Read Online Inside American Education by Thomas Sowell - Free Book Online
Authors: Thomas Sowell
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PREFACE
L IKE MANY other people, I have long been appalled by the low quality and continuing deterioration of American education. However, after doing the research for this book, I am frankly surprised that the results are not even worse than they are. The incredibly counterproductive fads, fashions, and dogmas of American education—from the kindergarten to the colleges—have yet to take their full toll, in part because all the standards of earlier times have not yet been completely eroded away. But the inevitable retirement of an older generation of teachers and professors must leave the new trends (and their accompanying Newspeak) as the dominant influence on the shaping of education in the generations to come.
Much has been said about how our young people do not meet the academic standards of their peers in other countries with which we compete economically. While this is both true and important, their academic deficiencies are only half the story. All across this country, the school curriculum has been invaded by psychological-conditioning programs which not only take up time sorely needed for intellectual development, but also promote an emotionalized and anti-intellectual way of responding to the challenges facing every individual and every society. Worst of all, the psychotherapeutic curriculum systematically undermines the parent-child relationship and the shared values which make a society possible.
Parents who send their children to school with instructions to respect and obey their teachers may be surprised to discover how often these children are sent back home conditioned to disrespect and disobey their parents. While psychological-conditioningprograms may not succeed in producing the atomistic society, or the self-sufficient and morally isolated individual which seems to be their ideal, they may nevertheless confuse children who receive very different moral and social messages from school and home. In short, too many American schools are turning out students who are not only intellectually incompetent but also morally confused, emotionally alienated, and socially maladjusted.
At the college and university level, the intrusion of nonintellectual and anti-intellectual material into the curriculum takes more of an ideological, rather than a psychological, form. New courses, new departments, and whole new programs concentrate on leading students to preconceived ideological conclusions, rather than developing the student’s ability to analyze issues so as to reach independent conclusions. The particular subject matter of these ideological courses and programs may range from race to the environment or foreign policy, but the general approach is the same, not only in its fundamental anti-intellectualism, but also in its underlying hostility to American society and Western civilization, and the tendentiousness or even dishonesty with which it attempts to indoctrinate. Here again, the danger is not that these methods will succeed in achieving their goals, but that they will undermine or cripple education in the attempt.
Thomas Sowell
Hoover Institution
PART ONE
SCHOOLS
PART TWO
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
PART THREE
ASSESSMENT
CHAPTER 11
Bankruptcy
T HE BRUTAL REALITY is that the American system of education is bankrupt. Allowed to continue as it is, it will absorb ever more vast resources, without any appreciable improvement in the quality of its output, which is already falling behind world standards. Its educational failures cannot be justified, or even mitigated, by its many non-academic social goals, such as the psychological well-being of students, harmony among racial, ethnic, or other social groups, the prevention of teen-age pregnancy, or the like. It has not merely failed in these areas but has been counterproductive.
This is not a blanket condemnation of every aspect of American education. Even an enterprise in bankruptcy often has valuable assets. Both the assets and the liabilities of our
L IKE MANY other people, I have long been appalled by the low quality and continuing deterioration of American education. However, after doing the research for this book, I am frankly surprised that the results are not even worse than they are. The incredibly counterproductive fads, fashions, and dogmas of American education—from the kindergarten to the colleges—have yet to take their full toll, in part because all the standards of earlier times have not yet been completely eroded away. But the inevitable retirement of an older generation of teachers and professors must leave the new trends (and their accompanying Newspeak) as the dominant influence on the shaping of education in the generations to come.
Much has been said about how our young people do not meet the academic standards of their peers in other countries with which we compete economically. While this is both true and important, their academic deficiencies are only half the story. All across this country, the school curriculum has been invaded by psychological-conditioning programs which not only take up time sorely needed for intellectual development, but also promote an emotionalized and anti-intellectual way of responding to the challenges facing every individual and every society. Worst of all, the psychotherapeutic curriculum systematically undermines the parent-child relationship and the shared values which make a society possible.
Parents who send their children to school with instructions to respect and obey their teachers may be surprised to discover how often these children are sent back home conditioned to disrespect and disobey their parents. While psychological-conditioningprograms may not succeed in producing the atomistic society, or the self-sufficient and morally isolated individual which seems to be their ideal, they may nevertheless confuse children who receive very different moral and social messages from school and home. In short, too many American schools are turning out students who are not only intellectually incompetent but also morally confused, emotionally alienated, and socially maladjusted.
At the college and university level, the intrusion of nonintellectual and anti-intellectual material into the curriculum takes more of an ideological, rather than a psychological, form. New courses, new departments, and whole new programs concentrate on leading students to preconceived ideological conclusions, rather than developing the student’s ability to analyze issues so as to reach independent conclusions. The particular subject matter of these ideological courses and programs may range from race to the environment or foreign policy, but the general approach is the same, not only in its fundamental anti-intellectualism, but also in its underlying hostility to American society and Western civilization, and the tendentiousness or even dishonesty with which it attempts to indoctrinate. Here again, the danger is not that these methods will succeed in achieving their goals, but that they will undermine or cripple education in the attempt.
Thomas Sowell
Hoover Institution
PART ONE
SCHOOLS
PART TWO
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
PART THREE
ASSESSMENT
CHAPTER 11
Bankruptcy
T HE BRUTAL REALITY is that the American system of education is bankrupt. Allowed to continue as it is, it will absorb ever more vast resources, without any appreciable improvement in the quality of its output, which is already falling behind world standards. Its educational failures cannot be justified, or even mitigated, by its many non-academic social goals, such as the psychological well-being of students, harmony among racial, ethnic, or other social groups, the prevention of teen-age pregnancy, or the like. It has not merely failed in these areas but has been counterproductive.
This is not a blanket condemnation of every aspect of American education. Even an enterprise in bankruptcy often has valuable assets. Both the assets and the liabilities of our
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