A Teacher’s Perspective on What’s Wrong with Our Schools · Mathematics curriculum for decades and appeared in widely used ... to the Golden Gate Bridge—teachers often “teach”

Cato Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Winter 2018). Copyright © Cato Institute. All rightsreserved.

Peter McAllister taught mathematics and social studies at West Islip High Schoolin Long Island, New York. Before becoming a teacher, he was a Vice President ofCitibank. He was also a cofounder of the American Renaissance School, a for-profithigh school that was located in White Plains, New York. The author would like tothank Ronald Pisaturo, James Bencivenga, Donna Wilder, and Donald Dutkowskyfor their insights during the preparation of this article.

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A Teacher’s Perspective on What’sWrong with Our Schools

Peter McAllister

The American public has been aware of the poor performance ofour schools since the Reagan Administration published A Nation atRisk: The Imperative for Education Reform in 1983. Since then, edu-cational reformers have engaged in several major programs, such asthe No Child Left Behind Act and the Common Core StateStandards Initiative. Despite these efforts, the performance of ourschools is still unsatisfactory. We have one of the highest levels ofeducational spending per student in the world, yet American students’ performance in international comparisons of educational quality is consistently mediocre. According to the NationalAssessment of Educational Progress (2017), only 25 percent ofAmerican 12th grade students are proficient in math, 22 percent areproficient in science, and 12 percent are proficient in U. S. history.

Members of several professional groups, including economists,psychologists, teacher union representatives, public policy analysts,and politicians, have opined upon our educational policies fordecades. Teachers, on the other hand, have been virtually silent. Yetteachers have direct experience of the practical consequences of oureducational policies, and are in a position to identify problems in our

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schools that may not have been discussed adequately in the publicforum.

Based upon my own teaching experience, I believe that the dis-couraging test performance of American students is a symptom offundamental problems in our schools. When I taught mathematicsand social studies in a public high school, I observed the followingcharacteristics in many of my students:

• A nonconceptual mentality. Students could not integrate theinformation that they learned into a comprehensive under-standing of a subject. Because they could not comprehend theirsubject matter, they simply memorized it.

• A lack of independent thought.When drawing conclusions, stu-dents rarely relied on their own informed judgment. Instead,they either relied on their emotional reactions or uncriticallyadopted the opinion of the group.

• Ethical expediency. Students frequently cut corners for the sakeof some short-term gain. If they thought that the rewards werehigh enough, students violated rules that they would not haveviolated otherwise.

In this article, I argue that the policies and practices that engen-dered these characteristics in my students are based upon the peda-gogical principles of “progressive education”—that is, theeducational philosophy that has dominated mainstream Americaneducation for the past century. Although progressive educationended as a formal movement in the 1950s (Cremin 1961: 347–53),state departments of education have ensured that progressive educa-tional principles have remained firmly entrenched within ourschools. These principles, applied faithfully by American educatorsfor generations, have produced students who do not think, whodo not question, and who do not care about what is right or wrong.

Nonconceptual MentalityStudents have difficulty learning to think conceptually because

many of our curricula violate a fundamental principle of epistemol-ogy: the hierarchical structure of knowledge.

In her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Ayn Rand (1966)identified a crucial aspect of conceptual knowledge: concepts havea hierarchical structure. Higher-level concepts are derived from


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simpler, more basic concepts. For example, it is impossible for a childto grasp the concept of “furniture” without first grasping more basicconcepts from which the concept furniture is derived such as “bed,”“table,” “chair,” and so on. There is a necessary order in the sequenceof abstractions that a child must follow to form this concept. Thisnecessity of order applies to every concept. A higher-level concept,such as “electron,” requires a lengthy, complex sequence of abstrac-tions. Each step in this sequence must be performed in a hierarchi-cal order. If any step is omitted or not performed properly, theresulting idea cannot be considered valid conceptual knowledge.

This aspect of Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts has a clear pedagog-ical implication: because there is a necessary order in which conceptsare formed, there is a necessary order in which concepts must betaught. As Lisa VanDamme (2006: 59), the headmistress of theVanDamme Academy, has pointed out, “An abstract idea—whethera concept, generalization, principle or theory—should never betaught to a child unless he has already grasped those ideas that nec-essarily precede it in the hierarchy, all the way down to the percep-tual level.” Because the order of presentation of conceptualknowledge must follow the principle of hierarchy, a proper educationrequires a structured curriculum that also follows this principle. Ifthe proper order of presentation of a subject is violated, it is oftenimpossible for a child to integrate new information into his knowl-edge base.

