Monday February 13, 2023
FEATURE: An Honest Discussion - Education II | BLACK HISTORY MONTH COMMENTARY: Truman and Desegregating the Military | Happening This Week
FEATURE: An Honest Discussion - Education II
by Martin Davis and Shaun Kenney
In the second part of our discussion, we explore testing, the meaning of culture, and whether school choice is a step forward in advancing education.
SVK: This gets us down to a core question: who decides? If indeed we want more parental involvement in education, isn’t the best way of creating that space allowing parents to choose how their children are actually educated? Not just with a metric that we can measure (testing) but with an environment that helps produce outcomes we all desire? We speak a great deal about diversity as a strength; why do we stop short when it comes to a cookie cutter solution to what is arguably a publicam bonum for the res publica? In short, the transmission of culture might be just as (if not more) important than the transmission of testing metrics – no?
So long as education is reduced to the transmission of culture, our wars will continue. Look to the 1619 Project, which elicited a firestorm from the right; or Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s war on Black history. Underlying both these controversies is an unwillingness of white America to allow Black America to tell their stories. And testing becomes the flashpoint. What gets talked about and tested, and what gets ignored? What is the common good I allude to? Learning to hear everyone, not insisting we teach just one side of the story. There is a place in K-12 education for Aristotle and Plato, for the 1619 Project, and the writings of Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx. On this we can agree. Testing - which now drives everything in education, is the least helpful component of education. It’s time to unshackle teachers’ hands, and end the culture wars. What students learn is far less important that the skills they walk away with - analysis, respect, appreciation for the other, and the ability to write about it all.
MAD: So long as education is reduced to the transmission of culture, our wars will continue. Look to the 1619 Project, which elicited a firestorm from the right; or Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s war on Black history. Underlying both these controversies is an unwillingness of white America to allow Black America to tell their stories. And testing becomes the flashpoint. What gets talked about and tested, and what gets ignored? What is the common good I allude to? Learning to hear everyone, not insisting we teach just one side of the story. There is a place in K-12 education for Aristotle and Plato, for the 1619 Project, and the writings of Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx. On this we can agree. Testing - which now drives everything in education, is the least helpful component of education. It’s time to unshackle teachers’ hands, and end the culture wars. What students learn is far less important that the skills they walk away with - analysis, respect, appreciation for the other, and the ability to write about it all.
SVK: It is probably too far to say that ‘culture’ is the problem when a certain type of culture – namely, good ol’ fashioned pluralism – is precisely where we want to be. In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that the 1619 Project should be taught, right there alongside the 1776 Project, alongside comparative religions and so forth. Critical Race Theory? Bring it on. Evolution and creationism? Let’s talk about it. The scientific method? Let’s use it! The transmission of culture we want? All of it – as in we should be drinking from the firehose so we can allow our children to surprise us with the result.
What should strike all of us as patently absurd is the very moment we became too weak and insecure to deeply consider alternate viewpoints – so on this, we entirely agree (and hopefully, others do as well).
That having been said, instead of testing what we know? Our students only know the tests. Teachers are inspired to teach, and often have a deep love for their field, yet our students never catch the spark. Is some of that cultural? Most likely so, both in the macro and the micro. Yet a regime of test scores only gives the appearance to students that the mark of excellence is a binary choice between 0s and 1s. The problem comes when the pendulum starts rocking as one set of values begins to dominate the discourse, which – if we listen carefully to critics of public education – is where the pressure is most keenly felt. Does testing have a role? Surely – but this thoughtless approach we employ today is doing far more harm than good, I’d agree.
MAD: Two illuminating points of understanding. First, we both instinctively used the world “culture” thinking the other knew what was meant. However, I misunderstood your definition as one that is common on the right. One that stresses the teaching of Western culture, narrowly defined. So I was both shocked and delighted to hear you talk about pluralism, which many tend to associate with more-progressive people.
Second is the fact that we agree on the damaging impact of testing. As you so thoughtfully put it - we lead people to believe “the mark of excellence is a binary choice between 0s and 1s.”
This doesn’t mean that testing has no value. But we have come to define excellence by test results - hence the obsession over SOL scores, NAEP scores, and PISA scores. Rather, these tests should be more in the background as tools that teachers use to understand what students do and don’t know, and then work to service those shortcomings.
These tests should also be the ground floors of education. Real learning occurs when we move from a Trivial Pursuit-type education we now practice to thoughtful analysis and discussion.
The great irony to me of the conservative critique of public education is that students aren’t “work ready.” So now we want to force students to earn certifications that prepare them for labor-oriented jobs. Nothing wrong with that, but it won’t solve the fundamental problem. Students only learn to problem-solve when forced to tackle the complexities of life a solid liberal arts education delivers.
SVK: I suspect most people deep down know that’s right. I forget where I read the observation, but when the aliens come to Earth, they aren’t going to be interested in our STEM-H. Rather, it will be in our poetry, music, architecture, prose… the stuff that becomes the hallmark of both civilization and culture.
Yet on the wider points progressives should consider in the debate on school choice, are we really doing good by all of our students? Do conservatives feel heard by the Virginia Education Association? Do we really have religious and intellectual freedom in public education? Or have we backslid into mere toleration from those in power, which for those of us who dabble in Latin merely means to bear out or endure other viewpoints?
For too many outside observers, progressives enjoy a grip on the institutions and don’t seem terribly fussed about changing much of what people are complaining about, from Critical Race Theory (both its introduction and suppression) to LGBTQ+ issues to the introduction of litter boxes for furries (yes, it’s a thing) while test scores dip even lower. And yes, it is a uniquely progressive problem that cannot be fobbed away with whataboutism. The mass androgenization of values and viewpoints in the classroom isn’t pluralism; it’s androgenization, and it serves no one.
