Waiting for Lex Luther

If our education system is truly broken as is so often claimed, then we can ignore the Hippocratic maxim “first do no harm.” Doing something--anything at all--will be at least no worse than the status quo. Of course we should always strive to improve public education, but if public education is generally working, if the statistical measures that predict our doom are bunk (and I will argue in later posts that we have good reason to think that at least many of them are), then we have something to lose in considering sweeping education reform proposals, something quite precious. 

If so, we ought to be cautious about imposing “magic bullet” reforms such as those propagandized in the 2010 documentary “Waiting for Superman,” specifically charter schools and union-busting. It was the villain, Lex Luthor, who was the industrialist and mad scientist trying to impose his vision on the world to fit his schemes. It seems to be he likes of him rather than Superman to whom too many are looking for help in improving our system of education.

The notion of “America’s failing schools” or our “broken educational system” is a cherished dogma that few seem incentivized to question. Both Democrats and Republicans find it expedient for pursuing their ends. Democrats use it for seeking greater funding for schools which helps them maintain support from teachers unions. Republicans find it just as useful for fomenting opposition to unions and painting pictures of big government boondoggles to justify tax cuts. Education theoreticians depend on the myth of failing schools to help promote their various reform proposals. Even Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris celebrated for their skepticism of dogmas are quick to attribute America’s “failing schools” to those rare nutty school boards pushing intelligent design. They don’t have an ounce of their tauted skepticism to direct toward the “failing schools” slogan itself. It seems to be one-size-fits-all evidence for support of just about any agenda. The political echo chamber reverberates with the truism that American students rank among the worst educated in math and science when compared to industrialized countries of the world, but where does this notion come from, and is it true?

First consider that claims that the sky is falling when it comes to the preparation of youth to take the lead in the future are nothing new. Growing up in the 1980’s, the big fear in my youth was that the Japanese superior work ethic in schools and factories would drive us to second rate nation status. In the widely heralded 1983 report “A Nation at Risk,” author James J. Harvey summarized the sentiments of the commission members with these memorable opening lines: "the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” It went on to claim that “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." These words will certainly sound familiar to anyone in education who is at least as old as I am (40 years old with 16 years teaching experience). 

A generation after the report, these claims of mediocre education spelling the doom of American society in retrospect are revealed as no more than the typical complaints that every generation in history has had about the moral and intellectual failings of it’s youth. These are the complaints that Socrates had about the youth of ancient Athens, that our grandparents had about our parent’s generation and the ones that our grandchildren will no doubt someday have about their children.

If “sky is falling” predictions were so wrong 28 ago, what should make us think that they are any more likely to be right when such modern seers forecast decades into the future today? The Communists haven’t invaded. Japanese men in business suits haven’t taken over the world. (Our collective fears on that score are today directed at China and India) That doesn’t mean that our future will necessarily be rosy. Our own banker’s lack of ability to understand the risks they were taking surprisingly turned out to constitute a far greater threat to our economic well-being than any foreign power in recent years. We will likely be surprised over and over again by the future. One thing we should always expect is the unexpected. We should therefore have a lot more humility about our forecasts and recognize that we just aren’t very good at predicting such things. We should try to improve education without lending any credence towards doomsday predictors that may lead us to hasty and drastic measures with perhaps dire unforeseen consequences.