Progressive educators, however, have rejected structured, hierar-chical curricula. William Heard Kilpatrick, who was reputed to havetrained 35,000 teachers during his tenure at Teachers College,Columbia University (Ravitch 1983: 50), was outspoken in his antipa-thy toward any structured curricula. Kilpatrick (1925: 266) advocatedan education that “would stress thinking and methods of attack andprinciples of action” rather than curricula that he derisively referredto as “subject matter fixed-in-advance.” This rejection of fixed curric-ula led to the separation of thinking methods from content, with con-tent relegated to a secondary status. Under the influence ofKilpatrick and other progressive educators, teachers gradually aban-doned courses with content presented in a logical hierarchy.

The U.S. experience with mathematics education is an obviousexample of this development. State departments of education beganto mandate instruction in “New Math” in the late 1950s and, by thelate 1960s, the New Math curriculum had become prevalent in our


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schools. As Morris Klein (1973) has pointed out, this curriculumrepeatedly violated the principle of hierarchy. Elementary school stu-dents struggling to grasp the rudiments of arithmetic have had tolearn aspects of number theory that are meaningless to children oftheir age. For example, in many schools, instead of teaching subtrac-tion by simply counting and removing quantities of real objects, suchas tiles or beads, elementary school teachers taught their studentsthat the operation of subtraction entails the addition of a negativequantity. It took the world’s leading mathematical thinkers a millen-nium to develop the concept of a negative quantity, and another millennium to accept it (Klein 1973: 40); yet mathematics teachershave expected children somehow to master this counterintuitive con-cept in a matter of weeks. Similarly, even though it took 22 centuriesfor mathematicians to notice that Euclid’s Elements rested on more fundamental axioms than Euclid stated, geometry teachers haveexpected teenagers not only to grasp this shortcoming, but also tounderstand why they must use abstruse axioms to prove the simplestof theorems. New Math curricula have flitted across exotic, unrelatedtopics such as set theory, locus, symbolic logic, and linear algebrawithout providing students with any indication of the practical appli-cation of these topics or a logical context within which to integratethem.

To get an idea of how esoteric New Math curricula have been,consider the topic of material implication. This topic deals with con-ditional sentences, which are statements in the form of “if . . . , then.”Material implication obviates any causal relationship in these state-ments. Material implication holds that the only time a conditionalsentence is false is when the antecedent (the “if” part of the sentence)is true and the consequent (the “then” part) is false. All other condi-tional sentences are true. Thus, a sentence such as “If Paris is the cap-ital of France, then the sun rises in the West” is false, not because itmakes no sense, but because the antecedent is true (Paris is the cap-ital of France) and the consequent is false (the sun does not rise inthe West). On the other hand, the sentence “If the sun rises in theWest, then Paris is the capital of France” is a true statement. Tryexplaining that to a class of ninth graders! Material implication firstgained notoriety when Bertrand Russell included it in PrincipiaMathematica (Whitehead and Russell 1910: 98). Since then, philoso-phers have challenged the utility of this logical formalism (Blanshard1939: 374–81). As you may imagine, most well-educated adults


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would have a great deal of difficulty understanding this topic. Youalso may be wondering what any of this has to do with mathematics.Yet material implication was part of New York State’s IntegratedMathematics curriculum for decades and appeared in widely usedmathematics textbooks (Dressler and Keenan 1989: 147–51). TheNew York State Regents examinations regularly included questionsinvolving material implication, or topics derived from it, until January2009. It has also been part of the curricula of school districts inCalifornia and several other states. Material implication is not part ofthe Common Core standards, however, and it is no longer includedin the mathematics curricula of either New York or California.

By discarding the hierarchical, logical chain that connects mathe-matical abstractions to physical reality, American educators have sev-ered mathematics from the real world in the minds of many of theirstudents. I encountered the consequences of this separation shortlyafter I began teaching high school mathematics. When I tried toshow my students how the topics we were covering have real world,perceptual foundations, students typically demanded that I stop andjust give them a formula that they could memorize. They had nointerest in grasping the hierarchical chain that connects mathemati-cal principles to observable facts. Based upon their prior mathemat-ics courses, my students had come to expect instruction inmathematics to consist of manipulating a series of strange little sym-bols whose meaning defy comprehension. I also discovered that,because mathematics teachers have learned this subject the sameway they teach it, many mathematics teachers do not understand thereal world foundation of mathematics either.