There’s the Catch-22. Conservatives are neither free to leave the public education system via school choice, nor are we heard when we rattle our cages. If we really want an education system where we are breathing with both lungs, either give conservatives a hearing or give parents the voucher they need to escape mediocrity.
If the former, and we want to include alternative voices, our friends in Richmond aren’t setting the best tone or example in that regard. If the latter, then giving parents the power to put students over systems just might help spur the rest of us towards a more equitable and pluralistic education system which includes all of us – public, private, homeschool, charter and parochial. I like the sound of that future over the failures of the past.
MD: Without playing whataboutism, Progressives aren’t alone in having problems. The reaction to CRT from the right borders on hysterical. And recent moves by the governor regarding LGBTQ+ students are simply cruel. And I’m not sold on the litter box urban myth.
What is clear is that conservatives are in attack mode seeking revenge against perceived liberal bias in education. Which is going to lead to another backlash to the left. We have to break this cycle.
It’s unfortunate that after acknowledging the problems with test scores, you return to them to label public schools a failure. But again, public schools aren’t failing.
Well-funded schools in middle- and upper-class communities do quite well, generally speaking. And poorly funded schools in poorer communities generally struggle.
I’m all about “breathing with both lungs.” But that can’t happen if school choice becomes a venue for parents to isolate their children by culture, in the same way we’ve allowed economics to segregate our traditional public schools.
And this doesn’t touch the obvious problem. The cost to build “school choice.” Schools aren’t cheap, and a few thousand dollars per pupil will never be enough to make it happen. You need either deep-pocketed donors (and there aren’t enough), or we have to strip money from public schools to fund an alternative school system.
Instead of pulling money out, give the schools the money they need and allow them to innovate. Magnet schools are just one example of how traditional public schools have proven innovative in targeting people’s educational interests.
Truman’s Order: The End of Segregation in the Military
By David S. Kerr
"A Sailor stands on the flight deck of USS Harry S. Truman." by Official U.S. Navy Imagery is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
In 1948 President Harry S. Truman did something that would change the course of American society and the U.S. military forever. He issued an executive order in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief integrating the armed forces. In commemorating black history month this remarkable order sometimes gets overlooked. That’s a shame. It deserves to be celebrated.
Desegregation of the military represented a massive change in the military culture. Until 1948 America’s armed forces were rigidly segregated. In the Army there were “colored” divisions (with white officers) and “white” military divisions. In the Navy, blacks could only serve as cooks or in units that loaded and unloaded cargo. Of course, there had been one breakthrough. The Air Force, which only the year before had become a separate branch of the service, had African American pilots who were officers. The famous Tuskegee Airmen. However, that was just a small exception. Segregation remained a standing cultural norm in the military.
That didn’t all change in one single day, but the tide most certainly turned when President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, formally integrating the nation’s armed forces. That’s one of the remarkable things about the military. Orders are given and orders are followed. By the time we entered the Korean War, two years later, our armed services were almost entirely integrated.
An old friend of mine was a sergeant in an Army aviation support company that was ordered to integrate following the executive order. My friend had joined the Army underage (using his brother’s ID) and had been in World War II. He had known black soldiers and had no concerns about working with them. However, that wasn’t true for several of his fellow white non-commissioned officers (NCO’s). During their first week as an integrated unit, the company commander spoke to the white NCO’s and suggested that during mealtimes they needed to sit with their African American counterparts and “Let them get to know you.”
Several of these men said they weren’t sure they could do that. The Captain, probably expecting this, nodded, and said he understood. They didn’t have to it if they didn’t want to, but then assuming a firmness they knew all too well, he said, “…be advised gentleman, if you don’t do this, and don’t help me in integrating this unit, you’ll be out of the Army before the sun comes up tomorrow.” It worked and the company integrated with relatively little difficulty. Sometimes the methods the military uses to obtain cooperation from its ranks aren’t subtle, but they do work.
Integration of the Armed Forces preceded integration in civilian America by almost two decades. Again, that’s another aspect of military life many civilians don’t appreciate. Social change in a structured, orders-based society can happen quickly and far faster than it can in the civilian world.
Remember, too that the 1948 order was six years before the famous Supreme Court Case decision, Brown v. Topeka, that ordered the desegregation of America’s public schools and 16 years before the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
However, while military bases might have been integrated, many of their adjacent communities, particularly in the south, were decidedly segregated. Black and white soldiers and their families could socialize on base and use the same pools in the summertime, but when they left their base or installation, it was often a world of harsh and rigidly enforced segregation.
Racism and a scarcity of African Americans in the senior leadership of the armed services is still a problem in the 21st century. It wasn’t all solved in 1948. While the military can set its own rules, and force change in a way no other American institution can, its still a microcosm of American society. Complete with all its foibles and failings.
Still, there is still something satisfying in the fight against racism to recall President Truman’s executive directing the immediate desegregation of the armed forces. He simply did what his conscience demanded. Truman never backed down and nor did the thousands of African Americans who, thanks to Truman’s order, would become the first of their race in a wide range of military jobs and positions of leadership in the years that followed follow.
Happening This Week In:
Fredericksburg
City Council: Tuesday, February 14 at 7:30 PM. You can find the agenda here.
Spotsylvania
Board of Supervisors Meeting, February 14 at 4:30 PM. You can find the agenda here.
School Board Meeting, February 13 at 5:30 PM. You can find the agenda here.