Poor Elijah's Almanack: News reel - Sidearms and science

When I was a kid, movies included a newsreel. Here are some clips of amusing and unsettling education events.

It took the combined wisdom of the "departments of Education, Homeland Security, Justice, and Health and Human Services," the FBI, and FEMA, but the new federal school "emergency guidelines" recommend that I not bring a loaded pistol to my seventh grade English class.

While I agree that school security is a legitimate concern, and I'd like to think I'd give my life to protect my students, I'm not in favor of armed school guards. Given the unlikelihood of an assault, the possible advantage offered by armed guards is outweighed by the certainty of the negative changes children will experience attending schools that increasingly resemble fortresses.

I recognize the risks and the potential for terrible loss, but so does every parent who's ever given his children the keys to the car.

Given how often people are shot in their own homes with their own guns, it's hardly likely we'll make schools safer by distributing sidearms to English teachers. Equally sensible brainstorms include the district that trained students "facing a gunman" to "rush him," throw books and pencils, and "take him down." There's also the "weapon-proof school gear" collection, featuring a backpack that purportedly stops "ninety-seven percent" of bullets, provided students keep their backpacks between themselves and their assailants.

On the academic front, five states have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards, or NGSS. These new science standards "align" with the Common Core State Standards, or CCSS, and emphasize science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. The new standards reportedly provide students with "as many options and opportunities as possible," not to mention all the new acronyms and initials.

The science standards' similarity to the Common Core isn't surprising given that Achieve, a Gates-funded organization led by business heavyweights, was a principal partner in developing the Common Core, currently serves as "project management" for one of the two Common Core assessment consortia, and also "managed" the development of the science standards. Proponents nonetheless insist the science standards are the result of a grassroots, "state-led" process, the same way they describe the Common Core itself, which was definitely not the result of a grassroots, state-led process.

Diving into the politics of science, the new standards spotlight climate change as a "central scientific topic," answering conservatives' skepticism regarding human-induced global warming by substituting liberals' certainty regarding human-induced global warming. Critics also question the standards' stress on engineering, an emphasis promoted by corporate enthusiasts like Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Merck, and ExxonMobil.

Despite this declared practical bent, the "next generation" standards reassert reformers' flawed post-1970s approach to content. Proponents argue that since "information is available to everyone" via the Internet, teachers should no longer "deliver" content to students, but rather allow them to "gather" it for themselves. This ignores the fact that books have long provided more information than students could possibly assimilate, and that a teacher's job has always included leading students through that information so they understand it. Reformers demean content learning as "memorizing" and "regurgitating," but mastery of any subject begins with knowledge, demonstrated through the ability to cogently restate that knowledge. You can't skip that step.

Instead of a broad survey of science topics, an approach they consider "outdated," next-generation boosters favor a sampling of narrower issues and interests, with students leading a "critical examination of scientific evidence" while teachers "facilitate and monitor." Critics respond that the new standards "omit too much important science content knowledge" in favor of "hands-on learning," and that students therefore know too little to understand and evaluate any evidence. Despite reformers' glowing rhetoric, students can't engage in "real-world" scientific "practices" like "real scientists" unless they first know what real scientists know.

The standards' stated mission is to prepare "all students" for "demanding coursework, a college degree in the sciences, and a career" in science, including "English-language learners," "students with disabilities," and "students in alternative education," meaning students who have dropped out. To this end a "diversity and equity team" conducted "bias and sensitivity reviews" of the standards.

Ethnicity and income certainly shouldn't be a bar to science class, but no standards can guarantee success for all students, including those who lack ability, prerequisite knowledge, or motivation, unless you dramatically lower the standards. In their zeal to pretend that all students will succeed, advocates demand "major shifts in practice" for science classes, shifts which will, despite assurances, inevitably water down instruction for students of every ethnicity and income. This will only perpetuate the achievement decline that's plagued students, schools, and the nation for decades.

Finally, in a recent essay critiquing progressive math instruction, two professors challenged the prevailing reform contention that teaching basic arithmetic is bad because it inhibits students' "creative reasoning." The claim that schools can improve advanced mathematics achievement by skipping basic operations is as ridiculous, say the authors, as skipping factual knowledge when you're teaching biology.

Or putting it another way, skipping factual knowledge when you're teaching biology is as ridiculous as skipping basic operations when you're teaching math.

And yet we keep doing these things.


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