[school-discuss] Quote From Neil Postman

[Joel Kahn <jj2kk4@xxxxxxxxx>]

Below the dotted line is a slightly edited quote 
from Neil Postman's 1995 book _The End of 
Education: Redefining the Value of School_. I'm 
not advocating that readers should draw any 
specific conclusions from Postman's opinions; I 
merely offer this as food for thought, especially 
in light of the changes in technology that have 
taken place since this was written.

................................................

We could improve the quality of teaching 
overnight, as it were, if math teachers were 
assigned to teach art, art teachers science, 
science teachers English. My reasoning is as 
follows: Most teachers, especially high school and 
college teachers, teach subjects they were good at 
in school. They found the subject both easy and 
pleasurable. As a result, they are not likely to 
understand how the subject appears to those who 
are *not* good at it, or don't care about it, or 
both. If, let us say, for a semester, each teacher 
were assigned a subject which he or she hated or 
always had trouble with, the teacher would be 
forced to see the situation as most students do, 
would see things more as a new learner than as an 
old teacher. Perhaps he or she would discover how 
boring the textbooks are, would learn how 
nerve-racking the fear of making mistakes is, 
might discover that a question that has 
unsuspectingly aroused his or her interest must be 
ignored because it is not covered by the syllabus, 
might even discover that there are students who 
know the subject better than he or she could ever 
hope to. Then what?

All in all, I believe the experience would be 
chastening and even eye-opening. When teachers 
returned to their specialties, it is possible they 
would bring with them refreshing ideas about how 
to communicate about their subject, and with an 
increased empathy for their students.

Here is another idea. . . .
We can also improve the quality of teaching and 
learning overnight by getting rid of all 
textbooks. Most textbooks are badly written and, 
therefore, give the impression that the subject 
is boring. Most textbooks are also impersonally 
written. They have no "voice," reveal no human 
personality. Their relationship to the reader is 
not unlike the telephone message that says, "If 
you want further assistance, press two now." I 
have found the recipes on the backs of cereal 
boxes to be written with more style and 
conviction than most textbook descriptions of the
causes of the Civil War. Of the language of 
grammar texts, I will not even speak. To borrow 
from Shakespeare, it is unfit for a Christian ear 
to endure. But worse than this, textbooks are 
concerned with presenting the facts of the case 
(whatever the case may be) as if there can be no 
disputing them, as if they are fixed and 
immutable. And still worse, there is usually no 
clue given as to who claimed these are the facts 
of the case, or how "it" discovered these facts 
(there being no he or she, or I or we). There 
is no sense of the frailty or ambiguity of human 
judgment, no hint of the possibilities of error. 
Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be 
acquired, never as a human struggle to 
understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble 
toward the truth.

Textbooks, it seems to me, are enemies of 
education, instruments for promoting dogmatism 
and trivial learning. They may save the teacher 
some trouble, but the trouble they inflict on 
the minds of students is a blight and a curse.

On one occasion when I made this argument before 
a group of teachers, one of them asked, "But if 
we eliminated textbooks, what would replace 
them?" My answer . . . was as follows: "When 
Jonas Salk's vaccine eliminated polio, did 
anyone ask, But what will replace it?"


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