LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

List of Letters to the Editor, by Subject

A Reader's Critique (Part 2)
With a Response from the Author

Mr. Coulson:

More interesting comments. Now I can see that you are really a
libertarian, which is a philosophical position which has never gained and held political power in the United States. I think this is so because of a paradoxical quality of the American project which libertarians have never understood. While most Americans value and want liberty, they also want government to play a role in social improvement. From Jefferson and Jackson on through present day. They want both, even though they sometimes have a difficult time working with the relationship between these two different goods.

My central problem with Chapters 4 and 5 of your book is that you tell a simplistic, one-sided, and insufficiently complex version of the story. The story is much more complex and much more inconsistent, I believe, than the version you present. And the reason ideology matters is that it tends to orient how the author gathers evidence and organizes it to give meaning and offer narrative.

Just a few examples of the party-line quality of your narrative to
illustrate my point:

Your story of school consolidation is very limited and biased. Most of the consolidation took place long after the events you describe and was pushed by centrist bureaucrats much more than progressives. Also you don't even mention James Conant, who was the major figure in promoting consolidation and larger secondary schools. Conant was an interesting figure, both a central member of the ruling class AND in some ways a
progressive.

What you don't seem to understand is that in the culture war between progressives and industrial leaders and their political and educational vassals, the progressives lost! Even by 1930 the industrial model of schooling was dominant and has remained so. If ideology doesn't matter, why do you and Don Hirsch tell essentially the same story about your vision of overwhelming progressive influence? Just to give you credit, Hirsch's version is much more bizarre and fictive than yours.

Your story of the reading wars contradicts Jeanne Chall, for example, on pages 163-164, Chall has written that a good part of the openness that teachers had to whole language resulted from an overuse of phonics in the 1960s and 1970s. Your version of the California story comes right from the mouth of Pete Wilson and ignores the much more complex circumstances of the California experience (class size increases, dramatic increases in percent of students who did not speak English, the fact that most California primary teachers were probably not even using
whole language approaches, the errors in scoring in the 1994 NAEP, and so on).

Just to give this last example some context: I am not a whole language advocate. From what I know, children learn to read in several different ways. My belief is that primary teachers need to understand this diversity and be able to respond to each child in appropriate and helpful ways, some of which include direct and structured phonics instruction.

I am also a critic of our industrial paradigm schools. But I don't
believe that we will get better schools if we work from the kind of
simplistic, one-sided critique that you offer.

--David Marshak

The Author's Reply

David,

I think the American people are more pragmatic and less political than you suggest. You say that people want government to play a role in social improvement. I don't think that's quite accurate. I would argue that most people see government as a tool, and only seek its involvement when they feel it will achieve some desired goal, in this case, social improvement. When it is pointed out to them that there are much more effective ways of securing the particular kinds of social improvement they seek, their desire for government action wanes.

For example, contrary to the popular misconception, non-government schools do a better job of fostering racial integration and religious harmony than do government-run schools (see Market Education). When people become aware of this fact, they generally cease to advocate government intervention in education on these grounds.

If the American people become convinced of the conclusions presented in Market Education, I strongly suspect that they will move toward a free educational market and away from state-run schools. They won't do this for political reasons, but rather because they realize that it is a more effective means of fulfilling their educational goals, both individually and at the societal level.

You argue that my treatment of U.S. education is simplistic, one-sided, and biased, and in defense of these claims you point to a few passages in the book that you think are flawed. I don't think you make your case, and here's why:

Your first assertion is that I am biased against "progressive" educators, and that my bias is manifested in my treatment of the school district consolidation movement. To support that statement you assert that "most of the consolidation" of small school districts into larger ones happened "long after" the cases I describe. That's just wrong.

