The Myth of the Robber Barons by Burton W. Folsom

I learned of this book because it is written by a member of Hillsdale faculty, and I have read books written by him before. This short book, The Myth of the Robber Barons by Burton W. Folsom, Jr. is a quick easy read. Although he has done tremendous research, he uses that information in a story-telling  manner that makes it easily digestible. 

The book is seven chapters, the first six deal with individual personalities and the last is a conclusion. Each of the men described enjoy a reputation for fabulous wealth somewhat tainted by an unearned reputation for unscrupulous dealings. 

Folsom begins by differentiating between "market entrepreneurs" and "political entrepreneurs." The former eschews government handouts and works under free market conditions. The latter needs government intervention in order to survive. He starts with Vanderbilt and his contributions to the steamship industry. While Robert Fulton was the first to build and begin a steamship company, he operated under a government-granted monopoly. Another operator hired young Cornelius Vanderbilt to try to break into that market. He ran illegal ferries until the Supreme Court finally struck down the monopoly as unconstitutional. In a free market, Vanderbilt undercut all his competition, drastically lowing rates. Eventually he took on the cross-Atlantic, subsidized mail carriers, where he had competition on both sides of the pond. He found creative ways to cut expenses, including sailing such well-built ships that he did not feel the need to buy insurance. Eventually, the government-subsidized companies could not compete. Their mismanagement was revealed and they went bankrupt. Folsom states, "In the steamship industry, political entrepreneurship often led to price-fixing, technological stagnation, and the bribing of competitors and politicians. The market entrepreneurs were the innovators and rate-cutters." (p. 15) Federal aid appeared to be a curse. 

He then moves onto the railroad industry. All schoolchildren learn about the glorious Transcontinental Railroad built by the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. What they do not learn is that it was a government-financed boondoggle. In fact, Folsom tells the story of James J. Hill who built another transcontinental railroad completely free of government money, that operated both efficiently and profitably. Instead of rushing and acting inefficiently in order to get the job done quickly and maximize government funding, Hill took his time, carefully studied the path of the tracks and used high-quality materials. Therefore his train ran a shorter distance with greater dependability for less money. Folsom calls the Union Pacific's eventual bankruptcy all but foreordained. "The aid bred inefficiency; the inefficiency created consumer wrath; the consumer wrath led to government regulation; and the regulation closed the UP's options and helped lead to bankruptcy." (p. 22) With his profits flowing in, Hill began buying up failed, subsidized railroads and making them profitable. Hill built slowly, developing the areas around his railroad in order to promote exports that he could ship. He even opened up trade to the Orient. Unfortunately he was caught in the morass of legislation and laws meant to protect the nation from unscrupulous, subsidized businesses. His very successful, self-built company was declared a monopoly and ordered disbanded. 

Of course, the railroads could not function without a cheap supply of iron. This is where the Scrantons come in. Looking to produce iron, William Henry joined with his relatives, the Scrantons, and purchased land in northeast Pennsylvania. They faced fierce pushback from the local iron manufacturers and unforeseen poor land conditions. They quickly began to fail. Desperate, they tapped all their friends and family for funds to continue operations. They made the very risky decision to challenge the English and enter into the rail market. Undercutting the British, they got a contract almost impossible for them to fulfill, yet fulfill it they did. However, they knew that in order to continue to succeed, they would have to build up the local infrastructure to make it more amenable to transporting raw and finished materials. In the barren wilderness, they single-handedly developed the town of Scranton. The phenomenal growth of the town attracted other entrepreneurs like the five-and-dime Woolworth's stores. Interestingly, Folsom details the stories of the children of the original entrepreneurs. Some did well with the resources handed to them, but many did not. He makes the case that entrepreneurial spirit is not necessarily in the genes. Wealth does not always follow the families bequeathed it. 

Although I know of him in the context of financial investing, apparently Charles Schwab made his fortune in the steel industry. To demonstrate his ingenuity, Folsom tells of a story of an under-performing steel mill. After asking what had been done to motivate the workers and hearing a recitation of various threats, coaxing, and pushing, Schwab asks how many "heats" had been produced that day. After hearing that six had, he simply took some chalk and wrote the number 6 on the floor. When he returned days later, he saw the 6 crossed out and replaced with a 7, and then a 10. He had, in his own unique way, motivated the men and instilled the spirit of competition. 

Schwab worked for Andrew Carnegie. He worked tirelessly to make the factories more efficient and earned bonuses and promotions as a result. Unfortunately he did not imitate Carnegie's pension for clean living. Scandal eventually forced him to resign from U.S. Steel. While president of U.S. Steel, he had purchased Bethlehem Steel for his own portfolio. It was to this venture that he turned at his lowest point. This tiny company may have seemed like a radical demotion, but Schwab was determined to turn it around and make it competitive. Schwab even took on his old company and challenged the giant U.S. Steel. His attitude was, "If we are going to go bust, we will go bust big." (p. 73) He was eventually able to make a very profitable company out of Bethlehem Steel. But later in life, he ran out of steam. Once again ignoring the example of Carnegie, he went back to his profligate ways. The man who could single-handedly, through dint of his own hard work and motivational skills, make two companies very successful, died deeply in debt. 

John D. Rockefeller rose to the ranks of the fabulously wealthy in the field of oil production. He came from very humble beginnings but showed entrepreneurial promise early on. He was fascinated with the burgeoning oil industry and the ability to produce kerosene from crude oil, but right away, he noticed the appalling waste and fluctuating prices due to overproduction. He and a partner opened an oil refinery and determined to produce the best kerosene at the lowest price, while finding profitable uses for the myriad byproducts, which others threw into the river. Eventually, he decided to take on the Russians, who had all the natural advantages. He beat them at their own game by being more efficient. Although he was shrewd in business, he was quiet man, who "displayed none of the tantrums of a Vanderbilt or a Hill, and none of the flamboyance of a Schwab." (p. 93) His humility impressed all who knew him. Rockefeller was a devoted Christian and family man, who always put God and family before career. He donated tremendous sums of money and still managed to wind up with $900 million. 

The final biography Folsom turns to is that of Andrew Mellon. He was a Secretary of the Treasury of whom it was said that 4 Presidents served under. He had the revolutionary idea that too-high taxes would actually reduce revenue. He had made his money in the aluminum industry. His business skills brought him to the attention of President Harding. When asked to serve as Secretary of the Treasury, Mellon took a tremendous pay cut and accepted the challenge of turning around a post-war stagnant economy. Mellon believed that both the rich and the poor were being overtaxed. He saw first-hand that the wealthy were likely to shield their wealth in tax-exempt accounts rather than use it for investment in the economy. He despaired of this misallocation of resources. He advocated for the slashing of taxes, and true to his theories, revenues increased as more available money grew the economy. 

