EducationNews.org

An Interview with B.K. Eakman: Sitting Ducks in the Classroom

Michael F. Shaughnessy - June 23, 2009
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

 

1)         What do you mean by psychological classrooms? And how are they making our students “sitting ducks”?

 

Actually, the term I coined was “psychologized” classrooms, meaning that today’s educators are not focused on academics, but instead on so-called mental health.  By this child experts mean non-cognitive (i.e., non-knowledge-based) feelings, emotions — the exact opposite of what you need for “critical thinking.”  From kindergarten, children are taught to think with their gut, not to use any logic.  So, by the time they are adults, these kids are “sitting ducks” for any charismatic somebody who comes along with a lot of feel-good talk because the audience no long knows how to distinguish between substance and style. We are “psychologizing” the classroom, using the justification of producing happy, well-adjusted citizens.  We are doing the opposite.  Our crime statistics alone show that this nation is moving ever-closer to out-and-out anarchy, a situation that can only be “averted” via a powerful surveillance state — that is to say, a “police state,” except government is careful not to call it that.  Understand that the public school’s version of “critical thinking” does not entail analyzing anything or even thinking.  It’s more a code for generating blind obedience to political correctness.

 

2)         What should the primary function of schools be?

             If we really wanted to “reform” education, we would begin by building all curriculum and activities around three simple platforms:

• creating a literate citizenry, capable of self-government;
• ensuring financial independence for that free citizenry (because doing so helps ensure political stability); and
• bolstering moral standards consistent with the Founders’ unique and Christian-based concept of democracy (life, pursuit of happiness, national sovereignty, property rights, and free speech).

3)      What seems to be the current function of schools?

 

The current function of school is to produce “happy children.”  In education jargon, the aim is to produce a “child-centered curriculum,” a term coined by the late testing mogul and behavioral psychologist, Ralph Tyler.  His ideas were echoed by John Dewey, Edward Thorndike, William Spady and a host of others most average parents have never even heard of but who are well-known in professional circles.  Of course, most schoolchildren are not happy.  Proof is in the graffiti, vandalism, arson, school shootings, and just plain non-engagement on the part of students with what should be academic achievement.

 

4)      Some people say the current function of schools is to prepare them to take multiple choice tests:  Your response?

 

Well, school system superintendents, local school principals and, by extension, classroom teachers are supposed to assure that the state and, therefore, the school district, gets funding from the federal govt., which, of course, passes through to “state education agencies” and “local education agencies,” in legislative parlance.  Therefore, schools give assessments (which, by the way, are not especially focused on academics, which is why they are called “assessments”) that align with the No Child Left Behind Act, and before that, with Goals 2000.  These tests are primarily multiple choice or true-false, with a few “fill-in-the-blanks” thrown in occasionally.  There is hardly any emphasis given to the writing of paragraphs or logical sentence structure.  So, in that vein, yes, a school’s function is to prepare children to take multiple choice tests.  I am attaching a real test from 1895, since there are few like it today, in which children had to write coherent responses.

 

5)      I often hear about being culturally sensitive to various racial, ethnic and other minority groups. Is this being taken to the extreme?

 

Well, if you consider the supposed ideal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “color-blind society,” in which a person was to be judged on his own merits and “the content of his character,” then yes, it is being not just taken to extremes, but turned upside down.  One positive aspect of President Obama is that here we have a role model that is judged on his speaking ability and at least to some extent, his own merits.  But much of the vote, unfortunately, was based simply on skin color, which is not serving minorities well in securing acceptance or middle-class jobs.  Asians, for the most part, have refused that model for acceptance and have benefited in that most people, after the initial shaking of hands is over and done with no longer even “see” this group as Asian or “different.”  This is what Dr. King was after, and unfortunately many minority leaders that came after him didn’t adhere to his principles on this.  So, what we have now, basically, is a society at odds with itself, warring gangs and factions, competing ideologies instead of a truly inclusive America, where people share values instead of engaging in what are essentially large-scale turf battles.  Sensitivity training in schools, the workplace and so on have essentially aided and abetted the fracturing of America and, thus, have been counterproductive in producing a united populace.

 

6)      Should teachers be changing student values or as the old song by Pink Floyd goes “Teachers-- leave those kids alone!”

