Abbot on Education

A friend has asked some questions about my recent posts on education. Answering them here may clarify my points for others.

I wrote:

Question: how can the teaching profession actually manage, as shown by comparison with the results of home schooling, to do worse in their chosen line of work than people pulled randomly off the street?

Dear Abbot:

Parents are not pulled randomly off the street.

Concerned Parent.

Dear CP:

Context is important. Nobody is ever a person “pulled randomly off the street” for all contexts and purposes. If a Jewish surgeon performs a Catholic mass, he is a “person pulled randomly off the street”; but if he performs an operation, he is not. We were speaking of the teaching profession, as per the first clause of the sentence. From the point of view of supposed teaching qualifications, the parent is a person pulled randomly off the street.

Having your surgery performed by your mother, after all, is not obviously a good idea.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:

Would homeschooling by parents produce similar results to homeschooling conducted by a person hired to do so, randomly off the street?

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

I suspect not, but if being a parent is the crucial item, the conclusion is inescapable: schools per se are a mistake, and all children should be home-schooled. I'm not prepared to go that far, without further evidence.

As it happens, other studies have indeed put certified teachers more or less head to head against people who have not been certified to teach, and the results regularly go in favour of the good old Jewish MD yanked from the pavement.

1. Private schools in the US consistently do better than public schools, at less cost. Public schools must hire “certified” teachers. Private schools generally do not have to.
2. Teachers taken up through the “Teach for America” program consistently get better results than those coming up through the ed schools. TFA applicants are, unfortunately, obliged to get some teacher training; but much less than the regular troops.
3. “Operation Follow Through,” a massive study funded by the US government, put a variety of teaching approaches to the test over twenty years. Almost all the approaches sponsored by ed schools failed in standardized tests—they did worse than the controls. The one approach that did best, and clearly surpassed the controls, was developed by an advertising executive, and, by its own estimation, could use anyone as the teacher.

Abbot

I wrote:

All modern, secular approaches to education are based on the premise that teaching should be a "science."

Dear Abbot:

How do you mean this? You put the word in quotation marks, and doing so typically indicates the writer should have used a different term. If your sentence stands as is without the artificial emphasis, then you should specify which modern secular approaches are based on that premise or at lease give a few examples. If you mean something other than science, then what?

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

ALL modern approaches to education, as per the ed schools--behaviourism, constructivism, and cognitivism--are based on the fundamental premise that teaching can and should be “scientific.” I use quotes, because what they imagine science to be is not at all what science is—the word should probably be “scientism,” or perhaps even more accurately, “the cargo cult of science.” It is a worship of the word “science” and an unreasoning faith that if something resembles the scientific method in any way, its results must be truth. It's a type of sympathetic magic, ultimately, I suppose.

Of course, there are other approaches to education that are not “scientific”—the rabbinical tradition, the Salesian tradition, the Jesuit tradition, the classical tradition of rhetoric, the Confucian tradition, and so forth. But they are not modern, and you will not find them in the ed schools. They are not recognized for teacher certification. Mention them, and you'd probably get thrown out of teacher's college.

It is more or less necessary that any coherent approach to education be religious in nature. Take that away, and you have no meaningful goal. The idea of making it “scientific” might once have seemed like a workable alternative, but it is not. It requires you first to make a religion called “science.”

The earlier “humanistic,” “classical,” or “rhetorical” approach also sought to be a secular model. But the inevitable problem with this is quickly revealed by all the current connotations of the terms “rhetoric,” or “sophistry.” An education stripped of values is not a good thing.

Abbot

I wrote:

The human mind (other than our own) cannot be observed.

Dear Abbot:

Why not? ...unless you restrict the term observe to mean seeing light waves reflected off an object.

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

Strictly speaking, perhaps that sentence should have been “directly observed.” I struck “directly,” though,because it is redundant. Anything that exists can be indirectly observed, and so there is no meaningful distinction added. But we cannot observe anyone else's mind. All we can observe is its products: its words, its works. I cannot know what you are thinking; I cannot read your mind.

