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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels September 7, 2004 Public education moving in wrong direction By Michael L. Hays Ashland Recent test scores show Ashland's schools not only passing minimum standards, but also surpassing most other Oregon schools. To many, the scores speak for themselves and support civic and parental pride. To some, they reflect the city's socio-economic and cultural advantages. To few, they represent distractions from the sorry state of contemporary education even in the best of school systems. Consider Ashland's HS English curriculum (but ignore its vacuities). It more likely satisfies teachers and students than serves subject or society. First, in many courses, teachers select different works by genre. So the curriculum is idiosyncratic, not coherent, in its coverage of world, English, or American literature in historical literary context. Second, no HS English curriculum responsible for and serious about shared literacy offers random, trivial electives like "Reading for Pleasure," "Contemporary Best Sellers," "The Creation of Middle-Earth," and "Science Fiction" - all involving works of dubious cultural or civic value in school. Instead, schools should abandon a curriculum of teach-to-the-test, stand-alone works in required courses and faddish or fun books in elective courses (proper for students' free time). Schools should provide what they alone can provide: instruction in a common curriculum of works of proven merit to be taught in value-adding ways by competent, confident, committed teachers. This cultural literacy relies on language literacy. The skills required by writing are reciprocals of, but harder to master than, those required by reading. Yet grammar and composition get lip-service, mainly to placate the public. Most teachers do not know the basics of grammar or composition, cannot and so do not teach what they do not know, and, in self-serving rationalization, denigrate their value for various bogus reasons. Of all teachers, English teachers alone lack respect for and expertise in the fundamentals of their field. Instead, they rely on the fact that most students are native speakers and assign - so they need read and grade - few papers. No practice, no perfection. Ashland is not alone in continuing the decades-long dumbing down of the curriculum even as it prepares students to pass tests giving fraudulent assurance of an education which they do not have. As teachers do not require that students acquire mastery of systematic knowledge and fundamental skills, so students engage in a cynical game of credentialism in which showing up, going through the motions, and making nice entitles them to good grades, diplomas, and recommendations. Bad lessons taught and learned. Advantaged Ashland sends some graduates to colleges, mostly mediocre ones. It has no more reason for pride in its schools than do less advantaged cities. Here as elsewhere, schools cater to the political and PTA crowds, and those crowds are proud. But being among the best of a bad lot is no big deal. The larger, longer-term effects of a dumbed-down education we see everywhere. Americans say that they are concerned about jobs going abroad. But they blame those now doing what their grandparents did: studying hard and working hard. They do not require that their children do the only job most children now have to do: study and learn. Americans also say that the political process is demeaning and devoid of meaning, with little regard for information and issues. Then, reading or viewing, they skim the news to savor features or sports, and vote on the basis of a tabloid mentality trading in gossip and snippets. So a dumbed-down education has created a slowed-down economy and a dim-witted electorate. Ironically, the educational values even of liberal Ashland replicate those well represented by George Bush, a non-reader, non-writer, non-thinker, non-achiever: enjoy, go easy, get by, rely on daddy, let others sweat. Michael Hays has a Ph.D in English from the University of Michigan and is the author of, "Shakespearean Tragedy as Chivalric Romance." DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams