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Inside American Education
by
Thomas Sowell
Elaine: They read.
Jerry: I read.
Elaine: Books, Jerry. Books.
Jerry: Ohhhhh....
(Elaine Benes to serial cereal box
reader Jerry Seinfeld.)
Thomas Sowell argues that education has become therapeutic, emotionalized,
one-sided and anti-intellectual; producing alienation, atomization, confusion
and maladjustment. He claims that the retirement of older teachers will make
things worse, but the dead wood and the “tenured radicals” are the older
teachers.
Grade inflation is rampant. The incoming freshman classes at some colleges have mean grade point averages above 4.0. American students are taught to feel good about performing poorly. The name Joseph Stalin means nothing to about half of 17-year-olds.
Mean SAT scores have dropped, but some claim that more students take the
test now, which caused the drop in the mean. Sowell writes that SAT scores have
dropped at the top where presumably increased test taking is a negligible
factor. Scores might also be lower if not for the growth in the test
preparation industry. Students in the past simply showed up on the day of the
test.
Worse, claims Sowell, is American student performance on tests of
analytical ability. Acknowledging that non-school factors such as neighborhoods
influence academic performance, Sowell points out that in school factors matter
most. Among in school factors, class size and per-pupil spending are grossly
overrated. Foreign countries accomplish much more with larger classes and less
money.
About half the professors at research universities spent no more than
four hours per week teaching undergrads. Others counter that professor work
hard outside the classroom. Big deal, writes Sowell. Teaching should come
first.
Educational groups, opines Sowell, have engaged in “brainwashing,” using
emotively loaded techniques to espouse one-sided agendas on issues ranging from
housing to nuclear weapons. Affective education takes the place of intellectual
tools.
Teachers are poorly prepared and poorly selected. Education departments
are replete with Mickey Mouse courses and dead wood professors. Those without
credentials from education departments are kept from teaching in public
schools. Tenure and piled up credentials, he argues, have not translated to
increases in student performance.
Much of Sowell’s work in anecdotal, especially the brainwashing chapter,
much of it a scary expose of young children being hammered with adult topics
and the “correct” beliefs to hold on those topics—death education, sex
education and nuclear education for tots.
Sowell argues there is no evidence that multiculturalism helps people
get along better. Multiculturalists simply believe without evidence that when
people fight, it is completely someone else’s fault. Multiculturalism is not
needed for personal relationships, education or the “global economy,” as is
sometimes claimed. There has been a long human history of multiculturalism
being correlated with violence even among peoples who are held up as models of
multicultural harmony such as the Sri Lankans and their civil war. Sowell puts
considerable effort into criticizing various ethnic studies programs and double
standards in the political correctness movement. Of course, “Anti-intellectualism”
serves the same purpose for ultra-liberals as “class warfare” serves for
ultra-conservatives, a method to cut off argument.
Children learn best with an immersion in the English language, not
bilingual education. The better individuals master English, the better their
opportunities in life. Sowell characterizes the self-esteem and role model
movements as dogmas.
Multiculturalism replaces the melting pot model with the soap factory
model. Parts to be boiled and mixed with corrosive chemicals, turned into
chunks with dyes and perfumes added to create identity and superficial
diversity. Underneath the dyes and perfumes is still a hard, bitter product.
Instead of giving people important truths, it gives glittering prescriptions
using anthropological factoids and misrepresentations about some tribe in a forest
thousands of miles away.
Sowell’s multicultural stuff should be accompanied by a smile.
Multiculturalists and ultra-conservatives are inadvertent allies.
Ultra-conservatives benefit from multiculturalists just as they benefit from
the Green party. When a college administrator does nothing when a
multiculturalist commits a wrong while punishing a non-multiculturalist for
imaginary wrongs, ultra-conservatives gain at least a dozen votes. Banal
careerists, memorizing fiends, trivial pedagogues and narrow demagogues are at
least as great a threat to academic development as the fawning followers of
political correctness.
Sowell trashes the college sports system. Most college athletic
departments lose money for the university, yet many coaches in these “amateur”
sports at “non-profit” institutions are multi-millionaires. Colleges allege
they cannot control spiraling costs. Having debts and claiming “need” is one
way they get more money out of students and taxpayers.
Colleges, he argues, are free minor leagues for pro sports. Athletes are
rarely serious students. At Memphis State a decade went by without a single
basketball player graduating. Afro-American athletes graduate at a 0.27 rate,
yet few in the college system seem concerned.
Admissions advisors are rapidly becoming the sort of hucksters that
military recruiters are. Colleges are ranked by the research they do and other
factors rather than the educations they give undergrads. Someone once said that
getting ranked highly by U.S. News & World Report is merely matter
of being difficult to get into and difficult to flunk out of. Selectivity and
retention rates are given too much weight.
Untenured professors who have won teaching awards get fired because they
spend too much time teaching and not enough time on research. Colleges build
and spend as if they were in an arms race. They have $50 million dollar
buildings that sit empty most of the time while public schools in Los Angeles
are now packed year round. While public libraries are packed and have limited
hours, walking around a campus in the early evening feels like walking around
downtown at three on Monday morning. At one state university the circulation desk
uses a pen to write in due dates. Little point in using a stamp when almost no
one reads books.
Sowell finds that prestigious universities act a cartel, fixing prices
at annual meeting so that there will be little price competition. Federal
financial aid rules encourage universities to raise costs. Why parents and
student go so far into debt to pay of useless information that students will
almost completely forget in a couple years is beyond my comprehension. Many
economists compare a college education to a peacock’s tail. It does nothing to
help the student, but it signals to employers that one is better adapted than
other candidates. College is a long, institutionalized hazing ritual—financial,
intellectual and moral.
College may make character worse because of sunk costs. If a college
grad has a job the harms himself or others or both, he is more likely to think
its too late to change now. Some might have the attitude: “I deserve whatever I
can get my hands on. I spent years in college.” Individuals are prone to avoid
thinking about how destructive their careers might be.
Numerous appeals to tradition, ad hominems, nurture assumptions and false cause claims do nothing to help Sowell’s arguments. An example of the latter is his claim that sex ed caused the rise in teen pregnancy. Some of this is petty. Coed showers at Stanford are not among the bigger threats to the Republic. His alternatives of parental choice or education establishment choice are a false dichotomy. Recommended. Book review by J.T. Fournier
368p (H) 1993
— J.T. Fournier
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