The Genesis of NCLB: Chester Finn's "A Nation Still
at Risk"
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) did not spring up
suddenly, out of nothing. Its principles have been
bandied about for probably as long as there has been
public education, but the genesis of the current
incarnation can be traced back specifically to the
mid-1980's and the Reagan administration. Even that
was a reaction to the reforms in education started in
the 1970's (the CUNY Open Admissions program, the
rise of the whole-language and writing-process
movements, and other liberating trends in education),
but that's another story.
Specifically, 1983's "A Nation at Risk," not in and of itself a particularly reactionary document, was followed by 1989's "A Nation Still at Risk," by Chester Finn, former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Education under William Bennett. (The title of the article has been recycled by Finn and his followers and collaborators numerous times since then, but as nearly as I can find, the article in the May, 1989, issue of Commentary magazine was the first to use that title.) Finn asserts that that nation is still at risk because despite the previous six years of spending and good intentions, the nation's educational system is as bad as ever and in need of serious reform. Out of these initial calls for reform has come the NCLB.
Like much ultra-conservative propaganda, the article is rife with fallacious reasoning and almost laughable assertions, but I'd like to examine the principles underlying the article as a way of getting a handle on what drives the insanity of the NCLB today.
Finn lists a litany of problems with current (i.e., 1989) education principles, and follows that with four "obstacles" to education "reform" (which is his term for what most educators see as a return to the dark ages of education.) I think his general complaints about education practices can be lumped into a few categories:
1. Modern education is not the way I remember it
2. Knowledge consists of unchanging lumps of fact and nothing more; modern education does not teach the facts
3. Modern education is not industrial-age capitalistic enough
4. Modern education is not mean enough
5. Modern education is too democratic
6. Teachers are lazy, overpaid and incompetent
Education is changing, which is always a frightening thing for conservatives (that is what the word "conservative" means, after all). In many ways, it has changed for the better, and mostly it's changing in ways to meet the new challenges of the 21st century: new communications media, a new globalization, new knowledge, new kinds of students. And no, it's not the way Finn remembers when he was going to school; it should not be. (Finn even recounts an embarrassing anecdote about his mother's education.) Jessica Stern's book Terror in the name of God, an in-depth study of violent religious fundamentalists, discovers that what drives fundamentalists (both Islamic and Christian) is "fear of modernity." I'm struck by how much a "fear of modernity" drives these conservative calls for a reform that is actually a regression.
"Our students know too little," writes Finn. But what does he mean by "know"? Time and time again he returns to the refrain which can be paraphrased as modern education does not teach facts. In hindsight, one of his examples tells all you need to know about his take on the facts: "Given a blank map of Europe and asked to identify particular countries,...just ten percent [spot] Yugoslavia." Yugoslavia no longer exists, of course, and all the students who got it wrong on the map-test are now exonerated. This blinkered view of "knowledge" and "learning" is characteristic of the Industrial Revolution, a 19th concept that has little applicability today. If you want to teach people how to work in mills and factories, how to mindlessly follow fixed procedures, teach these facts. But this is a bankrupt concept for today's world; it's no longer enough to teach supposed facts; they change, like it or not. The earth is not the center of the universe; the atom is not a series of concentric circles; Yugoslavia is not a country. (God did not create the universe and all species 6000 years ago, and man does indeed contribute to global warming, and because there is overwhelming irrefutable evidence for both, education has no business teaching otherwise, but I'm not going there in this blog.) Knowledge is not clumps of fact that never have changed and never will change, and for American education pretend otherwise is global suicide.
The implication of this for Finn is that our students should return to memorizing "facts" and stop thinking. He takes some breath-taking potshots at critical thinking: "'Thinking critically' avoids the relativist's agony of having to designate 'right' and 'wrong' answers," he writes. It's curious that an Assistant Secretary of Education would denigrate thinking, but there you are. For Finn, knowledge is clearly static, stuff to be memorized, all the while knowledge is changing and our students, under his proposals, will have no intellectual tools whatsoever to keep up with the world.
And finally we come to the real heart of Finn's (and the current crop of conservatives') principles: Educational Darwinism. It's a mean, tough, nasty, dog-eat -dog world out there, and education has to be mean and nasty to equip its "products" (Finn's word, not mine) to survive in this kind of world. Memorize facts as if they never changed; take one-chance-and-out tests on those facts (easy to do if there are clearly right and wrong answers) is the way to cull out the weak. "Tough standards" is the new watchword.
