WHO’S CRAZY? EXPERTS OR NON-EXPERTS?
Experts make disasters, then expand on them
by
Dr. Joan E. Battey – February, 2005
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If you haven’t yet taken up the idea of seeing clues in the
news, you might want to do so immediately. Especially, in this example, if
you value your children, your grandchildren, or your wallets. It’s getting
hard to pick which news to mine for clues, but so much of it seems to offer
the greatest gems in stories connected in any way with “education.”This latest one is a literal Sutter’s Mill sitting there waiting for the
Gold Rush to begin!“State Plan Would Let Middle Schools Drop ‘Exploratory’ Courses” It’s out of
Albany, NY — where lately you hardly need a metal detector, just a bent
spoon, to start digging for clues in news. (It’s an AP story, by-line:
Michael Gormley)A little background may be in order here. For years and years, many
non-experts called parents, taxpayers or simply those who recognize boulders
in the roads that go through anything connected with education, have been
routinely ignored and often ridiculed for describing the boulders and the
massive damage they could inflict if not removed immediately.Along the way, “experts” (those who have made often profitable careers out
orchestrating waves of change) became very adept at knowing how to judge
when new boulders could be marketed as a different rocky road, but better
than the previous expertly-designed boulder-strewn road.Old boulders? The largest and most effective one was “Infusion confusion,”
which was a high-speed shell game guaranteed to make students more able to
compete in the modern world. Academic subjects soon became almost pointless,
old-fashioned drudgery that would no longer be needed. Parents and taxpayers
were made to understand that times had changed. Students had miraculously,
in a generation, morphed into brilliant self-learners, no longer in need of
orderly progression of solidly-built foundations of learning. They would be
in great demand, the world over, because of their skills, their teamwork,
their concern for righting community wrongs, their ability to step up and
advise adults of all ages and persuasions on how to run everything that
needed running. What do you mean they didn’t know how to handle the basic
details? Unimportant!Experts, with the help of journalists recruited to the cause, and
corporations in need of having a compliant and disposable workforce, sold
the country next on “career skills,” and “workforce training.” Corporations
and heir expert advisers, working with educators and their coterie of
highly-paid bureaucrats and expert advisers, soon found that the biggest
skills needed for any workforce were lacking in the academic sense of
reading, writing and math ability. But, they were able to work this to their
advantage because they were “experts,” and commonsense “non-experts” were
know-nothing trouble-makers. Solution? Re-define basics and infuse it with
pseudo-skills.The next round of expert advisers came up with the idea that students needed
to have it proven to them that any education was necessary for any
particular job, and so much time was lost trying to entice students to
careers, whether they had the ability or not, or the interest or not.Picking up on the old “home party” sales schemes, much school time was
diverted to learning about all kinds of careers, enticing students to please
be interested in becoming “professional” thises or thats. Actual time away
from class often was devoted to job sampling where students were sent to
workplaces to take part in whatever work was done there.Portal-to-portal time overlapped class-to-class real education time, but
this is the new millenium. Don’t question why, just pay the bills?But, all the fun and sampling, all the traveling around for “enrichment,”
all the “leadership” and “board advisory involvement” somehow came
face-to-face with long-term needed remedial education in the basics at the
college level, and a growing chorus of complaints by businesses and clients
alike that “mistakes” cost us money as a business and frustration as a
customer.Expert solution: More rigorous exams. Problem? Ever-lower passing grades on
the more rigorous exams — which were incidentally devised by the same
experts who made the mess. They were trying to prove how erudite they
themselves were in coming up with nonsense “problem solving” based not on
facts, but on agendas and process. They openly admitted that correct answers
were not important, only knowing the process. And, this was to entice
students to careers that needed correct and precise answers as the end
procedures? Don’t question the experts!What kind of brainwashed public could possibly disagree with that? Even
then, it didn’t register that it was the expert advice that was the root
cause of the problem!Fast forward to the latest jargon — but read all the way down through the
“solutions” that merely flim-flam their way to the continuation of the shell
game, at higher costs, which are already expensive and getting more so with
every passing semester, tax bill and economic impact. It’s even more tragic
in terms of harsh reality as students try to take their expertly-devised
education into a dwindling job market with lowered financial rewards.Sounds great! “Drop the exploratory courses.” This is a euphemism for “fun
and games openly labeled career training.” After lowering the passing grades
to the point where even those distanced from paying attention to education
can see what’s happened. So, now, the experts realize, it’s time to create
new boulders, difficult as it might be to market them to a market which has
