celebrities since 2008, and seem keen to keep doing it.
CW,
The creative teachers were always the best ones. You wound up learning the required material and enjoyed doing it too. Too bad gimmicks like Common Core or just giving up on standards are seen as the answer. I’d be glad to take your courses. Sounds like fun.
Regards,
Jim
Ronald Reagan was a celebrity.
There is a history of Catholic schools taking in questionable children and finding a way to bring those children’s intelligence out. Nearly all of them graduated and over 80-percent were qualified to attend two- or four-year schools after high school graduation based on the ACT or SAT.
Anyone familiar with Jaime Escalante, depicted in the movie Stand and Deliver, will recognize that the ordinary high school teachers of the Los Angeles school district weren’t up to it. They occasionally did not know their subject matter and often were unable to deliver it to the students in a way that moved the students to respond.
The public high schools are delivering a series of ideas which support the direction of the progressive movement in this country. If the students actually learn something useful, it seems accidental.
Unless parents are once again given control over their children’s education, which means that the control exercised by the administrators and teachers must be abrogated, this sorry state of affairs will continue.
Mendel: Since we’re talking about math standards, allow me to be the obnoxious know-it-all who points out that it is not necessarily true that half of the students are below average. Half of the students are below the median.
Harrington made that distinction in his Post.
Streaming used to be called The Track System. One for the college bound and the other for not so bright students. I agree with Harrington. Additionally, I like those educators who encourage more and better trade schools. Readin, writin, and rithmatic of course. Thomas Sowell is correct in his argument that pushing kids to achieve beyond their skill level is psychologically damaging when they fail.
I don’t believe Reagan was elected because of his acting background – he was elected despite it.
I attended Catholic school, and I agree with you, but :) A big part of the reason why the Catholic schools I went to worked was because the parents totally supported the teachers, and the parents totally supported the idea of making their children face the consequences of low performance; it wasn’t unusual for kids to be held back a grade, and parents had no problem with it. There were times when a few of our teachers really were treating us unfairly; our parents told us to suck it up and deal with it.
All parents want better education for their kids, but way too many parents of all socio economic classes are not willing to have their kids held accountable anymore. There are wealthy parents who freak when their kid doesn’t get an A and immediately attack the teacher. I dislike teacher’s unions as much as anyone, but it is a mistake to solely blame teacher’s unions.
I was talking recently about how people always shirk responsibility, and a friend (who teaches in public schools) joined in: “You are so right! I try to get the parents of my students to take responsibility for their own kids, but they just want to blame the school and the teachers!”
Many people hold to a romanticized view of education that all children are capable of learning pretty much anything if given the right home life and support–a view unfortunately held by the makers of education policy. It is simply not true. Some people are smarter than others and any system that doesn’t take that into account is failing its students. Doesn’t mean of course that some students don’t fail for other reasons, including lack of support, peer pressure, or lousy schools.
Certainly a better educational environment will help all students, regardless of ability level, but we still need to do right by the kids who simply lack the ability to do higher order tasks. That’s true whether they are in public or private schools. (I would personally prefer all education to be private, but I doubt that’s going to happen.)
I’m not suggesting giving up on standards, just making them take into account the abilities of the students they apply to. If I were given PE standards saying I have to dunk a basketball on a ten-foot goal, I’m going to fail no matter how hard I try and how committed I am to the task. Asking a low-ability kid to learn algebra II is the academic equivalent of that.
Seems rather harsh treatment for something they have no control over. They didn’t pick their parents, and didn’t pick their genes. Why not let them spend their time on something that might actually improve their life chances?
It will be my first act after ascending to the throne.
For some it is though. There are lot of reasons kids don’t learn including those you mentioned. But for some it’s because they simply aren’t able to do the work. It’s not their fault and we should give them an alternate path.