Greg Lukianoff of FIRE emailed to tell me his new book Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate is out.
I have read part of it and it is a great read if you want to find out what is happening to free speech at college campuses in this country. All royalties go toward FIRE’s mission of defending individual rights in higher education.
This looks like an interesting book. And I have to agree with the premise from what I’ve read so far.
As someone who spent 20 years in education, including student teaching, substitute teaching, full time teaching, and part time teaching as an adjunct professor, I’ve taught at every level from first grade to sophomore college. And I can tell you for a fact that what we need is curriculum reform.
One of the most interesting classes I attended in college was History and Philosophy of Education. We studied curricula and tests from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Wow, the eighth grade then was the equivalent to a PhD program today.
We need to dump all of this new math, whole language nonsense, and get back to phonics, grammar, punctuation, and spelling, sentence diagramming.
I was teaching high school, and I realized that these students didn’t know grammar, punctuation and spelling. So that’s what I taught. The principal called me into his office and asked me why I was teaching grammar, punctuation and spelling. I told him, because these children don’t know it. He said, no, we teach whole language learning.
Okay, fine, so I wrote my lesson plans, which he read, based on whole language learning, but I continued to teach my students grammar, punctuation and spelling.
When my students took the TASS test, which is a state administered standardized test, three times as many of my students, who were low level students, passed than the advanced placement students.
The principal called me back into his office and asked me what they could do to meet my passing standard. I told him, you can begin by kissing my ass. You can start with teaching grammar, punctuation and spelling, sentence diagramming. Oh, and by the way, I resign.
Education is a joke today. It doesn’t teach essential skills. Money won’t solve the problem. We need curriculum reform.
My family owns a rather large real estate corporation down here. When we need to hire a secretary, we give her or him a simple spelling and math test. You’d be shocked at how many fail, can’t even score 80%. And most of them are college graduates. But they can’t even pass a simple spelling and math quiz?
We deal with high dollar deals. We cannot afford to make mistakes. We sell commercial properties, ranch properties, acreage, new homes, and repossesed homes. If I misspell a name on a contract, or invert numbers on a street address, or misspell the street name, that’s an actionable offense. Not only could I lose my license, but I could be sued for treble damages–that’s three times the sales price of the property.
I can’t afford to make mistakes like that. This is why we expect our secretary to pass a simple spelling and math test. And what are her responsibilities? She answers phones. She cannot give advice and opinions on real estate. She can only refer callers to a licensed realtor.
But if she does not know basic spelling and simple math, she doesn’t deserve a minimum wage job.
What we need in this country is curriculum reform. Money is not the problem here. The curriculum is.
GG, I have always thought that the crises in education has at least as much to do with parents as it does anything else. My thoughts are that with fewer stay at home moms and more families without dads the amount of time a parent spends with their child on educational pursuits has become nill.
I think teachers used to be viewed as adjuncts to the home education, and now they are viewed as necessary and sufficient for a child to become educated. So parents are not involved or really invested in their children’s education.
Along with this, it seems that when Johnny misbehaves, the mom tends to take the child’s side and attack the teacher. So there is a huge lack of discipline as well.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject if you have the time.
Trey
Thanks for the recommedation. I pre-ordered the Kindle version which will be downloaded tomorrow. Interestingly enough, I just finished Daphne Patai’s “Heterophobia” book concerning the rise of the Sexual Harrasment Industry on College campuses (and hence into society). Her book was published in 1998 so it will be interesting to read Lukianoff’s update.
I must say that after reading Patai’s book (because the situation has only gotten worse) I am truly disturbed and troubled. But I am still hopeful because I think our ranks are growing. And these books assist that process.