Saturday, April 12, 2014

Can our children be educated by people who don't know what education is?

I don't know who Steven Johnathan Rummelsburg is, but his article today ("Bury Me on My Head) at the Imaginative Conservative (one of my favorite blogs) is simply outstanding. I speak to parents and teachers all over the country and one of my themes has been that those who run our education system simply do not know what education is. The question then becomes how they can purport to do what they purport to do without knowing what it is they purport to do?

Rummelsburg, quoting Chesterton as he goes, takes a wrecking ball to a public education establishment that is devoid of intellectual competence, infected with relativist ideology, and bloated with tax money. Take a gander at the answer he receives when he starts actually asking public educators what education is.

I laughed till I cried, then I realized that I should have just cried. You too can read it. And weep:
What is an education? What does it mean to be an “educated” human being? Ask a public school teacher or two and the answers may surprise you. Not because they will enlighten you, or give you a new perspective, but because in general there are vast plains of intellectual empty space that lie between the truth about education and what most teachers know about it. I have asked hundreds of public school teachers, students, and experts what it means to be educated, and the answers have been surprisingly untethered from the fetters of reason.
Read the rest here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr. Cothran, I know you. I have been somewhat of a fan ever since (I don't know how many years ago it has been now) I got my hands on a CD from a Circe Institute conference and you taught me about logic- As they say, Minerva's owl flies at dusk, I had already been a school teacher for nearly two decades only to learn that I myself had been thoroughly uneducated- not exactly a self-esteem builder.
My very intention is to take a wrecking ball to Americas ‘golden calf’ and to expose it for what it really is- did you see this on National History Day? http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/03/national-history-day.html
I also have an article asserting that for all intents and purposes, the vast majority of public school teachers are formally illiterate- If you would like to see it, I believe it too will make you laugh and cry when really we should only cry.
I hope you know how honored I am to get a good word from a good man, I don’t expect praise for what I write, but I am heartily grateful-

Pax Christi vobiscum! Steven

Martin Cothran said...

Steven,

I will check that out. Your article really was excellent. Also, I notice you graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara where both my wife and I graduated from. In fact, my wife also was a history major there.

Martin Cothran said...

Steven,

I would like to see that other article by the way.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Cothran,

I had noticed that you too went to UCSB, and your wife too! Nice coincidence. When were you there? I graduated in 1990.

I would love to hear what you thought of my national history day article- and here is my teacher literacy article- At a glance the assertion may look hyperbolic, in the end, I don't think so- but I would be honored to hear your criticism, positive or negative-
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-literacy-crisis-in-american-public-schools

One bit of confirmation on teacher illiteracy is that I have heard no complaints about my "anti-public school" essays- from any public educators, surely if they could read them they would be very upset with me but so far crickets. (ok, tongue in cheek)

You can email me if you would like to know more, I am in the third of four essays on the Common Core- and I believe they are a series of wrecking balls- I have inside information, I am in 24 days of common core training where we are designing curriculum for our respective districts, and if I had a better vocabulary and if I were an exponentially better writer, I would shock you with the devastating truth about this most horrid of developments in public ed.

Blessings to you and your family, Steven