shown signs of being suspicious of the “process.”They are going to drop the “exploratory courses” (aka career enticement
shopping excursions, fun and games and visiting professionals with sales
pitches for their own careers.) But, wait a minute. It’s not “drop” in the
usually-understood meaning of the word. Don’t you believe it! The experts
are ever at work, overtime pay, seminar reimbursements, travel expenses,
in-service training and all! Drop the courses, but only here and there until
you can finish crafting the new boulders! Offer options for what should have
been an ironclad “Drop the exploratory courses; stop the nonsense; don’t
make a bad situation permanently worse!” Wrap the options in a nice new
press-release gift-wrapped flim-flam and send it off to the non-experts to
approve or get out of the way.Solutions: If schools have poor performances, let them drop SOME of the
“exploratory course” focus. BUT, the Lucy football pull-away LIVES! Then,
the time COULD be spent on core subjects, BUT, integrate the “exploratory
issues” into THOSE OTHER COURSES. Which is what lowered the real education
to noticeably dismal levels in the first place. Same game, new name!Second choice: same as all that preceded it. Schools which actually met the
new gobbledegook standards of achievement, could be granted “relief from
prescribed time requirements for units of study in ALL subject areas.” Would
this perhaps include the subject areas that were ready to be infused with
the “exploratory career” focus????The last choice really is a shell game — because after being granted
“relief” from meeting requirements, the schools could then “restructure
their entire educational program”.It’s being claimed that in order to get back to what was always real
education prior to “expert” intervention, that students would be deprived of
art and music. They would no longer, apparently, be able to whap out posters
for every contest or charitable activity which could be pulled under the
umbrella of “art education.” They would no longer, apparently have any
remotely ethereal exposure to music. Who were those teachers in earlier days
who routinely exposed students to art and music, free of outside forces or
expensive public performances and distant competition? Returning to basics
would permanently stunt students’ education!Those who are part of the initial first thrust against any real change, are
claiming that students will not have any way to release their creativity —
perhaps such as the news-making winning art exhibit which just included a
fantastic creative effort of a high school student depicting side-by-side
images of Hitler references and George Bush references.They say now that exploratory courses are necessary because students need to
be introduced to “areas they may choose to study in high school.” Given a
choice between fun electives with a hint of profitable careers included,
what student is going to voluntarily choose academics?And, (horrors!) if they take away the exploratory (fun-and-time-consuming)
courses, then it might be that teachers might be laid off.! But, again, not
to worry! Schools would continue to need their services because of infusing
the exploratory careers into regular academics courses. Voila, without
missing a beat, they would just shift gears. Business as usual, just under a
different name.The wonderful experts ensured this last new and improved boulder when they
came up with the third alternative for schools to “choose.” They could, if
they hadn’t yet fallen too far in passing exams, “redesign traditional
exploratory courses into mini-courses, with input from students, colleges,
YMCAs and corporations in the community.” This would mean “high interest,
relevant topics such as fad diets, youth fitness, student leadership,
engineering design, science and techology research, and the arts as
political expression.” Could non-experts possibly come up with this expert
gobbledegook, and market it without the requisite career training? Of course
not! Get out of the way!This, if you please, comes out of the same State Education Department that
has never deviated from its own fun-and-games career enhancement path over
all the years of tap-dancing around the lowered education expectations and
achievements.Another news item, regarding the need to get more money for “failing New
York City schools,” indicates how far from reality most of the experts
operate. In referring to the new and ever-higher demands for “more money”
for education, even though the lid is steadily lifting high enough to see
waste, fraud, and abuse of both money and frequently students as well, one
expert has confidently proposed a special education surcharge on those
making $100,000 and a higher surcharge on those making $200,000. He is “sure
they would have no objection to that surcharge” because it’s for education.
Oh, really? How many did he survey?The saddest part of the whole education industry experts’ permanent and
ongoing advice for fixing all the problems? It is very likely that they will
have no problem creating and marketing their lucrative boulder-building
enterprise. However, the students will be the real losers, as pawns in the
ongoing expert games.Can’t argue with success, can we?
Joan E. Battey is a freelance political writer from
Apalachin, NY. Her love of logical dot connecting and writing developed
over many years of typesetting and proof reading in small daily
newspapers; ad agency and manufacturing office secretarial work, and
volunteer work in libraries, animal welfare, political campaigns, and
networks of people keeping abreast of the steady “reforms” in education.
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