Multicultural Express Rumbles Into Chesterfield
Wednesday, March 24, 1993
By Robert Holland
"This is fake reform -- PC junk --that profits no one except curriculum
consultants peddling their wares to gullible educrats."
Computation is a basic skill, as is phonics. In the Brave New World
Order of education restructuring, such old-fashioned basics rank way below
politically correct attitudes, multiculturalism, and pupil self-esteem on the
priority scale.
Still, one simple two-step calculation is entirely in order for the so-called
Outcome Based Education that Virginia's Department of Education is so determined
to spread across the Commonwealth:
(1) How much is this massive makeover going to cost?
(2) What return can taxpayers expect on their, ahem, "investment"?
Extrapolating figures from a Wharton School of Economics study in
Pennsylvania, the Virginia Taxpayers Association last week estimated that OBE
could increase education costs across the state as much as $500 million.
Is that figure off? Would the actual cost of teacher retraining, new
textbooks, new tests, etc., be less than other education projects?
Or is the stage being set for a tax increase of Clintonesque proportions?
Mum's the word from DOE. Before the state goes one step further with
OBE, a.k.a. World-Class Education, its leaders should have to talk cost,
honestly.
As for return on the dollar, the shocking truth is that OBE -- which is
largely about inculcating the kinds of attitudes that infest National Education
Association conclaves -- is entirely experimental. There are no data to
show that it advances learning. There is, in fact, evidence to the
contrary. In Chicago, for instance, black parents sued educrats for
malpractice, charging that OBE had turned their elementary school into a
"factory of failure." The district school board later dropped OBE after
confirmation that test scores had plunged.
Meanwhile, Virginia educrats -- with compatriots in 30 other states -- are
working up a full head of steam despite their claims that everything's in draft
form and nothing's final. Yesterday DOE held the latest in a series of
public TV workshops on OBE -- this one on, uh-huh, "Overcoming Barriers to
School Restructuring." And it has distributed $1.5 million for early
childhood (ages 4-8) "demonstration schools" in Danville, Roanoke, Albemarle,
Gloucester, Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Prince Edward, Winchester, Wise, Prince
William, Stafford, and Hanover.
Chesterfield County is one of the school systems rushing to embrace the
attitudinal approach ahead of the state's timetable. That's hard to
figure, given the excellence the county's schools have achieved by stressing the
basics. A radically revised K-12 social studies curriculum, scheduled to
begin a phase-in this fall, typifies the new paradigm:
"We have designed this program," the curriculum committee proudly stated, "to
enhance students' self-worth and their appreciation of a diverse and
ever-changing world." The approach is "interdisciplinary" and
"multicultural." Social studies used to be about basic history, geography,
civics. Now, it's all about "global citizenship."
A 3-inch-thick manual lays out the New Social Studies in exquisite detail.
Here is a small sampling of suggested activities:
*Fourth-graders studying "the first Americans" will be invited to make a mask
and create a dance to participate in an Aztec religious ceremony (sans human
sacrifice one presumes) -- this, ironically, in a school system that recently
banned voluntary baccalaureate services. Evidently religion is hunky-dory
if it is "multicultural." *Fifth-graders will study the Americas of the 20th
Century by focusing on three persons: Cesar Chavez, Eleanor Roosevelt, and
Colin Powell. So goes the Maya Angelou Grand Diversity Parade: a
Hispanic, a woman, a black. White males like Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and
Dwight Eisenhower are mere bystanders compared with such towering figures as a
union boycotter of grapes and lettuce. Students will research various
labor unions, including those for boilermakers, electrical workers,
firefighters, mine workers...and teachers.
*In high school, each student will be compelled to perform 20 hours of
community service annually. The teacher will decide what constitutes service.
Projects with the homeless or tree-huggers are among the possibilities.
Somehow I doubt that volunteering to help Concerned Educators Against Forced
Unionism would cut it.
* In studying ancient Greece, ninth-graders could "write a newspaper article
with the headline, "Gloria Steinem Addresses Women's Group in Sparta."
The issue is not the status quo vs reform. It is real reform vs. fake
reform, education vs. political indoctrination. This is fake reform --PC
junk -- that profits no one except curriculum consultants peddling their wares
to gullible educrats.
What works? The November, 1991, issue of The Atlantic Monthly examined
the relatively few schools that did not -- repeat not -- experience the 80-point
plunge in SAT verbal scores that occurred in education generally from 1963 to
1980. The study showed that those consistently high-quality schools had
these stands in common:
*They never abandoned a traditional liberal-arts curriculum to chase Sixties'
fads like "relevance." They continued to stress English grammar and
vocabulary, as well as rigorous math.
*They also continued to group students by ability in as many disciplines as
possible. The contrast here could not have been more vivid: Schools
that insisted (as OBE doctrine does) on classes of widely divergent abilities
had the sharpest achievement drops. Those that maintained the homogeneous
grouping -- thus tending to the needs of gifted and slower students alike --
kept performance high.
OBE is a train wreck happening in slow motion. Must there really be
another crack up, and billions more wasted, before the bitter lesson is learned
again?