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Shifting Tides of Theory. Because it is American, American education dreams of panaceas—universal modern cures for the ancient pain of learning, easy ways to raise test scores and at the same time prepare the "whole child" for his role in society. Education has become a tormented field where armies of theorists clash, frequently using language that is unintelligible to the layman. Faddish theories sweep through the profession, changing standards, techniques, procedures. Often these changes dislocate students and teachers to little purpose. The New Math is an instructive example. Introduced in the early '60s without adequate tryout, and poorly understood by teachers and parents, the New Math eventually was used in more than half the nation's schools. The result: lowered basic skills and test scores in elementary math. Exotic features, like binary arithmetic, have since been dropped. Another trend is the "open classroom," with its many competing "learning centers," which can turn a class into a bullpen of babble. There was the look-say approach to reading (learning to read by recognizing a whole word), which for years displaced the more effective "phonics" (learning to read by sounding out syllables).
Pedagogues seeking a "science of education" are sometimes mere comic pinpricks in a teacher's side. For example, Ph.D. theses have been written on such topics as Service in the High School Cafeteria, Student Posture and Public School Plumbing. But many studies are hard on teacher morale. Sociologist James S. Coleman's celebrated 1966 survey of pupil achievement seemed glum news for teachers. That study argued that family background made almost all the difference, and that qualities of schools and teachers, good and bad, accounted "for only a small fraction of differences in pupil achievement." Later researchers, examining Coleman's work, found that pupils do seem to learn more when they receive more hours of instruction.
The sensible thing for any effective teacher would be to fend off such theories as best he can and go on teaching. As teachers are fond of saying, "Teaching occurs behind closed doors." But theory, some of it foolish and damaging, inexorably seeps under the doors and into the classrooms. For example, the sound idea that teachers should concentrate on whetting the interests of students and stirring creativity has been unsoundly used as an excuse to duck detailed schoolwork. Says Columbia's Teachers College Professor Diane Ravitch: "It is really putting things backward to say that if children feel good about themselves, then they will achieve. Instead, if children are learning and achieving, then they feel good about themselves." Ravitch believes U.S. education has suffered much from such pedagogic theories, and especially from the notion, which emerged from the social climate of the 1960s, that the pursuit of competency is "elitist and undemocratic."