Advocacy for Children
by Siegfried Engelmann
1982
The problem with the current educational system is
that it has no advocacy for the children. In fact, it is a very strong
non-advocacy system, which is supported by all major components of the system—the
law, colleges of education, local school districts, educational
publishers, federal and state grant supports, and teacher unions.
Although it is not possible to detail all the ways in
which these various components contribute to the overwhelming incompetence of
the system, I'll try to provide a brief summary of the major problems with each
component.
The law: Basically, the laws associated with
teaching and student performance are two-faced. In one sense, the laws were
instituted to protect the students and thereby protect the state's interest
in a valuable resource. The other face of the law denies that teachers have
any sort of professional skills that are not possessed by the person on the
street, asserts that teachers have only "responsibilities," protects
schools or teachers from liability, and refuses to recognize rights of students
to receive a quality education. Although special education children are modestly
protected by laws, the appropriateness of programs is not determined by anything
approaching tight standards.
Through laws, states have established a variety of
bureaucracies, such as state textbook commissions. These agencies function in a
uniformly incompetent manner. Although designed to improve instruction the
students receive, the commissions are highly conservative and act as
impediments to change.
In summary, there is not help from the law, no hope
of malpractice suits (because these suits imply that teachers have professional
skills, which the law denies), and no hope of support from state boards of
education or state agencies because these agencies are not accountable for
achieving their stated mission.
Colleges of education: The product of nearly
all colleges of education is a hopelessly ill-trained person with very few
technical skills. Although the basic requirement of teachers in most districts
is to "appropriately adapt instruction to the individual needs of the
children," the graduates know little about corrections, firming, cumulative
reviews, and procedures for teaching new discriminations and operations. Colleges
are typically based on the "lecture model," with instructors who
know very little about the technical side of instruction.
Anyone who has worked much in colleges knows that
there is very little hope of achieving a "cooperative" effort from
the faculty—the kind of effort necessary to introduce a good training
program—because faculty members do pretty much what they want to do. They are
not supervised, coordinated, or ordered to teach a certain way. The college, in
other words, is the quintessence of laissez faire, operating on the assumption
that if the faculty is permitted to be diverse and do their own thing, a
reasonable product will emerge. Empirical data suggests that no such evolution
has occurred, and the colleges remain as tributes to incompetence.
Perhaps the greatest single cause of incompetence on
the college level is the tenure system, which was originally instituted to
protect academic freedom of faculty members, but which effectively reinforces
faculty for being lazy. The business of training teachers is extremely
demanding, in time and in skill. The colleges are not prepared to wrestle with
the practical problems of training and therefore serve teachers only by giving
them slogans instead of skill.
Local school districts: Districts are the most
obvious exception to the Peter Principle. In districts people are not elevated
to higher positions because they have demonstrated excellence in lesser positions.
They are elevated for political reasons. The districts, particularly the larger
ones, are complete paradoxes. They have all the trappings of a technologically
advanced system, and yet they have never addressed the most basic problems
of teaching. Studies performed in the ’60s by Westinghouse and others demonstrated
that districts are not like other "businesses" in the sense that
their goal is not to increase their "output," the performance of
the students. Instead, they address the visible aspects of schooling—busing,
increasing the length of the school day, new formats for course selection,
and so forth. Virtually any activity they address is one that requires no
expertise (suggesting that the law is correct in assuming that teachers have
no more skill than the man on the street).
The greatest shortcoming of the districts is their
failure to recognize that they must be responsible for the training and
monitoring of teachers. Nearly every school district suggests that any new
teacher must be able to "adjust instruction so that it is appropriate for
individual students." Yet, this ability is never tested, and the district
has virtually no capacity to induce it in the teachers who can't do it (which
would include the vast majority of teachers). We have analyzed the skill level
of teachers in typical school districts, and the results are appalling. The
teachers typically know very little about the instructional programs that they
use, have a very vague understanding of students' skill level or ability to
perform on the topics that are "taught," and teach in a way that is
not well designed to transmit information to the average student. Despite their
skill deficiencies, however, the teachers are not monitored or trained.
Furthermore, the diagnostic procedures used by the schools are designed to
protect the teachers. A district may have file cabinets full of records of
students who failed because these students are assumed to have problems, such
as "dyslexia." In contrast, there is usually not one folder on a
child who failed, not because of a child problem, but because the teachers
failed. The probability of such a distribution is very suspect.
In connection with this diagnostic philosophy, the
district has a laissez faire attitude toward the teacher, who remains behind
closed doors—an independent agent whose efforts are not carefully monitored or
coordinated with the efforts of others. The result is exactly what we would
expect in any business that has no quality control in its production
methods—lots of needlessly damaged merchandise in the form of children who are
crippled by the system but who ultimately bear the
responsibility for being "immature," "perceptually
handicapped," "unmotivated," "dyslexic," or being the
cause in some other way for their failure.
