Diane Rehm Interviews Thomas Sowell 1993 (Part 1 of 2)

but you am you a public broadcasting radio station has its studios on the campus each weekday morning at 11 a.m. Diane Rehm hosts a discussion and callin program on Wednesday of last week she welcomed columnist and writer Thomas Sewell who currently works as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution mr. Sewell recently authored a book about the state of American education and he discusses the book with MS ream and takes questions from her listeners we now bring you that program good morning welcome back to the Diane Rehm Show on 88 5 FM the u.s. education system has many critics who see a continuing deterioration in our schools thomas sowell a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution is one of those as the older generation of teachers and professors leave he says new trends and counterproductive fans fashions and dogmas of American education will become the dominant influence and shape the generations to come in short he argues American schools are turning out students who are not intellectually in competent but also morally confused emotionally alienated and socially maladjusted the problem is not merely the Johnny can't read or even that Johnny can't think Johnny doesn't know what thinking is as dr. Sol because thinking is so often confused with feeling in many public schools dr. Sol is written a new book it's called inside American education the decline the deception the dogmas you can join us cause between now and 12:00 noon 885 8850 good morning to you sir it's good to have you here thank you very much what's going on here seems rather curious in the face of rising grades and elevated expectations about schools abilities to perform and students academic yes the back in 1966 there were about twice as many C's as aids given out in the high and after public schools in the United States by the late 70s there were twice as many AES of C's so we have this long period during which all sorts of test scores are going down at this very same time grades are going up is heck going on it both the elementary secondary and college at the college level during the entire decade of the 1980s the percentage of A's at Yale University never fell below 40 percent so you're saying there's there's a great inflation going on and there are decline in attention yes and this is this is part of the deception because if people knew exactly what was happening I don't think the test scores could have kept going down as long as they did but everyone was told I say saw the wonderful grades that kids were bringing home they were told blowing things when I was teaching back in the 1960s I kept hearing that this was the brightest and best generation that we'd had I kept saying they don't seem to be enrolling in my courses and it was only in the end well into the 70s before the word came out that the data showed just the opposite of what the educators were saying and now it would seem good many educators here in agreement with you when they talk about the serious traits that our American schools are in they agree in in the sense only that these this kind of talk gets them more money and in fact that's used is the biggest reason why we need more money but in point of fact the money spent on education was rising by leaps and bounds throughout the entire period during which the test scores were going down somewhere in the early 80s there was a there was a leveling off and a few little Rises but we have never come close to where we were in 1963 talk about the social phenomenon you call effective education and how it plays into this whole question of just how good schools are a great deal of time and energy are spent on things which are non academic subjects which are essentially psychological kinds of subjects exercises and this is known as effective education as if you can somehow educate people's feelings than to educate their intellect and the problem is that most public school teachers have no such qualifications if anyone has such qualifications but certainly they're not psychiatrists like Hayek psychologists they have no idea of the emotional turmoil they may be stirring up while in the students and there's some evidence that that's that's happening in terms of medical reactions of vomiting signs of nerves in various ways but more than that what they tend to do is to try to alienate the child from the parent and I think that's the most dangerous thing that how do they do that well if you read the literature it's just astonishing how parents are depicted in the literature as people who are hung up who have old-fashioned ideas one of the areas which they do is a sex education but it's not sex education as such because there are a whole series of kinds of education of the emotions as they would put it which do the same thing and the idea is that the child is supposed to make his own decisions and he's supposed to pick his own values on which to make those decisions so the holiest for the human race is sort of thrown out the window and Johnny is supposed to start and draw upon his entire eight or nine years of experience in the world so to decide what his values ought to be it was interesting in the book you used an example of an exchange that you had with a student and I guess your question to the student was something like well what did you learn and the response was something like I learned that my thoughts and my feelings are valued yes whereas there was no effort to speak to a fact or something learned but rather the emphasis or I feel occasion that was actually Ben Stein a reporter in Los Angeles and he asked this graduating senior who was considered the smartest kid in the class what did you what do you know about the Vietnam War and he said the Vietnam War was when North and South Korea was fighting and they drew a line along the 38th