The Educated Society

With a spirited public discussion on education reform by politicians, educators, and the media reaching critical mass, it is somewhat comforting to witness such a concerted effort to solve America’s education problems. And it is quite the challenge. As a recap, the December 2010 Program on International Student Assessment (PISA) report from the OECD highlighted how much American students lagged their international counterparts, ranking 15th, 20th, and 30th in reading, science, and math literacy, respectively, compared with over 60 countries (read the more in-depth report in my previous post). As a reaction to this global (and domestic) achievement gap, the current administration’s priority has been to refine the current No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, expand charter schools, as well as develop more stringent evaluations and recruitment of teachers.  In light of the publicity surrounding the documentary Waiting for Superman, sociologist Jonathan Cole of Columbia University and author of The Great American University succinctly summarized the state of America’s education and its reform attempts in his article. Noted education historian Diane Ravitch also provides a compelling perspective in her recent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, summarized in an article for The Wall Street Journal, and details her view of charter schools in The New York Review of Books.

Such extensive attention to reform leads to a thought-provoking question: Why are we in this mess?

Of course, there is no shortage of causes proffered for the sorry state of education: An anemic teacher profession, poor school supervision, lack of parental responsibility, a diluted and narrow curriculum, poverty, etc. But where do these causes originate? What conditions allowed our schools to fall so precipitously since the 1980s? I explored the roots of this decline, and found it was part of a larger malaise that encompassed every part of American society today: in business (the Bernie Madoff scandal, the financial and housing crises), in politics (the growing polarization of parties and ideology); in health (the ongoing obesity crisis and lack of access to healthy foods), and in popular culture. Here is what I have found.

The deterioration of practically every aspect of society can be traced back to our individualist culture borne from a democratic and capitalist heritage, which in turn has led to a culture of rampant selfishness and anti-intellectualism that wreaks havoc on every American institution. Sounds a bit elitist, doesn’t it? If you think so, that’s actually… kind of the problem.

Cultural historian James Collier captured our individualist foundation in his book The Rise of Selfishness in America by asking the question: How did we go from self-restraint to self-gratification? He traced the history of American socialization from the refined Victorian era to one of permissive self-indulgence fueled by industrialization, urbanization, and the birth of mass entertainment. The Victorian revolution, a reaction to the disorderliness of the uncivilized 1700s, was exalted as the age that epitomized gentility, order, temperance, and decency, but a rising industrialization that brought on technology and a surfeit of immigrants threatened its puritanical ideals. Unlike Puritans, immigrants to America wanted to succeed in life in a different way:

Indifferent to Victorian notions of success, which [immigrants] believed to be unobtainable in any case, they wanted to enjoy their lives as much as possible through the warmth of associations with family and friends; by means of such public entertainment as they could afford; and through drinking, and dancing in the saloons, concert gardens, and taverns they created for themselves in their own neighborhoods. The work ethic meant little to them: they had come out of their cultures where work got you nothing but calluses and a sore back. (p. 31)

This new expressivism, along with a rapidly developing industry, was crucial to explaining Collier’s thesis of a rising selfishness. Increased urbanization from immigration and industrialization corresponded with the emergence of a social class system as higher education (which fostered white-collared employers) was needed to supervise, manage, plan, and record-keep operations and workers in factories. A corresponding need for cheap laborers cemented this Marxian paradigm. The modern city borne from industrialization exacerbated the splintering of social groups and the diffusion of family, and fostered the requisite alienation and loss of personal connections. When mass entertainment and the institutionalization of vice inevitably developed to accommodate a broad population of disillusioned workers, Collier argued, society was well on its way to an inexorable triumph of selfishness.

In his concluding chapter, Collier suggested that selfishness in America has alarming consequences for our children and the public. With a nation of citizens that essentially elected its public officials to “leave them alone as much as possible” (p. 237), as the electorate did in the 1980s, an era of abdication of responsibility and public neglect rises as a collectivist mindset that might improve the lives of the downtrodden, the public sphere, and national well-being recede. It is the constant cries for rights without the corresponding cries for responsibilities, such as “…the right of the affluent to hole themselves up in their suburban fortresses without any corresponding responsibility for the central cities that produce so much of their wealth” (p. 263), or the right to have children without the corresponding responsibility to do what’s best for them. (Addendum: Psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, in their book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, also call for parents to change the way they raise their children to be more other-directed).

Collier summarized, “…the right of everybody and anybody to take whatever they can get without any responsibility for putting something back in the pot” (p. 263). Only through deliberate critical reflection, a willingness to sacrifice, and a decision to act can things revert to an improvement.

