IMPACT OF HIGH SCHOOL PREPARATION
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best and brightest but, with rare exceptions, encountered only the
mediocre. Never the brightest, although sometimes perhaps the good,
if
not the best. It is a truth universally acknowledged that applicants to ed
school have comparatively low SAT scores-an average combined verbal
and math score of 964 in 1997-and equally unimpressive high school
grade point averages. They're not choosing between becoming teachers and
becoming rocket scientists. The mother of a boy who was having trouble
making the cut for admission to ed school summed it up for me: if he
couldn't become a teacher he could only look forward to a future on the
assembly line.
Still, many such young people make their way into positions caring for
the youngest pupils. I say "caring" because that is exactly how they char–
acterize themselves and their function. They say they chose teaching
because they love children. They never say they love learning. And while
many of them succeed in making the schoolhouse a warm and welcoming
place, they are hardly equipped to suggest to their young charges the magic
of words, the power of myth, or the admirable qualities of the heroes of
the past who have shaped our present world. Those figures they have them–
selves learned to present as exemplars are chosen for crassly political
reasons. So ask a third-grader today to name a famous figure in American
history and you are more likely to hear the name of Harriet Tubman than
that of George Washington. Thomas Jefferson,
if
he comes up at all, will
be identified as a slave owner. Diversity has its reasons, but presenting a true
perspective on who and what has shaped our past is not one of them.
As for those who would teach older students, tho e in junior high and
secondary school, many of them must also be described as among the good
in the sense that they are idealists. They aim to change the world, and they
are smart enough to know that the way to do it is to influence the minds
of the young. They themselves are taught by the tenured radicals whose
favorite text is
The Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
They have never read
The .
Federalist Papers.
Their view of the society in which they live is an antino–
mian one; they think Marx's theories have never been given a real chance,
and they decry the so-called canon as an instrument of enforcing the hege–
mony of white European men, for whose works they substitute a
curriculum made up as far as possible by those of women of color. This is
not a parody, and I remind you that these are the bright ones from among
those who go into teaching. And so, whether because of ignorance or ide–
ology, most students in America today are deprived of any serious
acquaintance with the Western tradition, with the treasures and trials of
our civilization, and wi th the means of carrying on the cul ture.
This is the crux of the situation: the transformation of the schools
from transmitters of a common culture to agencies of social change. The
