FrankRep
07-30-2013, 11:51 PM
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51OBoCS90ML._SY300_.jpg (http://tinyurl.com/qaoq7ml)
Education: Assumptions Versus History (http://tinyurl.com/qaoq7ml)
Thomas Sowell, 1985
Book Review
How to Improve Education
The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/)
December 30, 1985
Dr. Thomas Sowell, the prolific and iconoclastic economist from UCLA, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, has turned out still another learned text. This work is a collection of essays in which Sowell, the thinker and the teacher, examines the problems and successes of education in America. In his preface, Sowell tells his readers: "The central theme of the essays that follow is that we cannot educate on the basis of assumptions." In Sowell's view, if true reform is to occur in the troubled American educational system, "we need to look at evidence as to what has and has not worked. We cannot simply 'feel' that this or that should be done." He correctly argues that in the past, social and academic reformers, in their zeal to force changes, have adopted unsound educational reforms based on erroneous assumptions and fashionable opinions. In retrospect, many of these reforms have inflicted more damage on students and on academic standards than the alleged evils that they were intended to stamp out.
In "Patterns of Black Excellence," Dr. Sowell examines seven top-ranked black high schools. He notes that during the 1950s and early 1960s when it was assumed that all "segregated schools are inherently evil", most "outstanding black schools were destroyed by white officials who were unaware of their quality." Sowell contends that black schools flourished during the "era of racial segregation" due to "the lack of interest ... by the all-white board of education." This benign neglect, he argues, "allowed wide latitude to black subordinates to run the black part of the system."
The Hoover scholar concludes that of the past success stories he studied, the common denominators were an administration and a faculty with a "dedication to education, commitment to the children, and faith in what it was possible to achieve." He adds that "Each of these schools ... maintaining high standards was a very quiet and orderly school ... where 'discipline problems' were virtually unheard of."
Tuition Tax Credits
In an important essay, entitled "Tuition Tax Credits: A Social Revolution," which first appeared in Policy Review in 1978, Dr. Sowell clearly makes a case for tuition tax credits. Beginning his discussion by attacking the well-cultivated myth that only "the rich" would benefit from tuition tax credits, Sowell charges: "The campaign of misrepresentation by the educational establishment has depicted the affluent as the chief (or sole) beneficiaries, when in fact the opposite is nearer the truth." He states that under the current system, even when parents are forced to pay tuition bills in addition to local taxes to support public schools, "enrollees in private education are not primarily the affluent."
Sowell compares the potential impact of tuition tax credits to the post-World War II G.I. Bill that "extended a privilege [college education] enjoyed by a few into an opportunity open to millions more." He writes that the establishment of tuition tax credits would open the doors of educational choice for many more parents and students, and that this "is precisely why it is being opposed and misrepresented by those whose jobs, pensions, and power derive from the public school bureaucracy." The public education lobby knows that with tuition tax credits, parents will be given a real choice, and "public school officials will lose the monopoly power they now hold over a captive audience."
Sowell On Campus
In an essay entitled "The 'Available' University," Dr. Sowell compares the modern university to Al Capp's hapless "Available" Jones. In the comic strip, residents of Dogpatch could give old Available Jones a few dollars and kick him in the pants to work out their frustrations. For Sowell, this is a perfect analogy for the modern university.
He laments the fact that the "apostles of relevance" have corrupted many of today's universities by forcing them to serve all known purposes (except education). Sowell writes that these do-gooders have "created a Frankenstein" when they recast the university "in the role of solving personal and social ills." He particularly objects to trendy black studies programs that were widely instituted on campuses. He observes: "After years of history being written as if blacks did not exist, suddenly their role was recognized, usually after a university building was seized. Suddenly, hastily constructed black studies programs began springing up all over the landscape, like intellectual shantytowns. Few things are more revealing than seeing white faculty members rationalizing and romanticizing the black studies program on a campus where the black students are staying away in droves."
Dr. Sowell argues that instead of wasting funds on assorted leftist causes, which merely make white elitists "feel noble," a faculty that really cared about students would return to teaching fundamentals. Toward that goal, he suggests "the abolition of academic tenure, prohibition of consulting fees, the destruction of the teaching assistant system, elimination of varsity athletics, and drastic cutbacks in enrollments."
Dr. Sowell continues by attacking rampant "paternalism" which he also finds on the college campus. He is disgusted that "some professors grade black students more leniently than they would grade other students, and many hesitate to flunk them, either out of humanitarianism or a desire to avoid 'trouble.'" For Sowell, a double standard in grading on the college level is anathema: "The market can be ruthless in devaluing degrees that do not mean what they say." But even worse, the practice "also devalues the student in his own eyes."
This book is not for everyone. But, if you have followed the writing career of Thomas Sowell over the years, or if you are interested in intellectually honest solutions to educational problems, this book is for you.
