Another far more damaging aspect of public education, which has also found its way into private institutions, is so-called constructivist education theory. Education schools have developed a veritable cult mentality supporting constructivism, no different in most respects from the credulous, quasi-religious groupthink mentality that clings to the anthropogenic global warming lie.
In the environment governed by constructivism, students are arbitrarily promoted to the status of learner which, with its concomitant demotion of the teacher to facilitator, linguistically and systemically erases the traditional teacher/student relationship that has driven classical education for centuries, and which is responsible for virtually ALL scientific, social and industrial progress experienced by Western Civilization.
Constructivism imposes a radical new model on the education environment (see also: Change). In this model students seek truths on their own terms while teachers act as “guides on the side”. If this sounds vaguely like a daycare center, you’re beginning to see the problem.
Classical education was once an arena where the knowledgeable and experienced transferred their knowledge and thinking skills to ignorant, unskilled minds. Tangible and often substantial rewards were offered to those individuals who excelled in assimilating, synthesizing and extending this knowledge. In the general sense, this process promoted individual mastery, as well as individual accountability and responsibility – the fundamental requirements for a society founded on individual liberty. In at least one specific sense – and per the topic of Mr. Lester’s valid concerns – it also promoted a broad, deep understanding of human social behavior, especially through the objective study of human history.
That all changed with the influence of Dewey, Piaget, constructivism, “new math”, modular scheduling, et al.
Through the influence of constructivism, contemporary education has devolved into an amorphous and artificially egalitarian “learning process” which eschews progress assessment (tests and grades) and often has no fixed curriculum; it transforms the student from a uniquely accountable individual, responsible for mastering a specific set of skills, to a dependent member of a collective, through emphasis on group activities and, often, group evaluation.
Since constructivist theory demands that objective assessment be minimized, and that much of the learning process be collective in nature, it provides no incentive whatever for the individual to assimilate and master the information and thinking skills that must be (and once were) a part of growing into adulthood and functioning as a productive, independent individual in a free society. By the time life proceeds beyond this new, historically novel academic experience, graduates have been effectively indoctrinated with a mindset that sees collective, pathological dependence on an omnipotent, therapeutic State as “normal”. Developmentally, this process replaces (and continues) the parents’ unconditional support for their child by offering unconditional rewards irrespective of academic performance. The product is an adult “adolescent” who, not surprisingly, engages in transference in the form of a feeling of entitlement, i.e., to continued, unconditional support from the world at large and the State in particular.
Philosophically, constructivism encourages “learners” to, literally, construct their own truths. This is in keeping with the narcissist notion that is central to the “Change” mantra, supported by many constructivist learning theorists – that is, that there are no moral absolutes, and reality is not something we can ever know because reality doesn’t exist outside our collective ability to define it. This is the foundation of moral relativism, and it’s become a fundamental part of contemporary public education precisely because it imparts a broken thought process to the “learner” – a process that fits the “intellectual” model of the postmodern citizen who rejects the socially cohering intuitive ethics that are bound up in cultural tradition, religion, national identity and respect for authority.
The outcome of all this constructivist poison, which we’ve been paying through the nose to have injected into our public education system for decades, is wholly predictable.
The graduates of a constructivist education system are guaranteed to be functionally illiterate, innumerate, ignorant of history and virtually incapable of critical thinking. They are also guaranteed to posses enormous (and dangerous) reserves of unwarranted self-esteem after years of having been rewarded regardless of how they actually perform academically. At the same time, those “educated” under the collectivizing rubric of constructivism are also guaranteed to hold a favorable view of collectivist social mechanisms like “universal” health care, welfare, infinite extensions to unemployment benefits, Social Security, unions and, above all, a sense of entitlement.
This predictable outcome completely and accurately describes the product of contemporary public education. And it’s no accident, because it completely and accurately describes the type of person most accommodating to an elitist, overweening, unaccountable government – such as the one which currently resides in Washington. Through constructivism – which is nothing short of active, purposeful sabotage of traditional, classical education – the education process has degenerated to fit the needs of the totalitarian super-State, in direct support of Socialism’s long march through American institutions.
Additional information on this phenomenon is archived here.
