Rick Santorum uncovers another liberal conspiracy.

[angus]

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/santorum-blames-liberal-plot-for-students-bad-history-scores-video.php

Another day, another entry for Rick Santorum's list of liberal conspiracies.

This time Santorum is arguing that the reason so few U.S. students perform well in U.S. history is because of "a conscious effort on the part of the left who has a huge influence on our curriculum, to desensitize America to what American values are so they're more pliable to the new values that they would like to impose on America."

Santorum was speaking to the Story County GOP Central Committee in Iowa, and referenced a report that found that only 13% of high school seniors nationally are proficient in history. Only 22% of fourth-grade students and 18% of eighth-graders were proficient.

"How can we be a free people?" Santorum asked. "How can we be a people that fight for America if we don't know who America is or what we're all about?"

He may be on to something.  There was a time when tests had a correct answer.  Now we're all touchy-feely and politically correct.  You can bet your ass that Koreans don't get hung up on political correctness.  That's why they outperform us whitekids on just about every test.

They used to ask, "If John wants to run 200 yards of fence, and he wants a fencepost every 10 yards, how many fence posts does he need?'  And the choices might be, like, A. 200  B.  20  C.  21  D.  210

Now, they they ask, "If Sanjay Upanishashad wants to run 200 meters of fence, and he or she wants a fencepost every 10 meters, how many fence posts does he or she need?"  Already it is unnecessarily wordy, what with the gratuitious subordinate clause "or she."  Then, they add insult to injury by giving "E.  19" as a choice, recognizing that Sanjay may have worked on a farm back in Uttar Pradesh and he (or she!) will know that a "Fence post" is not the same as a "corner post" and therefore, we should accept 19 as well as 21 as the correct answer.

I'm not a big fan of Rick Santorum, but in this case I think he might be exactly right:  political correctness is ameliorating our grading system.  In newspeak, and for you under-21 crowd, it is "dumbing down" our curriculum.

[angus]

He may be on to something.  There was a time when tests had a correct answer.  Now we're all touchy-feely and politically correct.  You can bet your ass that Koreans don't get hung up on political correctness.  That's why they outperform us whitekids on just about every test.

They used to ask, "If John wants to run 200 yards of fence, and he wants a fencepost every 10 yards, how many fence posts does he need?'  And the choices might be, like, A. 200  B.  20  C.  21  D.  210

Now, they they ask, "If Sanjay Upanishashad wants to run 200 meters of fence, and he or she wants a fencepost every 10 meters, how many fence posts does he or she need?"  Already it is unnecessarily wordy, what with the gratuitious subordinate clause "or she."  Then, they add insult to injury by giving "E.  19" as a choice, recognizing that Sanjay may have worked on a farm back in Uttar Pradesh and he (or she!) will know that a "Fence post" is not the same as a "corner post" and therefore, we should accept 19 as well as 21 as the correct answer.

I'm not a big fan of Rick Santorum, but in this case I think he might be exactly right:  political correctness is ameliorating our grading system.  In newspeak, and for you under-21 crowd, it is "dumbing down" our curriculum.

Conservatives criticize "political correctness" because they can't get away with overt racism or sexism anymore. If you really believe political correctness is "dumbing down" our curriculum, try giving a better example than "adding 'or she' is gratuitous." Without evidence you're just regurgitating the same conservative, anti-progress talking points adjusted for a mainstream audience.

Yeah, that's me.  I hate ns, chinks, gooks, wetbacks.  Pretty much everybody.

I admit it.  I'm a complete bigot and don't like anyone who isn't a white anglo saxon protestant, and since I'm not a white anglo saxon protestant I hate mself as well, and anytime I say anything negative about the government's policy, it's because I'm a full of self-loathing which I project on all humanity.  Moreover, since I'm a knuckle-dragging neanderthal and I"m not smart enough to recognize I need psychiatric help, I just go on hating and bashing the government for its policies which favor everyone else but me.

Thanks for pointing that out.  I'm so glad everyone isn't a Republican, because surely the world would be such a mess if everyone were as stupid and narrow-minded and uninformed as myself and my fellow Republicans.