Mellon's program had four components: 1. Cut taxes to 25%, the maximum he felt the wealthy would pay before they shielded their money. 2. Cut taxes on low incomes, especially the regressive excise taxes on products. 3. Reduce the federal estate tax in order to discourage the sheltering of wealth in tax-exempt foundations. 4. Introduce efficiency into the government, cutting staff and expenses. He faced stiff opposition from the Progressives who wanted more, not less, government spending and higher taxes on the rich. Mellon's plan worked exactly as he predicted. More tax revenue came from the rich, with lower tax rates, and the lower income people had relief as well. Unfortunately, Mellon's legacy has been repeatedly described as tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the poor. This is the moniker the Progressives had hung on him during his lifetime and it stuck. It's unfortunate because Mellon is someone we could all learn from.

Folsom concludes by stating that the lessons of history will not be learned if we fail to understand what actually happened. Time and again, we see government subsidies retarding a company, leading to waste, fraud, and abuse, and the entrepreneurs that eschewed government handouts succeeding through bare-knuckled efficiency, which always benefited the consumer. History likes to portray these market entrepreneurs as "Robber Barons." Of this history, Folsom points out, "We did have the industrialists, such as Jay Gould and Henry Villard, who mulcted government money, erected shoddy enterprises, and ran them into the ground. What is missing are the builders who took the risks, overcame strong foreign competition, and pushed American industries to places of world leadership." (p. 127) Folsom celebrates these men in a way the history books do not. The "market entrepreneurs made decisive and unique contributions to American economic development. The political entrepreneurs stifled productivity (through monopolies and pools), corrupted business and politics, and dulled America's competitive edge." (p. 132) It is unfortunate that they are all lumped together. 

Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong by William Kilpatrick

Since I'm making it a duty of mine to read all the books recommended by the Hillsdale Bookstore, I picked up Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong by William Kilpatrick. Obviously the title is modeled after Why Johnny Can't Read, the best seller in the 1950s that woke America to the dangers of an educational system failing its students. This book is a similar harbinger. While it was written in 1992, it remains every bit as relevant today as it was then. In fact, I think we are seeing even more of what he predicted as time as gone on. 

After recounting some particularly horrific accounts of kids gone wild, he acknowledges the natural inclination to call for the teaching of morality in schools. "To someone with that idea it might come as a surprise to learn that moral values courses have been in the schools for over twenty-five years. In fact, more attention and research have been devoted to moral education in recent years than at any time in our history. Unfortunately, these attempts at moral education have been a resounding failure." (p. 15) And this, 25 years ago!

Character education switched to the decision-making model, asking students to reflect on their self-discovered values rather than learning the ones "handed down by adults." (p. 16) This closely follows the child-centered, individualist mantra which consumes educational theory. This has failed on every level to produce citizens with a common store of values, rather leading to subjective ideas of right and wrong. "In these curriculums a lot of time and energy are spent exchanging opinions and exploring feelings, but practically no time is spent providing moral guidance or forming character. The virtues are not explained or discussed, no models of good behavior are provided, no reason is given why a boy or girl should want to be good in the first place. In short, students are given nothing to live by or look up to." (p. 22) It's no wonder this type of moral education has failed. 

Character education programs began with drug education programs. It soon became apparent that bull sessions by students discussing the morality of drug use actually led to more experimentation, not less. The idea was based on a therapeutic approach, in which the students explored their feelings in a non-judgmental environment. At the same time, the "self-esteem" movement was gaining traction that sought to affirm students and validate their choices. By 1988, the U.S. Department of Education had seen the bad outcomes of this type of curriculum and encouraged schools to steer clear of such pedagogy. It recommended adult authorities clearly communicating right and wrong. How novel. In fact, the schools that successfully decreased drug usage were those that took a hard line against drugs, advocating for drug-free schools. 

Next up for the "moralists" was sex education. The curriculum introduced on this topic followed closely with the drug education. It was values-free, barely acknowledged abstinence, and focused on "responsibility." This too, caused an uptick in sexual activity, with the expected disastrous results. Its relativistic framework meant that there are no binding rules. Schools became just as sex-saturated as the culture. Although there seems to be a correlation between academic achievement and abstinence, we continued to teach children, that as long as they think its OK, its OK. 

These ideas grew out of the 60s and the cultural decay seen running rampant. Educators decided that culture and cultural values were not worth preserving. Rather, the students needed to find their own way to their values. Students would be given "decision-making" skills, not indoctrination. So highly esoteric situation were presented to students to get them to try to clarify their own values. "After being faced with quandary after quandary of the type that would stump Middle East negotiators, students [would] conclude that right and wrong are anybody's guess." (p. 85) Rather than encourage students to exercise time-honored virtues in normal circumstances, children were being asked to make highly nuanced determinations based on their as-yet-unknown hierarchy of values. Educators were making the highly dubious assumption that students already highly honored those principles generations past worked hard to inculcate. Kilpatrick likens it to the absurd proposition that we teach history to children by asking them to evaluate historically moral ambiguities like the Founders' ownership of slaves without teaching them the of their great achievements. To our shame, this is exactly what we are doing. Ironically, the only value this kind of education engendered was tolerance. But tolerance is an anti-value. It definitionally holds that there are no empirical values that citizens should embrace. We are seeing the ramifications of tolerance uber alles affecting the population today. The only "sin" in our culture today is intolerance. 

All throughout human history, the formation of character in the next generation has been a central concern. Ronald Reagan famously said we do not pass on freedom through the blood stream and that we are one generation away from losing it. "An effective moral education would be devoted to encouraging habits of honesty, helpfulness, and self-control until such behaviors become second nature." (p. 97) Children would be asked to respond automatically through the force of habit in a moral way to tempting situations. For a culture that ostensibly values freedom of choice and liberty, we seem paradoxically addicted to substances and behaviors that curb that very freedom we claim to hold dear. "None of this would have surprised Aristotle. A culture that neglects to cultivate good habits, he would have observed, will soon find itself the prisoner of bad habits." (p. 98) As rationalism and Romanticism came to influence Western Civilization, rather than counter-balance each other, they both "prized individual autonomy over any other goal." (p. 110) So today, while it seems we swing back and forth between these two extremes, we actually need to "move toward a wholly different mode of understanding human action." (p. 111)

In many ways, the thesis of  this book perfectly mirrors what those like E.D. Hirsch have been saying about the failures of education in general. In fact, just as Hirsch advocates for cultural literacy, Kilpatrick promotes a moral literacy, a set of values held in common by Americans. There used to be a common set of ideals and examples designed to socialize the youth into the values the larger society held dear. Today, few would recognize the stories that pervaded schoolhouses across the nation. Just as they are doing in education, so also in morality, the multi-culturalists decry a common core that they claim neglects the contributions of various disenfranchised groups. Ironically the traditional Western value system is actually the best way to honor what is good and should be emulated in other cultures. Western values provide the yardstick against which people can judge right and wrong. Without that ability to measure, students are left "adrift on a sea of relativism with no compass." (p. 128)

