[AAACE-NLA]Incurable Disease or Education Malpractice?

[George E. Demetrion]

The citation in the subject box refers to Robert Sweet' Jr., essay,
"Illiteracy: Incurable Disease or Education Malpractice?  This can be
accessed at   http://www.nrrf.org/essay_Illiteracy.html

I encourage people to read this essay carefully.  I use the term essay
somewhat loosely in that I don't believe it would be published in one of
the "first rate" peer-blind review journals that is now touted in the
policy statements on scientific-based education.   I'm going to bypass an
analysis of Sweet's essay here in order to focus on something related. 
Perhaps someone else would be able to do that, or maybe I'll get to it
later.


 On the point of what comprises the criteria of high quality research as
defined by the US Department of Education, it would be more than
instructive if someone could provide a list of journals which would
qualify as "first-rate" and which ones would not.  I speculate, but I'm
assuming such long standing journals like Educational Theory and Adult
Education Quarterly would not qualify.  I'm also assuming that the
journal Adult Basic Education would also not pass muster.  Because the
issue of intellectual legitimacy is being defined through the political
offices of the US Department of Education, it becomes more than a little
important to know of the criteria of what counts and what doesn't as
quality educational research and what is ruled in and what is ruled out.

On this, the comments of E.D Hirsch (of  "Cultural Literacy" fame) to the
California State Board of Education in 1997 might help to illuminate the
world view that shapes the US Department's thinking.  Hirsch's influence,
along with those of BV Manno, Lynne Cheney, and  Bill Bennett and others,
all reflecting the  ideology of the Reagan administration, might be
instructive.  I remain focused on Hirsch.  California, it should be
noted, passed a law that required education to be research-based.  That
concerned Hirsch, who pointed to the ubiquity of research that could
support virtually any educational policy and practice.  

The more pressing challenge, according to Hirsch, is "the need to
discriminate between reliable and unreliable research."  He also noted
that "there is "a continuous spectrum of reliability in most of the
natural and social sciences." On the latter, that view is disputed by
Donna C. Mertens in her "Research Methods in Education and Psychology,"
where she draws out three paradigms of research.  She notes that there
are commonalities among the paradigms.  Yet, in the questions they ask
and in the methodologies upon which they focus, they are rather different
in their orientation.   Hirsch bypasses this issue and notes (even,
apparently, for such academic fields of history and literary analysis?)
"that at the core of each discipline there develops a consensus of the
learned," one that "you can bet your life and your children's lives on
that core."  Beyond the consensus, "on the frontier of the discipline,
there is a lot of disagreement, and we can't tell for sure which rival
theory is right."

Though I may be reading a bit into this, what I gather is what concerns
Hirsch is that educational research of the >wrong< sort may come to
effect our school systems--scholarship which gave shape to whole language
reading theory, inquiry learning, and fuzzy math, for example.  In
essence, Hirsch sought to insulate the California educational system
against research stemming from the progressive educational framework
extending back to Dewey and including the likes of Jerome Bruner, Howard
Gardner, and the research which informed the despised Maria Montessori.

Do I exaggerate?  Listen to Hirsch as he warns the Board to stand guard
against "ideological conformity" stemming from the onslaught of  US
progressive education.  This he links to "Lysenkoism" as a school of
biology as practiced in the Soviet Union, "a theory that bears
similarities to constructvism."  To bring home his point to the
"practical" men and women who made up the California Board, Hirsch warned
them to stand guard.  "Over the door of every board of education should
be posted the watchword:  >Remember Lysenko<".   This is the only way of
protecting your children against the "received ideology" of the state as
manifested in the precepts of progressive education and the contestable
research base that undergirds it.  If Board members had any doubts as to
what the "mainstream consensus" of science is, they would no longer need
"to depend...on the guru principle."  Instead, they could obtain
"guidance from the National Academy of Sciences."

As Hirsch continued, the issue, as related to performance-based
assessment, is not how many educational "experts" support it, even if
their work is published in peer-blind review journals.  After all, "the
number of people who believe in flying saucers is greater than the total
astrophysicists in the world."  The cold, hard fact is "that science is
an elite subject, and ought to be so," and that applies for the social as
well as the natural sciences.  As Hirsch concluded, it is not the
consensus of the field that counts (assuming that all academic fields are
based on consensus thinking, which many are not).   "[T]he consensus that
counts is the consensus of the learned."  That would be those who write
for the most reputable journals according to Hirsch.

In short, as  the contentious issues of research traditions was beyond
the scope of the Board Members, they had to rely on another basis of
trust, that of consensus thinking of each field as discerned by the most
reputable journals, based on the most "rigorous" research.  Beware
especially of the Lysenkoism of the progressive educational movement--be
vigilant, be on guard, draw on the most reliable authorities, take the
word of E.D. Hirsch.

Hirsch and Sweet write in some different ways.  Hirsch is a formal
scholar.  I don't believe that Sweet is.  What they do have in common is
an ideological zeal for what is and isn't legitimate research, along with
a penchant for polarizing the issues in a simplistic intellectual
fundamentalism that is grounded in a certain political and moral world
view.  For many in the Bush administration, this world view  is informed
by a religious zealotry that links the moral purposes of the United
States with the kingdom of God.  In this scenario,  Bush is the new Moses
leading America as the New Jerusalem in establishing the new world order
at home and abroad.  And science, as it is touted by Hirsch and others,
is one of the instruments in the implementation of this world view.

Reference

E.D. Hirsch (2000).  Address to California State Board of Education.
April 1o, 1997. ( http://mathematicallycorrect//edh2cal.htm).

(I'm not sure if this link isstill up or can be accessed this way.  If
not, those interested might do a google search of the title or of
Hirsch.)

George Demetrion


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