Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The Sick Sixties : c. 1969

Experimentation, Innovation, Implementation. We have seen that mechanisms are needed for systematically determining the appropriate responsibilities of local, state, and federal education agencies. Similarly, we need mechanisms for systematically determining the kinds of human beings to be developed in our schools. Such mechanisms do not now exist in this state or any state. We need, too, mechanisms for appraising the quality of innovations and for systematically determining how a full range of projects might be put in a single school. (p. 471) I MPROVING E DUCATIONAL A SSESSMENT AND AN I NVENTORY OF M EASURES OF A FFECTIVE Behavior by Walcott H. Beatty, chairman and editor (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Devel opment Commission on Assessment of Educational Outcomes [NEA Stock No. 611–17804]: Washington, D.C., 1969) was published. A chapter entitled “The Purposes of Assessment” by Ralph Tyler, “the father of educational assessment,” was included in this important book. The following excerpts relate primarily to the principle of transfer in learning: The function of the school’s teaching is to develop young people whose behavior outside the classroom is effective and significant. Therefore, in appraising the relative effectiveness of curriculum materials or programs, one goes beyond a checking of program and purpose to consider whether the learnings are generalizable to life outside the school. The Progres sive Education Association’s Eight-Year Study, for example, followed a group of high school graduates into college and occupational roles to learn the extent to which they were able to utilize ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that the school had tried to develop.... We are all familiar with the general principle that any measures of education should be based upon educational objectives—what kind of learning are we seeking? Thirty-eight years ago, when Paul Diederich and I began some of these efforts in the Progressive Educa tion Association, much was said about determining educational objectives. We talked about educational objectives at a level so general that such objectives represented desirable and attainable human outcomes. Now, as the people from conditioning have moved into an interest in learning in the schools, the notions of behavioral objectives have become much more specific.... As far as I know, one cannot very well teach a pigeon a general principle that he can then apply to a variety of situations. The objectives for persons coming out of the Skinnerian background tend to be highly specific ones. When I listen to Gagne, who is an intelligent and effective conditioner, talk about human learning objectives, I wince a good deal because he sets very specific ones. I know that we can attain levels of generalization of objectives that are higher than that.... As a graduate student at Chicago 42 years ago, I did a study with Judd, who was at that time arguing with Thorndike over the principle of transfer in learning. Thorndike had demonstrated that transfer was not automatic among the formal disciplines; a person could take a course in Latin and not be able to handle other kinds of languages any more effec tively. Thorndike reached the conclusion that every objective had to be very specific, like conditioning objectives. His first treatise on the psychology of arithmetic established some 3,000 objectives for elementary school arithmetic. Judd, however, had come out of the social psychology tradition, having studied with Wundt at Leipzig. His view was that generalization was not only possible but was essential in education. The task he assigned me was to check on Thorndike’s view that the addition of every one of the 100 pairs of one-digit combinations had to be practiced by the learner before he could add all of the pairs. The design of my study was to take the principles of grouping for addition and help pupils see them. I noted that