Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Educate, Not teach

Much has been written of late about the Texas Board of Education’s rewrite of American history textbooks. In normal circumstances, this could be one of many “local actions” in the hinterlands that we could safely choose to ignore. Unfortunately, the reality is that “as Texas goes, so goes textbooks around the country.” Why? Because of Texas’ volume buying, publishers will do whatever Texas specifies, and then pass those changes on to all other states as the “standard text.” Only California has greater buying power and influence, but they will not make their next revisions until 2014. So Texas in effect sets the standards for all our kids for the next 4 years.


Why do we care? Because their changes are not being defined by academics, historians, or the teachers of this subject matter. Each change is being decided by majority vote of Board members, none of whom are academics, historians or teachers. They have expressly stated that their intention is to “correct” what they view as a “liberal bias” in existing textbooks. And what corrections need to be made to restore their version of “balance”? Examples:

• Removal of Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures who inspired the American revolution because he coined the phrase “separation of church and state” (apparently his authorship of the Declaration of Independence is an irrelevant qualification);

• Confederate President Jefferson Davis is to be treated as equally important to American history outcomes as Abraham Lincoln (even as a native southerner, that is hard to see as a “balanced” intention for what was clearly a poor performance as a president, regardless of his cause);

• “Capitalism” (apparently a negative term) is to be replaced by “free enterprise system” (thereby ignoring any goals of replacing rhetorical labels with substance);

• Studies of cultural movements in music will include Tin Pan Alley, the Beat Generation, rock ‘n roll, and country music, but hip-hop music was voted out as culturally unimportant (and American blues music – a truly indigenous musical form that has impacted all other American music forms – wasn’t even considered!);

• According to this Board, Joseph McCarthy’s slanders during the 1950s were apparently true (even though he never proved a single one of his “communists are everywhere” charges and ruined many countless innocent lives by his unsubstantiated accusations);

• Ronald Reagan was “our greatest U.S. president” (pushing aside the entire portfolio of presidents carved into Mount Rushmore); and

• Edward Kennedy and Justice Sonia Sotomayor will disappear entirely from view as irrelevant to our history (apparent figments of our imaginations).


Don McLeroy, Board member and former Chair, wrote that, “The theme of [American history] is freedom. [Our founders] understood America and the principles upon which she stood: self-evident truths; liberty, with its twin corollaries of limited government and individual responsibility; the embrace of Judeo-Christian values; and a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”

Sounds nice. But a true student of history who has actually read the writings, actions and statements of our founders knows that every one of McLeroy’s statements (except for the first statement about freedom) is counter to documented truths, documented even by the founders themselves. And my freedom starts with not having my education limited to Mr. McLeroy’s personal view of our history. But such recorded history is apparently of little concern to Mr. McLeroy. Welcome to a white, protestant, single-culture view of America’s history that discounts all other cultural contributions not in McLeroy’s personal experience. A view based upon one’s personal learnings, perspectives, experiences and dream-scenarios that someone seeks to make everyone’s truths.

I could actually make a partial case for what the Texas Board is doing except for one thing. The problem that seems to be escaping Mr. McLeroy and his colleagues is not just that they are putting out shameful distortions of information they clearly do not understand. The bigger concern is that they are unapologetically committing the exact same sin that they are accusing the left-wing biasers of – including in textbooks only that information which one has personally chosen to believe. That would leave both sides in error. The error of believing that teaching kids is about presenting a point of view that is purported to be “the single truth.”

In reality, our schools should be about education, not teaching. An educated person is not really marked by memorization of a determined set of facts. An educated person is one who is open to and knows about many perspectives and aspects of a topic, and has developed the experience and skills to apply a good thought process to those perspectives in order to derive a personal conclusion. A conclusion that most often leads to ACTION – hopefully a wise and good action. On that basis, those who truly support “education” should feel a responsibility not to advocate, but to present all possible points of view to a student, and then help that student develop fact-finding, filtering and discernment skills to analyze those facts, and logic and intuitive skills to derive his/her conclusions.

We should not fear differences of opinions. The reality is that if we are truly comfortable in our own skin and beliefs, most of the time it does not matter if you and I believe the same thing. If you believe in evolution and I believe in a creation story, what impact do our differences really make to the way either of us lives our everyday lives? If you believe Alexander Hamilton was our greatest founder and I think the same instead about his arch-enemy Thomas Jefferson, and we both have read their life stories and their writings, should your support of Hamilton’s view of government cause me to treat you any differently? Even if he was president of a confederacy that supported an aspect of a way of life that we now view as abhorrent, shouldn’t Jefferson Davis’s influence on American history be assessed on his performance as a government leader rather than his support of the cause of that period?

We need to trust in our kids better than we do. The only “corruption of their minds” that I fear is that they will grow up not understanding that there are different points of view in this world, views that come from different experiences and thought processes, and they have a right to hear those differences and decide for themselves. I fear more greatly their lack of exposure to all ideas than I do their exposure to “the wrong ideas.” Truly educated kids are the ones who grow up to be adults that make high-quality informed decisions. And that is why freedom of speech and freedom of the press are formalized ideals in our American Constitution.

Our schools should be laboratories of ideas where students can experiment with and create intellectual outcomes. After their schooling is complete, these kids are going to spend the rest of their adult lives encountering situations, propaganda, self-advocating demagogues, ideas, and beliefs different from what they have been previously taught. We need to arm our kids not with seeming facts and conclusions that we believe, but with all of the information available from which they can develop their own opinions. And in that process, hopefully they learn tolerance and appreciation for the views of others, without fearing differences of opinion. As much as I am a lover of history, history is ultimately not about knowing facts. It is about knowing the many stories of our history, the different values that have clashed over time, and how the stories and values have led to personal or collective decisions of belief and actions. We need to not teach our personal views; we need to educate all people, regardless of age or backgrounds, how to learn for themselves. And then get out of their way.

1 comment:

Howard Williams said...

Always excellent analysis, especially since I agree!