Educational publishers: Nearly all instructional
material published by major publishers is not written by people who are experienced
and effective teachers, is not actually "field tested," and is not
designed in a way that will make instruction manageable. Most of the material
that appears in "reading" texts, for instance, is either written
by in-house writers (who have often not taught or demonstrated teaching excellence)
or by professional writers. The "try out" consists of putting the
pre-publication material in school districts, and at the end of the year giving
the students a battery of tests. The tests typically show that the program
is no worse than other programs on the market. Note, however, that the goal
of the tryout is not to find problems with the material and redo the program
until it really works. Occasionally "gross" changes will be made,
but in the end, the program is like a magic show. It does not contain specific
correction procedures. It is not divided into daily lessons (to provide the
teacher with objectives about what is to be taught). It doesn't exhibit great
coordination between the material the teacher covers and the independent exercises
the students do. And it "introduces" topics without teaching them
to mastery (which is why the programs cover the same material year after year).
On the average, a given topic in elementary-grade reading programs such as
main idea/cause and effect, will not appear until
over 60 school days have elapsed since the last appearance of the topic. The
writers of these programs apparently know nothing about information retention
and work from a model of the human mind that is more than incredible.
Publishers of methods textbooks promulgate the party
line of an armchair approach to instruction, rather than a scientific one. The
teacher is presented as an omniscient assimilator of information and mediator
of appropriate solutions; however, the texts avoid discussing the gritty detail
that a teacher must deal with in teaching any topic.
In summary, the publishers provide no relief from the
incompetence created by the law, the colleges of education, and the local
school districts. Instead, the publishers provide a compatible interface that
tends to cement these components together.
Federal and state support: Grant support from either
the federal government or the sate is based on some variation of "review
by peers," which means that the traditionalists are the ultimate judges of
what is funded. The funding hinges largely on political considerations,
and the funds are usually a very poor expenditure of tax dollars in terms of
knowledge or effective change. If we ask the question, "What important
findings have resulted from funding?" we find that the return on the
dollar is appallingly low. Projects funded by state funds are overwhelmingly
poor with respect to results, and research funded by federal agencies
overwhelmingly trivial. A survey of projects funded reveals an ambitious array
of objectives and a pandemic lack of skill by the investigators—particularly on
issues of instruction.
Teacher unions: With hard economic times, the
power of unions diminishes; however, teacher unions still remain as a strong
impediment to effective change, not so much because of their stated goals
but more because of their focus. They are designed as the watchdogs of teachers.
But where are the watchdogs for the children? The unions are not balanced
by student unions or some sort of advocacy system that considers what is happening
to students.
Like school districts and colleges of education, the
unions exploit the simple fact that the students are not able to express their
problems. Teachers, on the other hand, are capable of eloquent rhetoric.
Certainly, it would be possible for a district to make a solid agreement with a
union that permitted the district to fire teachers and to maintain quality
control. The effort, however, is beyond the level of involvement that a typical
district would consider, simply because it involves a substantive issue that
would require technical understanding and create avoidable waves.
The future?
Changes come about when there is a crisis—a real
crisis. Until crises occur, we rape our natural resources, blindly consume
plastics, and pursue creature comforts. We also continue to support an
educational system that is next to worthless. Optimists suggest that changes
will occur within the system and that the strategy for affecting change is
through an evolutionary process, an infiltration and educational process. I
have seen too many good projects disappear to believe that such a benign
approach will work. The system is too self-supporting, too intertwined, too powerful to roll over because of mild internal
irritations. It will respond only to loud voices and demands from a strong
power base outside the system. The crisis is already at a critical level. What
is needed to create a productive response is a mobilized effort that points the
finger at the law, the colleges, the districts, the educational publishers, the
state and federal funding agencies, and the unions—in other words, at the
entire system.
I think that the most hopeful candidate for this role
is the business community. Businesses will be the recipients of our public
educational system, and they are in the unenviable position of trying to be
competitive with countries that have a far less negotiable view of what
education should be. Many businesses have already observed how a poor
educational system can change a city into a slum. I really don't know whether
the business community is prepared to accept the role of child advocates, but
without them I don't see any immediate hope for technologically sound
instruction. Certainly computers and video discs will have salutary effect on
instruction, but radical changes in the structure of the system must occur if
we are to save the children. Perhaps the most frustrating thought is that
today—now—we could create incredibly smart children if we were permitted to
deal with teachers and children directly, without the mediation of many agencies.
The available funds are more than adequate to do the job. But the plan would
see the school district as the training agency until the colleges changed and
became trainers of technicians. It would see coordinated schedules, objectives,
and heavy training of supervisors (with only expert teachers being elevated to
higher positions).
Without support, however, we will have to accept the
rape of the schools as a horrible crime that has no punishment.
| ©1982 Siegfried Engelmann |
Advocacy for Children
|