However, this lack of critical thinking is what characterizes this culture of ignorance, so says writer Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason (inspired from Richard Hofstadter’s 1966 seminal Anti-Intellectualism in American Life). In essence, her book was a 318-page jeremiad on the hastening decline of American intellectualism, specifically regarding the effective use of reason and scientific evidence in public dialogue. Her dismay at the current “cult of unreason,” (as exemplified by the former Bush administration during the turn of the twenty-first century and its handling of domestic and foreign policy, and the displays of consistent ignorance exacerbated by mass media and fundamentalist religion) is reflected in a credulous and anti-elitist populace willing to believe anyone that sounds like them (Sarah Palin, anyone?). A social climate that fosters a short attention span and instant gratification conflated with less stable family households wreak havoc on our ability to critically examine the important issues of our time.

Jacoby broadly traced much of our intellectual decline to our fundamentalist evangelical roots as well as rugged-individualism (i.e., the self-made man/Horatio Alger myth), both of which fostered a certain disinclination to secularism, modernism, and authoritarian involvement. They also led to an ironic resistance to change in a nation noted for its proud heterogeneity. It was the reason why such pseudoscience as social Darwinism in the early 1900s and the more recent intelligent design theory flourished as popular contemporary thought, and why secularist intellectuals were perceived as communist sympathizers in the mid- to late-twentieth century. Such “junk thought,” impervious to evidentiary challenges, has taken an increasingly substantial role in mass media, popular culture, and politics that create and fuel polarity. The rise of the tea parties and partisanship and the languishing state of health care are merely manifestations of such intransigence in politics today.

Central to this age of unreason, according to Jacoby, is our mediocre public education, particularly in the sciences and social sciences; to wit: 25% of high-school biology teachers believe that human beings and dinosaurs shared the earth, and more than a third of Americans can’t name a single First Amendment right or even a Supreme Court Justice. The growth of “infantainment” (e.g., reality programming) and the decrease of stalwart pillars of intellectual life such as reading books and maintaining family conversations (all starting at birth) would reasonably have a detrimental impact on fruitful dialogue. She summed up her book’s statement of position:

The real problem is that we, as a people, have become too lazy to learn what we need to know to make sound public decisions. The problem is that two-thirds of us can’t find Iraq on a map, and many members of Congress don’t know a Shiite from a Sunni. The problem is that the public doesn’t know enough or care enough about culture to be outraged when a United States secretary of defense [Donald Rumsfeld], informed that some of the oldest artifacts of Western civilization are being looted from a Baghdad museum on our watch, says dismissively, ‘Stuff happens.’ The problem is that most of us don’t bother to read newspapers or even watch the news on television. Our own ignorance is our worst enemy. (pp. 310-311)

The danger of of ignorance and unrestrained individualism is apparent. The educated society must be constantly vigilant of these tendencies, otherwise it will be difficult to contain. The low achievement scores in education, partisanship in politics, and international disdain are the current by-products we see today. Sappy, but profoundly true: Too little individuality stifles the human spirit, and too much brings inequality and chaos. Both, however, bring about stagnation in society. That is what we are witnessing now in the U.S. — that stagnation brought on by selfishness and ignorance towards a greater American good. Is it no wonder we are in relative decline?

So, back to education: Why are we in this mess? After tracing the cultural history through Collier and Jacoby, it appears we have lost that culture of learning and culture of balance so crucial to all aspects of business, politics, education, and of course, the family where it all starts. Cole perhaps summed up our misguided education reform most appropriately, as I (and many others) have asserted as well:

The key to changing educational outcomes lies not only in schools but also in our homes. Until we can transform the relative value families place on educational achievement, efforts to reform the curricula and the types of teachers in the schools, while marginally making a difference, are not apt to do much to cure the larger educational maladies we suffer from.

My previous post What No Education Reform Ever Addresses and Creating a Culture of Education series both delve into the importance of needing a more robust public discussion on parent accountability. That, along with a dose of cultural history, will shed light on why we are in this mess today.

In addressing the need for more American economic competitiveness, President Obama called on the nation to set the goal that “by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” It is an ambitious plan to make the U.S. competitive in the 21st century, considering that the Center on Education and the Workforce predicted that at current graduation rates, America would fall short of the needed 22 million graduates in 2018 by 3 million. Adding to the problem, ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer reported that this year China will graduate four times the number of college graduates than the U.S.

Clearly, Americans need to worry about themselves, as suggested in one of my previous posts. However, as progressive as China is made to sound, its dominance is not inevitable.

For one, China’s education system, though widely lauded for its rigorous culture, is also struggling to meet the demands of the 21st century economy.

The deeply ingrained Asian Confucian ideal of hard work, dedication, and “following the master’s way” has created a culture of education that has consistently placed China, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong among other Asian nations to the top of international lists in math, science, and even reading achievement (according to the latest international PISA results). The U.S. can learn from such dedication and high standards. But China’s emphasis on the all-important gaokao (college entrance exams) unintentionally creates three roadblocks toward premier status:  1) it sustains an anachronistic culture of rote learning in a modern era; and 2) it creates a social and economic divide; and 3) it sustains a thriving industry of fraud that jeopardizes China’s legitimate power.

