Why Do Colleges Cling to ‘Silly’ Concepts?

Rick Ginsberg and Yong Zhao are out with an intriguing new e book, Duck and Cowl: Confronting and Correcting Doubtful Practices in Schooling. The title refers back to the mantra of Nineteen Fifties-era faculty drills, again when a nation residing underneath the specter of nuclear holocaust taught its kids to “duck and canopy” within the occasion of a Soviet assault.

Because the authors clarify of their introduction, “The observe was easy. If there was imminent concern of a bomb hitting a college or touchdown in its neighborhood, college students had been educated to dive underneath their desks and canopy their heads with their arms.” The implication, in fact, was that kneeling underneath their desk would defend college students from a nuclear blast. Spoiler: It wouldn’t. However the Federal Civil Protection Program produced the 1951 movie “Duck and Cowl,” anyway, by which Bert the cartoon turtle cheerfully taught a era to “duck and canopy.”

As Ginsberg and Zhao drolly observe, “This must be one of the silly academic insurance policies ever enacted.” Why did so many policymakers and educators associate with a coverage that terrified younger college students whereas doing nothing to guard them? Ginsberg and Zhao argue that policymakers and educators felt obliged to do one thing—and, if one thing silly was the one possibility, nicely, they’d do this. They provide this as a metaphor for a lot of silly, ineffectual insurance policies in American education.

I’m a fan of each authors. Ginsberg is dean of training on the College of Kansas, former board chair of the American Affiliation of Schools of Trainer Schooling, a savvy observer of college reform, and an previous good friend. Zhao is a distinguished professor at Kansas and a refugee from communist China, whose contempt for paperwork and quasi-authoritarian meddling has made him one of many nation’s extra heterodox training thinkers.

In the middle of the e book’s brisk 156 pages, Ginsberg and Zhao skewer quite a lot of sacred cows. The 19 chapters cowl the academic waterfront: social-emotional studying (SEL), academic know-how, school and profession readiness, class dimension, gown codes, skilled growth, instructor analysis, gifted training, testing, faculty board governance, and way more.

The breadth of subjects hints at each the strengths and the weaknesses of this quantity. Its nice energy is its evenhanded willingness to say essential issues about quite a lot of common concepts. Readers of each ilk can relaxation assured that they’ll discover some issues to thrill them and others that infuriate them. In our polarized world, this marks a welcome departure from the acquainted groupthink. The authors deserve kudos for that alone.

Their method additionally permits them to cowl quite a lot of floor, making various provocative observations and providing various helpful cautions. However the trade-off is that they don’t spend quite a lot of time or power making the case {that a} given concept is silly. Many of the chapters didn’t provide parallels to “duck and canopy” or a lot as thumbnail sketches of the great, unhealthy, and ugly of how these concepts work in observe.

Thus, with regards to SEL, Ginsberg and Zhao notice the strain faculty leaders face from “specialists and researchers, do-gooders, and typically snake-oil salespersons buying their wares.” They then sketch the rationale for SEL and various issues about it, earlier than providing some wise recommendation about the necessity to transfer intentionally and make clear targets. That is all superb. However none of it actually makes the case that SEL is a “doubtful observe” (and I say this as somebody who’s been a lot skeptical of SEL). As a reader, given the promise of the e book’s subtitle, central metaphor, and setup, this felt like lower than I bargained for. That is fairly constant all through.

And I might’ve preferred to see them push tougher when explaining how doubtful concepts catch on and why we could be so reluctant to confront them. In any case, I’ve explored the frenzied tempo of college reform and why some reforms would possibly enchantment greater than others. On condition that, I hoped for greater than the broad reminder that “faculties really implement quite a lot of various things” and the remark that “duck-and-cover insurance policies persist as a result of they aren’t questioned.” On the outset, the e book guarantees a daring exploration of folly; on this rely, it delivers one thing lower than that.

In the end, although, it is a well timed and worthwhile contribution. Ginsberg and Zhao have penned a fair-minded survey of training coverage, with a wholesome emphasis on the necessity to assume extra intentionally about how issues really work. And that’s a worthwhile train and a much-needed reminder, one which educators, policymakers, and advocates ought to take to coronary heart.