[NLA] E.D Hirsch Mathematically Correct

[George E. Demetrion]

Colleagues:

Perhaps the following extract from E.D. Hirsch's presentation to the
California State Board of Education might be of interest given the
current conservative swing of the U.S. Department of Education under
Bush/Paige et al.  Along with William Bennet,  Lynne Cheney and others,
Hirsch has been an icon of neo-conservative educators.  

While it may be a bit difficult to discern the exact relationship among
these three conservative educators and the current USDoE, it is more than
a reasonable hypothesis to assume their intellectual influence has a
strong impact on current policy thinking.  This hypothesis at least in my
mind has been strengthened by the recent USDoE draft and now completed
strategic plan.  

Other commentary by Rod Paige consigning whole language reading theory to
the dust bin of history and the promotion of "American values" and
"traditional American history" in the classrooms in the Department's
documents as well as in various public presentations by key
spokespersons, further confirms this strong ideological conservative
direction.  This is to say nothing about the reduction of literacy to
reading, the reduction of reading to phonemic awareness as a foundational
grounding point rather than simply important,and  the impending NIFL
appointments (Board and Director).

In the following extracts of Hirsch's talk, keep in mind the following:

a)  Hirsch acknowledges that almost all educational practice is research
based.

b)  The challenge from his point of view is to "discriminate between
reliable and unreliable research."

c)  Policy should be based on the most "scientifically reliable
research."

d)  " At the core of each discipline, there develops a consensus of the
learned, and this consensus is highly dependable."  (One wonders what the
"consensus" research would be in the highly contentious field of US
history since the most reputable scholars in the field are saying
different things.  One wonders if historical scholarship needs to be
supervised by the scientists to assure methodological rigor or by various
patriotic groups to assure that dissenting perspectives on the state of
democracy in US history do not infect the high purposes of the new
classrooms under the Department's proposed great transformation designed
to instill patriotism and American values in civics and US history
classes).

e)  "Out at the edge, on the frontier of the discipline, there is a lot
of disagreement, and we can't tell for sure which rival theory is right.
When lawmakers say that education policy should be based on research, the
spirit of the law implies reliable, consensus research. Any other
interpretation would mean, and has meant, carrying out unwarranted human
experimentation on our own children. "  There is very little room here
for critical or alternative perspectives and a view of education as
mastery of the received tradition.

f)  (Listen up, EFFers)  "In the field of psychology, which is the key
field for education research, much of what is accepted within the
educational community has been required to conform to a so-called
"constructivist" ideology that does not represent the consensus in
mainstream psychology, and is almost certainly incorrect." (Though we've
heard nothing from official headquarters on the USDoE, DAEL's or OVAE's
position on EFF, from a consistent ideological perspective one might draw
a reasonable conclusion that the current Department of Education would
not look favorably on such "constructvist," "metacognitive" projects like
EFF.  Is this worth a discussion?)

Though I do not know exactly what the influence of such neo-conservative
tending educators  thinkers as E.D. Hirsch (he claims to be a liberal),
William Bennett, B.V. Manno, and Lynne Cheney are having on current USDoE
 thinking, a perusal of the documents and an attunement of various
pronouncements and television presentations leads one (me) to believe
that the collective influence of these thinkers is substantial. 

 What makes their influence particularly pernicious, in my opinion, is
that so much of this is happening below the radar screen where the likes
of constructivism and other progressive educational concepts are being
dismissed as ideology and faddism, while neo-conservative educational
thought is being equated with objective science.  There is an eeirie
Orwellian abuse of language in operation that marginalizes critical
thought with governmental propaganda that the good Senators of Senator
Kennedy's Committee just may not be in a position to see or to act upon
to which they must be held to account.

There's a lot at stake in the current direction of the UDDoE under Bush,
Paige.

Ralph Nader, is there really no difference between Gore and Bush?

George Demetrion
Sophocles5 at juno.com
________________________________________________________

Mathematically Correct

Address to California State Board of Education
April 10, 1997
by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mathman/edh2cal.htm

The enormous problem faced in basing policy on research is that it is
almost impossible to make educational policy that is not based on
research. 
Almost every educational practice that has ever been pursued has been
supported with data by somebody. I don't know a single failed policy,
ranging from the naturalistic teaching of reading, to the open classroom,
to the teaching of abstract set-theory in third-grade math that hasn't
been research-based. Experts have advocated almost every conceivable
practice short of inflicting permanent bodily harm. 

So we need to discriminate between reliable and unreliable research. And
of course my recommendation is going to be that only reliable research
should guide policy. Now it is possible to give some rules of thumb for
determining scientific reliability, but there is no formula adequate to
all situations. The distinguished sociologist of science, Stephen Cole in
his Harvard Press book, called Making Science has found a continuous
spectrum of reliability in most of the natural and social sciences. At
the core 
of each discipline, there develops a consensus of the learned, and this
consensus is highly dependable. It is close enough to being right that
you can bet your life and your children's lives on that core. But out at
the edge, on the frontier of the discipline, there is a lot of
disagreement, and we can't tell for sure which rival theory is right.
When lawmakers say that education policy should be based on research, the
spirit of the law implies reliable, consensus research. Any other
interpretation would mean, and has meant, carrying out unwarranted human
experimentation on our own children. 
If this distinction between core and non-core research is rightly
understood, and if its implications are followed in California, then I
think the days of faddism, guruism, partisanship, and unwarranted
experimentation may be numbered. I'm not saying that research can decide
the aims of education. In a democracy, those are decided by the people.
But core science can determine how best to achieve them. Take reading. As
a people we have decided that we want all our children to read well.
Mainstream research has been saying for some years that a naturalistic
approach cannot achieve that goal for all children. The reasons why that
core research was not heeded is a subject for intellectual and social
history, some of which I traced in my recent book, The Schools We Need &
Why We Don't Have Them. 

I was forced to conclude that in the field of psychology, which is the
key field for education research, much of what is accepted within the
educational community has been required to conform to a so-called
"constructivist" ideology that does not represent the consensus in
mainstream psychology, and is almost certainly incorrect. One
distinguished psychologist who receives grants from the education
division of the National Science Foundation (NSF) expressed dismay at the
ideological, anti-empirical sermons, as he called them, which he hears at
the education division of NSF meet
ings in psychology. 

Insistence upon ideological conformity makes for unreliable science. It
hinders the best research from getting disseminated to the education
world -- to journalists, policy makers, publishers, teachers, and
administrators. As a result, there is an information gap regarding the
findings of mainstream psychology as applied to education.



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