THE NEW MATH: WHAT IS EDUCATION TODAY, ANYWAY?

This editorial from the March 12 edition of the Columbia Daily Tribune is reprinted by permission. It was written by Henry J. Waters III, the newspaper's publisher.

How the teaching of math has progressed:

In 1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is four-fifths of this price. What is his profit?

In 1970: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is four-fifths of this price, or $80. What is his profit?

In 1970 (new math): A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100, and each element is worth $1. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set M. The set C of the costs of production contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of M, and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?

In 1990: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment is to underline the No. 20.

In 1990 (outcomes-based education): By cutting down beautiful forest trees, a logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? (Topic for class participation: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?)

Chemical and Engineering News

Jan. 23

If local school board members are angry at such descriptions of the enterprise they oversee, they should take another look at themselves. They might rethink current movements to teach reading and writing without teaching how to spell or punctuate. They could cast critical eyes at well-known trends away from serious accountability and assessment of student achievement in favor of feel-good, inexact report cards. They could openly recognize that "dumbing down" is indeed occurring, and they could try to reverse the trend before it destroys the integrity of their enterprise. In short, they could make sure they know what is being taught in Columbia classrooms. They could discuss their findings continually and openly with the public who pays the bills and sends its children into their care, critically evaluating the good and the bad.

Referring to the long-standing local policy allowing parents to move their children to other school districts, board president Mary Hentges said the transfer policy was an effort to meet parent desires but "may have mushroomed into a problem without the school district realizing it." She might have said the same thing about avowed intentions of the board and administration to develop "outcomes-based education," a policy they now try to wriggle away from, at least by name. It's not that OBE is necessarily bad, it's that the local board of education hasn't a clue about what it really is or what official policy should be regarding it at least none that has been openly discussed and justified with district patrons. Instead, they toss the hot potato to the various schools, hoping the issue will somehow resolve itself out there in never-never land.

Hentges provided a perfect example of the well-known phenomenon of unintended consequences, and it has its examples in today's public education reaching far beyond the ill-fated transfer policy. Nobody consciously sets out to destroy the quality and integrity of public education, but educators are well on their way to accomplishing the task more effectively than any outside assault from intellectual enemies could have. And it's all so well-intended.

School board members were dumbfounded over public reaction to the report of their task force calling for widespread transferring of students among districts. It is clear that an underlying tenet of the report is an attempt to achieve greater dispersal of student culture throughout the district. This is not a new issue. It has driven school district officials and patrons across the country. It has only been kept off the front burner here because of our extraordinary affluence and energetic attempts of school officials to keep the issue in darkness.

Underlying the mere mathematics of dispersal is the more serious issue of educational quality. By equating success with achievement of ethnic quotas and equality of student outcomes, school officials have dug themselves a hole that threatens to bury them.

In stressing egalitarianism over student achievement they have oversold the importance of diversity and busing and technological innovation and modern buildings, and they have grossly undersold the enduring virtues of basic education given by good teachers using simple practices aimed at individual students. We have good human beings in the teaching profession, but they have been diverted from the mark. They run around like chickens in a barnyard, vainly pecking the ground looking for new gimmicks.

Educators, holding forth mainly in university colleges of education, have dulled the sensibilities of teacher trainees and parents to basics, substituting social mumbo-jumbo for real education. In order to avoid conflict they consciously create atmospheres where nobody can fail. This "dumbing down" of the school experience is real, and it is destroying the value of public education. Schools are being transformed from education institutions into social incubators and are failing at both. We will have to decide what we want our "schools" to be, and a perfect place to get at this is in our very own district where, let us pray, we have the community gumption to do it.

If this sounds harsh, so be it. The quicker school officials here and elsewhere face up to the problem the sooner they might get on the road to correction. They'd better get at it lest the public get out in front and their status as leaders disappears.

Local board members are barely beginning to sense the problem. They are avoiding the worst of their recent redistricting report. Instead, they decided just the other day to strengthen rather than abandon Field and Benton, two central-city elementary schools whose students had been scheduled for relocation to other districts. This is a small but important sign that basic attitudes on the board might be subject to change.

The problem here is not primarily the redistricting report. It is the vacuum of direction about how education should be provided. Are neighborhood schools more or less important than diversity? Or should all schools be brought up to basic standards of quality so people living in every part of town can have a good neighborhood school? If this means that some schools will have levels of family income, minority representation or student achievement different from others, so what? Is not the goal to give the best education to each individual, or do we think equalizing participation characteristics is the most important goal education officials can pursue? From their actions, you would think so.

By fundamental definition, attempts to equalize superficial aspects of participation and outcome are the opposite of providing the best education for each student. Diversity is contradictory to discrimination, but we have it wrong about which is inherently best. When imposed for their own sakes, diversity and its twin devil, egalitarianism, are destroying public education, particularly for the students who need focused attention the most. Individual progress can best be made through targeted attention, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. Only through individualized schooling and assessment can individuals gain the most. We used to know this. We'd better learn it again, especially if we are to maximize educational benefits for children at risk. We can do it best in neighborhood schools where neighborhood cultures are left intact.

The best education would be ultimately discriminatory, in essence like it was back when plain vanilla schools contained students who received particular attention from teachers and parents. Those schools did not succeed merely because they had small teacher-student ratios. Often, they did not. Certainly, they did not succeed because their hall ways were wide or they had computers in every room. They succeeded because they concentrated on basics, had high expectations, imposed discipline and kept close track of individual student progress. If we did not divert teachers' attention so much, this kind of education could be offered to all students today. If in some cases parents or guardians are not there to help, school workers must do the best they can without abandoning good basic educational goals and practices, including strong requirements for proper discipline in mainline classrooms. Regardless of all other considerations, the few basic tenets of good education must be rigorously practiced.

Through higher expectations and individualized attention, teachers will save more of their students. Not by merely keeping their physical presence, but by actually causing them to learn the most. Every student willing to do his best will achieve more. Those who won't participate in a positive way must be moved promptly into other settings. We do not help anyone by simply shuffling everyone along, regardless, turning mainline classrooms into holding pens. We're fools for thinking that the mere provision of a graduation certificate is of paramount importance. No wonder these certificates are becoming meaningless.

We have so many examples of how magnet schools and other dispersal gimmicks have failed to basically improve public education. Why do we keep building them? In every case, we are trying to contradict the nature of neighborhoods. This is a well-meant but arrogant expression of elitism. More to the point, it does not work. Shall we merely do more of the same?

It is sad indeed that our school board is so far behind the curve. By failing in the past to confront basic education issues squarely, as some of us have urged, they now find themselves face to face with a set of challenges that should have been dealt with sooner in more fundamental ways.

They will be better off to do no more harm while they get at basic questions about what a good public education system really is. Our leaders should have been the first to realize it is not the system we are building today. Instead, they are the last to defend the fort.