New Trends in Education That Really Aren't New

Everything new is old again. So is the case in certain American schools, which are overturning sacred modern educational ideology by re-instituting special classes for below-average students. In "Holding Back Young Students: Is Program a Gift or a Stigma?", Winnie Hu briefly reports on this trend and shows how it is igniting a firestorm among educators who have long rejected the traditional idea that students should be, in some cases and in certain subjects, educated according to their intellectual level. Here's the current scene:

With the increasing emphasis on standardized testing over the past decade, large urban school systems have famously declared an end to so-called social promotion among youngsters lacking basic skills. Last year, New York flunked 6 percent of its first graders, and Chicago 7.7 percent.

Now the 8,400-student East Ramapo school district in this verdant stretch west of the Palisades is going further, having revived a controversial retention practice widely denounced in the 1980s to not only hold back nearly 12 percent of its first graders this spring but to segregate them in a separate classroom come fall.

Predictably, Hu blames this situation on the Left Behind Act, favorite whipping boy of many education professionals:

[W]ith the federal No Child Left Behind law and a battery of state mandates increasing pressure on schools to raise test scores, efforts to end the longtime practice of promoting children based on age rather than achievement have taken on new urgency. Districts in Milford, Del., and Lakeland, Fla., are among a handful nationwide that have been experimenting with transition classes in recent years, though both dropped them in the face of parental resistance and, in Florida, concerns among teachers.

Hu provides a very telling quote that reveals why so many contemporary teachers and educators buck against the more traditional system:

“I had a hard time putting just the low-achieving kids together,” said Betty Fitzgerald, principal of Lakeland’s Churchwell Elementary, which ran a separate class for repeating third graders for two years in response to tougher state standards. “It’s like saying, ‘You all are low kids, and you all didn’t pass.’ ”

Here's the central problem, then: self-esteem. It's not so much the bottom line--in this case, what students actually learn--but what students feel that drives the ideology of many contemporary educators and teachers. Now, I'm by no means in a hurry to put students in situations where they feel bad, but my first concern for students is not that they feel good, but that they learn. Funny how our system sometimes loses sight of this aim, which I believe it is intended, funded, and tasked to fulfill.

In the process of education, one often feels bad. I've always felt bad when I didn't do well in school. To this day, I hate getting bad grades. It's unpleasant, furthermore, to have to work hard on difficult subjects. I've currently got a ton of books to read for a PhD class. Is that pleasant in the same way that, say, a basketball game is? No sir. Definitely not. But is the process of reading multiple books on an academic topic hugely helpful to me? Absolutely. Were other self-esteem challenging, character-building educational exercises of similar help to my mind and heart? They certainly were. If difficult educational tasks are navigated with care and support from parents and teachers, great rewards will be reaped by many students (though in today's massive schools, one can understand how teachers and educators would struggle to provide the help many challenged students need--are many of our public schools, perhaps, far too large for their own good?)

Will today's students reap similar benefits, or will they suffer from a system that often seems to care more about their feelings than their minds?

You tell me.

The Resurgence of Philosophy on the Modern College Campus

The New York Times has a story out today about the surge in interest in philosophy among contemporary college students. Here's the key quotation:

"Once scoffed at as a luxury major, philosophy is being embraced at Rutgers and other universities by a new generation of college students who are drawing modern-day lessons from the age-old discipline as they try to make sense of their world, from the morality of the war in Iraq to the latest political scandal. The economic downturn has done little, if anything, to dampen this enthusiasm among students, who say that what they learn in class can translate into practical skills and careers. On many campuses, debate over modern issues like war and technology is emphasized over the study of classic ancient texts."

There's much to analyze about this phenomenon. For now, it's enough to note just a very few things. First, I think that the interest in philosophy is a direct response to the lack of classes in religion and theology in many college curricula today. In schools that do have such programs, these programs are often not required, and thus many students simply do not take them. Yet though we may a monolithic idea of college education today, many students are asking the higher questions of life. Philosophy classes give them such an opportunity.

Second, we can note that while interest in philosophy is a good thing, as it tends to self-examination and the asking of important questions that only Christianity can adequately answer, it is also taught as a secular exercise by many professors. Perhaps such classes may still be used to point out the flaws, however unintentionally, in certain philosophical and theological systems. One can hope that this is so. It could also lead students only farther away from true philosophy, that which is based in and bounded by Scripture. There doesn't seem to necessarily be a clear-cut answer here, making this question an inherently interesting philosophical and theological question in its own right: is the study of philosophy in itself a positive endeavor? I'd be interested to see what others think. Note that I'm not talking about Christian philosophy here; I'm asking whether the mere study of philosophy at a secular school taught by a non-Christian is a positive sign in the culture. I tend to think it is, but I'm sure that others will disagree, and I'm guessing that they'll make some good points.

Third, whether this rising interest in the discipline is positive in a spiritual sense, I think that it certainly is in a social sense. That is, philosophy is a rigorous discipline that requires one to think, argue, and write well. It's much harder to coast in philosophy than it is in other disciplines. I would encourage students to study philosophy far before I would encourage them to study other wildly popular subjects like sociology or psychology. It's one thing if you want to work in these fields. But if you merely want to study a subject that interests, I would personally encourage students to study a more rigorous discipline like philosophy, history, or the like.

Of course, there's always another reason to study this timeless discipline, as found in the NYT article:

Jenna Schaal-O’Connor, a 20-year-old sophomore who is majoring in cognitive science and linguistics, said philosophy had other perks. She said she found many male philosophy majors interesting and sensitive.

“That whole deep existential torment,” she said. “It’s good for getting girlfriends.”

If the above didn't convince you, my single male friends, I've got nothing else for you.