The rigid culture of lecture and rote memorization has produced a thriving manufacturing economy, but for China to compete, it must be able to innovate and create new products and services. These fiercely competitive gaokao exams, where 9.5 million high school students compete for 6.5 million university positions, is also not conducive to producing revolutionary innovators on the level of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, according to the ABC World News report. China has, however, recognized this problem and is working towards a more open curriculum that fosters creativity.

Secondly, this meritocratic exam, though it theoretically allows even the poor to equitably advance to a better life, has also inadvertently created a social divide. The students who pass then go on to college in economically developed urban areas as Shanghai and Beijing, but the ones who cannot pass essentially go back to their rural areas. Most likely the unfortunate ones end up as itinerant manufacturing laborers migrating from rural hometowns to urban areas; the result: a classic economic gap. As the well-educated prosper, education itself has become more expensive as these parents pay for enrichment materials, supplemental classes, nursery schools in early preparation for the all-consuming gaokao exams.

Perhaps the most deleterious effect of this exam is corruption and fraud. Not that exams create this problem per se, but its long-standing, all-important tradition nourishes an environment ripe for fraud that begins early on. There has been rising media exposure (both inside and outside China) documenting rampant academic and government fraud in China and calling for Chinese action. With an emphasis on quotas and quantity over quality, academicians are more susceptible to plagiarizing papers, fudging data, or simply fabricating qualifications. The Economist recently wrote about this phenomenon, citing one case in particular:

The most notable recent case centres on Tang Jun, a celebrity executive, a self-made man and author of a popular book, ‘My Success Can Be Replicated.’ He was recently accused of falsely claiming that he had a doctorate from the prestigious California Institute of Technology. He responded that his publisher had erred and in fact his degree is from another, much less swanky, California school.

With senior academicians and scientists rarely punished, a dangerous precedent is set for generations to come (the aforementioned “following the master’s way”). How the Chinese government reacts to this trend will speak volumes about being seen as a collaborative world partner. To compete as a credible power in the global economy, they will need to create legitimate peer-review structures and consistently enforce them. However, as recent as this week, The New York Times reported that six men in Xinjiang, China were detained by police for an attack that left a journalist brain dead. The crusader, Song Hongjie, a correspondent for the Northern Xinjiang Morning Post, had a reputation for exposing corruption and wrongdoing. Other recent beatings included two Chinese science reporters who were known to expose academic fraud.

This is not a post affirming or condemning Chinese politics; rather, it is about understanding how the millenia-old culture and its emphasis on the practical and traditional must go through a constant meta-analytical process to maintain Confucius’ original vision (aptly captured in his maxim: Study without reflection is a waste. Reflection without study is a danger). Otherwise, bastardized by-products such as piracy, corruption, and fraud become the unintended norm and prevent China from moving forward. They can start by rethinking how to better evaluate student knowledge and skills.

Addendum: Nick Kristof wrote a spot-on article (China’s Winning Schools) about their education system soon after this post, asserting that their Confucian reverence for education is the best thing we can learn. However, many Chinese teachers are highly critical of its own system, pointing to the lack of self-reliance and creative development in students, as I alluded to above.

Currently, the public debate on education reform has concentrated on two things: teachers and school choice. These debates, however, highlight the perennially narrow focus that misdiagnose deep-seated problems of American education.

Teacher reform, led by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, has focused on accountability, evaluations, and quality:

1) Part of the Race to the Top initiative, the federal competitive grant to advance education reform, is to recruit, develop, reward, and retain effective teachers. One of the ways states can be eligible for this grant is to allow teacher evaluations and pay (more commonly known as merit pay) to be based in part on student performance on standardized tests.

2) Through his foundation, Bill Gates has invested $335 million in education, with much of it financing research to develop a better evaluation system for classroom instruction.

3) A controversial statistical method called value-added modeling that calculates how much teachers help their students learn based on changes in test scores every year is already used in hundreds of school districts.

4) Duncan has also initiated a national teacher campaign to recruit top college graduates and raise the status of teachers, stating in the New York Times article, “We have to systematically create the environment and the incentives where people want to come into the profession. Three countries that outperform us — Singapore, South Korea, and Finland — don’t let anyone teach who doesn’t come from the top third of their graduating class. And in South Korea, they refer to their teachers as ‘nation builders.’” Unsurprisingly, the U.S. tends to draw teachers from the bottom third of graduates.