Consequently, mathematics education in our schools has oftendevolved into a process of cramming formulas into students’ minds,with mnemonic devices substituting for instruction. For example,instead of teaching the derivation of the quadratic formula—a for-mula indispensable in the design of objects ranging from flashlightsto the Golden Gate Bridge—teachers often “teach” this formula bysinging it with their students to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel.Mathematics teachers have relied on similar approaches to teach top-ics in number theory, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry.

Before I became a teacher, I spent more than two decades settingup and managing departments that specialized in using appliedmathematics to solve business problems for a multinational bank.During that period, I often had difficulty finding Americans who


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possessed the mathematical skills that I required. Shortly afterbecoming a teacher, I learned why: instruction in our state-mandatedmathematics curricula has caused this subject to become unfath-omable to many young minds.

The opposition to hierarchical curricula on the part of progressiveeducators has permeated instruction in other subjects as well. Aproper history curriculum should begin with objective facts and pro-ceed in a chronological sequence, so that students can see howchoices made by people in one period cause outcomes in the next.When education historian Diane Ravitch (1985) visited a local NewYork City high school in the mid-1980s, she was surprised by thecomplete absence of traditional, chronological instruction in history.The department chairman informed her that, since the late 1960s,the school had followed the guidelines of the New York StateEducation Department, which was to deemphasize chronologicalhistory and to focus instead on topical issues and social science concepts.

A teacher in the same school pointed out that he did not teach his-tory because it did not help his students pass the New York StateRegents examination in social studies. Under the influence of pro-gressive educators, such as John Dewey and Harold Rugg, school dis-tricts have eliminated history departments and replaced them withsocial studies departments. In addition to teaching courses in history,many social studies departments now offer courses in economics,sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Ravitch noted that theintroduction of these other disciplines caused considerable confusionamong teachers and administrators as to what constitutes a propercurriculum; it also left little time for hierarchical, chronologicalinstruction in history.

Like mathematics courses, science courses should begin with per-ceptually verifiable information before proceeding to higher levels ofabstraction. Instead, for decades, science teachers have plunged stu-dents into worlds of subatomic particles, obscure biologicalprocesses, and ineffable forces with little attempt to show how suchworlds were discovered from more basic knowledge or how the infor-mation that students are expected to learn has practical, observableconsequences. VanDamme (2006) has pointed out that this type ofinstruction in science paradoxically requires a nonscientific act offaith on the part of the student. For example, when a child is pre-sented with a schematic representation of an atom, with hardly any


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hierarchical explanation of the process by which atomic theory wasdeveloped, the child has no more compelling reason for believing inatomic theory than he has for believing in Santa Claus.

State departments of education also have virtually eliminated instruc-tion in grammar from the public school curriculum (Mulroy 2003), andhave introduced the nonphonetic—that is, nonconceptual—wholeword approach to reading instruction as either an alternative or a sup-plement to phonics-based instruction in reading.

Ironically, by denigrating hierarchical course content, Americaneducators have made students far less able to master the thinkingmethods prized by progressives. The curriculum, the very contentupon which students might learn to apply essential methods of think-ing, militates against the development of these methods. Withmethod divorced from content, students have come to view thinkingmethods as arbitrary rules of an unreal game. Instead of trying tounderstand these rules, students simply memorize them—exactly theopposite of the result sought by Kilpatrick and his progressive colleagues.

This substitution of memorization for understanding has incul-cated the nonconceptual mentality in many students. These studentscan often retain large amounts of information and perform calcula-tions and other routine mental operations rapidly, but they can dovery little conceptualizing. They memorize, manipulate, and recallinformation well; they just cannot think. Because they do not graspthe difference between understanding and memorization, they areoften incapable of identifying when they do not know something.

