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PERSON PROFILEDiane S. RavitchRavitch is currently (2005) a Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The Phony Intellectualism of Diane RavitchPOSTED JANUARY 3, 2001-- Diane Ravitch, a conservative sponsored educational researcher, wrote in a September 13 2000 Education Week interview that the ills of contemporary public schools can be traced to the roots of the Progressive Movement. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the Education Week interview Ravitch disingenuously used 19th and early 20th century public schools as her 'bad' examples, and quoted progressives of the same era in a misleading attempt to paint her ideological foes (Ravitch was part of the George W. Bush Republican presidential campaign) as the causes of the supposedly poor shape of today's public schools. In a nutshell, no one should take what she says about education seriously. The three great alleged errors of progressives of the past, according to Ravitch are:
If the above list seems hard to comprehend, you’re not alone. First, it is unclear, at best, if progressives actually embraced even the tortured meaning of two of the above contentions. For example, why did progressives support Social Security if they thought that public schools would solve all the nation’s ills? And nobody – including critics of today’s public education such as Ravitch, disputes her second point -- that we should seek a high quality education for all the nation’s children. Then why does Ravitch attempt to tar her opponents with it? Finally, since her examples and quotations of progressives are a century old, why should they be taken as representative of either present-day progressive positions, or even as standards by which to evaluate modern schools? As in much conservative sponsored research Ravitch has thus employed obfuscation as a rhetorical trick to prevent people from latching onto the muddle-headedness and political motivation behind her writing. She criticizes progressives for getting schools to teach practical things in practical ways, as opposed to teaching more theoretical and abstract subjects like algebra and classical literature. But why should poorer, less-skilled people be forced into a curricula they are neither interested in, nor will likely benefit from? The learning should be available to them, but certainly not forced upon them. And my own research has shown that the type of learning advocated by Ms. Ravitch for all students is actually needed only by a very small percentage of the working population. If this nonsense was not published in a book labeled nonfiction, or if she didn’t get paid by the Brookings Institution to do the so-called research, I might believe Ravitch’s writings were satire or a practical joke. Alas, they are not. It is a paradox that school critics for the past 30 years have used schools and the workers who are products of public education as scapegoats for the nation’s social and economic problems. Even in good economic times schools have gotten none of the credit, and are still mercilessly bashed for not preparing students for the so-called high-tech, high skill and high pay jobs of the future. Public schools are accused of creating social and economic problems that are ignored by politicians. Conservative foundations attempt to undermine public education -- the foundation of American democracy -- by utilizing phony think tank elitists feeding at the trough. Is it wrong for progressives to suggest that schools can help to alleviate social problems by teaching utilitarian skills for work or for life? What is the rationale for requiring "all" students to achieve so-called high quality academic education, as Ms. Ravitch advocates? It would be admirable if she and her well-sponsored colleagues would volunteer to demonstrate to teachers in inner city schools how to implement and successfully operate a high quality academic educational program for "all" students. Of course there would be no need to reduce class sizes because the brilliant foundation think tanks have found that good teachers are the secret to success, and that small class sizes are a missing luxury in poor schools but not in excellent suburban schools that send their graduates to the best universities. Does Ms. Ravitch have any experimental experience or citations of evidence for her so-called Transmission of Knowledge theory? (Transmission of Knowledge is the theory that students somehow apply the learning involved in high-level education, i.e. literature, algebra, etc., to everyday activity.) It would be particularly helpful if historian Dr. Ravitch would explain to the world how transmission of an academic knowledge of history or her beloved literature could alleviate the ills of our nation’s public schools. As a chemistry major and high school math teacher of the 1950s I have never found any valid evidence for any significant transmission of knowledge model for math courses or science. My experience is that in many cases transmission of knowledge is in the imagination of the sender, not a reality in the mind of the student. Of course "all" students should have access and be encouraged to achieve at the highest levels possible. However, it is absolutely not necessary for all students to achieve at high academic levels. In fact, unrealistic high standards such as requiring algebra, eliminating social promotion, and high stakes testing are destroying poor children. What is the rationale for these changes to our education system? If the answer – as our current educational and political leaders frequently tell us – is that it is necessary to prepare students for the high-tech high skill jobs of the future, then it is a hoax. Ms. Ravitch unbelievably refers to herself, in the September 13 Education Week interview, as an egalitarian traditionalist - even a progressive traditionalist, and goes on to imply that progressives themselves are somehow anti-intellectual, a charge that is doubly strange given Ms. Ravitch’s support of George W. Bush. Her education view could be more accurately classified as elitist traditional liberal education knowledge curriculum, and as phony intellectualism. This is in fact the antithesis of egalitarianism. The word progressive as defined in dictionaries can refer to persons who favor reform, improvement or are liberal. And the word liberal can refer to be people who are tolerant, generous and favor reform. It is thus a paradox that conservatives also claim to be education reformers. I believe progressives are strongly egalitarian because they support the utilitarian value of education. They don’t believe in some hierarchy of academic disciplines that are absolutely good in and of themselves. If intellectuals such as Ravitch believe that certain subjects or knowledge are absolutely essential for everyone to learn, what is that body of knowledge? Is it possible to get any group of experts to agree on an overall curriculum? Experts cannot even agree on curriculum for a single subject matter area like math. So what! It is much ado about nothing. There are some beliefs that Diane Ravitch and I hold in complete agreement. One is when she writes, "If all the children of the community had access to the same quality of education as the children of the best and wisest parents, that in itself would be a revolution in education." Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequalities, would also agree with that principle. But that does not mean, as Ravitch would have it, that every child should have the same curriculum. Another quote I am in complete agreement with is her assertion that, "They (schools) cannot be successful unless they teach children the importance of honesty, personal responsibility, intellectual curiosity, industry, kindness, empathy and courage." In those few words Ravitch sounds like a progressive.
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MORE LINKSPolitical Animal Thats three factual errors in the first four paragraphs of Ravitch's op-ed...having uncovered one error in Diane Ravitch's op-ed about math instruction in the Wall Street Journal, I've now learned of two others
The Nation The Education of Diane RavitchReview of Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms by Diane Ravitch
Georgia Log Cabin Republicans Ravitch, Bush, and the Gay RepublicansRead about Ravitch's role as education advisor to George W. Bush's Republican presidential campaign (she was an Assistant Secretary of Education in the reign of Bush I), and her leaving the campaign upon Bush's refusal to meet with the gay Log Cabin Republicans.
Austin360.com Bush Adopts Ravitch Theories on Education"...Another person Bush looked to was Ravitch, the education guru who helped rewrite Texas' social studies curriculum two years ago. Ravitch is widely viewed as an advocate for tough academic standards and accountability. "The federal government can help the schools by holding them accountable for improvements in student performance while giving them more flexibility to decide how to do their job," Ravitch said."
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