Annals of education: the end of “smart”
You knew it was coming didn’t you? An article by Zeus Leonardo (great name, actually), a “scholar of critical race/whiteness studies,” and Alice A. Broderick, a disability studies expert, which explores:
…”smartness” as an ideological system and particularly…the ways in which it intersects with whiteness as ideology. Using Cheryl Harris’s analysis of whiteness, the authors argue that smartness works as a form of property, with all the advantages that come with membership in the group…
Conclusions/Recommendations: Analogous to Roediger’s claim about whiteness, the authors argue that smartness is nothing but false and oppressive, and as such, attempts to theoretically rearticulate or rehabilitate smartness may serve to illuminate, but ultimately fail to dissolve, the normative center of schooling.
Lest you think this is The Onion, it is not—unless you think the Teacher’s College Record, “a journal of research, analysis, and commentary in the field of education…published continuously since 1900 by Teachers College, Columbia University” is merely a front for the humor magazine.
And this video has got to be one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. In it, an education professor (who happens to be a black man, an obviously intelligent guy) discusses research he did in which he interviewed about a dozen male black teachers who had been hired in predominantly black schools in order to be strong male role models, asking them about their experiences. If you watch the whole thing (it’s only about three minutes long), it seems his recommendation is that they go to the gender re-education camps. You’ll see what I mean; it’s pretty ironic, although he doesn’t mean to be.
Columbia is one of the most influential education schools in the United States. It not only churns out a great many graduates, but it sets the tone for a great deal of education-education in the country. This sort of thing has been going on for many decades somewhat under the radar. But it’s my impression it’s getting worse by the minute, like a virus that’s been spreading exponentially,
“This sort of thing has been going on for many decades somewhat under the radar. But it’s my impression it’s getting worse by the minute,…”
Such things tend to be the most serious threats, because of the chance of being aware of them only when it’s too late. The Marxification of academe and media and the Islamization of the West have gone so smoothly because of operating by that quiet, unobtrusive mode.
Paging Harrison Bergeron! Looks like you’re going to arrive sooner than expected…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
Teachers College, Columbia University
Smells like an onion. The only cures for the current education disaster are vouchers and home schooling. The public schools should be dynamited.
Lizzy: wow, that was written in 1961, too. Prescient.
About Broderick.
Her work is grounded in commitments to pursue inclusive schooling from a collaborative stance informed by disability studies in education (DSE) and other criticalist perspectives. Her research and teaching interests include critical explorations of cultural representations of dis/ability (particularly autism), and the role of DSE in pursuing socially just and inclusive schooling.
Heh. I especially like the construction “dis/ability”.
The irony of a faculty member of an Ivy League university disparaging “smartness” is that if one were to ask Ivy League students, professors, or graduates, if in their heart of hearts, they believed that their affiliation with the Ivy League showed that they were among the intellectual elite of the country, the reply would be, “HELL YES.”
I thought of Harrison Bergeron, too. As with Brave New World or 1984, it was not INTENDED to be an instruction manual.
I wanted to find out how much actual teaching experience Alicia Broderick had at the primary or secondary level. I was not able to find this out, but I suspect not much. Her faculty page at Columbia does not include a Vitae. I would assume that a member of an Education faculty would be shouting from the rooftops how much actual classroom experience one had, as the classroom experience is seen as giving the faculty member added credibility. Which to my mind explains why Alicia Broderick doesn’t include any information about a Vitae nor on how much primary or secondary classroom teaching experience she has had.
The Columbia Teacher’s College web page did include a short intro on why she got into teaching.
It is one thing to work as a teacher’s aide, and another thing to work as a teacher. She is obviously an idealist. How much her ideals work in practice is another matter entirely.
For all her dislike of having special ed students separated from other students, I wonder how much experience she has had in teaching classes that include both special ed students and “regular” students. From experience, I can inform others that “inclusive” classes can be problematic.
She got her Ph.D. at Syracuse: ‘Recovery,’ ‘science,’ and the politics of hope -a critical discourse analysis of applied behavior analysis for young children labeled with autism.
http://summit.syr.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=2397813 Doctoral dissertation at Syracuse
B.Phil from Miami University. Philosophy degree? If so , definitely not stupid.