That said, it is also true that science was specifically designed to work with sense experience, and not any other kinds of observation. It is difficult to deal with emotions, for example, “scientifically,” and I would advise against trying.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:

We cannot see gravity and the other forces of nature, either, can we?

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

That is why they are theories, in scientific terms--logical inferences—and not observations. The distinction is not trivial. No good scientist should assume gravity as an observed entity. If it were, Einstein would simply have been insane.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:

In observing commonalities the human mind can be observed. Might it be in these ways that educators formulate methodologies?

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

This is probably exactly how the best educators form their methods. It is all by inference from their own experience of their own minds, and a deep sympathy for others. This is not permitted to certified teachers, though. It is unscientific.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:

Could we call such formulation and the study towards how best to do so a type of science?

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

No. We have two other terms for describing this process: 1. art, and 2. more specifically, artistic genius. Art is not science; the two stand generally in contrast to one another. The contrast between art and science closely parallels the contrast between 1. subjective and 2. objective. That is, art is subjective, science is objective.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:

You start out by saying "the human mind (other than our own mind) cannot be observed." Our own mind?
Later you say the mind "cannot comprehend itself." If a person can observe his own mind, at least, then
to whatever degree that observation translates into comprehension, he can comprehend himself.

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

If we could observe everything about our mind, then we could perhaps comprehend it. But we cannot. We cannot observe the observer, and we cannot observe our observing. If we try to do either, we fall into an infinity paradox: we must then observe the observer observing the observer, and so forth. We must observe the observation of the observation, and so forth. Can't get back behind that, without being God. We cannot comprehend the process of comprehension without the same paradox. We just Kant.

This is without even touching upon the hypothesis of the unconscious or subconscious mind, or of ideal forms.

Abbot

I wrote:

This approach reduces the student and the mind to an object, which is fundamentally incorrect. They are independent subjects.

Dear Abbot:

While we are subject in one aspect, we can in another also serve as object.

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

This should never be done, on moral grounds. To quote Kant, “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.” This is the same as saying, “as a subject, and never merely as an object.” But I think the grounds are more than moral: it is at the same time absolute ontological truth that each human being is a subject, never merely an object, by his or her own nature. This is at least part of what the Bible meant by saying we are created “in the image of God.” We are godlike in that we are conscious and self-conscious beings.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:

Even though we are all the children of God, ultimately He is the subject and we His objects -- not in the sense of material object but in the sense of a reciprocal subject-object relationship.

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

Sorry, that's blasphemy. We are not objects to God. That's the point of saying we are his children. Our reciprocal relationship with God is “I-Thou,” as Martin Buber put it, not “subject-object.” Indeed, if it were “subject-object,” it could not be truly reciprocal.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:

Can you distinguish, please, between educational theory and educational methodology? What is a theory, and how does it manifest?

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

Good question. It's hazy. An educational theory is a theory about how the mind works and how learning happens. The methodology seeks to apply this in the classroom. This is always a bad idea—not just because the theory is always very preliminary, very tentative, and never anywhere near being proven beyond a reasonable doubt, making the actual application of it the educational equivalent of gross medical malpractice, of experiments on live human subjects without consent. This is also because whether a given theory actually can be applied in the classroom situation, and the way it ought to be applied in the classroom situation, if at all, is necessarily even more tenuous and open to indefinite debate. A debate that never happens—there is no time, before the current theory is scrapped, and another appears, and there is a rush to sell a new set of texts based on the latest theory.

Abbot

I wrote:

Each new theory necessarily must distinguish itself and its practitioners by doing something, in common teaching practice, that violates common sense.

Dear Abbot:

Can you cite some examples?

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

Sure. Behaviourism's audio-lingual method of teaching languages actually avoids ever telling the students the meaning of words.

Cognitivism's “communicative” method actually avoids ever telling the students the grammar of the language.

Constructivism, the postmodernist path, avoids telling the students anything at all.

And so it goes...

