The Cost of Grand Educational Designs
Analyzing education curriculum and its unintended consequences in practice.
The Socio-Political Roots of Pedagogical Fads
Pedagogical fads are not without their socio-political motivations. Here it becomes germane to note in furtherance of disentanglement that also better abandoned would be the overwhelming incongruities of grandiose curricular designs upon the many—as in overreaching core requirements further adorned sometimes with ostensibly college-prep McHonors courses vastly overenrolled with students devoid of any real affinity for the nominally honored subject matter. Students thus miscast wield no small power to frustrate the efforts of a content-oriented educator. The misunderstandings are therefore the misery of teachers and students alike.
The Survival Expedient of Fatuous Activity
Fatuous class activity entailing precious-little content sometimes then becomes a teacher’s political survival expedient. Student-subject incongruity hence is wind in the sails of pedagogical fads. Educational policy makers and other major powers in the education wars should ask themselves how ethical it is to bait and switch a serious would-be teacher into this bitterly disappointing circumstance. Pursuit of a subject beyond modest claims is best reserved for students with hearts and minds inclined in that direction.
Toward an Upfront and Fair Educational System
An upfront system fair to all concerned would hold this tenet as one that justly averts the dilemma that now too often occurs between harsh requirements as the one dysfunction, phony entitlements as the other. A system of this understanding would generate fewer class disruptions, fewer fads as coping devices, far less teaching to an ill-fitting test, far less politics, far less cheating, far less resentment all around.
The Sociological Reality of Grade Inflation and Pedigree
(While this accords with the often-seen phenomenon of talent-specific intelligence, it does not quite address the politics of grade-inflated socialites commonly headed for the none too rigorous versions of higher education as a class-conscious claim to higher educational pedigree. We met a number of suspects in this regard a number of pages ago. Subject matter that stands any higher than a doormat is liable to incur their formidable disapproval. Despite the current surge in remarkably high achievers in this nation’s not entirely healthy college admissions frenzy, crypto anti-cerebral types remain a deeply embedded sociological fact of life within the college-bound crowd and are the principal reason this writer wants no further part of teaching. The unpretentious working class abounds with people far more accomplished than they.)
