May 31, 2005

Dispatch From the School War Front

By Rita Kramer

Almost fifteen years ago I wrote a book describing a journey I had made through schools of education throughout the country. Its conclusion was that the institutions for training teachers saw their mission not as transmitting our culture but changing it, not as passing on an understanding of the history and traditions of a democratic United States of America but pursuing an agenda of far-left social activism. The U.S. was oppressive, racist, sexist, homophobic, and needed to be set on the path toward greater equality, not just of opportunity but of results. This was the message young people who wanted to become teachers were getting along with a curriculum heavy on pedagogical methods and light on subject matter: a lot of emphasis on how to teach and very little knowledge of what to teach.

In my enthusiasm and naivete I actually thought my careful parsing of what I had seen and heard might make a difference. Well, a decade and more later I am here to tell you that the only change has been for the worse. What the educrats have wrought is described in a wonderful piece of reporting by Jacob Gershman in the New York Sun for Tuesday, May 31.

Brooklyn College’s School of Education, the article shows, has taken to screening students for their political views. An evaluation of teacher candidates based on their “dispositions” is being put into effect explicitly in the teacher training institutions where my expose found it implicit at the time. A critical attitude toward white America (“multiculturalism”) and a hostility toward merit (“self-esteem” in terms of group identity, not achievement) characterized an agenda present in the classroom then; by now it has become part of the admissions process and a requirement for passing courses in such subjects as “Language Literacy in Secondary Education.”

That course is built around themes of “social justice,” such as the idea that standard English is the language of oppressors. There goes the nineteenth-century novel, lyric poetry, drama from Shakespeare on, and all the treasures that have enriched Western culture in centuries past. The gatekeepers of our schools have little use for imaginative literature or the recorded sweep of history through biography, for tales of early heroism, adventure and tragedy. (They also don’t think much of what I have often heard them refer to as “mere facts.”) What used to provide a window on the world for the young has been replaced, to use a famous phrase of George Orwell’s, by a smelly little orthodoxy. Everything in the past is rotten; we must make the world over. And three guesses in what this “social justice” consists.

The teacher of the Language Literacy course, out of all the literary treasures to choose from, had her class watch “Fahrenheit 9/11.” And according to students who took her class, she made it clear that anyone who disagreed with the filmmaker—or with her—should not become a teacher in the public schools.

Students who did disagree with the instructor found they had no recourse. Complaints were ignored by the administration, penalized by the instructor (lowered grades, charges of plagiarism based on inconsequential trivia). Said one of the students who objected, “Basically, she’s a socialist, she’s racist against white people. If you want to pass that class you better keep your mouth shut.”

Who is to blame? The largest accrediting agency of teacher education programs in the country, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, has been running the show for years now. Its policy states explicitly that schools of education should see teachers “as agents of change” with “a commitment to social justice.” And for years now Columbia University’s Teachers College has led the way in turning out teachers whose mission is, according to a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute in Virginia quoted in Gershman’s explosive article, “being defined by those who despise the very ideal of an American common culture.”

Do most parents of children in public schools know what is being taught to their children? Do they care? The New York Sun, which has earned its name by shedding light on many things you would never read about in the New York Times, has done a public service exposing the situation at Brooklyn College. It will be a long haul trying to change entrenched policies as long as the usual suspects are in charge. Step one is to get the word out. I believe most parents do care about what their children are learning—and what they are missing. Other steps are in the works—charter schools and vouchers are ways of getting around the teacher-training monopoly. And alternative certification programs for teachers can be a way of ensuring competence and assuring standards. A last resort—and perhaps a salutary one—would be to eliminate national accrediting agencies altogether, leaving it to states and local groups to set their own criteria. Stay tuned—the fight to reclaim our schools is just beginning.

Rita Kramer is the author of “Ed School Follies” available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.