The primary way we taught the virtues in the past was through stories. Yet Enlightenment theorists today, decry moral stories as the stuff of ignorant and illiterate farmers. Today we should be able to rationalize our way to good values avoiding the harmful superstitions and narrow prejudices embedded in ancient stories. Yet a moral framework is often the result of a transformation of vision. We "see" things in a new light. Stories are a perfect way to get young students to "see" the need for particular values. "Moral principles also take on a reality in stories that they lack in purely logical form. Stories restrain our tendency to indulge in abstract speculation about ethics." (p. 137) Moral stories are the opposite of the values clarification curriculum promulgated by the education establishment. But stories do something "bull sessions" cannot. They make implicit assumptions about values that should be embraced. They make people and consequences real and concrete. Stories have the power to implicitly say, "Act like this. Don't act like that." They are a marvelous, time-honored way to morally socialize our youth. We have abandoned them to our peril. "Once we lose sight of the human face of principle, the way is clear for attacking the principles themselves as merely situational or relative. The final stage of the progression is moral nihilism and the appeal to raw self-interest." (p. 143)

As we have rejected definitive moral values to be inculcated in the youth, we have opted for the idea that our job is to reform society instead. The message is, "You are great. Society stinks." This relieves the next generation of the hard work of building their own character through habit and rather focus their attention on societal ills. Morality then becomes all about politics and a giant power struggle. This creates the endless need for victims of problems it is society's responsibility to alleviate. Ironically, if moral standards are discarded, then societal problems actually increase. The modern solution to moral issues is creating the disease. The abandonment of traditional Western Values impacts the most vulnerable in society by unmooring them from the lodestones that have generally bound society together.

Kilpatrick wades into even more controversial waters in his discussion of  beauty. We've all been taught that beauty is highly subjective and only exists "in the eye of the beholder." Yet Kilpatrick argues for an objective standard of beauty that has been used over the millennia to civilize generations of young people. It is not even the lyrics of some forms of music that he condemns, but the modern stuff of angry gyrations. He believes the harmonies inherent in good music produce harmonies of the soul and of society and holds little hope for moral renewal as long as our standards for beauty are non-existent.

Returning to his love of story as central to the human condition, Kilpatrick states, "The desire to be a hero, so common to children and adults, is part of a larger wish: the hope that one's life can be like a story. It is such a basic wish that we hardly reflect on it. For the most part we simply assume that our lives will make sense." (p. 191) Therefore, good moral stories "can give us not only a reason for living but also a reason for living well." (p. 196) "When the narrative sense is absent from individual lives, society also suffers an impoverishment.... Both for society and the individual the loss of story and history amounts to a loss of memory. We become like amnesiacs, not knowing where we are going, because we don't know where we have come from, and -- for the same reason  -- susceptible to the most superficial attractions." (p. 205)

Rather than outgrowing moral stories, our society is in need of them more than ever. Unfortunately our society is at a crossroads. It can choose stories that promulgate "moral imagination," the idea of how things ought to be, or "idyllic imagination," the idea of how things can never be - a utopian ideal. "At best the idyllic imagination provides a respite from the serious business of living, but for the serious business itself -- the call of duty, the necessity of hard work, the taming of selfish and violent emotions, facing sickness and death -- the idyllic imagination is inadequate. The serious business of life requires a more serious imagination; the moral imagination." (p. 209) While, with so many detrimental cultural components, this one was ushered in in the 60s with the hippies and love children, the idyllic imagination has a dark side. Told the universe can be a Utopian place, young people are hit hard with reality. Not given the tools to cope when life is hard, they become angry at the betrayal. This amorphous anger manifests itself in myriad destructive tendencies. I believe it's why we are seeing the acting out violently on college campuses today as students have their precious idyllic vision of the universe punctured by those who offer an alternative viewpoint. "The idyllic and utopian visions mistakenly imagine that virtue and character can be safely left out of the picture. But when that happens, vice only looms larger. Moreover, when we ignore or minimize the tragic limitations of life, tragedy is only multiplied." (p. 223) In trying to naively better society, we have instead sowed the seeds of its destruction by ignoring the wisdom of the ages.

His solution to all this is schools that are not morally ambivalent, but boldly champion the moral imagination and "embody the kind of character they hope to instill." (p. 224) Since all problems are at heart, a moral problem, Kilpatrick believes true moral education is the only path forward. Unfortunately it seems like a lot of hard work. Both teachers and students have a self-interest in neglecting this component of education. It can be daunting to try to figure out what values we actually want to teach. It can certainly be controversial. He recommends starting with the four cardinal virtues  - prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. He would probably add in patience for good measure. In addition to the schools, parents can work to produce disciplined children. Learn to say, "No." Forget trying to "understand" the child and validate his voice. Rather train up a child in the way that they should go.



At the end of the book, Kilpatrick recommends a reading list that will help with the moral training:

Picture books, story books, beginning readers: 
Aesop's Fables. Fritz Kredel, Grosset
Beauty and the Beast. Jan Brett
Betsy-Tacy. Lovelace
Book of Greek Myths. d'Aulaire
The Children's Bible in 365 Stories. Batchelor
The Children's Homer; The adventures of Odysseus and the tale of Troy. Padriac Olum
Clancy's Coat. Bunting
The Clown of God. dePaola
Dogger. Hughes
The Door in the Wall. De Angeli
The Emperor and the Kite. Yolen
How Many Days to America?: A Thanksgiving Story. Bunting
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Joffe
John Henry, An American Legend. Keats
Just Enough is Plenty; A Hanukkah Tale. Goldin
Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie. Roop
The Little Engine That Could. Piper
Little House in the Big Woods. Wilder
The Little Match Girl. Andersen
Magical Hands. Barker
Marta and the Nazis. Cavanah
A Tale of Three Wishes. Singer
Thy Friend, Obadiah. Turkle
Waiting for Hannah. Russo
When I was Young in the Mountains. Rylant
Yonder. Johnston

Middle Readers:
All-of-a-Kind Family. Taylor
Black Beauty. Sewell
Blue Willow. Gates
Caddie Woodlawn. Brink
The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis
Cracker Jackson. Byars
Dear Mr. Henshaw. Cleary
A Dog on Barkham Street. Stolz
A Dog So Small. Pearce.
The 18th Emergency Byars
Five Children and It. Bland
Gaffer Samson's Luck. Walsh
A Girl Called Al. Greene
Good Morning, Miss Dove. Patton
Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad. Petry
Heather and Broom: Tales of the Scottish Highlands. Alger
Thistle and Thyme: Tales and Legends from Scotland. Alger
Heidi. Spyri
The House of Sixty Fathers. DeJong
The Hundred Dresses. Estes
Ida Early Comes Over the Mountain. Burch
The Indian in the Cupboard. Banks
Island of the Blue Dolphins. O'Dell
Johnny Tremain. Forbes
Ladder of Angels. L'Engle
Lassie come Home. Knight
A Little Princess. Burnett
Pagan the Black. Benedict
Plain Girl. Sorenson
Pollyanna. Porter
The Potlatch Family. Lampman
The Rabbi's Girls. Hurwitz
The Railway Children. Bland
Roll of Thunder, Hear  My Cry. Taylor
The Sign of the Beaver. Speare
Snow Treasure. McSwigan
Sounder. Armstrong
The Taize Picture Bible. de Saussure
Thank You, Jackie Robinson. Cohen
Tuck Everlasting. Babbitt
Understood Betsy. Canfield
Walking the Road to Freedom: A Story About Sojourner Truth. Ferris
The Wheel on the School. DeJong
The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Speare


