Over at Fordham’s Flypaper, Andy Smarick posts a remarkable piece that should be tacked to the bulletin boards of would-be ed reformers everywhere. It’s a brief reflection on Diane Ravitch’s 2000 book, Left Back.
If you’re not in the market for a dose of humility, this probably isn’t your bag. If read with an open mind, it’s sobering stuff for hard-charging reformers chock-full of certainty. But part of me thinks it should be required reading for anyone handing out big philanthropic grants or overseeing massive government education programs, especially those dedicated to innovation, like the much-discussed I3 program.
Hear, hear. Diane is a friend, and someone whose work I admired long before I met her, so I will not pretend to be unbiased, but I’m happy to see Smarick come to terms with the work of our greatest education historian and apply it to current efforts in education reform, a field intoxicated with triumphalism at the moment. Blame it on the blogosphere, but it has become too easy for “hard-charging reformers” to dismiss those who decline to ride the bandwagon as in favor of the status quo, ill-informed, enemies or just plain nuts. Diane has been on the receiving end of these slings and arrows in disproportionate numbers in recent years. Just about everyone who blogs on education champions a particular point of view, program or policy. As a historian, Diane doesn’t play favorites and she isn’t on anyone’s side. This drives some people over the edge. That’s their problem, not Diane Ravitch’s
Smarick, to his credit, gets it. “Ravitch’s lesson is a modest, even sage one: We need to avoid new ‘movements’ like the plague and give ‘more attention to fundamental, time-tested truths,’” he writes. And while he still doesn’t agree with her take on charters and assessments, after reading Left Back, “I certainly now better understand the roots of her criticisms of the Race to the Top’s favored strategies.”
My father, a first-generation American with deep blue-collar roots, did not suffer fools gladly. One of his favorite things to tell his son was “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.” Diane Ravitch has forgotten more about education than most of us will ever know.
The current reform community places a great deal of emphasis on youth and novelty–whether they admit it or not. Inspiration beats experience. Novel ideas that have not been fully tested win out over older ideas that have been poorly implemented. Eager young college grads with a fire in their belly grab the spotlight from longer-term veterans.
I’m all for youthful energy and inspiration. New ideas are important, especially if we want to wrestle with long-standing challenges.
But people are all too willing to write off the hard-earned wisdom of people like Ravitch, who have a perspective the younger folk often lack. History is not bunk, after all.
*Everyone* interested in K-12 education should read this book. It’s fantastically interesting and informative. It was probably the single most influential thing I read that made me shutter my lab and turn all my attention to K-12 education.
I keep learning from Left Back. I reach for it often. The book made sense to me when so little else did–when ed school jargon, district mandates, and fad after fad seemed loud around me. In this book I learned about some who had stood outside the movements of their time, people of wisdom, experience, and wit.
I agree with Claus–there is not enough value placed on wisdom. And there is no replacement for wisdom. No reform, no matter how well conceived, will do us a bit of good if wisdom is taken away.
And Left Back is filled with wisdom. Some of it is encouraging and some of it very sad. It shows schools that did quiet, good work, such as the schools in Winnetka, Illinois, under Carleton Washburne; it describes brilliant educators and educational leaders such as William H. Maxwell; and it shows the damage caused in the name of this or that reckless reform. But no matter how sad some of it is, the book sorts out the sense from the noise, and that in itself gives hope.
One of the things I got out of Left Back is the understanding that so much of what’s ostensibly new is actually very old; that many of the popular new reforms are warmed-over versions of what Teacher’s College was preaching in the 30’s. Also, the disturbing understanding that the dumbing down of our schools, teachers, and citizens began almost one hundred years ago. A lot of cultural and intellectual capital has eroded away in that time; it’ll be hard to build it back up. How can our current crop of teachers ramp up their teaching if they are the products of intellectually-impoverished schools? I rarely meet a fellow California middle school history and English teacher who has a solid grasp of his subject, or who really cares much about attaining one.
There’s a reason that German TV sports popular book talk shows and American TV does not.