 

It was educational guru Benjamin Bloom, who wrote the huge compendium, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, who first stated outright that the purpose of education was “to change a student’s fixed beliefs.”  That view has been echoed by educational psychologists (who are the only kinds of expert given any legitimacy in educational circles) for over 30 years.  In my view, teachers do not exist to strip away a parent’s belief system from children in their classrooms, and to then transmit “new,” supposedly “improved” values.  Teachers who teach best are those who back up parental standards and support the uniquely American ideals articulated by the Founding Fathers.  Unfortunately, curriculum and even the school environment itself are around a campaign of surreptitious psychological snooping under the cover of “mental health” and “socialization” activities.  I oppose the creation of non-cognitive curriculums aimed at altering personal and political beliefs, especially when these are passed off as substantive, cognitive learning programs. I reject the use of uncontrolled experimentation on minors.  Leaders truly committed to reforming education need to begin with the kind of training prospective teachers are getting.  Instead of being schooled in real learning diagnostics and remediation, they are immersed in psychobabble.

 

7)      Do we need a nationalized curriculum to make sure that schools ONLY teach facts, knowledge, information and skills instead of values and philosophies?

 

Given that our population is now quite mobile and transient, the concept of a common curriculum is not outlandish.  The trouble is, when you codify that into federal law, the result is the erosion of state’s rights, which in my view supersede federal policymaking.  Why do I say that?  Because of the trickle-down effect to individual rights.  Once you compromise the 10^th Amendment, you infringe upon individual conscience, privacy, assembly and so forth.  That is the very thing our Founders tried to avoid, having seen the results of all the various forms of government that had gone before and debated their merits.  The Declaration of Independence (not “interdependence”) is very clear about individuals being able to pursue their own dreams and goals and to adhere to their own beliefs.

 

That said, I believe that transmission of knowledge (facts) should be at the core of education.  Information and skills derive from that.  But values and philosophies were always an integral part of schooling.  It is equality of opportunity that matters, and that is what the Constitution was written to accomplish.  In order to take advantage of that kind of equality, however, requires individual effort, and that’s where the values of self-reliance, sacrifice and self-discipline come in.  Those who excel in all these departments become real leaders.  Wealth and luck alone will not suffice.  Too often, individual creativity and resourcefulness are equated with egotism, eccentricity and self-centeredness.  Every generation would have to develop a mind-set of self-reliance, self-determination, principle and individualism, be taught to take the long view and to value the precarious adventure of freedom over limiting notions like tenure, security, and guarantees.

 

As recently as 1950, public schools were “creating unity out of diversity and nationalism out of particularism.” Historian Henry Steele Commager noted that year in a piece for Time, Inc., that the goal of American schooling was still centered on passing along a “common body of knowledge,” which children could then take into whatever profession or avocation they wanted. “Poets like Bryant, Longfellow and Whittier; painters like Trumball, Stuart and Peale; historians like Jared Sparks and George Bancroft; schoolmen like Noah Webster with his Spellers, William H. McGuffey with his Readers — these and scores of others popularized that common group of heroes and villains, …images and values, of which national spirit is born,” he wrote.

 

How many graduates recognize even half of these famous Americans today? And why do government educrats not view it as necessary that they should?  Many youngsters no longer know enough about America’s past to value ideals like “national spirit.” Worse, vast numbers of immigrant children are not mainstreaming the way they once did.  And they have no desire to do so.

 

8)      I think it was Steven King who once wrote that the scariest time of his life was when he turned one of his kindergarten aged children over to a complete stranger- a teacher — and realized what was happening. What does good old Steve need to know about what is going to happen to his kids?

 

Most people want, desperately, to believe (so they do) that the experience called school is pretty much the same for their own children as it was for them, even if they hear differently from friends who “have been there” and whose children have had negative situations occur.  The old saying “you’ll know it’s true when it happens to you” is all too reliable in this case.

