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Part 68: Silberman:
September 15, 2003:
I have begun investigating another of the books written about education. This one is called "Crisis in the Classroom" by Charles E. Silberman. The writer is no lightweight in the education and journalism industries. He is figuratively swimming in credentials. He has awards and editorships, and he was a director of a $300,000 Carnegie study on the Education of Educators. What that means is he got paid for gathering the material for this book.
I am always suspicious of works that come as a result of a financed study. I get the impression of a gun for hire type of researcher. I have seen a great deal of this kind of thing in industry. Ford, Burroughs, or Bendix hires a firm to do a management study of some sort. The team comes in and the first thing they do is find out what management wants to hear. Once they know that, they can create a study that will produce those findings. By doing it this way, they insure future contracts to do more studies. This is not an exceptional phenomena. It is the normal situation. I have personally been forced to participate in a number of these charades. So I did begin this book with a rather jaundice eye.
So far, I have found no evidence that Silberman is anything but an honest investigator. I think, like me and everyone I know, he has some predisposed blindness, but it has nothing to do with ulterior motives. It is the common blindness of all people who are part of a machine. They cannot get far enough outside the machine to see that the way it works is not divine law, that it need not be that way. That blindness does not diminish the profound value of this work.
In his book Silberman describes a situation no different that what Holt has reported in "How Children Fail". Silberman's work was copyrighted in 1970. Holt's work was first published in 1964. Silberman did bring my attention to one issue I have not addressed. That is equality in education. Currently we know it does not exist. Poor and minority kids get the short end of an already stinky stick.
I have assumed equality in education under the program I am suggesting even though I know it does not exist now. Now, in thinking about it, I realize I have not made my position crystal clear. I did not talk about just middle class white kids. When I said all of our kids, I meant just that, but others may not see it that way. So I must address the issue directly and not assume it will just happen. Let's look at some of the issues involved.
First, there is the problem of communication for kids from different cultures. We must address that. These are not just our poor and black kids, but kids that were born to a different background than middle class America, be that Mexican, Armenian, Polish, or some other. The very first thing we must do is teach these kids how to communicate in English. They cannot participate until that is done.
Currently we make two different mistakes in this area. The classic one is the way we always did it. We teach in English and the foreign born kid is just expected to adapt by himself or lose out. That is a crappy attitude and patently unfair. Just as stupid is the bleeding heart solution. That is to have special language classes wherein we teach the current subjects to some kids in languages other than English. Besides the direct cost of this there is the long term cost to the kid. They are excused from learning what they must know to be American.
English is the language of this country so they must adapt to it sooner rather than later. Our language is not Eubonics or Spanish, it is English. We must have teacher who can teach English in the kid's language until they learn English. When we got them, the will not know how to communicate in English. That is the first thing they must learn. We cannot teach in Spanish or any other language. The purpose of other language teachers is just for the transition period. The legitimate study of other languages must come later as an elective.
At the same time, we must encourage kids to treasure their unique cultural background with pride. The school can help in this but it is also a function of the home. The home must honor the traditions and, for sure, the language of their ancestry. Don't worry about the kids handling two languages. It's only adults who are rigid in that way. The point is not to make the kids ashamed of what they are, but simply to give them common ground for communication and learning. Once they have common ground, the kids will join in and catch up.
What we are doing now in schools is wrong anyway, but the minority kids get a double hit. For too many of them, it is a crippling hit. It just isn't right and we know it. It must change. We must make them Americans without negating what they are. If we cannot do that, we ain't worth spit.
Now here is a quote I would like you to consider. It reenforces what I have noticed and what Holt has also revealed."The Assault on the students self-esteem and sense of self is frequently overt, with teachers virtually demanding failure from some students." Charles E. Silberman — "Crisis in the Classroom".
Following this statement, Silberman tells us of what he learned in interviews. The teachers begin teaching a class with the expectation that a third of the students will fail to learn. Another third will not be good students. Then they proceed to make that expectation come true. Think about that. The teachers here are literally demanding failure.
Here again is that basic stupidity of the teacher approaching education as a pass/fail two value game. They treat learning as a goal rather than a process. If we see learning as a process, no one can possibly fail. People may learn at differing rates, but everyone will learn. I truly believe, in that case, the success of the so called poor students would positively astound some of the neanderthals who are pretending to teach our kids now.
Another thing Silberman brings to my attention is that the teachers in our current system are as much the victims as the students. I touched on this briefly in other essays, but we need to look a bit harder at this fact. In most communities teachers are treated as second class citizens. They are caught in the machine that they did not create. They have no control. They are not consulted as to what they will teach or how. They are given assignments just as are the students. The text is usually selected for them by administration officials. In general, the workers in a factory have more freedom of action than do teachers.
The facilities for teachers are primitive at best and nonexistent in most case. They usually have no place for teaching conferences or discussions. All they have is the very public fishbowl classroom. There is nowhere they can be alone to think or plan. There are usually no offices for teachers. Even a decent teacher's lounge is rare. So they end up standing in halls or open classrooms to plan and discuss, if they have time for it at all. Silberman makes the point that a prison usually provides a better, freer environment for the inmates than schools provide for their teachers or their students.
The kids were forced into this situation. The teachers go into it believing they can do some good. They end up being ground down by the machinery. Instead of teaching they become monitors and policemen. They are expected to guard restrooms and enforce ridiculous rules of behavior. They are treated generally as common laborers rather than professionals. Just like the students, they are judged by stupid standards. It is not how well they teach or how well the students learn. It is how well they follow rules and maintain control. Their promotion, pay, and punishments are directly related to how well they follow procedure and has nothing at all to do with academic excellence.
Here is an anecdote from my experience. When I worked at Bendix Research Labs in Southfield, Michigan one of our best programmers was a highschool teacher escapee. He was a math major who wanted to teach, but he abandon the system to save himself. It was destroying him. At Bendix he made at least twice as much money and he was treated as the professional he was. Instead of being ordered to guard crappers, he was asked to be a project leader. He was consulted by management about tools and methods and he had his own office.
Who were the losers? He was one because he would rather have
been teaching kids. The real losers were the kids who never knew
what they had been cheated out of. We are all losers when people
like Ed are forced to abandon education. Our entire culture is
poorer for it.
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