The consolidation began in the late 1800s and continued at a quick pace during and immediately following the 1925 New York State episode I describe in the book. There were 27,000 fewer school districts in the mid 40s than there were in the early 30s (the first years for which published national data are available). That was a drop of about 20 percent. The pace of consolidation had slowed considerably by the 50s and 60s, and was flattening out into an asymptotic curve by the 70s. Though the national statistics only go back to 1932 or so, many states kept their own records as far back as the mid 19th century, and those I've seen indicate an ongoing trend of consolidation throughout the second half of the 1800s. (My library is boxed up at the moment, so I can't pull these). Horace Mann himself, the man most responsible for U.S. public schooling, was a progressive advocate of centralization and consolidation.

Next you criticize me for omitting a discussion of James Conant, as though that omission were the result of my putative bias against progressives, but then you add that you consider him to have been, to some extent, a progressive. Whatever your reasoning here, I can tell you why Conant doesn't appear in Market Education: he wouldn't have added anything sufficiently novel and important to justify the space. That was the same reason I omitted many other big names in the history of education. I'm sure that scholars of Roman education are distraught that I've left out Quintillian. However, I don't think that either Conant or Quintillian would have added anything of substance to the book, or altered any of the conclusions that appear in it. If you can show me why you think my omission of Conant undermines my conclusions, I will be happy to hear you out.

You also seem to be criticizing me for not sufficiently emphasizing "centrist bureaucrats" who advocated school consolidation. Are you really accusing me of trying to defend or protect education bureaucrats? I'm sure you'll agree that Market Education is critical of bureaucrats who seek to expand and consolidate their power for their own purposes. It just happens
that the section you are describing dealt with the generally statist,
progressive educators who most strongly influenced and sometimes directly controlled what went on in public schools in the first half of this century. I criticize the bureaucratic bloat of public schools elsewhere.

Furthermore, I question your description of these bureaucrats as centrists. Central to what? Why do you think that bureaucrats who seek to consolidate and centralize government power over education are centrists? These bureaucrats were not suggesting that half of our educational system should be market-driven, and
half centrally planned. Their agenda was purely statist and anti-market, and so there's nothing inherently centrist about it. If anything, it is more consistent with the views of most progressives, who have felt (contrary to the evidence) that government institutions can solve educational problems more effectively than the private sector.

You then wrote that:

> What you don't seem to understand is that in the
> culture war between progressives and industrial
> leaders and their political and educational vassals,
> the progressives lost! Even by 1930 the industrial
> model of schooling was dominant and has remained
> so.

This sort of view has been floating around in education circles for many decades, and it has always been a confused and inaccurate metaphor.

Our educational system has little to do with U.S. industry, now
or in the past. If anything, it resembles a centrally-planned, state-owned, Soviet-style enterprise. U.S. industries are most often characterized by consumer choice, direct payment by the consumer, vigorous competition between providers, the profit motive, limited (though ever increasing) regulation, innovation, improving quality and/or falling prices, etc. Public schools enjoy NONE of these characteristics. They do NOT follow   a U.S. industrial model.

What educators mean when they mistakenly say that public schools follow an industrial model is that our public schools are reminiscent of Henry Ford's first assembly line. To that extent they're not far off the mark, but this is not the fault of our nation's industrial leaders, who have had little real power over our school systems. The people championing the ideas, making the decisions, and implementing the policies have not been industrialists, but educationists. Our centrally-planned, homogenizing government school system was not designed by Henry Ford in the early 20th century, it was designed by Horace Mann in the middle of the 19th. The only area in which our school system departs from Mann's vision is in its results, which are
rather less Utopian than he promised.

Rigid age-based grading, one of the hallmark factory-line qualities of public schools, is an invention of the public schools themselves. Prior to the state's takeover of schooling, children were taught according to their performance not according to their age. Today, in places where schools are still operating in truly competitive marketplaces (such as the Juku of Japan, and some South American countries), children are again chiefly grouped by performance in particular subjects, not mindlessly pigeon-holed
based on their age.

While it is true that progressives have had setbacks and disappointments in implementing their pedagogical ideas, most public school teachers have progressive pedagogical views, and progressive methods for teaching the most important subjects (e.g. reading) are dominant around the country (see Market Education).

> If ideology doesn't matter, why do you and Don
> Hirsch tell essentially the same story about your
> vision of overwhelming progressive influence?

