During the last administration, there was railing against a huge program that was meant to radically improve the performance of students in this country. Most of the complaints came from teachers’ unions, bemoaning the increase in work load thanks to paperwork, and radical changes in curriculum. They warned they would be left with “teaching to the tests” – they were right. But there was one group of relatively quiet voices crying for the one thing that had the best hope of truly improving our educational system – they wanted increased national standards for colleges and universities in their Education programs. As it is, there really aren’t national standards for teachers to this day – there are performance standards based on the performance of their students, but no basic requirements that every post-secondary institution must require of students wishing to become teachers in the first place. So here we are, wondering why we aren’t seeing great improvements in academics nationwide, while doing the same thing we’ve been doing for years. (Isn’t there an adage about the insanity of expecting different results from the same actions?) If only that little quiet group had been a bit louder, and suggested that the solution was much easier than what was already on the table. It’s not like it doesn’t make sense – if you have better teachers, you’ll have better students, right?

Now, we have a new administration hell bent on fixing health care. They managed to pass a law and everything. Of course, they had to pass it before anyone could honestly understand everything that was in it. Before the bill was passed, there was already something that was the same in our health care system no matter where you went in this country. Every health care provider and insurance company in the nation uses the same system for recording everything – all ailments and treatments use the same codes no matter where you are. That may not seem very important all by itself, but it is meaningful. Because of that, the only difference between the various insurance companies’ paperwork is the name of the company on the letterhead.

So, if one would decide “hey, why don’t we make it possible for all insurance companies to do business anywhere they like in the U.S.”, it wouldn’t be very difficult. To protect the public from predatory practices by the industry, one would only have to make a list of basic standards all companies would have to meet. And one very important thing that would need to be in that list would be a rule against insurance companies refusing to pay for economical solutions doctors come up with for people’s problems. Like no one would be screaming over the fact that a flat-footed child could not have inserts for his shoes in an attempt to cure his condition – insurance companies couldn’t tell doctors that they must opt for expensive surgeries in cases like that. That example is a very crude summation of our current problems with health care after all. Insurance companies are controlling the system, not health care providers. Accountants are telling doctors what to do. Bureaucracy. So the solution, according to this administration, is to make more bureaucracy?

Of course that alone would not necessarily make health care affordable for all. Perhaps we could take a page from the book of the insurance companies on this one. Maybe we could do away with insurance groups as we know them. We all understand that a company with thousands of employees pays less per person for insurance than one with just hundreds of employees. How about basing premiums on the number of individuals a given insurance company handles? Throw in the ability for companies to compete across state lines for business, and offering incentives to the public for keeping savings accounts for health care expenses, and maybe we’d have something. But the problem is, it wouldn’t be controlled by the government beyond insurance companies being fined – or shut down in extreme cases – for not meeting those minimum national standards.

Common sense relies on finding the simplest solution to a given problem. We have moved well beyond the point where common sense is anything but a joke to elected officials. All of the solutions offered above have probably been mentioned by others along the way. But they have also been mentioned by children. Contrary to what many may think, children are not stupid – they are just more simplistic. When they attack a problem, they don’t tend to take the long way around – nor do they take into account questionable situations like crafting an answer in a way that benefits them the most (unless you are talking about conning the latest video game out of a grandparent, of course.) As we age, we forget that simplicity, and particularly in the world of politics and government, that works to our disadvantage. We start from the most complex solutions first, and if we’re smart enough to realize our folly, we go back and simplify. (That’s assuming that we get anywhere in the first place, since we’re so enamored with infighting.) Perhaps the real change we need to look for is people that attack problems like children – identify the problem, identify the desired result, and then figure out the easiest way to reach that outcome. Parents often call it “taking the easy way out”, but in government, it should be called “not creating bureaucracies to justify the existence of our own jobs.”

Today, Jennifer Marshall at The Foundry suggests the solution to our education woes lies in removing the Fed from the equation. She is absolutely right that schools should be beholden to local stakeholders in education before the Federal or even the State Departments of Education. Parents should have far more control than they do now, and school choice should be the law of the land. However, there is one place the Federal Government needs to be involved more than it already is.

Now, before anyone gets all upset or excited about the possibility that I’m stepping away from my belief in fiscal conservatism, my suggestion should not increase bureaucracy. Well, it would, if it weren’t already so bloated, but I digress. The Federal Government continues to fail in one very important facet of education – while demanding higher standards from students, it has not significantly stated a desire for the same from educators. While there are some very good programs in our colleges and universities for potential teachers, there are many that are not. We still need to take a page from the books of countries that are outperforming us in education. Those countries have extremely high standards for becoming educators in the first place. NCLB actually back-pedaled, creating easier routes to the classroom for potential teachers.