Older Readers:
Abraham Lincoln: From Log Cabin to White House. North
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain
April Morning. Fast
Building Blocks. Voigt
Call of the Wild. London
Captains Courageous. Kipling
Cheaper by the Dozen. Gilbreth
A Child's History of England. Dickens
The Chosen. Potok
The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas
David Copperfield. Dickens
Diary of a Young Girl. Frank
Drums Along the Mohawk. Edmonds
The Endless Steppe: A Girl in Exile. Hautzig
Great Expectations. Dickens
The Great Gilly Hopkins. Paterson
Gulliver's Travels. Swift
Hard Times. Dickens
The Hero and the Crown. McKinley
Hobberdy Dick. Briggs.
The Hobbit. Tolkien
Kidnapped. Stevenson
Knight's Fee. Sutcliff
Little Women. Alcott
Moby-Dick. Melville
Narrative of the Life of  Frederick Douglas. Douglass
1984. Orwell
The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway
Old Yeller. Gipson
Oliver Twist. Dickens
Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story." Aurandt
The Phantom Tollbooth. Juster
The Red Badge of Courage. Crane
Rifles for Watie. Keith
Robinson Crusoe. Defoe
The Scarlet Pimpernel. Orczy
Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury
The Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength. Lewis
Stories for Children. Singer
A Study in Scarlet. Doyle
The Sign of the Four. Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles. Doyle
A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens
This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War. Catton
Typhoon. Conrad
Warrior Scarlet. Sutcliff
Watership Down. Adams

Why Knowledge Matters by E.D. Hirsch

I love E.D. Hirsch, and I think I have read just about every book he has written. I truly believe he is onto something with his focus on content over skill acquisition in education. This, his latest book, Why Knowledge Matters, continues to make that case, especially in light of the Common Core. 

After stating, "I am still chiefly motivated by the social injustice of our domestic theories and their unwitting destruction of the American dream," he begins by discussing "The Tyranny of Three Ideas." (p. 1) He states the three misguided ideas as:

1. "Early education should be appropriate to the child's age and nature...

2. Early education should be individualized as far as possible -- to follow the learning styles and interests of each developing student.

3. The unifying aim of education is to develop critical thinking and other general skills." (p. 7)

He believes we should replace these ideas with:

1. "Early education should be chiefly communal -- focused on gaining proficiency in the language and the conventions of the public sphere.

2. Every child in each locality should study basically the  same early curriculum

3. The unifying aim of early schooling is autonomy and equality of opportunity..." (p. 7) 

He summarizes thusly, "I will argue, with support from developmental psychology, that equating early education with the metaphor of individual 'development' is misleading; that so-called 'unnatural' social impositions are the most natural things in the world; that school systems with so-called 'lockstep' curricula in the early grades (Finland, Japan) have very child-happy, effective schools that score near the top in international studies. Indeed, international studies have shown that a differentiated curriculum is harmful to achievement and equity. To make the emphases and content of the child's early schooling largely dependent upon the child's uniqueness is an idea unsupported by developmental psychology. The evidence for individual learning styles is weak to nonexistent." (p.11) Basically, we need a strong, content-based system of standards, taught to each student. This is straight up heresy in the educational world. 

In chapter one, he moves onto the invalidity of testing of students, especially in the language arts. In fact, he believes the tests actually cause lower test scores because they emphasize the wrong things. Since language art standards, even Common Core standards, unlike math standards, are content-free, the test makers must test the skills demanded instead. Yet research has shown that after learning basic decoding skills, generalized how-to skills don't exist and therefore cannot be tested. It is the students with the most content knowledge that do best on these "reading comprehension" tests. Relevant vocabulary and knowledge, not skills, determine the score. Of course the real danger is that schools will spend time trying to teach these skills, rather than the more productive content. "Those wasted hours ought to be spent on far more interesting and rewarding subject matters that will build up knowledge and vocabulary, and therefore induce greater reading competence." (p. 32) Yet he admits that this is "an outcome that will require greater courage and scientific insight than has been shown in the recent past." (p.33)

Chapter two deals with "The Scapegoating of Teachers." While acknowledging that our teacher colleges do a horrible job of preparing teachers to actually teach, Hirsch believes that even great teachers will underperform when given a bad curriculum. "In a system with a specific and coherent curriculum, the work of each teacher builds on the work of teachers who came before. The three Cs — cooperation, coherence, and cumulativeness — yield a bigger boost than the most brilliant efforts of teachers working individuality against the odds within a topic-incoherent system." (p. 37) He encourages teachers who want to be effective to "rebel against the skills delusion... [and] insist on coherent and cumulative multiyear content...then cooperate and consult." (p. 41)

Next he moves onto the "fadeout" we see of abilities garnered in a high-quality preschool. This is not universal, but it is certainly a characteristic of American education. In fact, the fadeout and achievement gaps increase as time goes on. He blames the elementary curriculum. Even very effective elementary programs like Direct Instruction and Success For All experience fadeout. He again points to the lack of a coherent knowledge-based curriculum in otherwise stellar programs. Our primary schools are saturated with "Reggio Emilia," the theory of letting children naturally develop. It emphasizes projects and hands-on learning. He looks to the high quality French preschools and the eventual fadeout seen once the students have progressed through the naturalistic primary schools. 

Because of falling test scores and the recognition that education is in trouble, various reforms like No Child Left Behind have forced schools to put all their emphasis on on language and math skills. Other subjects have been largely pushed out. Yet as he has repeatedly shown, language arts skills do not exist. It is content knowledge that determines the language arts abilities of a student. Yet teachers feel forced to teach skills because that is what will be tested. 

Hirsch states, "It is widely conceded that the high-stakes testing introduced by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002 caused a reduction in the knowledge students have gained in history, civics, music, visual art, literature and science." (p. 61) He bemoans this "dilution of the elementary curriculum" because the impact on low-income communities has been devastating. He believes rich curriculum would solve many, if not all, of the educational ills we face. In fact, he states, There is a growing body of evidence that many practical differences in students' ability to learn the academic content are differences in the topic-relevant knowledge that they already possess." (p. 72) 

One belief of modern education is that we need to develop "Twenty-first Century Skills" in our students. Remarkably these skills, including critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, teamwork and communication, are the same skills that were called "Nineteenth Century Skills" and "Twentieth Century Skills." In short, these are the skills education is always supposed to produce, but we have short-circuited the hard work of imparting knowledge and believe we can skip directly to imparting the skill. Repeatedly, Hirsch states that there is no such thing as a skill apart from content. There is no general "critical thinking" skill. This focus on building skills has led to an incoherent and fragmented curriculum in which topics do not build on and support other topics. 

