Sit Down and Shut Up

I remarked a few weeks ago on re-reading Less Than Words Can Say, a wonderful book on how stupid we've become about language in particular and education in general. One of the main points which the books makes is that we know how to teach, and we know how to learn. Stripped down to the very core, we teach by making folks Sit Down, Shut Up, and Pay Attention. 

Why is this so? Because it really isn't that hard to master subject-predicate agreement. Essential scientific principles are pretty straightforward. Axioms of philosophy are readily comprehensible. Theorems in geometry are not difficult to understand. IF you sit down, shut up, and actually pay attention to the subject matter. 

Yes, yes, yes, there may be individual, legitimate exceptions which require compassion, charity, and greater consideration. But by and large if you want to learn something you need to sit down, shut up, and pay attention to those who know the subject. 

Richard Mitchell, the author of the aforementioned book, argues that we are willfully being stupid about how to teach and learn. I think there's something to that. I think we want (well, some of us, and typically folks who get prestige and money from the rest of us, not incidentally through the force of government) to make what we call education into a grand scheme of virtually religious proportions, understandable only to an elite class of specially deep minded and concerned people. Yet our modern schooling is really mere training, taking on the skills we need to get along in the world. We are not educated into subject-predicate agreement. We are trained to recognize and employ the principles within it so that we may usefully communicate. It is no cosmic ideal.

Education itself? That is something much greater and vastly more profound. It is also something beyond my point today. But I'll get back to it soon. You've been warned. 

MEAP Standards Change: to what point?

Under new MEAP (Michigan Educational Assessment Program) standards, an awful lot of Michigan students are far from ready for college. This assertion is based on revised guidelines which purport to show that fewer students, in the lower grades especially, are proficient enough in math, science, reading, and social studies to be expected to do well in college.

Before the change, a student was considered proficient if he passed an exam with about 39% of the questions answered correctly. That standard has been hiked to 65%. Our first question is why anyone with a score of less than 40% (that's 6 out 0f 10 wrong, folks) could be considered proficient at anything. Before you draw the baseball analogy that .400 is considered a fantastic batting average, consider that physical sports aren't the same thing as mental acumen. No one is throwing curves and sliders at third graders. They're simply given them words on paper which the kid must interact with and manipulate.

Part of the trouble with measuring academic ability lies in the disparity between schools. Schools in poorer areas, schools with less parental involvement, are going to do poorly on standardized assessments. Some kids cannot or will not learn no matter where they are. Some areas have better teachers than others; we could go one, but the point is made. It is for these reasons that demands for 100% compliance with any standard, such as what is demanded of Michigan schools by 2014 under the No Child Left Behind Act, is patently absurd. Expectations must be realistic or they serve no purpose.

Yet one question which simply does not get asked is, why do all kids need a long regimen of formal training? If a kid is happy with the long range plan of doing whatever work doesn't actually, practically, require college or even, quite frankly, high school, why are we trying to force or shame them into things they don't care about? Spare us the arguments about how important math is in our daily lives: anyone who can do basic math at, say, at an 8th Grade level, can get along in the world. They don't need advanced algebra. True, those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it; but surely that only applies to those who make it. A plumber, carpenter, or store owner ain't gonna have much affect on history anyway.

In short, if education is all about training someone to be able to make it in the world, then maybe raising standards isn't really useful anyway. After a point: it's one thing for a guy to know addition and multiplication because he'll actually use that day in and day out. He doesn't need differential calculus or quantum physics, or even a seminar on the American Presidency. He just needs the basics.

So teach him, hard and fast, the necessary skills and then let him get on with his life. Leave the more exacting standards for those who move on to work which requires them. At the end of the day, we rather believe it would lead to happier, more productive and decent people. It would probably save us a few bucks in the cost of education as well. Those who scream against that you'll find are those with a vested interest in the education behemoth they've contrived to build. Are they protecting their students' best interest or their own jobs?

We'll leave that question hanging. We think you know the answer anyway.