Although educators have been aware of the need of a hierarchicalapproach to curriculum development, based upon my experience asa teacher and my review of the relevant literature, I believe that theyhave not fully realized its critical importance. In 1956, psychologistBenjamin Bloom (1956) chaired a committee of educators whodeveloped a set of hierarchical models that classify learning objec-tives into levels of complexity and specificity. Robert M. Gagne(1965) developed a similar system of analyzing learning from simpleto complex levels. These taxonomies present general guidelinesregarding the order of presentation of knowledge, and they havebeen used extensively in the design of curricula. There is also a sub-stantial amount of material that discusses, in general, the relationshipof curricula to students’ acquisition of conceptual knowledge.However, few researchers have sought to bridge the gap between


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the hierarchical structure of concepts within epistemology and thedevelopment of a hierarchical curriculum within pedagogy. The onlycurricula that I am aware of that present content in a comprehensive,hierarchical manner are the Core Knowledge Sequence developedby E.D. Hirsch and the Core Knowledge Foundation, and the curricula in place at the VanDamme Academy.

There is another aspect of our public education system that mili-tates against the establishment of a hierarchical approach to educa-tion: most public school teachers are not experts in subject matter.Beginning in the early 20th century, Ravitch (2003) notes, educatorssought to establish teaching as a distinct profession, similar to law ormedicine. Teacher certification became dependent upon takingcourses in pedagogy and passing exams in pedagogic theory, and lessdependent upon mastery of the subject taught. A report produced bythe National Center for Educational Statistics (Lewis et al. 1999:12–13) found that, by the end of the 20th century, only 38 percent ofteachers held a bachelor’s or graduate degree in an academic fieldother than education. The report noted that this statistic wasunchanged from a similar survey conducted five years earlier. A morerecent report by the U. S. Department of Education (Staklis andHenke 2013: 9) showed that one half of the 2007–08 bachelor’s degreerecipients who taught the following year had majored in education. Toinculcate a hierarchical understanding of the subjects they teach,teachers themselves need a comprehensive, hierarchical understand-ing of these subjects. To acquire this understanding, teachers need, atleast, to have attained a bachelor’s degree in these subjects.

On a topic related to hierarchy, E.D. Hirsch (2016: 13) notes thatcurrent research disputes progressive educators’ justification forwhat he refers to as “skills-centrism”: the belief that teachers canimpart general thinking skills, such as critical thinking and problemsolving, without regard to specific subject content. He cites the comprehensive Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and ExpertPerformance (Feltovich, Prietula, and Ericsson 2006: 11), whichstates, “Research clearly rejects the classical views on human cogni-tion in which general abilities such as learning, reasoning, problemsolving, and concept formation correspond to capacities and abili-ties that can be studied independently of the content domain.” Thedecoupling of thinking skills and subject matter that led to the proliferation of the nonhierarchical curricula discussed above restsupon this discredited assumption of skills-centrism.


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Hirsch (2016) also presents a cogent argument for the failure ofprogressive educational ideas in his discussions of the decline inAmerican schooling in the 1960s and 1970s, and the decline inFrench and Swedish schooling underway currently. Hirsch maintainsthat even though progressive ideas had begun to take over Americanpublic schools in the 1920s, it took decades for these ideas to achievedominance. Although the progressive education movement ended inthe 1950s, Hirsch notes, by the 1960s progressive ideas regardingteaching methods and curricula had become conventional educa-tional practice in most American schools. Between 1960 and 1980,American academic scores fell rapidly. Academic scores across allgrade levels fell more than a quarter of a standard deviation, a bigdecline for large populations. SAT scores fell by half a standard devi-ation. Student performance on other national tests such as the ACT(a test similar to the SAT), the Iowa Test of EducationalDevelopment, the Minnesota College Aptitude Test, the CaliforniaAchievement Test, and the Stanford Achievement Test all showedlarge declines (Hirsch 2016: 133)

Hirsch describes the same pattern emerging in France andSweden. In 1989, after decades of growing interest in progressiveeducational ideas in France’s schools of education, France adoptedthe loi Jospin (“the Jospin Law”); this law effectively required thatFrance’s elementary schools institute a child-focused, skills-centricapproach to education similar to the approach in American schools.A sample of the performance of 300,000 French fifth grade studentsin 2007 showed more than a third of a standard deviation decline inreading skills and more than four-fifths of a standard deviationdecline in mathematics skills relative to the performance of studentsin 1987—two very large, very significant declines. When stratified bydemographic characteristics, the results showed declines for allgroups, with the largest declines in those groups within the lowestsocioeconomic statuses (Hirsch 2016: 211). In 1994, Sweden madechanges to its educational system similar to those made in France.From 2000 to 2012, Sweden’s scores on the PISA test, a frequentlycited assessment of national educational quality, dropped from 516 to483 in reading, from 510 to 478 in mathematics, and from 512 to 485in science. These declines were monotonic: the result of each test ineach category was lower than the previous result (Hirsch 2016: 154).Apparently, France and Sweden are determined to duplicateAmerica’s educational mistakes.


