Southern Baptists Reject Exit Strategy

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention refused to back a resolution that would support an exodus from the public schools. There are at least three grounds for supporting a pullout that are separate from and in addition to the religious ones that Roger Moran and Bruce Shortt are advocating. Indeed, I would go further than Moran and Shortt. Since (1) the public schools increasingly have abandoned their commitment to welding a common American polity in favor of fragmentation of group interests and (2) they do a dismal job of education, why should they exist at all? I would support their abolition in favor of a voucher-based private system.

1. The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) oversees the accreditation of teacher edcuation programs and so heavily influences most teacher education in the US. NCATE has engaged in a program of indoctrination in its teacher education programs that is similar to the inculcation of religious belief. It is called dispositional assessment. NCATE had gone so far as to say that education programs could require students to adopt "social justice dispositions" without saying what the dispositions are. NCATE backed down from advocating "social justice dispositions" because of our pressure but continues to advocate the use of "dispositions" and "dispositional assessment". These are just as bad from Moran's/Shortt's standpoint, because the dispositions that NCATE advocates are general and vague and can easily cross over into religious doctrines and may frequently do so.

NCATE's use of dispositions has not been validated and so is a matter of faith or belief, not legitimate science. This in turn suggests that NCATE is using "dispositions" in its accreditation standards not to encourage competent teaching but rather to indoctrinate education students into belief systems, possibly, for example, rejection of religion. There is nothing to stop an education school from using the dispositional approach that NCATE advocates to say that contempt for religion is a necessary disposition for a teacher. Indeed, one of my colleagues at Brooklyn College, Timothy Shortell, a sociology professor, has publicly stated his view that believers are "moral retards." Clearly, such views could easily spill over into a concept such as "dispositional assessment."

2. As Diane Ravitch ably demonstrates in "Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform", quackery and ideologically motivated junk science has dominated the education field for the past 80 years. The teaching and education methods in the public schools are failures and by keeping their children in public schools, an increasing percentage of parents may find that they are giving their children a bad education. Hence an exodus is not just a matter of religion. It is in many cases an intelligent reaction to a breakdown of the educational system. Indeed, no one criticizes virtually every elite New Yorker for not having sent their children to New York City's public schools. With repeated left wing educationist attacks on the City's best schools, such as Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, why on earth would they send their children to New York's public schools? Are members of the SBC not entitled to an education at least as good as that of elite New York's?

3. One of the arguments that may be used to support education in public schools is that by sending children to public schools we are participating in a common society and encouraging a common set of American values. That is my favorite argument for public schools, but the problem is that the education of teachers and the ideologies of the education establishment have increasingly become rooted in identity politics, group interests, opposition to the "melting pot", disdain for the United States, and racialist doctrines that assault Whites, the United States, Christians and Jews. This becomes evident when you review NCATE's accreditation standards at www.ncate.org. While virtually every page of NCATE's guides and philosophies contains reference to "diversity", the NCATE literature has virtually nothing to say about competent teaching of mathematics, reading and writing.* NCATE's standards, which have been recognized by the Bush administration's Department of Education, are an embarrassment to the nation.

NCATE's accreditation policies heavily emphasize an identity politics approach. Given that the public schools increasingly have abandoned their support for a common polity, under policies that the Department of Education recognizes, the justification for public schools is considerably weakened. Coupled with the decline in educational standards and decades of incompetent educationist practices, the time may be drawing near to declare the public education system's bankruptcy. If the education system were General Motors, it would have been taken over by Ford or Toyota long ago.

*One of the chief effects of NCATE's emphasis on identity politics and its devaluation of basic education is the victimization of students from minority and immigrant backgrounds, who are not educated and acculturated adequately to become candidates for the best jobs, which are apparently reserved for children who go to elite private schools and so learn to write English well.