University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, October 6, 1987
5
Tuesday Forum
Growing bureaucracy dulls minds
By RUSHWORTH M. KIDDER
The Christian Science Month
The Christian Science Monitor
The phrase "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" was penned by Karl Marx.
Yet 45 percent of the public school students polled recently thought those words came from the United States Constitution.
Perhaps that's not surprising. Two out of three American high schools also can't provide the Civil War proper half-century. Many are unaware that, Spanish or America that there ever was World War I.
Little wonder, then, that the state of humanities education in America, particularly the teaching of history, literature and foreign language, has come under scrutiny. The process began three years ago when the National Endowment for the Science (NEH) published a report titled "To Reclaim the Legacy" by William Bennett, then NEH chairman and now U.S. Secretary of Education.
That report focused on higher education. Now, in a study issued by the current NEH chairman, Lyme V. Cheney, the other shoe has dropped. American Memory: A Report on the Humanities in America. The New York Times reports a problem at the pre-college level in the words of Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeskaw Milopes: "A
refusal to remember."
One reason has to do with a lack of public concern. Most of the national attention has focused on failures in math and science. Less might have been given to failures in the humanities.
Cheney worries that a focus on process has driven out content, in the mistaken belief that we can teach our children how to think without troubling them to learn anything worth thinking about. And she zeroes in on the inanity of the school textbook, the worst of which she describes as an overcrowded flea market of disconnected ideas.
Another reason is the most interesting. This is a report sparked in 1985 by a congressional directive to the NEH, a federal agency dependent upon congressional appropriations. Written for a Democratic Congress by a Republican who knows how Congress really works (her husband is Rep. Dick Cheney, R-Wyo.), it skates wary around the centralization question of the centralization of educational policy, away from local initiative and toward state and federal control.
To be sure, Cheney touches on the issue. She complains, rightly, that the 20-plus states that adopt textbooks on a centralized basis force publishers to produce bland prose glutted with
nice, safe facts :
Between 1960 and 1984, while the number of public school teachers grew by 57 percent, the number of curriculum specialists, supervisors of instruction and other central-office bureaucrats grew by almost 500 percent.
Why that burgeoning bureaucracy? Part of the problem lies in top-down regulations flowing relentlessly from federal and state systems. Many of those regulations are well meaning, as the tectonic shifts in American society force schools to pick up responsibilities, from day care to family-planning counsel, that were once provided by church and family.
What's going on is simply an unconscious sapping of the will to think hard, be unique and cleave to the values of the untramlined human spirit. So Cheney's recommendations, that more time should be given to the humanities and that textbooks should be better and teachers more knowledgeable, are perfectly valid. But they miss the mark. What matters in American education to teach or to take courses are not as good as they should be. What needs to change has been taken away from local educators, parents and children and delivered to distant ranges of administrators. It has become a process for ensuring conformity. Correct that, and the humanities will be increasingly in demand.
Education reforms hinge on public
By EDWARD L. MEYEN
"Both history and enduring works of literature should be part of every school year and a part of every student's academic life. In literature, history and foreign language classes, original works and original documents should be central to classroom instruction."
These recommendations from "American Memory: A report on the Humanities in the Nation's Public School" make sense. And, of course, so do recommendations on the amount of physical education, math, science, English, social studies, health, art and multicultural education, to mention which have evolved from numerous reports and have been translated into legislated requirements.
Just as the American public is unhappy with the outcomes of our public education system, professional educators are unhappy with the conditions for teaching and learning provided by the rule.
Yes, young people are capable of learning more than their performance suggests. Yes, teachers are capable of teaching more of whatever subject you wish to select. Yes, teacher education programs could be different. The question is not what we are capable of doing in our system of public education. Rather, it is a question of what the
public wants and is willing to make a matter of public policy.
Education is our most regulated enterprise. Local districts are mandated to teach prescribed courses. Even the minutes of the day and the amount of money spent are controlled. Teacher education is also regulated through prescribed content, experiences and time in clinical practice.
In Kansas, admission and exit requirements for teacher education programs are mandated. I am not suggesting that these controls are unimportant or misdirected. Nor am I suggesting that the reforms being called for by the many reform reports are not necessary, they are. Rather, I mention them as reminders of the system we have developed in this country and to suggest that reform will not only require public support but major action by policymakers.
The School of Education at the University of Kansas, because of faculty concern for reform, has made significant changes in our teacher education curriculum and admissions requirements. The two primary curriculum changes involve requiring teacher education majors have majors or minors in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and increasing classroom experience requirements.
Faculty in the School of Education support the need for teachers to have a strong background in their teaching field. But we also feel good about their professional education.
As was pointed out by the report from the National Endowment for the Humanities, public education in America is — and should be — a local responsibility. But we shape local programs through state policies, and this brings uniformity to public education and lessens the flexibility of the communities that wish for something more or less appropriate for their children. The balance between local initiatives and regulations ensure equity is delicate and must in some manner be protected.
At the same time, we must continue to develop the teaching profession and establish teacher education nationally as a responsibility shared across institutions of higher education. The latter will be achieved when teacher educators and faculty in the liberal arts and sciences mutually value their contributions to the preparation of teachers.
Edward L. Meyen is the dean of education at the University of Kansas.
when was the United States Constitution written? Thirty-nine percent could not place it within the correct half century, 1750-1800. When did the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor? Forty percent could not place it within the four-year period 1939-1943.
About 8,000 high-schoolers nationwide took a multiple-choice test for a federal survey in spring 1986. A sample of the test questions and results:
When did Christopher Columbus discover the new world? Thirty-two percent could not place the date before 1750.
What is the Magna Charita? Sixty-nine percent could not identify it as the foundation of the British parliamentary system.
Who wrote "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov"? Eighty-four percent could not name Dostoevsky.
Who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence?
Only 14 percent could name Thomas Jefferson.
Take out a piece of paper
Reprinted from the Christian Science Monitor
THE FAR SIDE
By GARY LARSON
Although their descendants firmly deny this, Neanderthal mobsters are frequently linked with the anthropological treasures of Olduvai Gorge.
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