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> From: “Greg Swann” <gswann@presenceofmind.net>
> “Dr. Louisa C. Moats” <webmaster@proactiveparent.com> > CC: “Arizona Education Superintendent Lisa Graham Keegan” <lkeegan@mail1.ade.state.az.us>, > BCC: <suppressed> > Subject: Guerrilla Schooling #4: Principles of pedagogical poisoning > Date: Sun, Aug 22, 1999, 6:04 AM |
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Principles of pedagogical poisoningHere is a diabolical poisoning strategy worthy of the diabolical Borgias themselves: First, poison your victim slowly, giving him trace quantities of your favored potion with every meal. When he complains that he is unwell, blame it on this ill humor or that; ascribe his illness to causes so vague as to be inarguable. Sympathize. Comfort. Show compassion and solicitude. And feed him more poison at every turn. Second, when he finally figures out that he has been poisoned, have a confederate offer him a supposed antidote that is in fact a venom so similar to the first as to be indistinguishable. Smile devilishly when he perishes, to the last expressing his gratitude for being rescued. It is the second role, the role of the secret confederate, that belongs to Dr. Louisa C. Moats—seen above in the “To:” line—in the drama of American educationism. She is not a purely poisonous pedagogue—not like our favorite, Dr. David Berliner, whom we are getting to. Instead Dr. Moats is a poisonous reformer, assigned the important role of finishing the job of destroying education after the Berliners have been caught—unread-handed, as it were. And we are very sure that both Dr. Moats and Dr. Berliner are earnest, conscientious people. They are not Borgias, cunning masters of knowing evil. So much the worse for us. For if they are not shrewd enough to see the awful havoc they wreak, it must be that they are very, very stupid indeed. And they write and they speak and they leave behind them a trail of evidence that can leave no doubt, in the minds of the thoughtful, that we have enfolded the business of education in the hands of precisely those people who are least possessed of the gifts of reason. In their earnest, conscientious way they poison the wells of thought not because they are well-poisoners but simply because they are incompetent boobs. They don’t know any better, and they’re too dim to know what they don’t know. And in the end it does not matter to us if we are poisoned by knowing Borgias or by unknowing baboons, we are still poisoned. Strive to contain your gratitude. And, yes, Dr. Moats is the honorary baboon for a brand new issue of Guerrilla Schooling, the web-based magazine concerned with practical strategies for wresting a rigorous academic education for our children from an education establishment stoutly committed to doing everything but providing rigorous academic education. We are guerrillas, not reformers, and what we seek is a real education, not any of the many unreasonable, unreasoning facsimiles. For our children, not all children everywhere. Now, while they’re still children. Dr. Moats earns her proud honor for the authorship of a tome called “Teaching Reading IS Rocket Science.” By means of an Herculean effort, she manages to dispense with her immense topic in—this is not a typo—32 pages. If we may presume to direct her energies, her next book might be called “Rocket Science IS NOT Rocket Science,” which could not possibly take up more than 16 pages. To gods and baboons all things are easy—except teaching reading. Whatever. We can get enough poison, even in tiny 32-page doses. A true antidote is the sweet nectar of reason, which we find always in the works of Richard Mitchell. We plug away at him issue after issue not just because he is so wise. He is, as well as being witty and trenchant and deliciously readable. But we keep plugging away at him because we are plugging him, promoting his works as cash-money products. His book “The Graves of Academe” is back in print, thanks to The Akadkine Press. We want you to buy it, both because it is the absolute best book on what (the hell) is wrong with American education and because we want for Dr. Mitchell to be rewarded, substantively if not substantially, for the immense benefits he has conferred upon us all. There is no way we can repay what he has done for us, but at least we can pay him for his books. We have a few other things to say, of course, and, fools that we are, we dance where Dr. Moats fears to tread. Behold our dancing at: http://www.presenceofmind.net/Guerrilla/ Just so no one can say they weren’t warned, we reissue these warnings:
And since we have been so bold as to suggest that Dr. Moats and Dr. Berliner and their ilk—and no word suits them so well as ‘ilk’—are incompetent to the jobs they hold, it is only fair to ask what jobs they might be suited to, should we ever reach that happy day when we get sick of being poisoned. Rocket science is out, of course, at least until rockets are powered by hubris and chutzpah. And when they’re not being unwitting Borgias they are unknowingly building hollow hobby-horses, so we must always beware of geeks burying graft. And, in any case, they’re so completely overtrained as to be ineducable; they are unable, even, to mimic their own best victims and say, “You want fries with that?” In the end there is only one job for which their unique mental qualities suit them: Food tasters. Isn’t that a dainty dish? And there is no poison better than a poison-pen letter. We are not that, exactly, but, our pen ever-venomed, we stand poised to strike. Well, sometimes we slouch a little; it’s a long, lonely night. Keep us company with links and email addressees. Forward and repost at will. And mind what goes into your mind... Until next time, Greg Swann
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