Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add [Paperback]

While I strongly disagree with several of Sykes' key conclusions, the book reaffirmed the need to keep student expectations high. I cannnot discount the key idea of this book that we expect too little of students and focus too much on non-academic ideas. It is always interesting and critical to "look at the other side of the argument." As a teacher, I expect that of my students. How can I not do the same? Although it is clearly a "right wing" look at education, I recommend this for educators, if for no other reason than to spur thought, discussion and debate on the status quo.

Charles Sykes wants you to think otherwise, but it is not a significant insight of his that "progressive" education, as conceptualized by John Dewey and other turn of the century "educationists" (Sykes snide word for... um... educators he dislikes), has not always been implemented well. (And neither have phonics based reading or other "traditional" approaches that he uncritically praises.) Furthermore, it is no surprise that Sykes can issue an abundance of anecdotal "horror stories" proving the incompetence of certain teachers and schools caught up in the latest educational fads. As Sykes should be aware as a hack journalist himself, every profession has its pretenders, who leave behind them the wreckage of their inept work.

What is most disturbing, however, is Sykes truly destructive and reactionary vision of reform. Eliminating undergraduate schools of education is, to education, what killing the patient is to medicine. Unless one foolishly devalues over a century of amassed knowledge, from disciplines as diverse as linguistics, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, that could be useful for improving the education of children, one would think schools of education uniquely useful instruments in assimilating this knowledge and applying it to the practical concern of enhancing teaching and learning in our schools. If one takes the intellectual and practical merit of this mission seriously, wouldn't one think ed. schools best improved by more rigor and higher admission standards? In my opinion, Sykes recommendation that education should be exclusively studied on the graduate level is not being made in good faith, for he clearly prefers to undermine teacher education altogether with "alternative" means of certification that will ensure a larger supply of expendable labor. This is exactly the kind of teacher work force the right prefers, for the main offense of public schools in this country is that they cost money which the wealthy would rather keep for themselves and their privately educated children.

Finally, Sykes appreciative statment, near the end of his book, about Mortimer Adler's Padiea program for schools is deeply incongrous with his vitriol against progressive education. For Adler, who admired John Dewey and even dedicated one of his books on this program to Dewey, saw himself as a progressive educator who was committed to replacing the rote and stifling dogmatism of certain ways the humanities are taught with an inquiry based, participative, and process oriented approach to reading, writing, and thinking.

Given its low quality sources, a near complete absence of any attention to scholarly research and quantitative analysis regarding actual school performance, and vitriolic tone, this book merits little respect or attention by educators who already have enough ignorant criticism to shrug off as it is.

But the crowd of think-tank faithfuls, who somehow distrust academic research from university faculty while believing every word that comes forth from the pens of "fellows" funded by think tanks supported largely by corporations and rich reactionaries, will lap this book up regardless of its defects, as all their positive remarks here show.