parallel and so on and Ben Stein's and would have brought you to know that that's completely wrong he said no and he said then what you said that it was that his feelings were valued is what his thoughts were valued and that was it but now isn't that of some worse if you do have a child who for example has done nothing but learned by rote aren't you attempting to bring out the fullness of that young person and get that person to reflect and think and meditate if you think the confusion the Vietnam War with the Korean War is thinking and meditating wasn't of course that that's very nice the tragedy is that these kids have no conception of thinking and if we're talking about adding something as an extra along the fringes fine but when you see how far behind we are behind almost every large and industrial nation or even behind Korea for heaven's sake you wonder what makes them think that we have the luxury of spending our time on these kinds of little experiments in the classroom just recently I received a letter from a high school students and wanted my opinion on a wide variety of subjects and this was a classroom assignment but this question there was to be sent out to people and I wrote in back that the opinions of old men like me don't matter what matters is whether young people like you learn to think get some knowledge because you're gonna be making these decisions long after I'm gone and to think that people are wasting your time having you send out these questionnaires the people you don't know is a sign of just why we're so far behind dr. Thomas solo of the Hoover Institution his new book is called inside American education they declined the deception the dogmas talk about some of the dogmas that you feel are driving American education well one of the dogmas is the notion that you have to feel good about yourself and I think nothing so epitomized this for me as a study of mathematics given a thirteen year olds around the world and I'm Koreans came in first Americans came in last and one of the questions that we asked these kids was are you good at maiya 23% of the Koreans said yes something like 68 percent of the Americans saying yes and so American kids felt good about themselves but they didn't know what he may have another study was done of 12th graders in Japan see if they liked me the 12th graders in Japan just like math more than the 12th graders in the United States and probably for good reason because it was probably harder math what the Japanese don't worry themselves about whether they're 12 graders like me that's right they don't care like this when you come out of there you're gonna know a certain amount of stuff and and if you don't do that you know your parents are gonna be on you is there a balance to be achieved that is helping students feel good about themselves and learn at the same time or is it either or doctor so I do not believe that there are free lunches and education or anywhere else and it's hard work that's right and I think that's part of it too a lot of these programs are really a substitute for hard work by the teachers I mean well I I think think of the teachers I had they could not have cared less whether I've talked good about myself they didn't ask me how did you get to school did you walk these 15 blocks from home or did you have money for the trolley they couldn't have cared less they wanted to make sure I had better have my homework when I got there and it better be right are you putting most of the responsibility here on the teachers themselves what about the parents the parents have their responsibilities as well on the whole the parents I think turn out a lot better than the education establishment the educational establishment is very good at blaming everything on parents and seizing upon this example in that example but the Cole fact is that for a period of decades the parents and the public have been pushing the schools to have more academic material and the schools have been pushing in non-academic directions and by large the schools have been winning that more and more fancy fads and gimmicks have been coming into the schools very often people say you know the Catholic schools do so much better with so little money and I've all come to think that really I don't want to take anything from the Catholic schools but I think the fact that they have less money may be one of the reasons why they're doing so well because they cannot afford these expensive gimmicks and fans dr. so what was your own background who was if anyone encouraging you as you were growing why did you get turned on to education oh I guess my family that I know when I went into the seventh grade they make it made a big to-do about it I didn't understand it until they told me that no one in the family it got to the seventh grade before and they thought it was marvelous you had both parents in the home part of the time too my father died and then I had other other elder relatives as well oh no no supporting that oh oh yes and pushing what not now of course they could not take part in the educational process they had no way of doing that they couldn't come to school and do all the things you know the parents must get involved it's utter nonsense whole generations of both blacks and the immigrant kids had a decent education without their parents becoming involved in the school there are an awful lot of people and teachers among the first and foremost who would say that the challenge is facing teachers today are far more difficult and complex than those that faced your teachers when you were growing such as such as drugs in the school such as weapons in the school such as kids who really don't want to learn kids who come totally unprepared to do anything else but make trouble in the classroom yes yeah I mean there are those those kinds of neighborhood to the extent that there are today maybe maybe