Romanticizing in Education

Romanticizing is such a huge problem in education today.  This is where we view things or people as we wish they were, instead of how they really are.  It’s kind of like lying to ourselves to make us feel good or sound good to others. It clouds our judgment of plans and actions.  It is like allowing our heart to overrule our brain!

We wish all children were just little learning machines, and all we have to do is set up the right situation, and they will just whiz through learning on their own!  It denies the fact that along with the angelic side that all children come with, there is also a demon side that must be tamed before success can come.

We frequently choose to view children “with rose colored glasses,” because we don’t want to go to the work of actually teaching them discipline, following through with them, and planning.  So we do wonderful sounding, though not very educational, “projects,” which have a great deal of busy-work to them without giving the practice students need.

We do group assignments, which we make successful by putting someone into the group who will get it done even if no one else works at it, allowing us to give credit to all, including those who did little.  We justify this by saying that this is the way “businesses” operate, when in fact businesses don’t really.  They have to have individual accountability, or they can’t justify keeping the employee on the payroll.

We use subjective assessments, so we can make sure everyone passes, regardless of effort or learning taking place.  We label these assessments as “authentic,” so they sound more valid than they really are.

We call practice “drill and kill,” because it isn’t fun.  We call teacher directed learning “lecturing,” so that gets us off the hook of really doing our job, and then justify our lack of real teaching by saying that teachers should be “a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage.”  While the romantics deny that this is the result of the philosophy, the students end up not gaining the skill necessary to be proficient.

These ideas have been replicated, with new labels over and over for a hundred years - ever since John Dewey gained credit for their origin.  They continue to be largely refuted, yet never die, because they sound so wonderful, so much like we wish children and learning were like – as one continuous round of fun and exciting explorations.

Unfortunately the results of these philosophies are students who can’t or won’t.  They promote in students an aura of awe that starts with, “I wish I was good at…” math, piano, writing, or whatever the subject is, while believing they never will be.

These ideas keep being resurrected when new teacher trainers, wanting to promote themselves or their products, assign the blame for the lack of proficiency, caused by this romantic belief, on the very things that would have provided proficiency!  These are direct instruction, practice, and building facts in students first and cementing them with deep understanding as the students gain sufficient facts to put together into understanding, rather than just trying to “deeply think” from the start.  This philosophy was manifest early on in Professor Harold Hill’s “Think System” in The Music Man!

The educational romantic wants the end (deep understanding) without the beginning and all the work in the middle.  He wants the roof without the foundation.  Human beings do not generally gain understanding by starting with the theory behind it.  They have to gain possession of the facts pertaining to it first.

As the person gains more facts, they can begin to put them together to learn the why behind them.  Some facts are more important than others in this process, despite romantics saying that it doesn’t really matter which facts they learn.  That is where the idea of “standards” came from, the desire to make sure the most important facts were taught.

Romantics, or constructivists using the philosophical name, reacting to the back-to-basics movement, conceded the need for some facts, but responded that it doesn’t really matter which facts, just have them learn some facts, and that would be good enough.

Standards were then called for, in order to make certain facts recognized as more important.  Constructivists, who were in positions of leadership that would create those standards, responded by changing the standards, which were at first measurable, into nebulous “understandings,” which were not measurable.

Because the new “standards” were subjective in nature, constructivists could then claim success with their methods, even when proficiency had not been obtained.  This continued the erosion of trust in educators, even though most teachers in the trenches adapted these ideas mostly into methods that worked, instead of what the constructivist theorists promoted.

Those who attempted to fight constructivists legislatively came up with the idea to make curriculum proven by student test scores, calling it “Standards-Based,” not realizing that constructivist had already turned standards into nebulous understandings.  By using the power of government to try to force standards, they naively gave constructivists the power to force teachers to adopt their philosophy by using tests, which they constructed to show the methods used, to ferret out teachers who would not adopt their methods.  This manifested itself in Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

With the adoption of CCSS, which are not amendable by teachers or parents, and using the tests to reveal teachers using the “closed-door veto,” constructivist have finally gotten the way to enforce their philosophy on all teachers nation-wide!  They want every state to adopt them, so that there will be no way to compare whether they accomplish their goal.

There will always be a need for a few romantics in the world to give spice and flavor.  However a plate of spaghetti would not taste good, if it were mostly spice and no noodles.  So too if constructivists/romantics control all of what and how our children are taught nation-wide, via CCSS or some other scheme, the result will not be healthy or desirable for our country’s future.  We will not be able to discern what is good and what is not.  We will not be able to judge it accurately.

In order to have the balancing effect that competition can bring, we must have variety of curriculum and methods between, not only states, but also districts.  We need to have local districts creating their own standards and comparing them against other districts in order to be able to discard what romantically may sound delicious, but in practice does not nourish.