Noam Chomsky Reflects on Contemporary Education

Despite the fact that it was fraught with a marking load I would not wish on anyone, my career as an English teacher offered many satisfactions, not the least of which was the opportunity to explore issues that are increasingly considered off-limits in the classroom: contemporary politics, the use and abuse of language for manipulative and sinister purposes, environmental degradation, etc., all within the context of the literature we were studying. However, by the time I retired six years ago, thanks to curriculum changes in Ontario, many disciplines became locked in a race to cover the material at the expense of what I would consider an essential part of learning: an open and informed discussion and the concomitant development of critical thinking skills. Structure began to supplant imagination, and I think students became the poorer for it.

I recently came across a very interesting interview on Alternet with Noam Chomsky, the famed linguist, political commentator, activist, and iconoclast. A man rarely heard these days in the mainstream media thanks to his seemingly endless capacity to challenge what passes for conventional wisdom, Chomsky reflects on his own upbringing and education, and has some very pointed observations about the current overemphasis on test results:

...the great educational innovation of Bush and Obama was 'no child left behind'. I can see the effects in schools from talking to teachers, parents and students. It's training to pass tests and the teachers are evaluated on how well the students do in the test - I've talked to teachers who've told me that a kid will be interested in something that comes up in class and want to pursue it and the teacher has to tell them - ' you can't do that because you have to pass this test next week'. That's the opposite of education.

Chomsky suggests that at its best, education is essentially subversive, in that it challenges the corporate demand for trained but passive and submissive workers. The cultivation of such an education model is regarded dimly by the elite, a fact he demonstrates by reference to a report and book produced in 1975 for the Trilateral Commission called The Crisis of Democracy. Its conclusion? ... the problems of governance "stem from an excess of democracy" and thus advocates "to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions."

Says Chomsky:

[The] commission that put together this book was concerned with trying to induce what they called 'more moderation in democracy' - turn people back to passivity and obedience so they don't put so many constraints on state power and so on. In particular they were worried about young people. They were concerned about the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young (that's their phrase), meaning schools, universities, church and so on - they're not doing their job, [the young are] not being sufficiently indoctrinated. They're too free to pursue their own initiatives and concerns and you've got to control them better.

That an independent-thinking citizenry should be regarded as a threat speaks volumes about the power of a real education. I'm glad I was a part of it for 30 years, and while I ardently hope that a reasonable balance can be struck between the needs of industry and the larger needs of society, I must confess that I am not especially hopeful about education's future.

Cross-posted at Politics and its Discontents

What Politicians These Education Officials Be

Caroline Alphonso, in today’s Globe and Mail, writes about a draft internal document from the Toronto District School Board that suggests officials are more concerned over ‘damage control’ than anything else when it comes to violence in their schools. This simply reinforces my contention that some of the biggest problems in education today are aggravated by the types of people that tend to hold positions of power – quasi-politicians, a label I think appropriate not only for elected officials, but also principals, superintendents, education bureaucrats, and directors of education . Read and decide for yourself. I have bolded parts I feel are especially relevant:

SCHOOL VIOLENCE
Board had a plan to limit safety-report backlash
CAROLINE ALPHONSO
January 29, 2008

TORONTO -- The Toronto District School Board prepared for the release of a damning report on school safety with a media strategy designed to "minimize and contain the damage to the board's reputation," including a press conference late enough to "pre-empt" views that may "contradict or detract" from its position.

An internal draft document obtained by The Globe and Mail yesterday links the expected findings of the report, commissioned after the shooting death of 15-year-old Jordan Manners last May at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute in North York, with plans for a black-focused school.

Public-school trustees will meet today to decide whether to proceed with a staff proposal on opening a black-focused alternative school in 2009.

"The board must position itself with unified and integrated messaging as it deals with the final report and other related issues in the public/media area, including Africentric schools ...," says the communications strategy document dated November 29.

The final massive report on school safety, written chiefly by Toronto lawyer Julian Falconer, was hastily made public earlier this month after it was leaked to most of the city's major news media. It described Canada's largest school system as rife with weapons, violence and sexual assaults, many of which go unreported because teachers and staff fear that speaking out will bring down the displeasure of their superiors.
The school board was scheduled to release the report earlier this month, with a media lockup in the afternoon and evening news conference.

