Around the Fair

HOUSE BREAKING TEACHER'S PET PEEVE

NOODLING WITH NOUVELLE

BRIDESHEAD RECONSTITUED

LEADING AN EAR TOA A TALKING HEAD

GETTING IN TOUCH WITH OUR REPILIAN SELVES

HOW TO HARD-BOLD A PLOT

PUTTING ON THE DOGMA

Judith Martin

Parents who demand that schools teach ethics ought to i'olunteer to teach chemistry at night

e certainly want to avoid forcing children to memorize a lot of dull, dry facts, and turning them into little robots who don't question anything and can't express their individuality creatively."

How many agree with that statement?

Wonderful. Considering the violent divergence of opinion now raging over what is wrong with our educational system, it is amazing to find such unanimity.

Now, pay attention to the next question. How many of you have actually seen a classroom of stifled pupils paralyzed by an overload of information? No hands? Has anybody met one single product of American education w ho has a lack of imagination that can reasonably be attributed to knowing too many facts?

Ah—an objection. You say that you have never known or heard of a parent who, within the past fifty years, has taught that sex is dirty. But you know that millions must have, because there are so many young people who explain that what they are busy doing is struggling to overcome the guilt resulting from this doctrine. Well, we must conclude either that invisible causes achieve the most widespread results, or that we grow fond of our traditional complaints and have a hard time relinquishing the useful ones.

Nevertheless, we who were taught to think, but not to spell, have an obligation to question the prevailing wisdom about education. Is it possible that in the statement with which you all agreed there is a misleading suggestion of cause and effect? Perhaps mental servitude and emotional incarceration are not caused by excessive intake of information.

Has anybody ever been in an argument with someone who had a lot of verifiable facts at his command? Has anybody ever testified in court or before a legislature and been caught on one tiny misstatement of fact? Who loses the argument, no matter how strong and deeply held his position, and who goes soaring to victory, trailing along whatever fanciful theory he chooses? In short, whose creative ideas prevail?

Now let us look at the characterization of facts and memorization as "dull" and "dry." Educational standards must be examined for cultural bias. People who discuss education, except to say they hate it, are from an age group (over sixteen) in which the mind no longer has a sticky surface to which facts easily adhere. Children have gummy little minds. If they are not provided at school with specific pieces of information to show off at the dinner table and use to shame grown-ups who then claim that they would have been able to remember in one more moment, do they turn to abstract ideas? No, they buy books of trivia or memorize sports statistics or the names of minor actors in films from (continued) the parents' era, and use these to inflict the same humiliation.

Around the Fair

Continued from page 12

Then there are those assumptions about individuality, creativity, and originality. A small amount of original research would establish that the original thoughts of ignorant people, while occasionally charming and often highly amusing, are not all that startlingly valuable. Nor have great minds suffered unduly from finding out what has already been done. The artists we call immortal for more than one season tend to be those who first learned by copying older masters, rather than those who skipped over such tedious steps as learning to draw and went right into expressing their alienation.

Skipping steps gets us back to that embarrassing admission of not being able to spell. Many certifiably educated Americans can't do basic mathematics either, and few have legible handwriting. We have therefore declared such skills to be inimical to true creativity, and the lack of them to be a sign of genius. Who would have thought that any educators would be stupid enough to fall for this argument and perpetuate our shame in our children?

Another successful cover-up is the fine and democratic-sounding declaration, "Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion." Educated people should know better. A point of education is that one has to earn that right. The opinion of a person who has not mastered the relevant material is in no way equal to that of someone who has.

It is the hierarchical implication of this that offends people. But those of you who were paying attention in civics class should know that while there is a great deal stated about American equality—being created equal, equal justice under the law, equal opportunity, and so on—we are nowhere required to consider all achievements equal. It is not unAmerican to notice that people who store up more knowledge than others are, well, more knowledgeable. Also, the idealistic concept that all disciplines are equal, life experience being as valuable as physics and a knowledge of street slang comparable to a knowledge of Latin, does

not work for a democratic reason— most of the people don't believe it any of the time.

Of course, the majority of citizens also believe that assisting in the development of children is the single most important task of society, would rate a mother's contribution as more worthy of honor than that of a litigation lawyer, and would treasure the work of a history teacher more than a public relations executive's. Show how this is demonstrated in the pay scale. (Too hard? Hint: Consider the assumption that being with children turns adults charmingly childlike, so they can be tricked out of a quarter by a pat on the head, and wouldn't know how to spend money sensibly if they had it.) Do we want smart and child-loving peo-

"Perhaps mental servitude and emotional incarceration are not caused by excessive intake of information

pie to teach, or do we want teachers who can't figure out that they won't be able to afford to feed, much less educate, children of their own on those salaries?

Now for the final: Why are we educating people at all? What is the goal of education? (Pick one of the following and explain.)

□ To produce useful citizens.

□ To build character, including honesty, good citizenship, and discipline.

□ To teach children to think.

□ To teach children to understand themselves.

□ To provide children with a capacity for happiness.

It was a trick question. You can hardly get through today's educational system without discovering that multiple choice works only if you have a vague grasp of the material; knowing too much, as well as knowing too little, is a handicap.

None of the answers, which are the usually stated goals, are exactly wrong, but none of them are quite right either. We all wish all of these results for all children, and some of them may actually occur at school, either through an extra effort on the part of a sensitive teacher or through the accident of the child's happening to be on school grounds when undergoing a stroke of luck.

But such tasks as building character and fostering the desire to be useful are among the monumental obligations of child rearing. Many parents demand that schools teach their children ethics—usually the parents who brag around the house about cheating on their income taxes and escaping the traffic police. The noblest teachers do try to make up for parental shirking. But when schools officially assume such jobs— at which they generally fail, being sabotaged by the parental attitude that led them to do so—they have to neglect some of their own, academic responsibilities to make time. At the least, the parents who want ethics, behavior, fair play, and discipline in the curriculum ought to volunteer to teach chemistry at night. (Facing a classroom is also a recommended exercise for parents who demand to know why their children's school is not being redone in the latest miracle educational technique or technology, as revealed in their newspaper feature section.)

The remaining goals are unachievable because they are by-products of other activities and therefore doomed to elude those who strive for them. A child whose sole assignment is to be happy is inevitably pathetic. "Why do they always make me do whatever I feel like?" one child put it. It is the child who is led to achieve results he thought were beyond him who ends up being uncommonly pleased with himself. Nor is the habit of focusing the major portion of one's attention inward a reliable method for producing selfunderstanding in the general run of the population. It is by cultivating the lifelong habit of interest and curiosity in the outside world that most people come to understand how to order their thinking, and find a satisfactory place for themselves.

What's that? You will not accept these dogmatic statements, and want to argue? What are you, the product of an inquiring education? ►