[angus]

Oh, I had a good long rant prepared, but I see you posted...

Ah, I've invested so much of my anger into my diatribe that I'm almost sober, so I'll have to start drinking again.  Rather than waste all that effort, I'll post it anyway and get back to you later with regards to your recent post.



Evidence?  I just gave it to you.  I have prepared tests.  I have sat on many committees which fretted over this asinine sort of PC garbage!  I have seen the tests evolve over the 22 years I have been employed in higher education.

Oh, you twit.  You pulled my chain, you did.  I should quit while I'm ahead, but your superficial and predictable post--No, I have no idea who you are.  Don't recognize your username, but D-TX speaks volumes.  You surely must be a frustrated young punk.  And while I recognize that, I cannot let such insolence and ingorance pass for wisdom.

Yes, Rick Santorum says all sorts of strange things.  So that implies that everything he says is misguided.  Right? 

Wrong.  This is an example of inductive reasoning.  The schools simply don't teach critical thinking anymore.  This has been documented and lamented for some time.  Don't believe me?  Fine.  Find yourself another PhD and ask him.  (Or her!  Yes, I know plenty of well-educated women.  In fact, my dissertation advisor was a female, and I respect her very much.  So is my wife, also a PhD, also a university professor, and also a non-WASP.  And I respect her very much as well.  And she agrees with me.  Moreover, she was educated outside the USA and is able to look at our political correctness rather more objectively than I and has drawn many of the same conclusions.)   As a matter of fact, I have worked as a high school teacher--in Texas, of all places--after obtaining my BS in mathematics and before going on to graduate school.  Moreover, I am a huge supporter of public schools.  I know that sometimes it puts me at odds with other Republicans and LIbertarians on this forum and elsewhere, but in fact I have always maintained a very Confucian philosophy with regard to the education of our children, and I do not complain about taxes, no matter how high, when those taxes are used for our schools.

So someone who doesn't even live in the United States posts, "Rick Santorum..."  and all the sudden everyone jumps on his bandwagon.  Doesn't matter what the elipses represent.  If Rick Santorum said it, it must be weird an bigoted, or at best uninformed and radical.  But he's dead reight here.  We are failing our children.  And our Republic will crumble if we can't even speak openly about our problems without resorting to assailing the messenger.

Oh, you can bet your ass I don't intend to fail my child in this regard.  I'm on his case every night.  Make no mistake.  He makes the best grades in his class.  I'm very anal-retentive about that.  And so is my wife.  WE buy him math books and handwriting books at Walmart every time we go.  Yes, Walmart, that beastly monstrosity that sends American jobs overseas and writes US foreign policy.  He knows very well that he needs to continue to score the highest marks in his class.  He is six years old and already can play the piano very well.  Just a few minutes ago I had him play six songs.  Simple arrangements, but he's up to chords now.  Take me out to the ballgame, Alley cat, Be our Guest, etc.  And he's reading chinese and spanish pretty well, in addition to English.  I have no intention of letting the schools and our politically correct legislature fail him. 

I know your legislature has its head up its ass.  I know your state's schools are failing.  I'm well aware of its shortcomings in this regard.  But do not be presumptuous.  My state does not have that problem.   Nor does my city.  The cedar falls composite 4th and 8th grade reading and math scores are above the state average, and the state average is above the national average.  So don't bring your Frustrated Texas Democrat attitude to bear on my comments.  I can appreciate where you are coming from, but we have slightly different perspectives, we have slightly different aspects of involvement in the system, and I'd guess that we have slightly different maturity levels.  I know from whence I speak.  Yes, Rick Santorum is onto something here.  He may be a radical weirdo, but in this regard he has spoken to the fact that our schools are failing our children.  This is demonstrable.  We no longer are as competitive in the global economy as we were five decades ago.  We spend six times as much on the weakest among us as on the strongest.  There was a time when we put money into advanced programs for the gifted and talented.  Nowadays, in many districts, those students suffer while money is funneled into programs for the barely literate.  How many blind bus drivers should the city hire, after all?  You tell me!  Sure, some of the bone-headed policies of the GOP are responsible in part--especially in Texas!--but you are either ignorant or insensitive if you do not recognize that our national desire to bask in the warm glow of white man's guilt is also a major source of our economic decline vis-a-vis the developing markets of the world.

