Rick Ginsberg and Yong Zhao are out with an intriguing new e book, Duck and Cowl: Confronting and Correcting Doubtful Practices in Schooling. The title refers back to the mantra of Nineteen Fifties-era faculty drills, again when a nation dwelling beneath the specter of nuclear holocaust taught its kids to “duck and canopy” within the occasion of a Soviet assault.
Because the authors clarify of their introduction, “The follow was easy. If there was imminent concern of a bomb hitting a college or touchdown in its neighborhood, college students had been educated to dive beneath their desks and canopy their heads with their fingers.” The implication, after all, was that kneeling beneath their desk would defend college students from a nuclear blast. Spoiler: It wouldn’t. However the Federal Civil Protection Program produced the 1951 movie “Duck and Cowl,” anyway, wherein Bert the cartoon turtle cheerfully taught a era to “duck and canopy.”
As Ginsberg and Zhao drolly observe, “This must be one of the crucial silly academic insurance policies ever enacted.” Why did so many policymakers and educators go together with a coverage that terrified younger college students whereas doing nothing to guard them? Ginsberg and Zhao argue that policymakers and educators felt obliged to do one thing—and, if one thing silly was the one choice, nicely, they’d try this. They provide this as a metaphor for a lot of silly, ineffectual insurance policies in American education.
I’m a fan of each authors. Ginsberg is dean of schooling on the College of Kansas, former board chair of the American Affiliation of Schools of Trainer Schooling, a savvy observer of faculty reform, and an previous buddy. Zhao is a distinguished professor at Kansas and a refugee from communist China, whose contempt for paperwork and quasi-authoritarian meddling has made him one of many nation’s extra heterodox schooling thinkers.
In the middle of the e book’s brisk 156 pages, Ginsberg and Zhao skewer lots of sacred cows. The 19 chapters cowl the academic waterfront: social-emotional studying (SEL), academic know-how, school and profession readiness, class measurement, gown codes, skilled improvement, instructor analysis, gifted schooling, testing, faculty board governance, and far more.
The breadth of subjects hints at each the strengths and the weaknesses of this quantity. Its nice power is its evenhanded willingness to say vital issues about lots of standard concepts. Readers of each ilk can relaxation assured that they’ll discover some issues to please them and others that infuriate them. In our polarized world, this marks a welcome departure from the acquainted groupthink. The authors deserve kudos for that alone.
Their method additionally permits them to cowl lots of floor, making various provocative observations and providing various helpful cautions. However the trade-off is that they don’t spend lots of time or vitality making the case {that a} given thought is silly. A lot of the chapters didn’t supply parallels to “duck and canopy” or a lot as thumbnail sketches of the great, unhealthy, and ugly of how these concepts work in follow.
Thus, with regards to SEL, Ginsberg and Zhao word the strain faculty leaders face from “consultants and researchers, do-gooders, and generally snake-oil salespersons buying their wares.” They then sketch the rationale for SEL and various issues about it, earlier than providing some smart recommendation about the necessity to transfer intentionally and make clear objectives. That is all fantastic. However none of it actually makes the case that SEL is a “doubtful follow” (and I say this as somebody who’s been loads skeptical of SEL). As a reader, given the promise of the e book’s subtitle, central metaphor, and setup, this felt like lower than I bargained for. That is fairly constant all through.
And I might’ve appreciated to see them push more durable when explaining how doubtful concepts catch on and why we might be so reluctant to confront them. In spite of everything, I’ve explored the frenzied tempo of faculty reform and why some reforms would possibly enchantment greater than others. On condition that, I hoped for greater than the broad reminder that “faculties truly implement lots of various things” and the statement that “duck-and-cover insurance policies persist as a result of they aren’t questioned.” On the outset, the e book guarantees a daring exploration of folly; on this depend, it delivers one thing lower than that.
In the end, although, this can be a well timed and invaluable contribution. Ginsberg and Zhao have penned a fair-minded survey of schooling coverage, with a wholesome emphasis on the necessity to assume extra intentionally about how issues truly work. And that’s a worthwhile train and a much-needed reminder, one which educators, policymakers, and advocates ought to take to coronary heart.