I humbly suggest that the cure to our educational ills is two-fold – reducing bureaucracy in education as suggested by Marshall, and creating (much higher) nationwide standards for teachers.

Moving on to more mundane references to pop culture, this latest situation with education calls to mind P!nk’s “Dear Mr. President” – and is heartily tempting me to toy with those old lyrics to fit Obama, although right now, they already do when it comes to education. The rhetoric is a little more polished, but it’s still more of the same.

I already know that there will be numbers crunchers out there that will cry foul for one reason or another on this one, but at this point, it’s too tempting for me to ignore it. As quoted in the Washington Post, 70% of freshmen today are graduating high school. Now, based on dropout rates listed by the U.S. Department of Education from 2001 (Table 1), that’s down from 86.5%.

Before anyone starts yelling “apples and oranges”, and claiming that it’s an unfair comparison, the only reason I am even mentioning this is the fact that Obama didn’t bother to suggest anything new for education today. There’s some name-changing, and minor adjustments to NCLB standards of practice, but no meaningful differences – like removal of unfunded mandates (or the novel concept of offering Fed dollars for them), or reassessment of educational standards for educators.

Sure, Obama “said” that teaching is an important profession, but it’s lip service, just as it always has been. And my contention that we can’t expect meaningful change in education until we address problems in the system that creates teachers is still as valid as it ever was – still shared by at least a few scholars and researchers in the field. We didn’t need fast-tracking for people wanting to become teachers – one of the “shiny objects” from NCLB that still is ignored, in spite of its complete stupidity. We don’t need colleges and universities treating their Education departments like “cash cows” for the benefit of anyone but their Education departments. But there was no mention of that – apparently Obama thinks it’s enough to just say teachers are important.

It’s also important to keep talking about increasing standards for students, closing down poor-performing schools, or restarting schools in the hope that shutting them down temporarily will somehow magically make them better. Bluntly, a decent sound technician could have dabbled with the audio track today, making it sound like Bush, and I honestly wouldn’t have known the difference if it was on the radio. (I might have thought, “Wow! Bush is really on his game today. He must have practiced this speech for a long time!) But hey, change is about keeping programs that don’t work so well, right?

And yes, the next time someone jumps on me for not being enthusiastic about health care reform, I’m going to mention this one!

First, I will grant that there are several educational theorists in the Ivory Tower that are probably Marxists. But, like anything else in the world of educational academia, theories get watered down severely on the path to implementation, with the most radical theorems ending up in the circular file. Let’s not forget that there are still school boards out there, and there are still parents that bother to attend meetings and loudly voice their opinions when it comes to the education of their little darlings. That said, truly radical change in the educational system of this country will never happen in a single leap – ever.

Now, to address some of the absurdities mentioned in the article that was brought to my attention this morning:

Some of the basic tenants of critical pedagogy are:

ALL education is inherently political…

A social and educational vision of justice and equality should be the foundation for all education

Race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and physical ability are important domains of oppression

The purpose of education is the alleviation of oppression and human suffering

Schools must not hurt students–good schools don’t blame students for their failures

Good schools don’t judge the beliefs students have about their life’s experiences

Part of the role of any educator involves becoming a researcher into social oppression

Education must promote emancipatory change

First, the term is “tenets”, not “tenants”, but maybe showing a command of the English language isn’t a prerequisite when it comes to writing a critique on educational theory in some people’s minds. Nitpicking aside, let’s start with the first tenet: “ALL education is inherently political”. Other than the fact that I find it comical that someone who is bothering to complain about the theories in the first place on political grounds is saying this, this is recognition of the condition of life in general. Life is political, even in the classroom. Anyone who doubts that doesn’t remember their school years, and if they have children, don’t know what in the world goes on during each school day. Cliques are the “political groupings” in the school setting, and every person in the school carries their personal political baggage with them each and every day. If educators would attempt to ignore that fact, they would lose their ability to teach because none of the students would think that they have any sense of reality. Only the Kindergarten and maybe the First Grade teachers would manage to have enough respect from their students to teach even a single concept. (Stating that from experience, since my youngest child is currently in Second Grade, and I am already seeing the signs of politicking amongst his classmates.) Divorcing politics from education would be an attempt to deny the very nature of human beings – we are political by nature, in that we seek the approval of others in our actions, naturally gravitate toward like-minded individuals, and avoid those that are “too” different.