 

Research shows that young children, in particular, do not do well in mass-institutional settings.  Without guidance and leadership administered by caring and interested adults (hard to find in today’s schools), youngsters tend to form brutal Lord of the Flies subcultures that do not serve their best interests now nor anyone else’s later, when they graduate. No wonder the country is awash in lawlessness, cultural devolution, and violence.  Take away the focus that academics provide, and children will compete, but not for good grades. They will compete to see who can intimidate other pupils, who can wear the most outrageous clothes, who can mouth the filthiest obscenities, who can wreak the most havoc, even who can get pregnant first.   The average public school, in particular, is stressful, dysfunctional, and unstructured.  Worse, it actively encourages poor character.

 

What parents, especially young parents, need to know is, the kinds of new values (called “belief system,” in the vernacular) being foisted upon children.  A flyer from a teacher’s workshop in North Carolina provides the following representative summary:

• Consensus is more important than principle (thus today's courses in conflict resolution and social science); 
• Amenability (i.e., likeability, popularity, being a “team player,”) is more important than hard knowledge or expertise;
• Nothing is permanent except change (thus the courses in “situation ethics”);
• The collective is more important than the individual (i.e., group lessons instead of individual excellence and the emphasis on free market socialism over true economic competition);
• There are no perpetrators, only victims (thus, the lack of personal accountability; it's nobody's fault); and
• Ethics are entirely situational; there are no moral absolutes (or that thing we used to call "common sense").

 

Parents also need to know that the states are serving as the “fall guys” for federal initiatives, regardless of legality or ethics, in order to secure ever-larger funding from the federal government.  State and local education agencies will not admit this if push comes to shove on any issue involving your child.  Parents will have to prove it on their own dime (and most children will have graduated by the time the court case is decided).   Funding is indirect, hard to find, and it is even harder to prove “compensable harm,” which is the gold standard in court cases.  Whether the local district made the decision on its own to adopt a program, survey or mandate, or whether it was merely responding to state or federal education incentives (i.e., money) is a bear to uncover. If it was a mandate, then the district may have, in effect, been forced into adopting the survey.  If it responded to incentives, then lawyers have to untangle the strands of federal-state dollars which may have gone to pay for implementing any part of the program or policy.

 

Hooker chic will be the standard of dress, and when problems occur, most administrators and teachers will take the side of the student over the responsible (read: “authoritarian and inflexible”) parent.  Thus, the parent will have no disciplinary backup.  When kids respond poorly to this setup, their parents will be pressured to administer psychotropic drugs and to enlist the school counselor, who nearly always slaps a label of mental illness on the child. Many wind up in special education, which has itself devolved into a holding tank for “conduct disorders.”  Special-education teachers have practically nothing in their arsenals to combat real academic difficulties; consequently, disciplinary issues have become the central focus of such placement.

 

9)      What is the title of your new book and where can it be found? Can it be bought on line?

 

My latest book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks.  It updates (especially in the area of technology and computerized cross-matching) and generally follows up on my award-winning classic, Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education.  The Walking Targets book is available at most online bookstores, including my own publisher’s, Midnight Whistler Publishers, at www.midnightwhistler.com.  My other three books, including Cloning of the American Mind, are available online as well and by special order in walk-in bookstores (inasmuch as they are somewhat older now), but all can be found by clicking on my website (www.BeverlyE.com) and going to the tab up top labeled “Bev’s Books.”  Prices and links to purchase are right there, as well as a short description of each.  Actual published book reviews are on another tab at the same website.

 

10)    What have I neglected to ask?

 

Oh, I think you have pretty well covered it.  But if people have other questions, there is a Frequently Asked Questions section at the end of the new Walking Targets book that addresses the queries I get most from readers of my articles and books as well as those who attend my speeches and seminars around the country.  It’s pretty comprehensive, so I would suggest they take advantage of that.

 

Also, I would add that only nine things can really go wrong in learning, and these, not psychological factors, are the only things you need concern yourself with.  Everyone is weak in at least one of these areas, so teacher education should focus on them, and they are not doing so.  The list is key to “basics” and success in school, and nearly every child can overcome any weaknesses in these areas by the end of third grade — in fact, professional “learning centers” tend to specialize in these areas.

 

>  Spatial reasoning

>  Abstract reasoning

>  Visual identification

>  Visual memory

>  Auditory memory

>  Perceptual speed

>  Mental stamina (sustained concentration)

>  Hand-eye coordination

>  Thought-expression synchronization