Toward An Educational Eschaton
Kelley, John
TOWARD AN EDUCATIONAL ESCHATON It seems everyone, from former Harvard President Dr. James B. Conant to Astronomer Harlow Shapley, has taken time to criticize American teachers and the Education...
...pays just as much as an M.A...
...Voice in the Back: "Brotherly Love...
...Why are students possessing education majors among the least able on college campuses...
...Lester Ward looked to experimental psychology to give man mastery over nature...
...Of course this excludes student teaching...
...Any perusal of recent doctoral dissertations will indicate this...
...The vast majority are satisfactory or better teachers...
...or "the extrensic dualistic organization of coordinate administration...
...Most graduate departments, except Education, will not accept an undergraduate grade average in the "major" below a "B...
...The careful research and experimentation of science have their place in any study...
...and, finally, land a job on the Education staff of a college instructing students in an art the teacher has not practiced for years...
...The mathematician, Charles Pierce, brought his "calculus of probabilities" to logic...
...Hechinger offers two good reasons: 1) they want to give an impression of wisdom, and 2) protection of their status as scholars compels them to make simple matters sound difficult...
...History thesis required research at Indiana University, The Library of Congress, The British Museum and Public Records Office, The Bibliotheque National, The Vatican Library and The University of Athens...
...If all else fails, the aspiring Ed.D...
...Usually these teachers graduate from a state teachers college...
...Candidate can send out a questionnaire, tabulate the replies and proudly accept his "well-earned" doctorate...
...It is a simple enough fact that a teacher's ability is not a linear function of the number of Education theory courses taken during his college or graduate school days...
...programs...
...Much that is done in the name of education research, however, is pedestrian and unworthy of the name of science...
...ESCHATON (Continued from Page 5) B.S...
...A Study of Factors Influencing Selection and Satisfactions in Use of Major Household Appliances as Indicated by Three Selected Groups of Married Women Graduates of the Ohio State University...
...Scorning the liberal arts, Spencer advocated the study of science...
...For some of those who wish to take their advanced degrees in an academic field there is no avoiding the Education department because of their poor to mediocre undergraduate records...
...The "educationist", pen in hand, enters a make-believe world inhabited only by fellow educationists...
...If he aspires to teach, he takes an academic major and, at best, tolerates the hours of education required for state licensing...
...dissertation's originality, scholarship, and contribution of new knowledge is compared with that of, say, a doctoral dissertation in history, the contrast is rather striking...
...the normative generalization reference cue...
...Blithely ignoring that any security problem existed during the Roosevelt and Truman years the texts emphasize the threat of McCarthyism never mentioning communist influences in various government departments and labor unions...
...Admittedly, I know of a number of poor college teachers, particularly lecturers...
...They are entrenched in control where they perpetuate their cause by inflated Ed.D...
...in economics or an M.S...
...Hechinger comments that "this technique is particularly important in the field of educational research, most of which would seem unnecessary if it were described in simple terms...
...Witness the recent study of high school history teachers in Indiana prepared by Maurice G. Baxter, Robert H. Ferrell, and John E. Wiltz of Indiana University...
...In view of the relative ease of the doctoral thesis, or master's thesis, easy entrance requirements, and lax language stipulations, is it surprising that most high school teachers prefer to take their graduate work in Education...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Only then will the Education Department rise from the muck...
...Vol...
...teach elementary or secondary school for a couple of years...
...Conant suggests that of the twelve to eighteen hours of "professional" courses, only the methods course is absolutely necessary...
...Why do Education departments give so much attention to professional courses while ignoring this more important consideration...
...In rhapsodizing on the dissent of the ultra-left and ignoring the validity of legitimate and effectual conservative criticism the "vogueish orthodoxy" is unconsciously indoctrinating students to an establishment point of view, denying them an alternative, and failing to teach them to make distinctions...
...If the teacher received his undergraduate degree in Education several years ago his troubles are compounded...
...A Performance Analysis of the Propulsive Force of the Flutter Kick...
...As a result, as was confirmed by a recent conversation, some teachers decline to do their graduate work in an academic subject because they feel they do not possess the time to make up the language requirement...
...Thus, my comments may not reveal any educational deficiency not already known but, hopefully they will express something of an outsider's perspective...
...They must revamp their curriculum, consolidate courses and seek closer harmony with the academic departments...
...Thorstein Veblen sought to describe the economic system in terms of evolution...
...Colleges and universities do not require education theory training of their teachers...
...11...
...is held in such low esteem when recent dissertations samplings included: "Recruitment, Selection, and Training of Custodians in Selected Public School Systems...
...Any layman happening upon a sample of Educanto quickly rejects it, repelled by its Frankensteinian proportions...
