Aug

3

This may bring on another round of Fight Club; but, having just watched the Giants stay even with the best pitcher in baseball– Mr. Johnson of the Marlins– and then destroy Florida's bullpen, I feel even luckier than usual. As many readers of this site know, my Dad built what was at one time before it was dismembered, the largest text, test and academic journal publisher in the world. In the last 5 months of his life, when his kidneys were failing, he and I spent 2 to 3 hours a day on the phone. He said he had come to enjoy talking to and at me because I had remained as much of a pain in the ass to him as I had ever been; and, in the waning days of his life he found that exasperation was the only thing that kept his mind sharp and I was as good a supply as ever.

The primary finding of his 65 years in education as a student, teacher and publisher was:

There are only two factors that affect the intelligence (I.Q) of the student– The I.Q of his or her parents and the I.Q of the teacher; Nothing else–class size, text books, teaching methods, expenditure per pupil–has any comparable effect.

Here are a few of his other observations made in the years 1999-2000; I doubt very much his opinions would be much different if he were still alive today:

Intelligence is a form of talent; it can be nurtured but it cannot be manufactured.

Skills, on the other hand, can be taught. They are what schools are supposed to be for. The challenge is to find out what skills the student is actually willing to learn.

The failure of the present school and college curricula is that, for all of their perpetual changes of style (what else would the education schools have to study?), the subjects themselves are as completely irrelevant to the needs and interests of the students and their parents as Latin and Greek were for the children of Boston in 1875.

The public schools were invented first to corral the unruly children of the urban poor and second to make certain that the immigrants' children were properly cowed.

Americans continue to believe in "education"– against all the evidence that it is no longer is worth what it costs– because schools and colleges are now the biggest public works program in American history. No one can afford to say that the money is almost all wasted– except for the fact that schools do continue to give parents a place to send their children during the day and colleges remain the only apprentice program available to the NBA and NFL.


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