Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993 TAG: 9307070437
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN C. LeDOUX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"World Class Education" and "Outcome Based Education" sound great until you find out the outcomes that will be assessed deal with "feelings" and "enthusiasm" and nothing to do with what a student has learned about the real world. I have been the recipient of Milburn and his associates' end-product for the past 12 years at Virginia Tech. In 1981 I was alarmed that so few students were ready for college-level work. They would not or could not read, written work was at grade-school level, math ability was minimal, and they were unable to think through a relatively simple word problem, much less do the math required. It has gone downhill since then.
About 20 percent of students can do college work. I suspect that they learned the basics in spite of their pre-college education. About 20 percent are so ill-prepared that there is no way that we can rescue them in a single semester. The other 60 percent are not ready, but with lots of help and hard work, they can make it. It is not the kids' fault. The educationalists are so concerned about kids' self-esteem and making them feel good that they neglect to educate them in the basics - reading, writing and math. It is my experience that you feel good when you accomplish something, and that takes work and knowledge. I have found that the home-schooled or private-schooled students are always in the upper or near upper 20 percent. The rest are from our expensive and non-productive public schools.
Milburn states that perfect spelling, knowing proper grammar and repetitious rote learning are a waste of time. Students must be allowed to be creative. How can you be creative when you are completely ignorant of basic facts? Impossible! Last semester I had an engineering student ask me during a midterm test, "How many feet are in a yard?" That may seem unimportant to teachers like him, but it indicates a complete lack of knowledge about much more than a yardstick. Perhaps spelling is not important when a student uses "thoughs" when he meant "those." How about the student who did not see anything wrong with the statement, "Lincoln was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands." Now that is creative.
One of my students who failed a midterm told me he still felt good about himself. I asked him if he would still feel good about himself if he designed a bridge that failed and killed hundreds of people. He just looked at me blankly. Knowledge, Milburn, is what produces more knowledge. Ignorance produces more ignorance. In 1987, 700,000 students graduated from high school in the United States who could not read their own diplomas. I bet that most of them still felt good about themselves. "Outcome Based Education" would have hailed that as a success.
Milburn states we only need to teach students how to find information. They do not need to learn it. Fine, if students have learned to appreciate the written word. Most will not even read their textbooks because there are not enough pictures in them. Do research in a library? Not much chance of that. I understand that the average reading assignment in high school these days is four books in four years. In my day, we were required to read 56 books during our high school years. I suspect that our children would be better educated if we had them read those 56 books and kept them out of school.
We do not need "World Class" or "Outcome Based Education," but basic education like we had 50 years ago. We need to return to the American work ethic in schools: five hours per day of reading, writing (grammar and spelling), math, science, history, etc. We need teachers who teach and not be social scientists and amateur psychologists. Memorization, hard work, homework - yes! About two to three hours per night would help keep kids out of trouble and off the streets. Eliminate condom-based sex-ed and emphasize abstinence. It works! If we did that, we would indeed have world-class education and would not need to evaluate the outcome. The marketplace would do that at no cost to us.
There are many hard-working, dedicated and competent teachers in our public-school systems who are not happy about the emphasis on feelings instead of fact-based knowledge. Parents need to support these teachers to return our schools to producing quality education instead of operating as psychological laboratories.
\ AUTHOR John C. LeDoux of Blacksburg is associate professor of engineering at Virginia Tech.
by CNB