Education: Assumptions Versus History (http://tinyurl.com/qaoq7ml)
Thomas Sowell, 1985
Book Review
How to Improve Education
The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/)
December 30, 1985
Dr. Thomas Sowell, the prolific and iconoclastic economist from UCLA, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, has turned out still another learned text. This work is a collection of essays in which Sowell, the thinker and the teacher, examines the problems and successes of education in America. In his preface, Sowell tells his readers: "The central theme of the essays that follow is that we cannot educate on the basis of assumptions." In Sowell's view, if true reform is to occur in the troubled American educational system, "we need to look at evidence as to what has and has not worked. We cannot simply 'feel' that this or that should be done." He correctly argues that in the past, social and academic reformers, in their zeal to force changes, have adopted unsound educational reforms based on erroneous assumptions and fashionable opinions. In retrospect, many of these reforms have inflicted more damage on students and on academic standards than the alleged evils that they were intended to stamp out.
In "Patterns of Black Excellence," Dr. Sowell examines seven top-ranked black high schools. He notes that during the 1950s and early 1960s when it was assumed that all "segregated schools are inherently evil", most "outstanding black schools were destroyed by white officials who were unaware of their quality." Sowell contends that black schools flourished during the "era of racial segregation" due to "the lack of interest ... by the all-white board of education." This benign neglect, he argues, "allowed wide latitude to black subordinates to run the black part of the system."
The Hoover scholar concludes that of the past success stories he studied, the common denominators were an administration and a faculty with a "dedication to education, commitment to the children, and faith in what it was possible to achieve." He adds that "Each of these schools ... maintaining high standards was a very quiet and orderly school ... where 'discipline problems' were virtually unheard of."
Tuition Tax Credits
In an important essay, entitled "Tuition Tax Credits: A Social Revolution," which first appeared in Policy Review in 1978, Dr. Sowell clearly makes a case for tuition tax credits. Beginning his discussion by attacking the well-cultivated myth that only "the rich" would benefit from tuition tax credits, Sowell charges: "The campaign of misrepresentation by the educational establishment has depicted the affluent as the chief (or sole) beneficiaries, when in fact the opposite is nearer the truth." He states that under the current system, even when parents are forced to pay tuition bills in addition to local taxes to support public schools, "enrollees in private education are not primarily the affluent."
Sowell compares the potential impact of tuition tax credits to the post-World War II G.I. Bill that "extended a privilege [college education] enjoyed by a few into an opportunity open to millions more." He writes that the establishment of tuition tax credits would open the doors of educational choice for many more parents and students, and that this "is precisely why it is being opposed and misrepresented by those whose jobs, pensions, and power derive from the public school bureaucracy." The public education lobby knows that with tuition tax credits, parents will be given a real choice, and "public school officials will lose the monopoly power they now hold over a captive audience."
Sowell On Campus
In an essay entitled "The 'Available' University," Dr. Sowell compares the modern university to Al Capp's hapless "Available" Jones. In the comic strip, residents of Dogpatch could give old Available Jones a few dollars and kick him in the pants to work out their frustrations. For Sowell, this is a perfect analogy for the modern university.
He laments the fact that the "apostles of relevance" have corrupted many of today's universities by forcing them to serve all known purposes (except education). Sowell writes that these do-gooders have "created a Frankenstein" when they recast the university "in the role of solving personal and social ills." He particularly objects to trendy black studies programs that were widely instituted on campuses. He observes: "After years of history being written as if blacks did not exist, suddenly their role was recognized, usually after a university building was seized. Suddenly, hastily constructed black studies programs began springing up all over the landscape, like intellectual shantytowns. Few things are more revealing than seeing white faculty members rationalizing and romanticizing the black studies program on a campus where the black students are staying away in droves."
Dr. Sowell argues that instead of wasting funds on assorted leftist causes, which merely make white elitists "feel noble," a faculty that really cared about students would return to teaching fundamentals. Toward that goal, he suggests "the abolition of academic tenure, prohibition of consulting fees, the destruction of the teaching assistant system, elimination of varsity athletics, and drastic cutbacks in enrollments."
Dr. Sowell continues by attacking rampant "paternalism" which he also finds on the college campus. He is disgusted that "some professors grade black students more leniently than they would grade other students, and many hesitate to flunk them, either out of humanitarianism or a desire to avoid 'trouble.'" For Sowell, a double standard in grading on the college level is anathema: "The market can be ruthless in devaluing degrees that do not mean what they say." But even worse, the practice "also devalues the student in his own eyes."
This book is not for everyone. But, if you have followed the writing career of Thomas Sowell over the years, or if you are interested in intellectually honest solutions to educational problems, this book is for you.