...What person can fail to be repulsed by phrases such as "the progressive familiar subcultural mental retardation...
...A recent I.U...
...The fundamental requirement of a good teacher is solid knowledge of his subject...
...Educanto is a language unto itself...
...John Kelley LOVE Prof.: "If I saw a man beating a donkey and stopped him from doing so, what virtue would I be showing...
...the situation response relationship reinforcement...
...Talk with teachers recently out of college...
...Leopold von Ranke founded a scientific school of history, emphasizing official records and statistics...
...At the present time I know of no evidence supporting the usefulness of Education courses for prospective high school teachers...
...At the same time people assumed anything sounding erudite and scientific was erudite and scientific...
...Why not take the "gravy train" when the M.S...
...Until recently and perhaps even today, the (Continued on Page 11) 5 Actually, the avowed adherents of communism and anarchism (in 1919) could call on the support of no more than a fraction of 1 per cent of the adult population of the country, but in business propaganda this fact was ignored and in the general hysteriait was overlooked...
...the cathartic construction projective dimension...
...This criticism intensified with the 1957 launching of Sputnik 1. Perhaps the subject has reached a saturation point...
...This requisite is simply non-existent in many of our secondary teachers...
...There are some educators who want to change this situation...
...A third reason for Educanto is that those addicted to it wish to impress readers of their scientific activity...
...On the contrary, there exists a substantial body of evidence indicating the insignificant contribution of these courses toward the prepara'tion of teachers...
...The same happens in education...
...2, p. 432) The Savants of the "vogueish orthodoxy" consider it superfluous to inform their students that less than one per cent of the Russian population in 1917 adhered to Marxist doctrine...
...Since the second half of the nineteenth century, the educated public has shown greater respect for the accomplishments of the physical sciences than for the achievements of the liberal arts...
...What of those teachers trained only in their subject...
...James B. Conant to Astronomer Harlow Shapley, has taken time to criticize American teachers and the Education schools of our universities...
...Public School Transportation Practices in Jackson County, Mississippi...
...or Ed.D...
...Failing to offer alternative opinions the Academy has fallen short of its ideals...
...required little or no foreign language study...
...in Ed...
...Why are the most vapid and redundant courses usually in the Education departments...
...By the turn of the century if a discipline did not at least make overtures to the goddess of science, people treated it lightly...
...Is it any wonder that the Ed.D...
...Hechinger justifiably makes fun of the literary aberrations created by educators in the name of research...
...James D. Koerner, in The Miseducation of American Teachers, refers to this involved pseudo-scientific language as "Educanto...
...When the Ed.D...
...Allen Nevins notes in The Gateway to History that Ranke also wrote some of the world's dullest history...
...To do so, they must delineate the boundaries of education, clarify the areas for true research and stimulate promising students...
...The Relative Effect of Mental Practice and Physical Practice on Learning the Tennis Forehand and Backhand Drives...
...Page 676) A reluctance to admit the ambiguous nature of issues filters from the texts of the "vogueish orthodoxy...
...in Ed...
...Generally speaking, they have nothing but contempt for Education courses...
...in physics...
...Herbert Specer applied Darwin's "survival of the fittest" to ethics and philosophy...
...Most (sic) people found his denials wholly convincing...
...Today's education problems are analogous to Gresham's law, "Bad money drives out good...
...When two coins of equal debt paying power but of unequal intrinsic value are simultaneously in circulation, the coin of superior intrinsic value will be hoarded, leaving the field to the intrinsically less valuable coin...
...Can anyone seriously criticize the teacher for taking the easier route...
...Why do educators avoid intelligible prose...
...Education is not a science but an art...
...Why are the incompetent teachers usually in the Education departments...
...The better student, the "intrinsically more valuable coin", is repelled by the pedantic language, the stifled intellectual atmosphere, and the questionable academic rank of the department...
...In an attempt to appear scientific, the term "social science" came to represent new approaches to old subjects...
...The answer and responsibility rest with perpetuators of the present system...
...Something of a pattern can be constructed for those who teach education in colleges and universities...
...Koerner confirms this observation...
...The largest group is college teachers...
...become administrators with an impressive M.S...
...Some texts raise the possibility of Alger Hiss' hanky-panky, but Caughey-May, the most religiously anti - anti - Communist of texts claims, "Hiss was hard to disbelieve...
...Fred M. Hechinger's "Never Call a Spade a Spade" in the November 26, 1961 issue of The New York Times Magazine prompted this article...
...The research required reading knowledge of French, German, Latin, Russian, Spanish and Greek...
Vol. 1 • November 1967 • No. 3