Critics argue that some topics are "developmentally inappropriate" at certain ages. Hirsch argues that this is patently false. Even Piaget, of the famous developmental stages, recanted at the end of his life and admitted that developmental stages owe far more to knowledge than chronological age. Inappropriateness of a topic comes from the unfamiliarity a child has with the relevant knowledge, not the age of the child. Certainly there are some things a child shouldn't know at a certain age, and wouldn't understand because he does not have an understanding of the other, related knowledge. But that doesn't make the child developmentally unable to process all kinds of information.

Leaving no dogma stone unturned, Hirsch addresses leveled, independent-reading programs. He states, "There's no evidence that the individualization of leveled-reader bins develops deep student interest or makes better readers. On the contrary, it neglects systematic knowledge building -- the key to high reading ability." (p. 73) This idea that students should read books they choose as long as they are at their reading level is sacrosanct in education. But Hirsch argues that there is no good way to level books because the publishers have no idea of the background knowledge a child has in the subject. Plus, letting a child choose his own book is not a systematic way to gain that background knowledge. It all becomes a hodgepodge. But it is favored by those preferring an individualized, child-centered approach, which Hirsch has demonstrated time and again, doesn't work. Consider the example of a doctor. He can read very high level dissertations on medicine, but he is helpless as a reader when confronted with an equally high level paper on engineering. It's content knowledge that makes him proficient as a reader. The only way to become a competent reader is a well-rounded education. 

But what about the argument that skills are more valuable than content knowledge because someone could always just "look it up." Well it turns out that it is not that easy. Just looking something up can be very disorienting without having some idea of what you are looking for. It is very easy to find information that an expert would recognize as misleading, wrong, or not credible. "Google is not an equal-opportunity fact finder; it rewards those already in the know." (p. 83) He calls this the Matthew Effect. Basically to those who have more will be given. To those with little, it will be taken away. 

What Hirsch is most concerned with are the achievement gaps we see in education that particularly hit the disadvantaged students. While no system can completely overcome the disadvantages a student might be born into, a good education can certainly help close that gap. The best part is, a good school can actually benefit the poorer student more than the great ones, in effect, reversing the Matthew Effect. Especially if we start with the youngest students when the gap is the smallest, low-income students can catch up and keep up if they get a systematic well-rounded education year after year. 

Next Hirsch weighs in with his thoughts on the Common Core. Even though he has advocated a "small-c" common core for decades, he is somewhat dismayed with what is being done now. He laments the fact that, although it does recommend a systematic, rich curriculum, that part is not emphasized. And certainly those implementing it are not emphasizing that. He cites their fear of recommending a specific core of knowledge required in K-12. Any recommendations are certain to followed up with howls of protest for what was not included as well as what was. But this thinking has left a lacuna in the knowledge held by students as they graduate from high school. While he believes there IS a cannon of knowledge that all American students should be well-versed in, he believes the most important thing is a systematic study of content with each topic building on the next. Multi-culturalists have weighed in demanding the curriculum be all-encompassing, highlighting the achievements of the neglected and disenfranchised. Ironically, this hurts the children they are purporting to help by depriving them of the standard body of knowledge necessary to succeed in the larger society. But until tests stop testing "skills," and start testing for specific content, he doesn't foresee a switch happening.

In addition, he attacks the idea of "close reading." He has seen elementary students try to "close read" and it results in nothing more than completely highlighted texts and random words pulled out. Once again, he returns to his idea of content knowledge stating that only those already fluent in the content can close read. It is another manifestation of the Matthew Effect. Unfortunately, most students are not well-versed and therefore are hurt in their efforts to "close read" because they end up missing the main points being made. 

As an example of all he is saying, he uses the school system in France. They are a perfect laboratory experiment for his views. Up until 1989, they had the kind of educational system he advocates for. Then they abruptly changed to a model based on the progressive U.S. schools. After more than 20 years, the data is in. It is clear that the experiment has failed. And yet, like the U.S. they are impervious to the ramifications. Like the United States, they have doubled down on progressive, child-centered pedagogy. Sweden did the same thing with the same results. However in Sweden, it was the right, not the left, pushing for the changes. He does not believe that the educational theories so widely espoused today are necessarily conservative or liberal, but simply pervasive. 

Finally, he ends with a discussion of what he is seeing the schools that have implemented his version of a common core, called Core Knowledge. He has seen reading gaps all but disappear rather than increase. He has seen the development of creativity by moving away from individualistic education and towards a communal-based education. Once children have a base of knowledge, they can soar. To the critics, he states that the Core Knowledge series follows the six key features endemic to all successful elementary curriculum:

1. Field-tested - "The need for field testing is obvious."

2. Topic-specific - ""...topic specificity is probably the most important characteristic to insist upon in the United States, since it makes everyone -- teachers, students, and parents -- aware of the level of expertise that students will have gained at each point, and what will need to be learned in the future."

3. Well rounded - "... breadth of knowledge and vocabulary (including proper nouns!) is critical to high reading skill and other communicative skills. Broad knowledge is also critical for ameliorating class distinctions..." 

4. Coherent - "Topic coherence within a grade level is particularly important in the language arts class, where topic in the United States are currently individualized, fragmentary, and disconnected." 

5. Cumulative - "Designing a multiyear cumulative sequence of topics is important technically to make sure that students are ready for each subject over the sequence of grade levels."

6. Selective - "...the topics of the curriculum should convey the most enabling knowledge withing the national context. " (p. 179-180)

Critics, however, continue to call it untested and ignore the studies that show it being successful. Hirsch acknowledges that all of this "contradicts the child-centered, skill-centric doctrines that are still an intellectual monopoly in our education world." (p. 182) But until the wider public understands that thinking skills like "critical thinking" and "problem-solving" are not in fact productive aims because there is no such thing as a general skill, it will be hard to make the necessary changes. In addition, there is push-back from conservatives who fear a "national curriculum" will inhibit our long-standing tradition of local control. The problem with this view, however, is that for most of American history we did have a type of national curriculum that was common to all or most schools. It is the Romantics that pushed for more local control over content in order to individualize education to the child. Conservatives should be at the forefront of pushing for a national common core of knowledge to be taught in the elementary schools in order to created citizens with a common heritage and store of knowledge. However, I understand the justified fear that what constitutes the common core can be manipulated by groups with an agenda. Yet what we are seeing now is clearly not working.

Teachers, parents, and students balk at Hirsch's ideas. It sounds like a lot of work on everyone's part. And yet that is exactly the prescription we need. "There are no significant shortcuts to intellectual competence." (p. 190) As Dr. Arnn of Hillsdale is fond of saying, "Strap your boots on. It's time to get to work."

Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform by Diane Ravitch

In my never-ending endeavor to be a good teacher, I am reading as many recommended education books as I can. One of these was Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform by Diane Ravitch. It was fascinating to read of the history of education in America. I think I marked up the entire book. 