I don't know any Don Hirsch. Do you mean E. D. Hirsch?

Assuming you mean E. D. H., I have as much disagreement with him as I do agreement. I personally think his curriculum has some merit, but the idea of having the state mandate the uniform adoption of any curriculum in all schools is totally at odds with the interests of families, and there are centuries of precedents to that effect. The only time I mention Hirsch's work in my book is when I refute his contention that it's best if all students are taught at the same pace. He seems utterly attached to the terrible practices of rigid age-based grouping and homogeneous mandatory curricula and testing.

> Your story of the reading wars contradicts Jeanne
> Chall, for example, on  pages 163-164, Chall has
> written that a good part of the openness that
> teachers had to whole language resulted from an
> overuse of phonics in the 1960s and 1970s.

I don't recall Chall saying that, though it's possible I missed it. Could you give me a reference?

I am aware of no renaissance of synthetic phonics during the sixties and seventies, except perhaps in those schools participating in the Follow Through experiment and using the Distar program. Those, however, comprised a
tiny fraction of the nation's schools as a whole.

> Your version of the California story comes right
> from the mouth of Pete Wilson

I've never read anything by Pete Wilson, on any subject. My narrative of the California experience comes from the sources cited in Market Education and other similar sources.

> and ignores the much more complex
> circumstances of the California experience (class size
> increases,

Not a major factor, see Hanushek's latest work.

> dramatic increases in percent of students who did
> not speak English,

Note that I provide an ethnic breakdown of California's 1994 grade 4 NAEP scores, showing it had the worst scores in every group except African Americans, where it had the second worse scores.

> the fact that most California primary teachers
> were probably not even using whole language
> approaches,

Nonsense. As I state in the book, virtually all college of education methods textbooks emphasize whole language, and give little time to anything else. None of the materials approved in California included synthetic phonics, all were whole-language in   orientation. Are you trying to tell me that teachers taught to use whole-language, who generally have progressive pedagogical views, and who are provided whole-language textbooks, used some other methodology entirely?

At best you could make a case that the teachers didn't follow some single specific whole language curriculum. But that is tautological. There _IS_ no single specific whole language curriculum. Whole language proponents are steadfastly against systematization and formal structure in reading instruction. That is one of the problems inherent in their belief system.

>the errors in scoring in the 1994 NAEP, and
> so on).

Apart from the standard sampling error, I'm not aware of any significant problem with the 1994 NAEP results. What are you referring to?

In any event, whether or not the NAEP scores for California can be relied upon, there is ample evidence on the deficiencies of whole language instruction as compared to synthetic phonics. I have quite a lot of material on this in the book, but more is always coming in. Earlier this year, the Scottish Office of the UK released the results of a 5 year study of reading instruction methods (Watson and Johnson, 1999). Synthetic phonics again had the highest scores overall and the fewest underachieving students. You can find it on the web at:
http://www.hmis.scotoff.gov.uk/riu/pdf/interchange_57.pdf

Given my comments above, I see no justification for your characterization of Market Education as either simplistic or biased. When I harshly condemn much of what educational "progressives" have wrought, it is because their actions have hurt children. Justified condemnation is not bias.

Nor do I restrict my condemnation to those on the Left. Just as there is a section in chapter 4 called "Dictators on the Left" so there is a section titled "Dictators on the Right." While I criticize "progressives" for such things as foisting whole language on America's children, I also criticize the Right for trying to foist its own educational agenda on the schools, whether it be school-prayer, the extirpation of evolution from the classroom, or the imposition of a mandatory state-wide or national curriculum.

You say that you disagree with my conclusions and that you think I'm biased. But you've spent most of your time fishing around for evidence of bias that just isn't there, and you've spent little or no time actually trying to refute my conclusions.

I suggest to you that, despite your protestations, you really are letting this Quixotic quest for author bias distract you from confronting the evidence, arguments, and conclusions of the book. If I'm wrong on this, please let me know what you think are the factual and logical errors in Market Education that you believe undermine its conclusions.

--Yours sincerely,
        Andrew

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