"An art which cannot be specified in detail cannot be transmitted by prescription, since no prescription for it exists".
"It is pathetic to watch the endless efforts--equipped with microscopy and chemistry, with mathematics and electronics--to reproduce a single violin of the kind the half-literate Stradivarius turned out as a matter of routine more than 200 years ago."
Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, describing the limits of science in comprehending artful performance.
PBS. RTI. AVID. IDEA. RTTT. Title I. TAG. OAKS. NCLB. State Standards. National Standards. Direct Instruction. Reading First. All examples of an attempt to 'transmit by prescription' and measure the outcomes of the art of teaching.
I have written again and again, one acronym at a time, that each of these programs/approaches/concepts is deeply flawed. They are not flawed in their implementation or in their finer points. This is not a matter of nuances. They can't be fixed or adjusted or improved. They are flawed in principal. They are epistemologically malformed. They are monstrous. They have their roots in a misunderstanding of science. Everything else follows from that misunderstanding.
Each of these programs is worthy of criticism in its own right. Each is flawed in ways that are unique to its intended outcomes. Still their single common flaw dwarfs their individual maladies. But how does one flaw find its way into all of these arenas?
The proponents of these various programs begin with an inadequate understanding of the physical sciences which they then misapply to the social sciences. Next they misappropriate this ill-wrought vision of social science and deploy it as a substitute for a theory of education. They have no theory of education and yet they are certain that they have the wisdom to determine practice on a state and national scale.
There you have it. Three sentences, three critical errors. And all of those errors are subterranean. They aren't even part of the discussion in the education community. In fact each error registers as truth (through relentless repetition) in the deep background knowledge of educators everywhere. Schools of education never discuss these issues. Most have no faculty capable of leading the discussion. They indoctrinate without questioning, they believe without hesitation. Their unexamined belief? The common article of faith? That they are doing some sort of science. That the practices that they promote are 'scientifically based'. That when they add up three test scores and divide by three, they are doing the educational equivalent of physics or chemistry. The notion is, of course, absurd. But they are serious. And they are in charge.
Those within the education community (mostly teachers) who feel ill-at-ease with the ramifications of this flawed thinking generally lack the channels of communication with which to effectively voice them. And if they can articulate them, they are still under the authority of leaders who don't want to hear it (and who often as not wouldn't understand it if they did). Education 'leaders' aren't generally informed or patient with ideas. They don't know or like philosophy. Most will identify themselves as pragmatists, by which they mean that they just 'do what works'. The fact that what they do doesn't work seems never to register with them. The fact that they don't understand Pragmatism (a philosophical orientation) leaves them untouched.
There are many circumstances in which it is unimportant whether a person lacks philosophical sophistication. But educational leaders who miss the mark regarding the very nature of schooling are far from harmless. Educational leaders who want to command compliance with their malformed theories are dangerous in the extreme.
These are people who cannot tell the difference between Merlot and grape jelly, Van Gogh and paint by numbers, Giselle and DDR. They are artless. AND they misunderstand science. Twice blind, and firmly in charge.
All that is left to those of us who have glimpsed the possibility of teaching as art, as craft, requiring judgment and connoisseurship, is to shield those closest to us from the worst of the edicts of the philistines and to create what space we may for real education to take place within our spheres of influence.
