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PARTISAN REVIEW
Edith Kurzweil:
I think we all agree on that. The question is, how to
go about it? I think one of th e problems we're faced with is that the
public school teachers now have been brought up in universities that
have lowered their expectations. Many of the teachers are simply not as
knowledgeable as they ought to be in order to educate their students. I
cou ld give examples of teachers who were teaching third- and fourth–
grade classes in Newark because they were role models. I remember two
of them who could not construct a proper sentence. These particular
ones have learned in the meantime. But I don't know whether we know
just what is being taught in the public schools. What are the standards?
Al Shanker:
If there's no agreed-upon curricu lum , you can't know,
because everyone's free . Most high school teachers in history and English
have degrees in their subject matter. In math and science there's such a
shortage that most of the people teaching those subjects are English or
history teachers. However, the question of the quality of education is a
function of the overall production of educated people within our soci–
ety. If you produce three percent of your high school students who meet
a world-class standard, and if that three percent goes to your elite
institutions, and if you hire about twenty-three percent of all college
graduates each year
to
go into teaching, you get the picture. Until you
produce about the same percentage of high school students who meet
those high standards as, let's say, France or Germany or Scandinavian
countries, you're going to have questions of quality. You're not
producing enough people who have the knowledge to teach.
Heather MacDonald:
Isn't there a link, though, between what's hap–
pening in colleges and what's happening in high schools? So it's become
a way of justifying what's happening in high schools. I think what is be–
ing discussed at colleges is providing the reasons for no longer emphasiz–
ing tests or de-emphasizing American history and for bringing in, instead,
a smorgasbord of world cultures. Again, I think what's happening in
colleges is setting a tone.
AI Shanker:
The emphasis on world cultures is very recent.
Heather MacDonald:
I'm responding more to Abigail Thernstrom's
point.
AI Shanker:
Look, I don't have to state my posItIon in terms of the
dangers of radical multiculturalism, but you can't blame the decline of
standards on that. It is a more recent phenomenon. The National
Assessment of Educational Progress started in 1968 or 1969. There's been