As with any study of history, one of the major benefits is to know where we came from to better understand where we are going. Ravitch states, "The aim of this book is to trace the origins of America's seemingly permanent debate about school standards, curricula, and methods. In particular, it recounts the story of unrelenting attacks on the academic mission of the schools." (p. 14-15). She gives her biases away in the introduction. Unlike other historians, she argues that the progressive philosophy that took over education had an inescapable anti-intellectualism at its core. She gives credence and voice to the movements critics. The reasons these controversies matter is because once the door was opened away from a classical, liberal education, anything was possible. There was no defensible reason to say, "No" to whatever educational fad held the day. The students suffered. 

In today's environment, Ravitch asserts, "The schools must reassert their primary responsibility for the development of young people's intelligence and character. Schools must do far more than teach children 'how to learn' and 'how to look things up'; they must teach them what knowledge has the most value, how to use that knowledge, how to organize what they know, how to understand the relationship between past and present, how to tell the difference between accurate information and propaganda, and how to turn information into understanding." (p. 17)

The big changes and reforms came to education once it was decided that all children should be required to attend school. Prior to the 20th dentury, most children received some education, but few continued all the way through high school. "The aim of the [new] common school was clear: to promote sufficient learning and self-discipline so that people in a democratic society could be good citizens, read the newspapers, get a job, make their way in an individualistic and competitive society, and contribute to their community's well-being." (p. 25) No longer was education about creating a "well-souled man." 

As a higher percentage of students poured into high schools, the debate grew over what was the purpose of secondary schools. As the century dawned, the emphasis became on training for manual jobs. The schools began to try to make education useful and attractive to students. It appeared to be just the right preparation for the new Industrial Age. 

A group of educators, known as the Committee of Ten was convened to lay out the groundwork for what education should look like going forward. "The report of the Ten was a reform document. It urged colleges to admit students who had not studied the classical languages. It supported new subjects such as history, the sciences, and modern foreign language as coequal with Latin, Greek, and mathematics. It recommended active teaching methods instead of rote memorization. It endorsed the democratic idea that all students should receive a liberal education." (p. 43) 

So, the 20th century began with a commitment to a broad liberal education for every student as a democratic right. The idea was that all children would access what had only been available to the elite up to that point. But opponents soon began to attack the idea that the children of workers and farmers even needed this kind of an education. It quickly became clear that education would proceed on one of two paths. Either a broad liberal education would be offered to all or education would become differentiated based on the likely future occupations of the students. 

Progressive schools of education came into being, with the mission "to refute the assumptions of traditional education, demonstrate the inutility of teaching academic subjects, and encourage schools to replace traditional subjects with practical studies." (p. 53) "In education, the progressive movement had numerous, related aims: It sought to make the schools more practical and realistic. It sought to introduce humane methods of teaching, recognition that students learn in different ways, and attention to the health of children. It sought to commit the schools more to social welfare than to academic studies." (P. 54) In addition the educational establishment began trying to make teaching as a profession only open to highly-trained educators. Towards this end, centralized school bureaucracies and civil service systems in urban districts began. 

The movement encompassed 4 significant ideas, which together questioned why anyone should receive a solid academic education.

1. Education was a science and could be measured = standardized testing

2. The methods and ends of education could be derived from the child = child-centered education

3. The methods and ends of education should fit the needs of society = social efficiency movement

4. Schools  had a duty to reform society, changing the social order = social reconstruction movement

The latest scientific research seemed to suggest that what a student studied was irrelevant. Any subject could produce a "good thinker." Education's role was to produce an improved society and any subject studied could produce the kind of people that would reform society. It was believed that "transfer" did not occur. That is learning in one area would give students skills and knowledge to be used elsewhere. What was needed was solid vocational skills. Later this thinking would be called a "misuse of experimental evidence" and "a major scandal in the history of educational thought." (p. 69) Even so, progressives continued to attack traditional education for being "repressive," "monarchical,' "barren and repellant," and out of touch with America, producing “automatons”. 

"The various reform movements springing up had three things in common. They all discredited the ideal of a liberal and general education for all. In addition, they sought to move education into the realm of experts and away from parents and teachers. Third they all advanced the claim that "a democratic education was synonymous with a differentiated curriculum." (p. 88) Education needed to be utilitarian and testable. This new way of thinking meant that a banker's child would get a very different education than the coal miner's child, being "fitted to occupy the status of their parents." (p. 90) This led to different tracks for different children. In practice this meant that children of immigrants and the poor got put into more vocational tracks. Critics defended the desire of working people to have a full education for their children, but the experts won out. Without any examples, they claimed the "common man" was clamoring for an "efficient" education for their children.  Progressives made clear that the previous focus of education on the individual was misguided and pedagogy should be left to the experts who would work for "social harmony, social efficiency and social survival." (p. 90) 

To the educational establishment’s horror, when given a choice, students would continue to take the college preparatory, academic classes. The experts decided this could not stand. Student would be directed at the discretion of the professionals. The drop-out rates were attributed to "the absurd emphasis on ancient history, composition and algebra." (p. 103) This, despite the evidence that students tended to drop out for economic reasons. Ironically, progressives suffered from a lack of imagination at to what economic progress would actually look like. Their highly regimented educational systems assumed an unchanging society. Boxing students into a particular track highly impacted the most vulnerable - the black students. The progressives were horrified that anyone would try to teach Latin to "negro" students. 

While the Classicists recognized the threat, they did not unify to combat the new developments. They were attacked as "conservative" and against progress. Despite their claims that a true democratic outlook necessitated a liberal education for all, since one never knew where talent would manifest itself, they were shouted down. In the push to make education more democratic, education became increasingly dumbed down. Unspoken was the idea that the students were simply too stupid to benefit from a liberal, classical education. Therefore, academic subjects were adjusted and changed. "History" became "Social Studies" and the goal shifted from educating the child, satisfying his curiosity and imagination, teaching him to become a more fully realized human being, to providing relevant and useful activities designed to produce good citizens. 

Early in the century, "progressive reformers believed that the scientific movement in education had 'exploded' the theory of mental discipline and demolished the rationale for the academic curriculum. They agreed that the academic curriculum was archaic, but they did not agree on what should replace it." (p. 162) While Dewey is often credited with this movement, his "child-centered" school actually did promote particular academic subjects. His innovation was to try to make learning more fun and interactive. Yet he tolerated progressives who had a similar desire to make education child-centered, but abhorred subject matter. This new way "would unleash creativity, self-expression, and originality." (p. 194) Educators took advantage of the chaos of the Great Depression to try to reconstruct society, using children as guinea pigs. 