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It is our children who suffer because of these ideas. In a recentmultiyear college and career readiness survey of 165,000 high schoolstudents, 87 percent of the respondents stated that they hope to earna college degree and embark upon a career, but only 45 percent feelpositively about their college and career readiness (YouthTruth2015). A separate survey, consisting of interviews with collegeinstructors and employers (Achieve 2015), indicates that these stu-dents have reason to be concerned. The survey found that 78 percentof college faculty and 62 percent of employers believe that publichigh schools are not preparing students for the demands that thesestudents will face when they graduate.

Lack of Independent ThoughtOne of the salient characteristics of progressive education is a shift

away from lecture-based, teacher-centered instruction to group-based, student-centered instruction. Based on my experience, thischange in focus, when combined with the effects of nonhierarchicalcurricula, has made students reluctant to question the content that ispresented to them or to investigate issues thoroughly when such aninvestigation may cause them to challenge opinions that they con-sider part of the status quo.

John Dewey, “the father of progressive education,” believed thatguiding a child’s adjustment to the demands of the group is one ofthe most important responsibilities of an educational system.According to Dewey (1897: 77), “The only true education comesthrough the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of thesocial situations in which he finds himself. Through these demandshe is stimulated to act as a member of a unity . . . to conceive of him-self from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which hebelongs.”

Under the influence of Dewey and other progressive educators,educational administrators began requiring teachers to focus on con-forming their students’ behavior to group norms during the early20th century. This development was most pronounced within theelementary grades, where students’ social interactions are most pliant. Dewey replaced permanently anchored classroom desks inhis Laboratory School in Chicago with movable units that couldbe rearranged at will to suit the needs of the group (Rugg andShumaker 1928: 1). School districts across the country followed suit.


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In leading progressive schools, the focus of instruction shifted fromthat of students acquiring individual intellectual skills to studentscompleting group projects. In the Lincoln School in New York City,elementary school students decided what projects the group wouldwork on and who would perform what tasks. The teacher was only“a wise but inconspicuous member of the group” (Rugg andShumaker 1928: 57). By the end of the 20th century, group work hadbecome common within all grades in our schools. A report on teacherdevelopment by the National Center for Educational Statistics (Choiand Chen 1998: 45) found that, during the 1993–94 school year,49 percent of teachers reported that they had received training inmethods of cooperative learning wherein students work together ingroups to solve a problem or produce a product.

As a high school teacher, I was frequently directed to avoid con-tent-based lecturing in favor of group activities. In my educationcourses, particularly those courses concerned with classroom man-agement skills, my professors stressed the advantages of allowinggroups of students to work independently on projects (Cooper 1999:267–307). As part of my state certification requirements, I had tosubmit videotaped lessons to the New York State Department ofEducation. The teacher who supervised the production of thesevideotapes informed me that, unless at least one-third of each lessoncontained group activities, my application would likely be rejected.In my performance reviews, school administrators told me to mini-mize time spent lecturing in favor of allowing students to work inde-pendently in groups. Administrators urged me to be “the guide onthe side, not the sage on the stage.” In department meetings, my col-leagues frequently praised a variation of the Socratic method theyused known as Socratic Circles, which effectively allow students tocontrol the direction and the flow of knowledge in the classroom.

Despite rosy descriptions of shifting the focus of instruction fromthe teacher to the student, I found that this group approach toinstruction yielded discouraging results. Many students became freeriders in these groups and contributed nothing, causing those stu-dents who worked on the group assignment to become resentful.I had to spend a great deal of time keeping students on task and pre-venting these group activities from becoming social get-togethers. Ingeneral, the quality of student work was poor. When students worktogether in groups, they often get bogged down with superficialissues and rarely think in fundamental terms. Used judiciously,


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carefully guided group work can be effective; but, overall, studentscannot direct the course of their own instruction.

