In his classic book, The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them,??E.D. Hirsch describes the education "thought-world," born from schools of education but dominant throughout the education system. Its??ideas are nicely summarized??in this book review in Commentary Magazine, as:
The American fondness for romanticism, with its feckless assumptions about human nature, about the innocent perfection of childhood, and about the "unnaturalness" of formalized pedagogy. That romantic background melded nicely with the Progressives' "child-centered" educational agenda to produce two "fundamental tenets." The first of these Hirsch calls "formalism": the belief that the acquisition of factual knowledge is less important than the acquisition of formal tools (like "critical thinking") that will enable future learning. The second is "naturalism": the belief that education is most effective when connected to natural goals and dispositions, rather than being tied to the forced and artificial setting of the classroom.
Now, you might expect to find such fuzzy notions rampant in liberal bastions like Takoma Park, Maryland, where I live. But in truth they extend to every corner of this country, or so it appears from a report I got from my sister. She lives in a solidly Republican exurb of Chicago, the kind of place where??most of??the houses are built on large lots and moms and dads commute to high-paying jobs in office parks or take the train to the Loop. She is serving on a strategic planning committee for her local school district, made up of parents and teachers, and this is the set of priorities they developed recently:
(1) Individualized Learning and Assessment (Includes teachers playing a "coaching" role with each child having a unique path)(2) Social & Emotional Learning (Includes the idea of "Embrace who you are"; an advisory group that students are part of for their whole??high school??experience; parent involvement;??and school/family/extracurricular balance)
(3) Global Classroom/Global Expectations/Competition
(4) Technology: (Includes PDAs for students with their individualized learning plans/curriculum)
(5) Flexible Academic Year/Day - Explore Boundaries??
(6) Green/Environment as part of curriculum and district
To be sure, many of these ideas have merit. But in their entirety, they line up quite nicely with the "thought-world" Hirsch describes (not to mention the movement for "21st Century Skills"). And notice what they leave out: academic content, discipline, character development, civic education, and on and on.
Ideas have consequences. And bad ideas have seemingly??limitless reach.