Abbot

I wrote:

If they did not, there would be no way of telling if a given teacher was applying "the method," and there would be nothing in practice for the new theory to teach.

Dear Abbot:

I don't get it.

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

Spoken with enviable clarity!

If a given teaching method just followed common sense, there would be no way for a supervisor to walk into a classroom, observe a class, and determine that that teacher had been “properly” trained. An intelligent person off the street would be doing all the same things. Unfortunately, currently, the results of these “classroom observations” are about the only thing that matters to any given teacher's career.

Similarly, if a student attended a teacher's college, and all the classes merely repeated what he or she already knew from common sense and from attending classes and observing teachers over eighteen years of schooling, it would be pretty obvious that there was no point in teacher's college or in teacher ed. Whatever they tell you to do has to be something quite different from what you have seen in all your own classes over those eighteen years. Different enough to take a full year or so to teach you to do.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:

The schools in my country believe that students should memorize lots of facts and pass tests so they will
get into better schools at the next stage. I don't agree, in theory, yet find myself pushing my daughter to study so
she will get good grades.

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

I feel the same way you do about this. How you do on a standardized test is not necessarily well related with whether you've gotten a good education. But it depends on your objective. Standardized tests, with all their problems, are still a good way to prevent discrimination, corruption, cronyism, and plain laziness. They give schools and teachers a clear goal—and if you don't have a clear goal, you're less likely to get there. They also offer some sort of independent check on the quality of teachers, techniques, and schools.

If you live in the US, this standardized test approach is coming very soon to a school near you. It is in the new vanguard of the movement to improve education.

There are two bodies that conduct these studies internationally. I recently did a mashup of the figures, evaluating all the developed countries's student performance in the three subject areas, reading, science, and math, in the two studies. Here's the top twelve:

1. Finland – 1
2. Taiwan – 1.5
3. Netherlands – 3.67
4. tie – South Korea and Japan – 3.75
5. Canada – 4.33
6. Latvia – 5
7. England – 6
8. Singapore – 6.33
9. New Zealand – 8.67
10. Switzerland – 9
11. Belgium – 9.5
12. Lithuania – 9.67

I look at that list, and I see countries that tend to be tidy, orderly, and lacking in passion or art. Countries where all of life is more or less a standardized test. (I know I am grossly oversimplifying. The Netherlands, Belgium, England, Japan, all excel in some of the arts some of the time. Korea is passionate.). In fact, doing well on a standardized test almost requires a lack of emotion—it is a test of calm under pressure as much as of knowledge or academic skills.

A great way to weed out artistic or creative temperaments.

Accordingly, it can be overemphasized. And is about to be, in North America.

Abbot

I wrote:

The educational “-isms” are perfectly designed to weed the best teachers out of the profession.

Dear Abbot:

How so?

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

If you love the students, you will react with visceral resistance to the requirement to treat them as objects. If you love teaching, you will instinctively resist the need to strip away all the best things you do, and that you know are best, in order to satisfy the official requirements. The more you love teaching, and the more you love your students, the harder that is going to be to do, and the less inclined you are going to be to do it.

Abbot

Dear Abbot:

So what makes a good teacher?

Concerned Parent

Dear CP:

The best teacher is going to be

1. The person who knows the subject best. You cannot teach what you do not know; and if the teacher cannot answer questions as they arise, students are better off alone with the books.
2. The person who knows how to learn best. That means the person who has themselves gotten the highest marks at school, has the highest IQ, has the widest general knowledge. Here, too, in matters of technique, you cannot teach what you do not know.
3. The person who is most articulate—best able to communicate clearly and entertainingly in speech and in writing. If you cannot explain clearly, you cannot teach.
4. The person the student most wants to emulate or to please. That is, someone likeable, someone accomplished, someone accessible, and someone of high moral character.

It would not be at all difficult to select teachers for just these traits. Unfortunately, none of them count for anything at a teacher's college, or in the certification process. This is for one reason, and one reason alone: except for 1, and possibly 3, they are not teachable, and 1 does not require a "teachers' college." The ed schools would be out of business.

Abbot