This type of instruction when combined with the effects of non-hierarchical curricula instilled conformity in many of my students.Students frequently saw no need to justify their opinions on any basisother than their emotions, or they uncritically accepted the groupconsensus. This behavior is understandable. Many students, forexample, do not have a chronological, hierarchical grasp of historicalfacts and yet are asked to develop recommendations regarding issuessuch as income inequality, nuclear nonproliferation, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. How can we expect these students, who have hardlyany knowledge of what men and women have actually done, to makewell-reasoned recommendations regarding what men and womenshould do?

Students who do not think independently are defenseless againsta subtle, but growing, form of propaganda within our schools. Inmany introductory economics courses, teachers coach students withno previous knowledge of financial markets or economic principles toreplicate complex explanations of how the Federal Reserve’s pur-chase and sale of securities affect interest rates, foreign exchangerates, the levels of consumption and investment, and ultimately nom-inal and real GDP. These financially nascent students must also pro-vide critiques of rarefied and controversial topics such as the centralpositions advanced by the Keynesians and Monetarists. Widely usedtexts for these courses focus on the mechanical aspects of these top-ics, with only a cursory examination of fundamental economic princi-ples (Clayton 1995, Baumol and Blinder 2005, Carbaugh 2008). Bycompressing so much sophisticated information into a high schoolcourse, these courses frequently violate the principle of hierarchy.Consequently, many students simply memorize this material, andthey do not question it. The often unstated premise in these coursesand their supporting textbooks is that, without the intervention of theFederal Reserve and the fiscal policies of the federal government,our economy would lurch from crisis to crisis. Because many stu-dents equate memorization with comprehension, they accept thispremise as true. Similarly, students learn about problems caused bymonopolies, oligopolies, and monopsonies, with the unstated prem-ise that these market structures are the unavoidable consequencesof an unregulated economy. Students accept this premise as well.Social studies departments portray these courses as unbiased, on the


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grounds that the textbooks and syllabi of these courses merely reflectthe economic reality of our mixed economy. Having taught thesecourses for several years, I can testify that the consistent message stu-dents receive is that, without the extensive and often drastic interven-tion of government policymakers and regulators, our economy wouldcollapse.

Students receive similar messages in their other social studiescourses. The authors of American history textbooks, from texts usedin the 1960s (Planer and Neff 1962) to texts used currently (Brinkley2007), have portrayed the late 19th and early 20th centuries as aperiod of escalating class conflict during which politicians had to protect the working classes from the predatory behavior of industri-alists. Historian Larry Schweikart (2008) examined several of themost widely used American history textbooks in upper-level highschool and introductory college courses and found evidence of anincreasing bias in favor of a progressive, left-liberal interpretation ofour past. He found that these texts maintain that the GreatDepression was caused by the tax cuts and unfettered flow of capitalof the late 1920s, that FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Societywere major advances in American society, and that Northern capitalist greed—not slavery—drove the civil war. These textbooksalso claim that our transcontinental railroads would never have beenbuilt without the intervention of the government, and that it was thelack of government intervention that caused the declines in the U.S.automobile and steel industries.

In literature courses, teachers often blame the avarice of Britain’sindustrialists for the miserable social conditions described by CharlesDickens and other writers, and claim that these conditions endedonly when legislators enacted child labor laws and other social legis-lation. In science courses, teachers claim that federal agencies mustwork constantly to prevent industrialists from destroying our environ-ment. Since 2007, every student I taught had seen An InconvenientTruth in at least one of his science courses, but few students wereaware that there are scientists who dispute the claims made in thisdocumentary. I do not know how many other school districts haveshown their students An Inconvenient Truth, but Schweikart pointsout that students are exposed to other sources, including Americanhistory textbooks, that imply that man-made global warming is realand caused primarily by insufficiently regulated American indus-tries. Even some mathematics textbooks now exhibit an ideological


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point of view. In his textbook Precalculus, for example, RobertBlitzer (2001: 362–63) illustrates how exponential functions canbe used to calculate how rapidly the world’s population would growwithout some type of presumed intervention to prevent the exhaus-tion of our global resources.