Lolzerballz.
As an autistic gay disabled black man, I find it just about balances out. I have lately taken steps to tone down my autism, autism, autism, autism, autism, autism, autism, autism, autism, autism, because it makes me look too smart. There is a lonely corner reserved for the smart guy. The dunce used to sit there but now he’s eating cheerios with his fingers.
“Paging Harrison Bergeron!”
Welcome to the Monkey House is a treasure chest of social commentary. Vonnegut was an old school liberal and throughout his career he was never shy about chiding the utopian fantasies of the hard left.
Orwell’s observation increasingly applies to academia;
“There are some ideas so wrong, that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”
only women in my family got degrees…
now they are trying to break up bronx sci, etc
the chinese are going to out pace us in a short time given what will happen over the next 20…
so its all moot…
wish i could put up a photo of my office…
i just moved out of that, to another bad place
but not as bad. was informed no raises or promotions for the rest of my life, just be comfortable or something like that… i guess palliative care starts early…
Any man or woman on the street is very aware that some people are smarter than others. They routinely use words like intelligent, bright, clever, sharp, slow, thick, dense and so forth. They meet someone and make such judgements pretty quickly. There is an empirical referent for such evaluative comments. To suggest that intelligence is a fabrication with no basis in physical reality is just dumb.
Across my career in higher education I saw the slow evolution of the concept learning disability. At first it was just blind or deaf students who were natively bright but needed some help with notes or tapes or a braille machine. Then came kids with a neurological disease which required help with note taking. Again, their mind was sound, they just needed an accommodation.
The change came when ADHD came along and students were to be given extra time on exams, including the ACT and SAT. Parents shopped around to get a diagnosis which would give their kids a leg up. The time extension on regular college course tests was clearly a shot in the dark or was pulled out of the administrator’s ass. They would say give 50% more time. Why not 40% or 60%. It was BS to avoid problems with the Feds.
I finally realized where that thing was headed. Low intelligence is the ultimate learning disability. Once that was understood, the idea of admission requirements and academic standards are gone. If your exams sort students on intelligence, you are guilty of discrimination.
If all the schools of education were to close tomorrow, would K-12 public schools be better, worse, or unchanged in five years?
Mr. Frank: IMHO, far better.
Mr. Frank, thanks for that report from the trenches of education. I’ve kind of guessed something like that was going on. Suspicions confirmed.
When people are being mislead by illusionary politics and foreign policy, the real work of the Left proceeds without hesitation, guilt, nor limits.
I have always believed that if Hillary Clinton became president,Diana Moon Glompers would be one of her first cabinet members. Harrison Bergeron is my favorite Vonnegut story. My Mom was my English teacher my senior year in high school, and she had us read it in class. Thanks, Mom!
Does that explain Chief Judge John Roberts’ decision in the Obamacare case?
Regarding the video by the education professor’s survey of 12 black male teachers’ experiences, I think his advice was not of the “go to the gender re-education camps” type. While he did seem to be put off by those teachers’ candid comments, I think his advice was more along the lines of “get a map to the mine field we asked you to walk through.”
The education professor is a parody of himself. You dignify him by calling him ‘professor’; in fact, Mr. Brockenbrough is an Assistant Prof at the Univ. of Rochester. He does ‘research’ by finding a minority of minorities (12 black male teachers) and then castigates them for being non-female and not thinking like women. Hmmm…what if this were 1970 and he’d done ‘research’ then on the few black teachers at formerly all-white schools. Would he have criticized them for being insensitive and non-white?
The male teachers were selected for their maleness, and he finds fault with their male thinking? This is research?
He is at the Univ. of Rochester, now the sole big employer in Rochester (after the departure of Xerox and the collapse of Kodak). The Univ. is very big on diversity. When it fails, what will be left of Rochester, NY? Not much.
Thank you, Bill Ayers, for helping “Education’ become what it has become.
Don Carlos:
The phrase “an education professor” is a generic, not technical, term, in which the uncapitalized word “professor” refers to a tenure track teacher at the college level. It’s not a formal title when used that way.
But yes, my point is that these teachers were chosen for their maleness and then castigated for it—by a man.
