- The schools were to blame for letting the Russians get into space first.
- Schools alone can close the achievement gap.
- Money doesn't matter.
- The United States is losing its competitive edge.
- The U. S. has a shortage of scientists, mathematicians and engineers.
- Merit pay for teachers will improve performance.
- The fastest growing jobs are all high-tech and require postsecondary education.
- Test scores are related to economic competitiveness.
- Education itself produces jobs.
All these statements are a common part of the current discussion on education and schools
And all are wrong, very wrong.
The list of nine points is not mine, but were compiled by Gerald Bracey. These talking points are commonly repeated by those who claim to be educational reformers, many of whom are hostile to public schools. They are commonly repeated in the press as part of the public discussion. Many are repeated by the President and his Secretary of Education. And the talking points are myths that are badly distorting the conversation, and seriously threatening the future of meaningful public education in this countr.
Gerald Bracey addresses all in this piece at Huffington Post, which should be mandatory reading for anyone who truly cares about education, students, and the future of public education.
For those who don't know Bracey or his work, he is a well-known writer and commentator on education. He is the author of many books, the most recent of which, Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality, might be the best book on education I have read in several years (and about which I will offer more in the near future). He served as Virginia's director of testing, and for years wrote the research column for Phi Delta Kappan, a major professional publication in education. And it is totally correct to describe him as a full-blown curmudgeon.
Bracey is very insistent that people factually support their assertions. For each of the nine myths, he offers cogent and accurate information that can help debunk them, if anyone is truly interested in accurate dialog.
Yes, I know some of the points have taken on the status of holy scripture. And there are some who are not interested in any information that might contradict or undercut their beliefs and positions on education, which seem at times to be frozen into rigid patterns that seem to approach the worst kind of theological dictates.
For anyone interested in reality, Bracey offers the material necessary to demythologize the discusssion. Consider for example his response on the 9th and final point, that Education itself produces jobs:
President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan have both linked any economic recovery to school improvement. This is nonsense. There are parts of India where thousands of educated people compete for a single relatively low-level white-collar job. Some of you might recall that in the 1970's many sociologists and commentators worried that America was becoming TOO educated, that they would be bored by the work available.
And common sense might lead us to recognize that my being more educated does not produce a single job. It may qualify me for jobs for which I was otherwise previously not qualified. But as Bracey notes in response to point 7, that the fastest growing jobs are high-tech and require post-secondary education, Walmart, McDonald's and other retail establishments generate more jobs than the 10 fastest growing occupations combined.
We are seeing many arguments, including from the President and his Secretary of Education, about the need for more scientific, technical and engineering training. This was fueled by an inaccurate and never published study about the supposed shortage of people for such jobs. Similar reasoning has been used by some corporations to justify bringing workers in under H1B visas restricting those workers to an indentured servitude with the company that brings them in, and to justify transporting jobs overseas where labor costs are much lower. But here's the reality: we produce three times as many graduates as the increase in jobs in those fields. Even allowing for the need for some replacements for workers who retire, die or leave the field, we are overproducing - which of course helps keeps wages down because of the oversupply - not shortage - of qualified workers.
As a teacher, the issue of merit pay, often tied to test scores (as the Secretary of Education insists be one major criteria for states wishing to receive Race to the Top funds), is one of the biggest distorters around. Besides the fact that many teach in fields that matter greatly to students and to our society (unless we presume that the only point of public schools is creating a pool of compliant worker bees for the transnational corporations), fields such as music, physical education, art, family and consumer science . . . The irony is that merit pay has been most used in finance, with results that should horrify us. After all, the bonus structures on Wall Street and in large money center banks and at places like Enron and AIG were major contributors to the creation of our current financial crisis. The bonuses led to distortion of the kinds of performance that would have benefited our society - and might even have allowed the corporations paying them to survive without massive government intervention. Campbell's law applies here as it does elsewhere, and Bracey appropriately reminds his readers what Donald Campbell taught us,
"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort the social processes it is intended to monitor."
Bracey only gives a small test of how much is available to counter the false memes of these nine myths. What he offers is less than the visible portion of the iceberg, because the data is massive, overwhelming, and totally in opposition to the myths.
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda who had a doctorate in literature, is well know for the line If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. But that is only the first line of the statement. In offering the whole statement, I am in no way indicating that the use of these myths implies that we are embarking on a road of Fascism, so you need not remind me of Godwin. But the complete remark is worth noting:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
It is not that these myths are for many people who repeat them deliberate big lies. It is that the more we commit to them by repetition, the more inclined those who rely upon them begin to react to opponents in ways that begin to hint of that to which Goebbels referred. Perhaps their dissent is not suppressed by the military and police power of the state, but at a minimum their voices become excluded from the discussion, so that most people do not know there is an alternative - and often more accurate - way of describing and viewing the issue at hand. We have seen this in the exclusion of advocates of single payer from testifying before Congressional Committees. And sadly, there is a well-documented history in Chicago Public Schools, starting before Duncan's tenure but continuing even to the present, of not allowing dissenting voices access to the public microphone as major decisions about the future of schools were made.
I take the time to offer the look at Goebbels because I see a pattern of thinking and expression that is repeating inaccuracies. In a sense, it does not matter if it is done with the malevolence of the Nazis. What matters is that the effect is somewhat similar in its suppression of alternative views, because of the threat such views make to the dominant view which rests upon these myths. I also note the Goebbels because we have not yet reached a point where the myths are totally locked in as revealed truth about education. There are those involved in educational policy, including in the Congress, who are still attempting to bring some reality to the discussions about the future of our schools.
My language may seem harsh. I expect some here will criticize me. And in offering my analyses, I in no way imply that Dr. Bracey would agree with all that I see.
Where Bracey and I absolutely concur is in the importance of challenging at every instance the false representations contained in these myths. Hence this diary.
I hope it has been of some use.
Peace.