MISSOURI WATCH: THE SCHOOLS WE WANT, NEED

It has now been more than four years since a majority of the members of the Missouri General Assembly voted approval of an ambitious educational improvement program which was given the name of Outstanding Schools Act of 1993. In the interval, thousands of Missouri students, teachers, school board members, parents and learning experts have made an input into an assessment fo current educational levels and, more importantly, set learning and achievement goals for young boys and girls well into the next century.

Although a great deal of planning and effort have gone into the 1993-enacted education program, it was not until a few days ago, July 31 to be exact, that the state's Commissioner of Education, Dr. Robert E. Bartman, announced the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education was ready to establish, and here are the commissioner's words, "a clear target for what public school students should learn in math." This is only the first subject to be covered by the mandated student-assessment program.

It is sheer folly for an inexperienced observer to question all the time that has been given over to a proper assessment of schooling progress in Missouri, but it is not frivolous to suggest that if the problems were so readily apparent more that four years ago, the time spent in correcting them seems, to put it gently, more than adequate. It is not the purpose of this column to focus on the length of time required for the educational fraternity to establish enhancement exercises. Rather the purpose is to define what kind of public education programs Missouri would seem to require, hoping that the methodology adopted by the state more or less connects with the needs-assessments.

This writer has just finished reading E.D. Hirsch's newest book, "The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them." There is a suspicion that not everyone in Commissioner Bartman's department would agree with all of the Hirsch dogma, but let me state from the very beginning, that this writer finds not only a great deal of wisdom in the book but also a rather foreboding feeling that Dr. Hirsch could be writing about Missouri and its evolutionary attempts to improve education.

As the author notes at the beginning of his thesis, the nation has been hearing that progressive ideas will save our schools from their test-confirmed mediocrity. But anyone who makes the effort to point out that these ideas have consistently failed is told that they haven't had a real chance. If schools districts don't mess them up in adopting them, teachers mess them up in the classroom. But, as Hirsch argues, the problem does not lie in the way progressive ideas have been implemented but in the ideas themselves.

The basic assumption of progressives is that subject matter is not really important. Schools are supposed to be teaching the whole child, so it's up to them to choose the subject matter they consider appropriate. Progressives dismiss specific content as "mere facts" and say that teachers who concern themselves with them are condemning students to a painful process called "rote learning." The results is kids who are crammed with facts but who can't think for themselves, taking no joy in learning. We have heard similar arguments from Missouri school officials. The phrase "problem solving" is not used exclusively by progressives; it is mentioned often by officials in Jefferson City.

Letting kids look up the information they need, or find it on the Internet, would seem both logical and reasonable. But there is no battle between learning and learning how to learn. Our schools have been disregarding content in favor of process for years. Nor is there any basis for accepting progressive ideas about how to teach children to think. The dismal record of achievement tests points to the opposite conclusion, and so does important research about how kids learn.

This research has shown that there is no such thing as an all-purpose thinking skill. Students need specific skills to think about geometry, and these are different than the ones needed to think about American history of Missouri government. Students are incapable of thinking without facts and information. The more well-stocked the student's mind, the better able for students to make the connections that are basic to thinking. If, on the other hand, students lack the necessary information, what they read or are told will be meaningless. The other day I tried to read a story about a cricket game in the London Times, and when finished, I still didn't have a clue about the outcome.

As for the notion that teaching children content will turn them off to learning, anyone who has watched students become enthusiastic about political history or prehistoric animals or basic geometry knows this is not the case. The problem is that focusing on content and guiding children in learning how to use what they know are not necessarily easy. One is ever visited by the thought that perhaps the reason the state is so much hard work and effort. But if we don't question the disciplined effort children must make to get on the soccer team, play the piano or learn to operate a computer, why do we consider it a hardship for them to master important academic skills?

Progressives are fond of saying that a core theme of education is experimentation, trying new ideas to see if you can do better. Do they forget that if you do worse, you should try something else? Let's try well-prepared teachers, basic curricula, strict discipline, earned graduation and rewarded achievement and see what happens. It's not clear that these five components have ever been combined into a concise recipe for outstanding schools -- and students -- in our state.

Maybe that's why educational achievement has remained so elusive in 525 school districts that hold Missouri's future.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.