Yesterday, Alfie Kohn; today Tony Wagner.
Jay Greene goes after the education guru on his blog and in an op-ed in the Northwest Arkansas Morning News. The Fayetteville Public School system has purchased 2,000 copies of Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap and is holding a series of public meetings, according to Greene, on how Wagner’s vision for 21st century skills ”might guide our schools.” Be afraid, says Jay. Be very afraid.
It’s hard to get people to think critically about people who push a focus on critical thinking. To be for critical thinking is like being for goodness and light. The tricky part is in how you get there. To the extent that Wagner has any concrete suggestions, he seems to be taking folks down the wrong path. He wants less emphasis on content and less testing. But he shows no evidence that higher levels of critical thinking can be found in places or at times when there was less content and less testing. In fact, the little evidence he does provide would suggest the opposite.
Joanne Jacobs weighs in as well, pointing to a Sandra Stotsky op-ed on Tony Wagner, and noting succinctly: “I don’t see excess knowledge as a big problem for today’s students.”
Cultural Literacy Bonus: Check out the illustration atop Jay’s blog post. It’s Bugs Bunny dressed as a Wagnerian Valkyrie from the cartoon, What’s Opera, Doc? Can you imagine a kid’s cartoon using Wagner’s Ring Cycle as the basis of a parody today? It’s a bromide to suggest that entertainment has been dumbed-down over time, but it’s hard not to notice the difference in the vocabulary of Mary Poppins, for example, or the Rex Harrison version of Doctor Doolittle compared to contemporary kids’ fare. Quantifying the change in cultural references and vocabulary level in children’s entertainment over the last 50 years or so would make for an interesting study, if it hasn’t already been done.
Great point about the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Think of the Bugs Bunny cartoon with a cry of “Leopold” — how many people would grasp a similar cartoon today?
I wonder how many of us know common melodies from classical and folk music courtesy of Bugs Bunny and Looney Toons. Quite a few, I’d wager.
http://www.emusic.com/lists/showlist.html?lid=17602622
I have noticed that there has been a shift from incidental cultural references (like the Bugs Bunny one) to more self-consciously deliberate ones (like in the “Baby Einstein” cartoons). It’s not that the latter are bad per se, but they do have a bit of a didactic tone about them rather than blending naturally into the overall piece.
My DD is currently reading the “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series, which were recently on the New York Times best sellers list. They are full of references to Greek mythology, but there’s a lot more accompanying explanation than what is found in classic children’s literature. The older authors assume that their audience is familiar with the source material so the allusions can be more subtle.
Frankly, the seven skills he lists — critical thinking, collaboration, adaptability, initiative, communication, analysis, and imagination – seem reasonable enough, but they are also so vague as to be unhelpful in informing schools about what to do.
This sounds more like a list of the seven habits of highly effective people. But these are skills one acquires after acquiring a good education.
I don’t agree with the word “after.” Is it possible to acquire a “good education” without simultaneously developing the seven skills? Wouldn’t those skills help students master content knowledge?
I’m with you on that, Deborah. No one disputes the idea that critical thinking, problem solving, etc. are essential components of education. The danger comes in the belief — acquired mistakenly or deliberately sent — that skills and knowledge are mutually exclusive. When that happens, it devalues the importance of content, which makes those important skills impossible. They cannot exist in the abstract.