The Committee of Ten

Last week we had a wonderful visit with my in-laws. I, unfortunately, got a cold but they took great care of little man and I actually got a "sick" day!! During my sick day I slept and read - it was WONDERFUL. My mother in law reported that she only read about 18 pages of her book last week, by contrast, I read close to 300 pages! Thank you!

The first book I read was E.M. Standing's Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work. This is a great overview of the basic principles of Montessori and it convinced me even more that it really is a great way to teach kids between 2 1/2 and 6. Some day I will comment more on what I learned from there.

The second book was The Graves of Academe. A witty, insightful and harsh treatment of the status of teacher education and its results in America. Richard Mitchell was the editor of the Underground Grammarian - a newsletter in the 1980's that exposed poor writing and educational methods among our universities. To give you an idea of his approach:

The betterment of fools, Goethe tells us, is the appropriate business of other fools. The Underground Grammarian does not seek to educate anyone. We intend rather to ridicule, humiliate, and infuriate those who abuse our language not so that they will do better but so that they will stop using language entirely or at least go away.

I do have to say, it has offered me a great education. It also made me ashamed that I am so sloppy in my grammar (despite my mom's best efforts). There were many excellent points made in the book about the lack of substance in most "education" today. At one point I was trying to read a portion aloud to my husband but starting laughing so hard I cried (okay, that could be hormones). Mitchell referred back to the "Committee of 10" which was formed in 1892 to help determine what should be taught in schools. I found a summary of the report and here are some highlights I'd like to share - just to show how far we've "come".

Here are the subjects that they explored in committees of ten - composed of high school teachers and college professors:

The Committee of Ten, after a preliminary discussion on November 9th, decided on November 10th to organize conferences on the following subjects:— 1. Latin; 2. Greek; 3. English; 4. Other Modern Languages; 5. Mathematics; 6. Physics, Astronomy, and Chemistry; 7. Natural History (Biology, including Botany, Zoölogy, and Physiology); 8. History, Civil Government, and Political Economy; 9. Geography (Physical Geography, Geology, and Meteorology).

Later the report discusses how most of these subjects (excepting Latin, Greek and Math) are "new subjects" in schools! You would be hard pressed to find a public school that teaches Greek and many don't even require you to learn any other foreign language.

Two questions were posed to all nine groups:

7. Should the subject be treated differently for pupils who are going to college, for those who are going to a scientific school, and for those who, presumably, are going to neither?
8. At what age should this differentiation begin, if any be recommended?

The 7th question is answered unanimously in the negative by the Conferences, and the 8th therefore needs no answer. The Committee of Ten unanimously agree with the Conferences. Ninety-eight teachers, intimately concerned either with the actual work of American secondary schools, or with the results of that work as they appear in students who come to college, unanimously declare that every subject which is taught at all in a secondary school should be taught in the same way and to the same extent to every pupil so long as he pursues it, no matter what the probable destination of the pupil may be, or at what point his education is to cease.

They, of course, were expecting that students would be challenged to the highest level in each area of academic pursuit - instead of the dumbing down which we frequently get today in the name of "equality". They desired each pupil to be challenged to the limit of their academic ability.

Even in that day and age the response was:

The experienced principal or superintendent in reading the reports will be apt to say to himself,— “This recommendation is sound, but cannot be carried out without teachers who have received a training superior to that of the teachers now at my command.”

So, this is why the Committee of Twenty-Seven was convened in the 1910's to help "fix" the high standard set by the Committee of Ten. Mitchell's diatribe is against the lack of "education" that occurs under the Committee of Twenty Seven and that we are still living in its shadow. I'll just let you know that the first and most important principle of education established by the Committee of Twenty Seven was health. Only one of the seven areas even discussed the traditional disciplines of education - and those they just discussed having a minimum standard.

Thus, we are entering into almost a century of dumbing down educational standards and making sure that public education does little to actual "educate" in the way the term was pursued and understood for centuries. I am now reading The Closing of the American Mind which has a similar theme and was written a few years after Mitchell's work.

As Mitchell points out, kids are being educated everyday in our schools - just not in things most of us would deem helpful to their growth and intellect. Mitchell doesn't hold out much hope for the educational establishment and I can't say that I blame him.