Imagine the students who did get the Yugoslavia question "right" in Finn's example: they are now creating and and trying to sell stuff to Yugoslavia, and probably wondering what happened. "Yugoslavia doesn't exist?? I never got the memo."
Specifically, 1983's "A Nation at Risk," not in and of itself a particularly reactionary document, was followed by 1989's "A Nation Still at Risk," by Chester Finn, former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Education under William Bennett. (The title of the article has been recycled by Finn and his followers and collaborators numerous times since then, but as nearly as I can find, the article in the May, 1989, issue of Commentary magazine was the first to use that title.) Finn asserts that that nation is still at risk because despite the previous six years of spending and good intentions, the nation's educational system is as bad as ever and in need of serious reform. Out of these initial calls for reform has come the NCLB.
Like much ultra-conservative propaganda, the article is rife with fallacious reasoning and almost laughable assertions, but I'd like to examine the principles underlying the article as a way of getting a handle on what drives the insanity of the NCLB today.
Finn lists a litany of problems with current (i.e., 1989) education principles, and follows that with four "obstacles" to education "reform" (which is his term for what most educators see as a return to the dark ages of education.) I think his general complaints about education practices can be lumped into a few categories:
1. Modern education is not the way I remember it
2. Knowledge consists of unchanging lumps of fact and nothing more; modern education does not teach the facts
3. Modern education is not industrial-age capitalistic enough
4. Modern education is not mean enough
5. Modern education is too democratic
6. Teachers are lazy, overpaid and incompetent
Education is changing, which is always a frightening thing for conservatives (that is what the word "conservative" means, after all). In many ways, it has changed for the better, and mostly it's changing in ways to meet the new challenges of the 21st century: new communications media, a new globalization, new knowledge, new kinds of students. And no, it's not the way Finn remembers when he was going to school; it should not be. (Finn even recounts an embarrassing anecdote about his mother's education.) Jessica Stern's book Terror in the name of God, an in-depth study of violent religious fundamentalists, discovers that what drives fundamentalists (both Islamic and Christian) is "fear of modernity." I'm struck by how much a "fear of modernity" drives these conservative calls for a reform that is actually a regression.
"Our students know too little," writes Finn. But what does he mean by "know"? Time and time again he returns to the refrain which can be paraphrased as modern education does not teach facts. In hindsight, one of his examples tells all you need to know about his take on the facts: "Given a blank map of Europe and asked to identify particular countries,...just ten percent [spot] Yugoslavia." Yugoslavia no longer exists, of course, and all the students who got it wrong on the map-test are now exonerated. This blinkered view of "knowledge" and "learning" is characteristic of the Industrial Revolution, a 19th concept that has little applicability today. If you want to teach people how to work in mills and factories, how to mindlessly follow fixed procedures, teach these facts. But this is a bankrupt concept for today's world; it's no longer enough to teach supposed facts; they change, like it or not. The earth is not the center of the universe; the atom is not a series of concentric circles; Yugoslavia is not a country. (God did not create the universe and all species 6000 years ago, and man does indeed contribute to global warming, and because there is overwhelming irrefutable evidence for both, education has no business teaching otherwise, but I'm not going there in this blog.) Knowledge is not clumps of fact that never have changed and never will change, and for American education pretend otherwise is global suicide.
The implication of this for Finn is that our students should return to memorizing "facts" and stop thinking. He takes some breath-taking potshots at critical thinking: "'Thinking critically' avoids the relativist's agony of having to designate 'right' and 'wrong' answers," he writes. It's curious that an Assistant Secretary of Education would denigrate thinking, but there you are. For Finn, knowledge is clearly static, stuff to be memorized, all the while knowledge is changing and our students, under his proposals, will have no intellectual tools whatsoever to keep up with the world.
And finally we come to the real heart of Finn's (and the current crop of conservatives') principles: Educational Darwinism. It's a mean, tough, nasty, dog-eat -dog world out there, and education has to be mean and nasty to equip its "products" (Finn's word, not mine) to survive in this kind of world. Memorize facts as if they never changed; take one-chance-and-out tests on those facts (easy to do if there are clearly right and wrong answers) is the way to cull out the weak. "Tough standards" is the new watchword.
Imagine the students who did get the Yugoslavia question "right" in Finn's example: they are now creating and and trying to sell stuff to Yugoslavia, and probably wondering what happened. "Yugoslavia doesn't exist?? I never got the memo."
|