"The timing of the press conference is critical as it will allow the chair and director to demonstrate leadership, anticipate questions that may arise from the findings, and take advantage of the opportunity to establish TDSB positioning to pre-empt individual stakeholders' views, which may contradict or detract from TDSB's position," the internal document says.

A separate document obtained by The Globe yesterday and dated Dec. 3 suggests that a school board committee already had hints of what would be in Mr. Falconer's report. "How will we address 'code of silence' concerns from the School Community Safety Advisory Panel?" asks the summary notes from a meeting of the school safety work.

Culture of Concealment - Part 2

In the last post I gave several examples demonstrating the administrative penchant for obscuring unpleasant truths. What are the effects of decisions prompted by policies of parental appeasement, avoidance, and concealment? Beyond the immediate impact of eroding student discipline and respect for rules, which makes the school less safe for everyone, there are much more insidious consequences negatively affecting the educational experience: staff demoralization, cynicism, and, in the case of impressionable younger teachers, the sense that educational principles are fluid and changeable, which, in turn, adversely affects their own judgment and development as educators. One final example will help to illustrate this.

In a specific department I will not identify, the practice existed of having a fieldtrip for the culminating task, which accounts for a certain percentage of the final mark. In this particular instance, because the students had performed so badly in the accompanying activities, the department head changed the assignment’s criteria so that everyone got at least 80%. Consequently, the teachers of students who did not go on the fieldtrip were instructed to make sure that their culminating task was designed so that those students would also achieve a minimum of 80%. Whether this perversion of education principles occurred with the knowledge and consent of the administration I cannot say, but the very fact that it happened should not be surprising, given the kind of environment and mentality arising from the weak leadership I have described here.

It would be easy for readers to dismiss each of my illustrations as isolated and insignificant events, but the truth is that most teachers have similar or worse stories to tell, but are not free to speak about them. Although boards would vehemently deny it, the pervasive organization ethos is that making things difficult or embarrassing for ‘the bosses’ is to invite, at the very least, career stagnation, and at the very worst, retribution, even dismissal. As we were often told by our local federation, criticizing your employer is grounds for dismissal. The fact that I am retired is the only reason I can bring these matters to light, and the reality is that I have presented only a highly selective version of what transpires in schools today; because I have no desire to jeopardize the careers of teachers who are still working, and the fact that some of the administrative transgressions I know of are based only on reliable second hand accounts, I have omitted much.

Without doubt, whenever misdeeds are brought to light, senior administrators and board officials will, as they always have, utter platitudes designed to placate the public, while ignoring opportunities for substantive change. The culture of concealment will, in one form or another, continue unless two things happen:

• Whistle-blower protection for teachers is enacted to spare them the retribution that normally ensues when people dare to speak out

• Board trustees begin to take back some of the responsibility for the day to day operation of schools they have abdicated to administrators and bureaucrats, both of whom often have an agenda at odds with quality education.

Unless and until there is a real desire for improvement at the top, things will, I fear, continue to deteriorate in our schools.

The Culture of Concealment Part 1

Thanks to the recent publication of the school safety panel report investigating violence in Toronto schools, the general public has received a rare glimpse into some unpleasant truths about contemporary secondary education. One of the newspaper headlines, ‘Fears of career suicide stopped educators from reporting violence,’ was followed by the revelation of a board–wide staff failure to report problems due to fears that revealing anything reflecting badly on the board would be “a career-limiting move.” Unfortunately, however, people living outside of Toronto have little reason to feel smug. This culture of concealment is widespread in public education today.

Although now retired, as a teacher for thirty years I witnessed my own share of questionable decisions and behaviour based more on political expedience than educational principle, and most seemed to spring from the almost pathological fear many administrators have of dealing with unhappy parents or having their schools look in any way less than perfect. Sadly, such a short-sighted philosophy incurs both immediate and long- term consequences. A few of my own experiences may help to illustrate.

Years ago I broke up a game of hackey sack in which one student was being physically assaulted by two others; after delivering them to the office with a full report, I was dismayed to later learn that no discipline had been meted out, as the physical abuse had “been part of the game.” When I insisted to the vice-principal that suspension was warranted, he protested that such action would require him “to answer some hard questions from the parents.”