Look, I don't know what might be in Santorum's head.  Don't claim too.  But the fact that someone can put up a thread with his name in the title, and lots of otherwise well-adjusted people jump in with bandwagon comments without even trying to analyze the substance of what he might have said is further evidence that our schools are failing in their duties to teach critical thinking.  That may or not be due to the causes that Santorum points out--I suspect multiple causes and Santorum's explanation is expedient and political but ignores other causes--but at least he has made statements that are worth objective analysis, instead of dismissal due to their messenger.

[angus]

Well, I've read your most recent post, cowboy, and not only is it irrelevant with regards to the topic of the thread, it is perhaps more rambling even than mine, and that's no mean feat.  Neither Santorum nor anyone who posted in this thread has made the claims that you have set upon refuting, so it probably doesn't deserve a response.

I'll stand by my original comments.  If you care to debate the merits of Santorum's comments intelligently, I'm here.

[angus]

Angus is a fighter for freedom.

Well, I'd say a scrapoer for sanity.  A rascal for reason.  Coo-coo for Coco-puffs, even.

We have a link to a 52-second excerpt from a Santorum speech presented in a thread with a leering, tabloid title, put there by an extremely inflammatory and sensationalistic poster.  (Ever try to get a job at Fox News, px?  You're reporting style is right up their alley.) 

Now, Rick Santorum couched his analysis in language that I would not have chosen.  Then again, I am not running for political office in the USA, so I don't have to boil away shades of grey in a little crucible in order to be left with black and white soundbites, digestible to paranoid, overweight, underemployed American audiences.  So I can get away with rambling, thoughful analyses.

Nevertheless, what he said is true.  We suck at history.  You've probably seen the data that shows how many US high school grads point to Russia as the enemy in WWII.  And we suck at geography.  You've also no doubt seen the polls that show how few Americans could point to Iraq on a globe even as 52% of us supported the invasion.  And if you like to place blame--as opposed to, say, correcting the fundamental, underlying problems--then there's plenty to go around.  Bush's "No Child Left Behind" legislation certainly placed such a high priority on mathematics and reading, setting specific goals and offering material rewards for demonstration of proficiency in those areas, that geography, history, science, art, music, foreign language, and all the other subjects suffered from lack of funding and lack of focus. 

But the truth is that don't know our history.  And elevating historical figures based solely on superficial attributes that have placed them in underrepresented classes does no one any good, least of all those members of underrepresented classes.  Bush did few things right, but his recognition of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" was evidence that he wanted to at least try to rectify the huge education gap between these underrepresented groups and the mainstream.  But his insistence on pushing math and reading at the expense of other subjects--subjects like history and geography in which we Americans were already weak--was not the best approach.

It seems to me that Santorum was mostly trying to speak to a friendly audience and get them worked up.  You can't blame him for that.  Politicians of all stripes do that.  But if I look at that 52-second excerpt, and ask myself the question, "Is anything he said false?" then I'd have to answer, "No.  Poorly-worded, maybe, and overly simplified, but not false."  There is a view in primary and secondary education circles that we should take a new approach to learning, and that this approach should emphasize "inclusiveness" at the expense of proven, traditional methods.  In the long run, that approach may pay off, but it's an expensive and risky experiment.  There is a such thing as true inclusiveness, but enforcing equality on a cohort that is inherently unequal merely excludes all equally.  The chinese understand this.  Students there are tracked and segregated early on.  The Germans understand this as well.  And the French and the Koreans and the Argentinians.  We, too, understood it at one time.  There was a time, no so long ago, when "tracking" wasn't a dirty word.

One sure way to make all trees equal in height is to cut them all down. 

[angus]

Angus, perhaps we agree more than we disagree. I'm a 19 year-old "punk" with a tendency to be combative and use inflammatory language to prove a point.

Well, I'm a 44-year-old punk who likes to get tanked up and argue policy.  Especially education policy.  We don't have lots of those threads, but when we do I generally cough up my opinion.