not but I think to the part of the big degeneration of morals has been helped out by the kind of nonsense they're taught in the schools I think there's also this sort of mortal and notion that we have to keep them all together back when I was coming along they had dumping ground classes and schools and if you didn't want to learn they were places where you could go and not learn I remember those well yes yes at the time when I was going through various phases they dumped me the way when you're ready to learn something you can come back how were you dumped oh I was assigned to Chelsea vocational school in New York and I was a total waste of time I think I told her people Chelsea Gogol's was a total waste of time was since since their our truancy laws I'll be here but I'll bring my reading so I won't waste the time totally but the fact is that there were standards and you can't have the position of what can we do for every single child you know it's a little like trying to get the drunk driver off the highway you've got to get him off that highway highway before he kill somebody now how he deals with his alcoholism or whatnot that's a separate and but and secondary question but you can't have him running up and down the highway clobbering other people what about school textbooks doctor so what's happened there yeah well the phrase is dumbing down one of the things I did in doing research for this book was to go back and look at the old mcguffey's readers and I must say you could not use those books today because people wouldn't know what all those big words was really impressed Oh where's that there was a history book that was being considered to be used as a textbook in the high school and they totally offer to take out wordless like spectacle and admired because those were too difficult for the students and of course they use much more bigger words than that but in eighth grade textbooks and generations passed and you're suggesting that the dumbing down of textbooks is part of this entire process absolutely of creating a system that's not really teaching as it should and the social tragedy of it is especially hard on low-income people you see if you're low income you're really gonna get a good education or you gonna stay in poverty by and large with routing some rare exceptions people of my generation in Harlem got a good education and so no matter how poor they were they could always go on people very often try to be complimentary to me and say you know how wonderful it is that you came out of this background and once and get your degrees and all this kind of business and I try to tell them you know that was not that unusual that uh I have a block away from me there was a guy who went on to become a psychiatrist own land the own land in Napa Valley and is now living in retirement overseas well well I'm not here trying to work for a living uh in the same building that you live in lived Harry Belafonte five blocks the other way he was James Baldwin see three blocks this way was where : pala went to college at CCNY and these are all people at the same place at the same time and you notice that none of that all those people although how different they are they all spoke impeccable English there was none of this junk that you hear now that's being a lying I of this so-called black English which the kids parents don't speak you know that you've got a good education now what you did with it was your business what would be the first one or two steps you would take to put American education back on track and to reach those young people who are now as turned off as they can possibly be number one I would have parental choice whether you call it a voucher tax credit I wouldn't care what name it is or what kind of device but some way in which parents can decide to yank their kids out of that school if it's not doing the job because as long as the school has a captive audience an iron-clad tenure they're gonna do what they wanted to do no matter what the public wants none of what the parents want no matter what the taxpayers want and no matter what the employers want would you be in favor of the Bill Clinton system of choice in public schools not simply for for parochial or as well well you know it's a question of whether well that's better than the present system virtually everything is better than the present system and so therefore the present system at least in its earlier appearance was what educated you doctor so certainly the kind of choice that you're talking about I mean you went to a neighborhood school you did what you had to do you do would you boys within the public school watch that's very true but many things have happened now so there's no other escape hatch in other words right now you have those teachers weren't unionized the way they are today well is that the attempt then is that the goal of choice is to break the unions no it's not the break that you use is to allow the parents to have an option the great problem with education throughout is that people are not accountable they can run those schools to indulge themselves whether whatever faired they like or whatever way they like to teach and that goes all the way through to the colleges the professors are there to do their research and if the students don't get in the way they don't mind but those schools are not being run as places for teaching alright so in addition to school choice what else Oh elimination of tenure at all levels well that may not be universally popular but they've done it in England so it can be done as long as as long as people are rewarded just for being alive and sitting there for a certain number of years regardless of the quality of work that they do you cannot expect good quality work what about the financial factor doctor so you talked about it earlier and said that you know everybody keeps blaming the fact that