Next book: The Cult of Smart by Freddie deBoer

I haven't felt like blogging much lately, but my latest read, The Cult of Smart by Freddie deBoer, has some choice quotes that I want to blog so I won't forget. Freddie argues simultaneously that education isn't and shouldn't be everything, AND that it's OK to recognize that some kids are smarter than others, some kids will benefit from being in more advanced tracks in school, etc. We don't need to push college on everyone, but we can recognize that some kids are probably better cut out for it than others, and that's OK.  Some key quotes:

1) On page 7:

For decades our educational politics have obsessed over between-group variation, that is, gaps between black students and white, between girls and boys, between rich and poor. But to me the more interesting, more essential, insights lie in the nature of within-group variation. Take any identifiable academic demographic group you'd like--poor black inner-city charter school students, first-generation Asian immigrants in Los Angeles public schools, poor rural white girls in the Ozard Mountains. There are indeed systematic differences in outcomes between these various groups. But what's more telling and more interesting is the variation within these groups. In any such groups, you will find students who excel at the highest levels and students who fail again and again.

Freddie goes on to argue that so much policy is aimed at getting everyone to the same target, which is insane.

2) On page 12, regarding the idea that effort is everything (which he has encountered in many teaching jobs):

The cruelty of that idea--that we are all so equal in ability that only effort and character can keep us from success--was apparent. The evidence was sitting at a desk in front of me, weeping real tears.

I've said repeatedly that a theory of success needn't be a theory of failure, but certainly they go together closely. Saying why people succeed says nothing about why people don't do what is required for success--maybe a cruel society has discouraged them from trying. Nonetheless, there's a strong implication that if they disregard a cruel society they'll succeed, and however well-intentioned that belief might be, it won't really help a kid who just isn't cut out for something.

3) Page 17, regarding "weed-out" intro courses in science and engineering:

And I grew to think that rather than representing a failure of educators to do their jobs, these classes that screened out students performed a necessary if unfortunate function for institutions dedicated to training young people for their futures.

There's nothing wrong with saying to people that if this is hard the next thing will be even harder, so the time to make a good decision is now, when changing course is still easy.

4) On page 20, an interesting indictment of "positive thinking" and related notions:

Everywhere I turned as a teacher I seemed to find the same empty talk of excellence (without the necessary corollary of failure), innovation (without any sense of what we should be innovating toward), and positive thinking (even while its acolytes accused everyone else of having failed).

The negativity and implicit judgmentalism of the "positive thinking" types is an important point. He's also getting at The Restlessness that I often talk about here. We need to be constantly innovating toward, um, something. The achievement of an impossible goal, I guess.

5) On page 64:

We of course should equalize the environment of all children by giving them safe, stable, happy homes in which to grow and learn. We should do so as an end, not as a means to achieving educational equality.

Amen to that. Children deserve good childhoods because they are people, and particularly vulnerable people at that. While we shouldn't be short-sighted, we also shouldn't subordinate everything to super-long-term planning either. Something can be good in the moment because this moment has value and a person deserves good.