Meanwhile, school choice and its poster boy, charter schools, have also received much public attention, having been stoked by Bill Gates’ substantial endorsement and the documentary film Waiting for Superman. Advocates point to the strength of deregulation, charter schools’ ability to innovate, and their impact on student achievement. Its uneven regulation, though, has drawn equally strong criticism. Education historian and scholar Diane Ravitch’s impassioned speech to the Representative Assembly of the National Education Assembly in July 2010 exemplifies the kinds of public outcries about school choice and the state of education today. If what is reported in academic journals, education blogs, and the news media is any indication, the topic of teachers and school choice are the educational zeitgeists of contemporary reform.

No doubt that ongoing improvements to public schools, the quality of teachers, and the education system are vital to reform; however, focusing on them to the exclusion of other larger problems is equally troubling. Right now, they are the only discussions happening in regard to education reform, and where the majority of policy changes have been centered on. What’s wrong with this current debate on teachers and schools, you ask? Doesn’t it make sense to focus on these crucial factors? How else can the nation improve student achievement if not improve schools and teachers?

Simple. Reformers, pundits, and politicians have centered so much on schooling and the education system that they have forgotten the other more crucial aspect of student success: the family and the home environment. This myopic focus on school-based factors (teachers, charter schools, curriculum, funding, etc.) is made more evident when considering that American students spend an average of only 10% to 20% of their waking hours in school from birth to age 18. Presumably, this means they spend astoundingly more time with family, where habits of the mind and attitudes are formed for life at an early age. Now imagine the staggering cumulative experiences during that 80% of time in a poverty stricken environment. Can the relatively miniscule amount of time in school ever compensate for the 80% of time learned outside it? Ravitch herself lamented the current administration’s failure to realize that poverty, not bad teachers, is the best predictor of low academic performance, echoing results of existing comprehensive studies. Yet policy reforms continue to address what goes on in the school without confronting the “elephant in the room” outside it.

There has never been a concerted national discussion to improve the student background, i.e., the family, the home environment and the larger culture, other than local community-based efforts. The renowned 1966 Coleman Report found that student background and socioeconomic status were overwhelmingly more important in determining student outcome than any school-based factors, and is well understood by the educated populace. Clearly, the problem is more than just about education — it’s societal. Which makes it even more onerous.

THAT is where our discussion should be focused — how to address a larger, more ominous, and nebulous institution – the family (and by extension, the culture). There are no easy solutions, however, but it is the right place to start. My ongoing series on the importance of creating that culture of education is the single most important framework to understanding how to approach education reform.

The recent controversy over New York City School Chancellor-designate Cathie Black has brought to mind the age-old question about what constitutes an effective leader: one with remarkable managerial skills or professional expertise? In this case, Black, a highly touted media executive as head of magazine publisher Hearst, has plenty of the former, and none of the latter in education. Mayor Bloomberg, who personally selected her defended the choice, saying that the school chancellor is responsible for an institution with a $23 billion budget and 135,000 employees.

In fact, her biggest stated priority is to manage the upcoming budget cuts; this would include reforming the current structure of laying off teachers by seniority and eliminating the absent teacher reserve pools (when released instructors are unable to find positions yet maintain their salary). No doubt that the New York City Department of Education needs to be managed well.

On the other hand, a chancellor’s job requires deft understanding of the education process and a strong grasp of what makes effective learning. This requires an in-depth understanding of the intimacies of public schools, including the dynamics of teachers and students, teachers and parents, and teachers and administrators. Experience with children, including their psychology and behavior, is crucial to optimizing their learning. A strong understanding of diverse populations is also beneficial.

My previous post on the general formula for good leadership calls for equal parts wisdom, benevolence, and integrity. Black appears to have excellent managerial experience and will surely streamline the bloated DOE. The question most people seem to have is whether her lack of public education experience will lead to missteps in policy reform that directly affect students? So while she has wisdom in one area (management), she lacks it in another (education). Outgoing School Chancellor Joel Klein was in a similar position, and he had critics and advocates. Time will tell.

The latest results of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) merely confirm what pundits are saying about the burgeoning global dominance of China. In the past, South Korea, Finland, and Singapore have been the highest scorers in these international assessments of science, reading, and math literacy. They have been used as models of education reform and accomplishment, and have not disappointed this year, coming in near the top.

However, results from the latest global comparison, taken in 2009, show that China, (as represented by Shanghai students) earned #1 in reading, science, and math literacy (see chart). The United States came in unsurprisingly at 15th, 20th, and 30th, respectively. Hong Kong has also come to the fore, scoring at no worse than 4th in every category. A summary has been written about this in today’s New York Times article.

Is the U.S. ready to confront this reality? Or will our leaders engage in partisanship that further erode our confidence and progress? China has already recently surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy; with my post on China’s recent accomplishment building the world’s fastest supercomputer, is this further proof of China’s global rise? In the end, I believe that there is a strong separation between classes in China that will prevent them from fully dominating, with a robust emerging upper class that is beginning to embrace a consumption economy contrasted with a large population of manufacturing laborers and the uneducated. I’m curious to know what readers think.