the schools aren't doing well on lack of resources and it's not just money that's the problem no it's not just money I would even argue that the country has been generous to a fault you look at other countries around the world includes Japan Australia the average American kid gets twice as much money spent on him as the average kid in New Zealand kids the only not doing a lot better they're getting a lot more spent on when they were spent on the kids in my era and they're doing much worse than the kids in my era I mean I had to send my daughter to a private school to get an education almost as good as I got in the public school for nothing you know so it's where we have fallen very far behind all right we have a number of colors waiting so we'll open the phones now 885 8850 dr. thomas ole the Hoover Institution is with me we're talking about his new book it's called inside American education that decline the deception the dogmas it's a pretty scathing indictment of the American education as dr. Sol seasoned I'll be interested in your questions and comments John you're on the air great book school oh yes and I was wondering how you are you viewed the program here and whether you thought it fit in with the way you feel about education well you know there is no one particular way to do education yet at any level the st. John's method is the rare but if it works for st. John's students and then more power to yes I think is the best is that about program is via the use of reason alone to determine how a classroom is structured I mean it could be seen as very unconventional and very I'm having a hard time experimental experimental yeah but at the same time it seems to be returned to a certain type of Education that only exists at a few hundred years ago yes well John st. John's is at one end of the spectrum at the other end of the spectrum other places that are trying to be modern where the great classics and I know are pushed aside in favor of things are the latest kinds of things just recently I went through the bookstore at Stanford University and looked in the political science department to see what books they were assigning not one course had the Federalist Papers and this is this is if any document can be said to explain the whole American system of government what they were trying to do when they wrote the Constitution this book is it and they do not have it but you can find all kinds of trend the I would consider junk Oh biggest line all right John thanks for your call Celeste you're on the air yes I've been a teacher for seven years and my question is about administration in the schools I find that as they talk about cutting teachers and making classrooms larger they don't talk about cutting administration and I don't see that the administration within the schools and within the larger entities of school boards are all right not the school board per se but them education [Music] organizations they don't talk about cutting people there and I think that the education is in the classroom it's not so much in the offices oh absolutely yeah absolutely in fact some studies have been done in New York I'm your walkie which show that of the money that's spent less than half of it ever reaches the classroom and some cases much less than half of it reaches the school it maintains this enormous and growing through bureaucracy and that's one of the reasons why there's very little correlation between the money and the educational performance all right tell us Thanks and the you're on the air yeah yeah I I too am a graduate of st. John's College now I I wanted to say that the problems that you did you talk about the difficulty of getting kids to think for themselves our problems that have been there since the very beginning of Education and you're right that a variety of educational approaches can't be proper I want to point out though that you seem to think that the problems with texts and educational approaches are largely due to special interest groups inside the education system and I disagree you look at history books that have been watered down because of conservative special interest groups and and liberal interest groups warring against each other to the point where the books have absolutely no substance at all you want to give you want to give primary source education students you want them to read the Federalist Papers they have to have them I divide those books and it goes back to the problem of the bureaucracy sucking up all the money again you know it's I don't think the Federalist Papers cost and even more than some of the textbooks that I've seen was you have no content well the thing is that by the time you get to the point of buying all the primary sources you need to balance that textbook or to give that textbook some sense or to actually talk to on susan's line yeah yeah I mean you know by the time you're done buying all the stuff you need I mean it's you know st. John's it is cheap because I mean all those primary books do cost a bit you have a wonderful bookshelf but it ain't cheap yes yes but I think when you when you when you think of all the things that schools manage to spend their money on I suspect there would be no problem whatever to spend money on on things of higher quality even if you stuck stuck to a textbook which I don't think is the best education you could have better quality textbooks and I'm a nice eyesore recently a textbook that my niece is using in the tenth grade and I looked through it and decide at the end that it was only toward the end of the book that they got to the kind of mayor that you would normally expect in the ninth grade and so a better book would not have cost any more is just this there's this they're selling junk

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Length: 23min 56sec (1436 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 07 2020