Roxie Alexander and General Ed

Roxie Alexander and General Ed
by David Benjamin

“… Mathematical Practices: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Model with mathematics. Use appropriate tools strategically. Attend to precision. Look for and make use of structure. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.”
— Common Core, Algebra Overview

MADISON, Wis. — One of the conundrums of “conservatism” today, often mentioned by conservatives like Steve Schmidt, is its aversion to conservatism.

For instance, there’s a great wailing and gnashing amongst so-called conservatives over the“Common Core” math and language standards fostered for public schools by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSO). These guidelines have been called Nazism, Communism, Marxism, anti-Christian, anti-capitalism, anti-American and “pro-homo.” They are seen as a diabolic plot, fomented by the right-wing bugaboo of all right-wing bugaboos — Barack Obama — to turn millions of unsuspecting kindergarteners into brainwashed socialists, and possibly gay.

Right-wing zealot Phyllis Schlafly typified this pathology: “Obama Core is a comprehensive plan to dumb down schoolchildren so they will be obedient servants of the government and probably to indoctrinate them to accept the leftwing view of America and its history.”

Donald Trump, who never set foot in a public school (tuition at his primary school today is $36,390 a year), said he’d dump the Core and make U.S. education “local” — which it has been, of course, since the Pilgrims landed.

Neither Phyllis nor Trump ever read the Common Core. I don’t fault them. It’s a hard read. But I did get through enough of it to feel sort of nostalgic. I started remembering high school, when my “required courses” had a sort of Core-ish vibe. I didn’t fully appreciate then that education is so fiercely “local.” Not all students in America, nor even in my own state, had to pursue the same goals that had been foisted upon me. Graduation on the east side of Madison came a lot harder than it did on the south side of Milwaukee.

The ideal behind Common Core, according to its authors, is to correct “an uneven patchwork of academic standards that vary from state to state and do not agree on what students should know and be able to do at each grade level.”

In college, while pursuing a Master of Arts in Teaching degree that I’ve never actually used, I took a half-dozen Education courses, did some practice teaching and bonded with Roxie Alexander, one of the great mentors of all time.

Roxie dutifully dispensed the latest ed-biz trends while warning me not to take this crap to heart. She subtly intimated that pedagogic fashion is almost as ephemeral as the Billboard Top 40. Teachers are expected to dance the latest methodological tune ’til it fades out. It always does. Randi Weingarten, a battle-scarred classroom veteran who runs the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), exposed the irony of Common Core standards — which AFT supports — when she said, “Either they will lead to a revolution in teaching and learning. Or they will end up in the overflowing dustbin of abandoned reforms, with people throwing up their hands and decrying that public schools just don’t work.”

Herein lies the real “conservative” objection to Common Core. There are powerful people out there who’ve always believed that public schools just don’t work. They never wanted them. They still don’t. They don’t care if common people’s kids can’t read, can’t write, can’t figure. They’d rather we didn’t.

Since the birth of the republic, our propertied few have chafed at the founding folly that “all men are created equal.” It took a century for public-school advocates to chip away the widespread wisdom that book-learning is wasted on citizens who get their hands dirty — in factories and canneries, on farms and fishing boats, in lumber camps, kitchens and beauty parlors, or under the hood of a Model T.

Even when laws were passed making school mandatory ’til age 16, stratification trumped equality. “College-bound” students faced a longer, tougher common core than the kids relegated to the “general” curriculum. This was called “tracking.” It left late bloomers, rebels and most “subsidized lunch” (poor) kids out in the cold, to fend for themselves, battle the odds and buck the system.

My first encounter with tracking came in eighth grade, when I got put down among the riffraff at Franklin School. I have no idea how this decision came about. I’d been near the top of my class for seven previous grades. But I carried handicaps. I’d just arrived from a parochial school in a small town “up North.” Mom was a single parent. We lived on a street that later became infamous for crime and violence. We got most of our income from the welfare department. I might as well have had “General Ed” tattooed above my nonexistent eyebrows.

Later that year, after I’d racked up a few A’s, Franklin School — with a whiff of reluctance — upgraded me to college-bound. This only lasted ‘til ninth grade, where they looked dubiously at my address, my hometown, my alma maters, my mom and her income, and probably my shoes. I was summarily demoted back to General Ed (who’s still my second favorite war hero, after Alvin York).

It took a year to climb back among the college-bound. I made it partly because, even in General Ed, the required courses at LaFollette High — in English, math, history, social studies, gym — were the same for every student in the city. And teachers were watching us. If a kid kicked ass in general math, she could find herself suddenly pushed upstairs to college-bound geometry.

The standards that ruled the curriculum then weren’t imaginative. They didn’t give me much room to spread my wings. In four years, I had exactly one “elective.” But I didn’t fear for my creativity because, although my school administrators weren’t notably interested in it, I wasn’t especially eager to share it with them. Besides, I had friends and teachers who knew what I was up to.

The curriculum I endured 50 years ago — focused on basic subjects, thinking skills, Socratic dialog and “showing your work” — was classically conservative. Today’s Common Core, in many ways, has come back around to that fairly narrow ethos. We’re going back to the basics. So, why are “conservatives” so panicky?

Well, because it’s “common.” Resistance to universal education in America has always stunk with the sort of desperate elitism that can only thrive in a nation with no lineal aristocracy, where gilded scaffolds must be erected to raise the high and mighty above the teeming masses. For a century, formal schooling — reserved to a few with private means and ample leisure — did the lift. But then, public school put up a ladder and ruined the fun. By the mid-20th century, a regular shmo named Truman (Independence High, Spalding’s Commercial College), was in the Oval Office bossing around Ivy League bluebloods like Henry Stimson (Andover, Yale) and Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (Exeter, Cornell). Oh, the humanity!

John Dewey (University of Vermont) was champion of what he called the “American common school.” He deemed it the engine of democracy and the essence of citizenship. He celebrated public schools because — more than politics, economics or religion — it has the power to level us all, eye-to-eye and side-by-side. He wrote, “Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some… Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy. Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

So, how’d I know about this Dewey guy? Roxie told me. Trust your teachers.