The Function of Pre-College Education

The Spring 1996 catalog of scholastic offerings at Stony Brook's School of Professional Development and Continuing Studies includes the following gem of an opportunity for the truly progressive Three Village teacher. Referenced as CEE 598:21, the course is entitled Topics in Education - Cultural Values in School. Described as exploring "from various political perspectives the frequently contested values of five broad areas of importance to education: multi-culturalism, political correctness, national standards, business and technology, and religion...[in addition, student teachers] will address the larger question of whether the primary function of school should be to enhance economic competitiveness, increase political participation, or bring about social change." Whoa!

Does that bother you? I hope so. It could help to explain why education in America has come to represent failure with a capital "F." It's the thinking that goes into making education degree holders and, for some of them at least, a raison d'ètre. But the ideology's infinite possibilities for classroom ponderables takes from the finite time available for instruction. For example, the inclusion of multicultural references in every manner of presentation from mathematics to motor vehicle repair causes information formerly provided to be cast aside, as though now irrelevant. That it is not smart, only politically fashionable amongst educrats, with enormous short and long-term economic and social costs.

Nor should our schools be used to develop an emerging army of political activists or to bring about social change perceived as "most correct" by the National Education Association or the New York State Union of Teachers. Plumbers plumb, judges judge, runners run and teachers should get out of the parenting, political and social engineering businesses and just teach. To do anything more illustrates hubris, anything less the unconscionable; while either invites eventual public wrath.

Our primary and secondary schools should provide but two things: "tools" and inspiration. Both being useful to life-long-learning. "Tools" with which to read, write, calculate, argue and refute. Inspiration in the form of a desire to sharpen, expand and utilize those attributes. All else desirable will follow.

The learned find their own way, without direction from pedagogues.