The next one is bothersome to say the least. “A social and educational vision of justice and equality should be the foundation for all education.” Why anyone at this point in this nation’s development would find this objectionable is disturbing. However, I’ll grant a little bit of understanding simply because there’s a buzz phrase in there – social justice. That is a term that has become bastardized, and is obviously being taken in the context of organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (or at least I hope that’s the case.) In educational theory, this is typically considered on a much smaller scale, particularly in practice. It is meant to encourage educators and administrators to treat all students equally within the school environment. Students should know that if they do something wrong, no matter what all of them will receive the same treatment – conversely, the same treatment if they do something right. There should be no “special treatment” that isn’t specifically attached to circumstances that are beyond the students’ control – i.e., students with disabilities such as autism may not end up with the same punishment as other students for acting up in the classroom, but that’s only because such actions are biologically beyond the control of the student. The goal of this tenet is that students will go out into the world with a reasonable sense of what is right and wrong – at least that’s a very basic analysis of it.

“Race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and physical ability are important domains of oppression.” Denying reality is a certain guarantee that students will not take educators seriously. The reality of society is that race, class, gender, sexuality, religion and physical ability can be oppressive. There are still situations where these circumstance affect the way society treats individuals. Education is called the great equalizer because it is meant to help individuals overcome real or perceived barriers to success. These are the “perceived” barriers. And that also addresses the next one: “The purpose of education is the alleviation of oppression and human suffering.” Education is meant to open doors of opportunity, and that alleviates oppression and suffering.

Objections to this next one infuriate parents of children that need even the slightest bit of educational support. “Schools must not hurt students–good schools don’t blame students for their failures.” Contrary to what some people might think, this isn’t about coddling students that have the ability to do well, but are just not trying. This is about recognizing when students are not learning because they need to be taught in a different way from their peers. Special education, tutoring, individual educational plans, and all of the rest of the various educational support programs are being addressed here. This is merely recognition of the fact that not all students learn the same way, and that it is important to assist students that have different needs – not ignore them, and let them fail.

This next one is probably objectionable only part of the time. “Good schools don’t judge the beliefs students have about their life’s experiences.” It’s probably bad to avoid judging students when their beliefs and experiences are different – look out if anyone judges students that happen to agree with the ones that believe in this nonsensical view of educational theory.

“Part of the role of any educator involves becoming a researcher into social oppression.” Educators more often than not won’t have a clue about the problems faced by their students. There are the exceptions – ones that had “been there, and done that.” But for the rest, educators need to know where their students are coming from, or they will lose credibility. Call it “researched empathy” if you like. Bottom line is that an upper-middle-class white teacher will not be effective in an inner-city classroom unless that teacher takes the time to learn about what the students’ lives are really like. Conversely, that same teacher teaching in an affluent, mostly white suburban school will not be able to teach students about what they will probably encounter in the “real world.” Oh, I forgot. Class and race are never oppressive, right?

Finally, “Education must promote emancipatory change.” The greatest gift of freedom is the ability to expand one’s world through education. Education itself is meant to be freeing. Learning how to do a job frees one from the oppression of occupational mediocrity or failure. To put it in more capitalistic terms, if our nation as a whole is better educated, we can emancipate ourselves from the oppression of being ranked as less than number one in business and technology. We can free ourselves of the need for social programs outside of caring for retired citizens and veterans (disabled or not, since there is no way we can ever honestly repay them for their service.)

That said, for all the screaming that educational theories such as this are “Marxist” and will sap this nation of its strength, the arguments fall flat in the face of what the real goals are. Educational equity is not the enemy – it is the path to greatness. If it wasn’t, why was “No Child Left Behind” so important? NCLB wasn’t nearly as effective as anyone had hoped. The ones in the Ivory Tower sat down and worked on ways to make it better, and we ended up with theories like this. Evaluating them in the context of the world of politics is bluntly ludicrous. Although everything is political, the political world is not equipped to evaluate these theories fairly. They are meant to be evaluated in the context of educational scholarship. These tenets are merely a recognition of the laundry list of shortcomings of our educational system as a whole. Some of the tenets should be applied and implemented in all schools – some shouldn’t. All of them should be kept in mind when it comes to making decisions on how to manage our educational systems. One thing that isn’t mentioned is the one thing that all educators and administrators do when it comes to evaluating theories like this – they take what they know would be useful to them and implement it, and leave the rest, either permanently, or for future consideration. They recognize that there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” theory out there for our schools. Perhaps that’s why NCLB didn’t do so well.