The theme that runs through these lessons, and a myriad of otherlessons, is the standard progressive conceit: we cannot trust privateindividuals to act on their own. Instead, we need government expertsto guide our choices, and politicians to protect us from the balefulconsequences of capitalism. Isabel Paterson (1943: 258) warned that“every politically controlled educational system will inculcate thedoctrine of state supremacy sooner or later . . . Once that doctrine hasbeen accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break thestranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen.” Overthe 75 years since Paterson issued her warning, the movement of ourpublic schools in this direction has been unmistakable.

Ethical ExpedienceJohn Dewey rejected the idea of moral absolutes. According to

Dewey (1929: 222), “A moral law, like a law in physics, is not some-thing to swear by and stick to at all hazard.” Instead, to Dewey andhis progressive followers, efficacy is the primary criterion of ethicalvalidity. Moral rules should be treated “as intellectual instruments tobe tested and confirmed—and altered—through consequenceseffected by acting upon them” (Dewey 1929: 221). This progressiveemphasis on efficacy, as opposed to strict adherence to rules, hasbeen captured in a four word slogan that has echoed throughout ourschools for more than half a century: “There are no absolutes.”

It is impossible to make a blanket statement regarding how muchthe environment of our schools has changed because of Dewey’semphasis on efficacy. At the beginning of the twentieth century,Dewey (1915: 19) himself estimated that only 1 percent of theAmerican population attended college and only 5 percent enteredhigh school. The dramatic increase in school attendance during the20th century, along with waves of immigration, exerted profoundeffects upon the conditions in our schools. Regardless of the sourcesof these changes, however, our schools have experienced a definitemovement away from rigorously enforced codes of conduct and academic standards.


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Because rules are absolute—either you make it to class by the bellor you do not—formerly strict, traditional codes of conduct in manyschools have become guidelines, open to continuous modificationand interpretation. I am personally aware of administrators who,because it would be inefficacious to “rock the boat,” have chosen notto deal with violations of conduct codes properly in situations rangingfrom insubordination, inappropriate dress, and cell phone usage, tosystematic cheating and assault. Additionally, students know that theycan reduce or overturn almost any punishment for any infraction ofschool policy if they can persuade their parents or guardians to lodgea formal protest against it. A 2004 survey (Public Agenda 2004: 4)found that 55 percent of teachers believe that school districts’ back-ing down when confronted by assertive parents causes disciplineproblems in their classrooms.

Absolute academic standards, likewise, have often disappeared.Grade inflation has been chronic, and school systems have adoptedpolicies such as social promotion, whereby grade advancement isdetermined by a student’s age rather than his intellectual develop-ment. Because it takes a lot more time to fail a student than to givehim a marginally passing grade, and because high failure rates spelltrouble for school districts, teachers and administrators sometimesfind it expedient to avoid adhering strictly to grading criteria. Instates where students are required to pass standardized examinationsto advance academically, teachers routinely have been able to findextra points for failing students. This practice became so widespreadthat the New York State Department of Education had to introduceelaborate grading procedures for its state Regents Examinations sothat teachers could no longer change any student’s examinationgrade once it was computed. School district administrators fre-quently fail to enforce attendance policies, and teachers have evenbeen ordered by their school board to overlook plagiarism policies(Wilgoren 2002).

Many teachers who embrace multicultural education have com-municated moral relativism explicitly in the classroom. PsychologistsBlaine Fowers and Frank Richardson (1996: 609) define multicultur-alism as “a social-intellectual movement that promotes the value ofdiversity as a core principle and insists that all cultural groups betreated with respect and as equals.” Teachers who engage in multi-cultural education often do so because they sincerely believe eitherthat cultures cannot be evaluated according to any absolute, objective


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criteria, or that it is wrong to do so. Others, however, may simply findit expedient to retreat to multiculturalism to avoid thorny issuesrelated to criticizing other cultures. Either way, if all cultural groupsare to be treated as equals, then the only moral conclusion studentsare likely to reach in these classes is “you must not judge.”