"In the 1920s, well before the Great Depression began, intellectuals were highly critical of American society. They looked with contempt at a society that seemed self-absorbed, narrow-minded, puritanical, repressed, materialistic, indifferent to poverty, and easily swayed by religious evangelists." (p. 202) These were the same intellectuals that sought to change our educational system. They opposed the "rugged individualism" to which most Americans held. Their real goal was to change society and education was the key. “At this point in the evolution of the progressive ideology, an important shift occurred: the radical, free-spirited individualism associated with the child-centered schools of the 1920s disappeared, replaced by calls to ‘adjust’ the individual to the requirements of collective society.” (p. 261) They watched as the Communists in Russia put their dream into reality. They loved the central planning and the devotion to experts. “The key to this shift from individualism to cooperative group living was clear: it required a de-emphasis of the academic curriculum, which stood in opposition to child-centered schools, social reconstructionism, and social conformism.” (p. 261)

Ravitch comments that, "It was odd that the Russian Revolution inspired educators to want to build new social order through the schools, because the schools in Russia had not created the Russian Revolution; nor did any of the progressive educators wonder how their own social ideals had been forged, since all of them were products of a subject-centered, traditional education." This is what I believe is the fatal flaw of progressivism. It depends on the capital of the traditions that came before it, while working to destroy those very foundations. They have no appreciation for the forces that gave them the institutions they take for granted. The irony that they supported collectivism, focused on the society over the individual, desired centrally planned economies and centrally planned education, all the while decrying the lack individuality in traditional education did not occur to them. While critics were not able to convince the educational establishment to abandon its love affair with Marxism, the results of Marxism finally did. The failures of Russia's new school system, resulting in intellectual purges in the Soviet Union, could no longer be ignored. 

Taking advantage of the disruptions caused by the Great Depression, public schools set about to revise their curriculum. With almost no pushback, "every curriculum revision project of the era echoed the rhetoric of progressive educators, declaring its intention to 'meet the needs of the whole child' and achieve 'democracy in education.' Educators agreed that the curriculum must be dynamic; that education was a continuous reconstruction of experience; that education had to embrace the total life experience of the child; that the goal of education was effective living for all; that instruction had to shift from subject matter to the child's experience; that college preparatory studies were narrow and aristocratic; that promotion and failure were anachronistic concepts; that marks and other extrinsic rewards were undemocratic." (p. 241) No one spent any time studying whether or not these good-sounding ideas actually worked. Engaging activities became the means and the ends. 

The public school system decided that elementary schools would be centers of activity, while secondary schools would emphasize lifestyle-focused curriculum. In high immigrant areas, these changes were easier to foist upon unsuspecting and unsophisticated parents with little grasp of English. “These changes…imposed on uncomprehending students and parents, were described by the principal as ‘a living object lesson in democracy,’ but in retrospect they seem more like a class-biased, racist effort to restrict educational and social opportunities.” (p. 269) Educational leaders expressed surprise at the desire of black parents to give their children a traditional academic experience. It was believed that black youth should be raised to support the status quo and not be taught to challenge it. They were to have a vocational education which would more properly “fit them for society.” “The high schools that adopted these progressive reforms became…’an enormous, complicated machine for sorting and ticketing and routing children through life,’…Because this sorting process was linked closely to race and social class…it had the effect of ‘sharpening rather than eliminating divisions along class and racial lines.’” (p. 282-283) 

After World War II, a new educational tool provided the progressives and racist alike with a "scientific" way to segregate students - the IQ test. "Mental testing was the linchpin of the scientific movement in education." (p. 130) Many devotees of intelligence testing were also supporters of eugenics. Intelligence testing gave educators a number which "could then be used to group students, define what they would learn, and determine their future vocation." (p. 139) These tests held the promise of enormous power over people's lives. It was no surprise that since immigrants and the poor were being given inferior educations, they scored lower on the tests... Therefore the progressives had justification to further block immigrants and the poor from academic educations. "The intelligence testers promoted fatalism, a rueful acceptance that achievement in school is the result of innate ability, not sustained efforts by teachers and students." (p. 161) 

It wasn’t that the critics of progressive education failed to speak up. It was simply that they were unsuccessful at pushing back on the modern orthodoxy. The times were so uncertain, that the public had little time to notice what was going on in education, and the voices for a traditional, liberal education were not heard. William Bagley, a prominent dissident, “believed that the common school in a democratic society should not decide whom to educate. And he believed that the knowledge built up by the human race over many centuries was a precious heritage that must be taught to each succeeding generation in order for progress to continue.” (p. 286) He spoke out very early against vocational education. He decried the idea of each district creating its own curriculum. “People need a fund of common knowledge so they can discuss common problems in terms that are widely understood.” (p. 287) Besides, Americas were so mobil, it made no sense to try to educate a child differently from one district to another. 

Other critics pointed out what the classicists had always known. A democratic society demands an educated population. Only despots would restrict the knowledge given to children. Russian immigrant, Michael J. Demiashkevich, “wanted the schools to ‘introduce students to the highest standards of accurate and fertile thinking, through direct or indirect contacts with the best minds of humanity, and in that way to put them on solid ground for the critical judgment of their own thinking and that of others.’ Students must be able to capitalize on accumulated human experience, to learn efficiently what others have learned slowly and painfully. It was antidemocratic, he wrote, to allow students to remain ignorant of accumulated human experience and knowledge.” (p. 292-293)

In 1930, University of Chicago President, Robert Hutchins, teamed up with Mortimer Adler to establish a “Great Books” curriculum to combat progressives insistence on abandoning academic subject matter. They ridiculed the notion that the purpose of a school was to provide real life experience. “Only the school and college could supply intellectual discipline, and if they abandoned this responsibility, no other agency would do it.” (p. 302) They were attacked by no less a progressive light than John Dewey. Hutchins attracted an extreme amount of vitriol simply for calling for the reading of Great Books. Ironically, it was the conservative critics that recognized that without a thorough understanding of the best that humanity had achieved, actual progress was not possible. “To study every problem with ‘an open and empty mind, without preconception, without knowing what has already been learned about it, must condemn men to a chronic childishness.’ … Society could be progressive only by conserving its traditions.” (p. 312)

Bagley’s colleague, Isaac Kandel, was a particularly insightful critic. “He charged that progressive education had become a hollow doctrine, empty of any intellectual vitality or moral purpose. Progressivism, wrote Kandel, celebrated change for its own sake, blithely tossing away trident and experience, leaving only a legacy of ‘nihilism and anti-intellectualism.’” (p. 319) He railed against progressive education’s “failure to confront alarming deficiencies in American education.” (p. 319) The results of their experiment were abysmal, by any metric. 

“By the end of World War II, progressivism was the reigning ideology of American education. Educators at every level of public education spoke the same pedagogical language and claimed to be implementing the very programs that progressive educators had been advocating for decades.” (p. 322) “By the end of the war… progressive education had become calcified, the property of professors of education who spoke and wrote in an obscure jargon understood only by their colleagues and students. Having set aside the earlier ideal of child-centered schooling that liberated individualism and creativity as well as  the ideal of leading a socialist revolution through the schools, all that remained was the belief the schools should adjust children to fit into their society.” (p. 326-327) Schools began to focus on life issues - dating, socialization, consumer math, home budgeting, and home economics. Students would be educated for the society as it existed and were considered unable to master the hard, academic subjects. 