For several years now, smoking has been banned on school property. It is the practice of bylaw officials to inform schools of the date they will be visiting for enforcement purposes. For a time at my school, however, when such a visit was pending, daily announcements were made warning the students that the ‘smoke police’ would soon be arriving. The common perception amongst staff was that these announcements were made to ensure that no student would receive a citation, thereby minimizing the chance of parental outrage.

A strategy of containment is at times practiced by wary administrators. On one occasion, a student who had urinated on the floor outside of the school’s photo developing lab was apprehended by a custodian. I subsequently learned that the perpetrator was ‘punished’ with a week of cafeteria clean-up duty, and when I complained that such an egregious violation of the school merited a suspension, I was shocked to learn that the offender’s parents hadn’t even been notified, as administrators were concerned that there might be “home issues.”

Bullying, despite board rhetoric about zero tolerance, is another problem compounded by administrative ineptitude. In one incident, a vice-principal told me I would be receiving a new student, three weeks into the semester, as she had been the victim of bullying in one of her classes. When I inquired as to why the administrator was victimizing her a second time by revamping her entire academic schedule instead of punishing the bullies, I was told that the identity of her tormentors was unknown. Two days later, I learned from a very reliable source that the administration did, in fact, know who they were.

Perhaps the worst example of administrative indifference to school safety occurred several years ago. A colleague was threatened with death by one of her students, which she immediately reported to the office. The student who made the threat was told that if he ever did it again, he would face suspension. The victim suffered tremendous psychological distress as a result of this event, and was off on a sick leave for a significant amount of time afterwards, fearful that the student would, in fact, carry out his threat.

In Part 2, I will discuss some of the effects of decisions prompted by policies of parental appeasement, avoidance, and concealment.

More on Faith-Based School Funding

If this topic interests you, there is a fairly comprehensive article on the issue in today's Globe and Mail.

Faith-Based Schools - Part 2

I came across a couple of articles in The Hamilton Spectator today on the issue of public funding of faith-based schools. One is by Eveyln Myrie, Tory's school funding plan is complicated and the other is by Zeynep Basal,No time for religious ghettos in new world.

Check them out if you are interested in looking at the issue from the perspectives of a Jamaican-Canadian and a Turkish-Canadian.

Public Funding of Faith-Based Schools

As a Canadian, I am proud of our multiculturalism. Although not a perfect policy, it reflects, I think, one of our defining characteristics as a nation. However, during the current Ontario election campaign, there is a policy being promoted by the Conservative leader John Tory that I cannot support. His election promise to extend public education funding to faith-based schools is ill-considered and divisive.

Currently, about 53000 children attend such privately-funded schools. Tory’s contention that the extension of funding will ‘bring them into the public tent’ and promote understanding and greater tolerance makes no sense to me. First, a public system, by its nature, is open to all, and at least in theory offers equality of opportunity. Faith-based schools cater to an exclusive clientele and refuse to hire those who do not share their beliefs or religious denominations. I doubt that would change were funding extended. One has only to look at the publicly financed Catholic system to see its discriminatory hiring practices which no one challenges them on. The fact is that an applicant must be a good practising Catholic with a note from the parish priest to even get an interview. Indeed, they even refuse to share school buses with them, even though transportation costs could be reduced significantly. Would it be any different with other faiths and denominations?

Secondly, Tory’s assertion that it will bring people together is a non sequitor. When I went to Catholic elementary and high school, I was rarely exposed to people of other faiths. How would the extension of funding result in anything different? Indeed, isn’t it likely that the current 53000 enrollment would jump considerably if people didn’t have to pay the tuition, thereby increasing educational segregation?

Finally, and most importantly, a proposal that would take at least a half-billion dollars out of the public system can’t be healthy for that system. I was reading in the Globe the other day that there are many schools that now have to rely almost exclusively on fund-raisers in order to acquire books for the library. Indeed, Heather Reisman, CEO of Chapters and Indigo, has embarked on a program to fill that gap. What more sacrifices to the quality of public education will have to be made if funding is extended to others?

Mr. Tory has said publicly that this is the right thing to do. My own thought is it probably had its origins in an ill-advised bid to attract votes in large multi-cultural centers such as Toronto. In any event, polls show that it is a very unpopular proposal for the majority of Ontarians.

Election Day, October 10, will see which view prevails.