It is difficult to assess the moral caliber of youth, and even moredifficult to ascribe specific moral characteristics to the influence ofschooling. Individuals are free to choose their own actions; and otherfactors, such as family life and religious affiliation, exert powerfulinfluences upon the development of an individual’s character.Despite these disclaimers, it is hard to imagine that students have notbeen affected by the progressive influence on the moral environmentof our schools. Before progressive ideas became influential, manytraditional schools emphasized to their students that it is right for stu-dents to base their actions on moral principles; the schools backed upthis emphasis with strictly enforced codes of conduct. This situation,however, was not what I encountered when I taught. Because teach-ers and administrators, both explicitly and by their actions, hadassured students that “there are no absolutes,” many studentsregarded issues of right and wrong as mostly irrelevant. If the likeli-hood of getting caught for a tempting infraction of school policy washigh and the penalty was great enough, students did not break therules. Otherwise, they did. If I left a classroom where I was proctor-ing an examination, students immediately began to cheat. If calcula-tors, cell phones or other valuable items were left unattended,students were likely to steal them. This unprincipled behavior is con-sistent with progressive educators’ ethical pragmatism. If there areno moral absolutes, then ethics is a matter of expediency.

ConclusionIn Educational Wastelands, published in 1953, Arthur E. Bestor

(1953) accused progressive educators of abdicating the responsibilityto teach the “power to think.” That same year, Robert M. Hutchins(1953), in The Conflict in Education in a Democratic Society, criti-cized what he referred to as progressive educators’ “doctrine ofadjustment,” which prized conformity and devalued independentthought. Albert Lynd (1953: 36), in Quackery in the Public Schools,also published in 1953, characterized the methods of teacher trainingand certification, wherein teachers are taught and certified only by


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teachers who are themselves steeped in progressive educational theory, as “one of the neatest bureaucratic machines created by anyprofessional group in any country anywhere.” The specific conditionsthat these authors criticized have changed but, 65 years later, theunderlying problems that they identified continue to plague our edu-cational system.

The foregoing leads to the following question: Is the central prob-lem in our schools the influence of progressive educational ideas, oris it the patchwork of state education monopolies that has renderedour schools impervious to fundamental reform? These well-coordi-nated monopolies have suppressed the marketplace for new ideas ineducation, and they have pitted the rent-seeking behavior of teacherunions against the well-being of our children.

I believe that our current system of state education monopolies isthe biggest obstacle we face to achieving genuine educational reform.In the Winter 2016 edition of the Cato Journal, Benjamin Scafidi(2016: 134–38) discussed a proposal offered by economist RichardVedder that may overcome some of the resistance to dismantlingthese monopolies. Vedder (2000) proposed using “Employee StockOwnership Plans” to convert individual public schools intoautonomous, employee-owned enterprises. These schools wouldhave control over the curricula, teaching methods, and conductcodes that they adopt. The tuition charged by these schools would becovered by voucher payments, but Vedder’s proposal does allow forparents to bid up the price of tuition by adding their own funds to theamount of tuition they offer to pay. Although students from low-income families and special needs students may have to receive addi-tional resources, a trial program could be structured to identify andaddress problems that these groups of students encounter. Becauseteachers and other stakeholders would become owners of theseschools, their resistance to ending state control of education may bereduced.

Vedder’s approach provides the means to address all the issues Ihave identified above. Most critically, it would end the states’ monop-olies of educational policies. If parents still want their children toreceive an education based upon progressive principles, they wouldbe free to send their children to a progressive school. In fact, Vedderspeculated that most schools would not initially offer programs ofinstruction that were radically different from the those in place cur-rently. Over time, I believe this would change. Private schools need


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the approval of state departments of education to confer diplomasrecognized by the state. If the need for this approval was eliminated,I believe that many schools would be willing to explore innovativeeducational approaches. This could lead to a dramatic improvementin the quality of American schools.

The alternative to trying Vedder’s approach, or a similar approach,is to continue the pitched battles that proponents of school choice areengaged in currently with teacher unions and the politicians thatthese unions support. Unfortunately, these battles will leave ourcounterproductive educational policies mostly untouched.

When I was a teacher in a government-run school, I witnessedfirsthand the consequences of the educational policies discussed inthis article. If we wish to realize the schools that our children deserve,we need to jettison these educational policies along with the statemonopolies that have preserved them.

Our children deserve schools that train them in the proper devel-opment and use of concepts; that facts and principles cannot beevaded with impunity; and that their own unaided reason, ratherthan any majority’s opinion or anyone’s emotional reaction, is theonly means whereby they can discover the truth. And our childrendeserve schools that demonstrate that there are objective moral values whose realization can lead to a successful, productive, andhappy life.

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