“By midcentury, the public schools had become agencies dedicated to socializing students, teaching them proper attitudes and behaviors, and encouraging conformity to the norms of social life and the workplace. Educators at the national, state, and local levels who subscribed to life adjustment education thought that the schools were meeting the needs of their students and of democratic society admirably.” (p. 343) Therefore they were totally unprepared for the overwhelming backlash. “Rudolf Fleisch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read reached the national best-seller lists, where it remained for more than thirty weeks.” (p. 353) He gave voice to what society was beginning to notice. The schools were failing to actually educate students. Progressive education suddenly became a joke, progressive ideas were old and stale, and parents clamored for a return to traditional education. Then the Russians launched Sputnik and the nation’s failing educational system was fully revealed. American education simply had to return to actually educating students. 

But, along came the 60s. After decades of the schools doing what the parents should have done, and no one actually educating the children, teenagers began “living in their own society, seeking approval from one another rather than from adults, and participating in a subculture with its own language, symbols, and values… What were the values of the adolescent society?… Anti-intellectual and materialistic.” (p. 369) Decades of putting black students on certain tracks that reinforced the status quo lead to a stifled and subjugated people desperate for the liberties enjoyed by other Americans. After bruising civil rights battles, black students were finally given access previously withheld from them. “Ready or not, American schools were confronted with the necessity of educating black children from a wide variety of backgrounds, many of whom's parents had been denied a decent education.” (p. 383) 

“The upheavals of the era changed the public schools in important ways. Confronted with violence, disciplinary problems, and litigation, school officials backed away from acting in loco parentis. In an effort to reduce conflict, academic demands were minimized. Students were increasingly left to fend for themselves, without adult guidance. The withdrawal of adults from their responsibility for instructing their students had implications both for students’ behavior and for the academic coherence of the schools.” (p. 386) Faced with overwhelming problems, the educational bureaucracy turned to old ideas, dressed up as a fresh and radical. Back was the child-centered learning, experience and experimentation, gone was the idea of tests and an academic curriculum. The child should learn what the child wanted to learn. 

“The radical critics of the 1960s were legitimately angry at the appalling condition of urban schools for black children, but their rage turned into a rejection of virtually all manifestations of formal education: textbooks and tests, marks and grading, curricula and lesson plans, and knowledge itself.” (p. 391) “Freedom” was the mantra. “The progressive educators of the 1960s seemed unaware that these issues had been debated a generation earlier and asserted their quasi-religious belief that unfettered student freedom must necessarily produce a better society…. The critics expected that children left free to choose would always make wise choices and that in time the world would be a far, far better place, where racism, war, and hatred no longer existed.” (p. 393) 

Once again, parents were well aware that the schools were failing their children. In the mid to late 1970s, they pushed for more traditional schooling and accountability. The experiments on children had to end. “Donald A. Myers, part of a team that evaluated open classrooms in New York State, wrote in 1974 that ‘open education appears all but dead in America.’ It had died, he said, not only because it had not improved student achievement, because it had been oversold by yellow journalists and irresponsible evangelists. ‘The time has come in American education,’ he declared, ‘when teachers should stage a walkout when education evangelists propose innovations that have not been validated by careful research over a long period of time. Instead of being paid and applauded, these hucksters should be set packing and ‘should be thankful they are not jailed as would representatives of a pharmaceutical house for dispensing a drug before it had been tested.’ “ (p. 401)

By 1980, academic scores had plummeted, yet self-esteem had gone up. “Changes in the curriculum in pursuit of relevance accentuated narcissistic themes. Social studies courses focused on immediate personal and social issues; chronological history and civic knowledge, which required students to think about worlds larger than their own acquaintance, were relegate to minor roles in social studies departments. ‘Values clarification’ courses, which encouraged students to make their own decision about whether to use drugs or engage in other dangerous behaviors, proliferated. English became ‘English language arts,’ with more attention to self-expression and social issues than to classic literature. The study of heroes, once popular among students in search of models to emulate, fell into disfavor. In an effort to promote self-esteem and group identity, schools reduced their once-customary attention to the values of self-restraint, self-discipline, and humility.” (p. 406-407)

"By the early 1980s, there was growing concern about the quality of the nation's schools. The sustained assault on the academic curriculum in the late 1960s and early 1970s had taken its toll." (p. 408) Ronald Reagan's secretary of education produced a report titled, A Nation at Risk. "Written in stirring language that the general public could understand, the report warned that the schools had not kept pace with the changes in society and the economy and that the nation would suffer if education was not dramatically improved for all children. It also asserted that lax academic standards were correlated with lax behavioral standards and that neither should be ignored." (p. 411) Unlike earlier national commissions, this one did not find in favor of differentiated instruction, but rather held to the premise that all children can learn and are entitled to the tools necessary to develop their individuals strengths. 

Into this time of actual academic improvement came the multicultural and self-esteem movements. Both had the effect of sowing discord and possibly derailing much needed reforms. Fortunately, by the end of the 1980s, another, more beneficial movement came on the scene, standards. Initially conceived as six national goals for the year 2000, states began to construct their own goals for academic content. It started in History, long neglected under the Social Studies rubric, and then moved to English. However, it was not smooth sailing as different groups fought over what should be included. Math teachers weighed in as well, creating a set of standards with the likeliest chance to succeed. After "new math" and the reactionary "back-to-basics," the math departments needed serious reform.  The "Whole Language" versus Phonics also threatened a pursuit for unified standards in the instruction of reading. 

Eventually, "the powerful middle ground" won out. "In history, children need big thematic concepts, but they also need a solid grounding in factual knowledge, a secure scaffolding of dates, names, and events on which to build the big concepts... In mathematics, children need to engage in active problem solving , and they also need to master the basic skills of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing in order to become successful problem solvers. In English, children need to learn the skills of correct language usage as well as have opportunities to read excellent classic and contemporary literary works and write their own compositions." (p. 450) Finally, it was acknowledged that teachers need to actually teach, not "facilitate." It appeared that after a century of "reform," education had finally found a common sense approach that might actually work. 

"If there is a lesson to be learned from the river of ink that was spilled in the education disputes of the twentieth century, it is that anything in education that is labeled a 'movement' should be avoided like the plague. What American education most needs is not more nostrums and enthusiasms but more attention to fundamental, time-tested truths. It is a fundamental truth that children need well-educated teachers who are eclectic in their methods and willing to use different strategies depending on what works best for which children. It is another fundamental truth that adults must take responsibility for  children and help them develop as good persons with worthy ideals." (p. 453) 

The three great errors demonstrated in these pages are, first, the belief that schools should be expected to solve all of society's problems; second, the belief that only a portion of children need access to a high-quality academic education; and third, the belief that schools should emphasize students' immediate experiences and minimize (or even ignore) the transmission of knowledge. 

Why did it take a century to discover the aforementioned"fundamental truths"? Ultimately, schools lost their way when they lost sight of their purpose. In 1897, John Dewey "proclaimed that the school was the primary means of social reform and the teacher was 'the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God.' " (p. 459) Once again, it appears that rejection of the actual, true God led to disaster.