Roy Maynard: Early Returns

Calculators aren't among the tools of learning that Texas elementary students need.

The State Board of Education made that wise decision in November, when it rejected the text Everyday Mathematics for third graders because it didn't place sufficient emphasis on memorizing multiplication tables. Instead, the book encourages them to use calculators.

There's a lot more going on here than might seem. And it's political.

It's really a disagreement about the nature of education: Some members of the state board are continuing a long battle against "progressive" principles that have hobbled American education.

And the battle is played out in skirmishes like this one.

"At issue in the math book debate is whether math should focus on memorizing specific skills - such as how to add, subtract, multiply and divide - or learning general concepts," wrote William Lutz in a recent edition of the Lone Star Report. "Books in the latter category often introduce calculators at the elementary school level (even though they cannot be used on state exams), while books in the former category focus on memorizing multiplication tables and learning how to carry and borrow."

State board member Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas, took aim at Everyday Mathematics, saying it doesn't meet state standards.

The book's publishers, McGraw Hill and the Wright Group, responded that "the book is currently used by 3 million schoolchildren nationwide and is based on research done at the University of Chicago."

That's an important detail - because the University of Chicago can be called the birthplace of educational progressivism. It's where the 34-year-old John Dewey went in 1894 to expand on his psychological and educational theories.

"Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn," Dewey wrote. "Learning naturally results."

As a teacher myself, I can see some sense in that statement. The flaw is in grouping all pupils together. As any parent knows, children learn differently at the ages of 6 and 16. What might be true for high schoolers - when "experiential learning" has some legitimacy - may not apply to elementary school students.

The better approach to education is something less than progressive - something incredibly regressive, in fact. In her 1947 speech, "The Lost Tools of Learning," British educator and author Dorothy Sayers demonstrated how the classical model of education changes with the student.

The first stage of that model - the grammar stage - might better be termed the poll-parrot stage, reflecting the love children have for repetition and recitation.

"The poll-parrot stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little relished," she wrote. "At this age, one readily memorizes... one enjoys the mere accumulation of things."

Children at this stage like to memorize, collect, chant and recite.

We sometimes still call them "grammar schools" - a throwback to the classical model - but very few classrooms reflect this developmental reality anymore. Progressive educators refer to memorization as the "drill-and-kill" method, implying that learning dry sets of facts destroys creativity and self-expression.

Not only do I disagree with that, but John Dewey did, too.

"We can have facts without thinking, but we cannot have thinking without facts," he wrote.

It's critical that what my own school (Good Shepherd in Tyler) refers to as "math facts" be taught in the elementary grades.

"The grammar of mathematics begins, of course, with the multiplication table, which, if not learnt now, will never be learnt with pleasure," Sayers pointed out.

How is this controversy political?

The 7-6 vote taken by the State Board of Education mostly reflects a philosophical divide on the board. Lutz attributed the debate to "several socially conservative members of the elected board." And following the vote, the left-leaning Texas Freedom Network got involved.

And just beneath the surface of this issue is something even more controversial - and apparently unrelated: evolution.

"A united faction of (the board's) most radical members is attempting an end run around the Legislature's clear intent to bar them from censoring textbooks," Texas Freedom Network Presi-dent Kathy Miller said. "If they get away with it, then it's open season again on textbooks that teach about evolution and other topics that a majority of board members may have personal and political objections to."

I don't see the connection. But I do expect this issue to re-emerge during the normally quiet re-election campaigns of board members.

(Smith County is represented by Republican Barbara Cargill of The Woodlands. She voted against Everyday Mathematics. She's up for re-election in 2008.)



Early Returns is the political observations column of staff writer Roy Maynard, who can be reached at 903-596-6291 or at roymaynardtmt@gmail.com.

Roy Maynard
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