Ira,
No, it was not. It was a recommendation that they learn how their own patriarchal attitudes are coloring their perception of the women in charge and making them make prejudicial sexist accusations against those women.
Good point, neo-neocon.
Assistant Professor Brockenbrough has been considering his subject for several years.
http://www.tcrecord.org/library/abstract.asp?contentid=16417
http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3328531/
Don Carlos poses the right question: “Hmmm…what if this were 1970 and he’d done ‘research’ then on the few black teachers at formerly all-white schools. Would he [Brockenbrough] have criticized them for being insensitive and non-white?”
My guess is that Brockenbrough would have blamed the white folks for being insensitive. I also guess that he identifies more with entrenched female administrators and teachers, which is why he did not seem to sympathize with the complaints made by his 11 subjects.
From Brockenbrough bio shown at
http://www.warner.rochester.edu/facultystaff/brockenbrough/
it appears that Brockenbrough has no actual experience teaching any K-12 classes, which another commenter correctly indicated would seem to be a prerequisite for teaching others how to educate.
After reading his bio and re-viewing the video, it appears that Brockenbrough is particularly sensitive to gender senstitivities.
In any event, the advice he gives at the end of the video would have been helpful to black male teachers in 1970s formerly all white schools, and would be helpful to black male teachers working in “minority” schools today, and would be helpful to everyone: Have an understanding of the proclivities and sensitivities of those you work for and with.
By the way, for all we know, Brockenbrough’s 11 subjects may have done everything right and were just plain frustrated by injustices heaped on them by the administrators of their school(s).
Ira:
My hunch is that your final paragraph is spot on. That’s what I think is most likely to have been the case.
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Neo-
My professor comment was an attempt at a sneer.
And as Ira points out, Brockenbrough is not a male-male.
It turns out that Edward Brockenbrough HAS had some experience teaching at the secondary level. From Vitae:Visiting Lecturer at Swarthmore:
Yes, he HAS taught at the secondary level. Yes, he DOES have an ax to grind. Given that he has an ax to grind regarding “queer educators and queer students in predominantly black educational settings,” I would tend to dismiss out of hand whatever line he is pushing.
My guess is that his “private secondary school in the Bronx” is one of the elite private schools in the Bronx, such as Riverdale Country School, Horace Mann School, or the Fieldston School. He got his Bachelor’s from Brown, so he had the credentials to teach at such schools. Much easier duty than one of the public schools in the Bronx. Can’t blame him for choosing such schools for teaching- if my surmise is correct. But it seems odd to teach at an elite private school and then to later focus one’s research on “predominantly black educational settings.”
“the end of smart”? Apparently, being a good student is now a psychological disorder. Check out this psych exam question posted over at Maggie’s Farm.
To bad about The Teaching College. A few years ago, I found,
How to Study and Teaching How to Study (1909) by F. M. McMurry, Professor of Elementary Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, online. It is an excellent argument for teaching students to, you know, do their job, studying. Sadly, although the work was much cited in its time, it seems to have been lost in the field of education. Not completely, his factors of studying are basically what even the finest universities fail to teach today, critical thinking. Only McMurry advocated teaching kids how to study at the beginning of their student careers, starting in earnest in 3rd grade. What a crazy idea: Teaching kids how to study. It’s madness. They might gain freedom of thought and then where would the Progs be?
Twenty-five years ago I typed my wife’s master’s in education thesis and got a look at education research. You cannot believe how banal it is.
An old HS classmate of mine, a very good teacher and coach, got his EdD so he could become a Superintendent. He had three daughters to send to college. He was an excellent Supt, too. I had an opportunity to see his dissertation. It was around 20 pages, including bibliography. As he said, “Crap. Total crap, but it did the job.”
“We need to have inclusive education, and that extends to the university level, where special ed is often taught by a separate faculty.”
University level special ed?
ITYM “chosen for their maleness and then castigated for it — by a castrati”.
Education profs have to come from somewhere.
I’m so glad I got through public school before ideas like this started gaining traction. When my father retired from teaching (about ten years ago), he said he was glad to be getting out because all the “self-esteem crap” was starting to overwhelm the actual teaching.