Don't let old farts like me push you around though.  You are certainly entitled to your own opinions.  But "tolerance" is a sad goal.  "I tolerate you."  That's hardly a ringing endorsement.  On the other hand, it's probably better than "I do not tolerate you."   Still, political correctness is a poor substitute for genuine cultural sensitivity, and too often it gets in the way of honest debate. 

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with having foreign names in test questions.  (My own surname is Slavic, and I'm rather used to mispronunciations.)  And there's nothing wrong with having examples of girls as well as boys.  Today, for example, I took an American REd Cross CPR certification class.  I noticed that both the teacher and the voice in the video we watched never said "he or she."  It was refreshing.  When the teacher asked us to do something, she'd say "Now, each student should take his mannequin and practice the following steps."  In many examples, the video would say, "When a person does this, he is usually...."  And other times they'd say, "She does this..."   Mix it up a little if you like, and throw in some female examples.  Nothing wrong with that.  But keep it simple and gramatically correct.  Otherwise, it becomes a distraction. 

But back to Santorum, he's just saying that he thinks that we have let our feigned sensitivity get in the way of curriculum.  We certainly have let something get in its way. 

Welcome to the forum. 

[angus]

Malleable?  Maybe, open minded.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.

For example, we used to think that economic progress for all, or at least for the average among us, comes only with increasing democracy, increasing transparency, and increasing industrialization.  And for a couple of centuries all the evidence suggest that this was the way.  Then China wakes up after its four-century nap and shows another way.  Suddenly we are faced with the reality that there is more than one way to achieve peace and prosperity for all.  The American Model is not the only path.  It's good to let our schoolchildren understand this.  It's helpful to teach our schoolchildren to wrap their minds around exotic concepts, and a malleable mind lends itself to such wrapping.

But we're putting the cart before the horse.  It's sort of like Maslow's triangle on a large scale.  A sociological hierarchy of needs.  Just as an individual needs food before he can start thinking about shelter and clothing, and shelter and clothing before he can start to think about self-actualization, so do societies need the basics, before they can begin to flourish.  Sociologists have technical terms for these concepts, but I forget them.  Anyway, just as one cannot be expected to wax philosophic while his belly groans with hunger, neither can a population begin to contemplate the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of government while many of its numbers are out of work owing to the fact that it hasn't kept up educationally with folks in far-flung places who not only are better at solving problems, but who will do so at a fraction of the price that ours will.

We need to focus on our understanding of history and geography as well as math and science before we worry about the subtleties and nuances of relative morality.  You don't teach primary school children that Washington grew hemp or Socrates liked showing up at parties with nine-year-old boys on his arm.   You teach them that Washington was a stud a gentleman who established the two-term presidency, and Socrates was a brilliant philosopher who taught us self-reflection.  Later, in university, you can get into the gritty details of their lives, or the wounds they may have inflected upon others.

And while we're at it, would it kill them to learn to pledge allegiance to the flag?

Malleability in the absence of grounding is basically silly putty.  And you can't build a structure with silly putty.  You need a few bricks as well.

[angus]

I realize I didn't respond to your comments about the history textbook situation in Texas.  I think I probably agree with you about that.  We have had a thread about that on this forum, and I remember pointing out that Texas public school officials have a big effect on textbooks nationally.    So obviously we are all concerned about that situation.  I'm certainly not defending their decisions.  But you can't conflate that with anything Santorum was saying.  He seems to be suggesting a return to tradition, which is not quite what the Texas legislature did.  There, the state school board wanted to erase Jefferson from the books in order to make more room for Reagan.  I say put 'em both in.  There, they claim that Country music is an important modern cultural movement, but hip-hop isn't.  I say that they're both worth mentioning when you get to the history of musical forms.  There, they claim that Senator Joseph McCarthy was a major hero.  I say that we shouldn't call him a hero or a villian, but point out what he did, analyze its effect on our society, and let the children decide for themselves whether he was a hero or a villian, both, or neither.  I don't think you can automatically assume that Santorum wants the Texas School Board writing his children's books.  But he also doesn't want the Vermont School Board writing his children's schoolbooks.  It's fair enough.