http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/yecke.html
The
War Against Excellence
The
Rising Tide of Mediocrity in America's Schools
By
Cheri Pierson Yecke
Review
by Jonathan Butcher
Some
stories are born in an author's imagination, nurtured by creativity, and told
after a spark of inspiration. Some stories are a matter of tradition, and their
legend grows with each retelling--thereby preserving a culture. And some stories
are based on fact, but embellished in their composition in order to exaggerate a
condition, something contemporary man calls "news."
Cheri
Pierson Yecke's The
War Against Excellence
is none of these. The War Against
Excellence is so meticulously researched and well-documented, so thoroughly
explained and rich with supporting evidence that it could only have come from
witnessing a set of events over and over again until an appalling scene became
etched in the author's mind. The circumstances were so bleak, the opposition so
entrenched in falsehood that the argument described in this book must have
gnawed at the writer until nothing else could be accomplished--almost all other
concerns became peripheral--until it was put to paper. In her introduction,
Yecke says, "To put it simply, this is a story that has to be
told."
In
this book, Yecke, Minnesota's Commissioner of Education, comprehensively relates
the history of American middle schools, focusing on a reform movement dedicated
to egalitarianism that took shape in the middle of the 20th century. As part of
this movement, a body of research and literature grew around the ideas that
1) middle school
students cannot learn challenging material, 2) treating students differently
based on skill level is harmful, and 3) middle schools should be used to conduct
social experiments. The National Middle School Association, founded in
1973, embraced these ideas and led a movement to make all students equal
through the suppression of excellent students.
This,
says Yecke, is unethical. "Public schools were never meant to be the vehicle for
massive social experiments aimed at achieving the questionable utopian goals of
an elite few," she says.
Clearly
the most destructive and widely-practiced method to accomplish these ends is
what Yecke calls "heterogeneous
grouping." Here students within classes are broken into groups and given
assignments. The groups intermingle talented students with students who, though
capable, either do not apply themselves to the same degree or do not grasp
concepts as quickly. The result is that gifted students who already understand
the material are not challenged by the content, thereby preventing their
advancement and attenuating their ability to perform. The students who do not
grasp the material do not participate as much in the project at hand, convinced
that the talented students can do the work quicker and more completely; these
non-participants, who are in need of the practice, then fall further behind
their peers. Yecke explains how this process also takes place through peer tutoring and cooperative learning
(similar to heterogeneous grouping).
Thus,
in an attempt to treat all students equally, proponents of egalitarianism and
"heterogeneous grouping" successfully restrain talented students, preventing
their success, and completely alienate the perfectly capable students who simply
take longer to grasp the same concepts.
"Amazingly,
their message is that high ability students should succumb to peer pressure and
strive not to achieve, or they will risk making their classmates look bad--and
their actions might even go so far as to force these non-motivated students to
work harder!" Yecke says.
In
her final chapter, "Implications for the 21st Century," a perceptive analysis of
the implications of the middle school movement, Yecke argues that the movement's
core values are un-American. "American values such as
rewarding individual effort, honoring individual achievement, and promoting
healthy competition have given way to a capricious smorgasbord of liberal ideas
that undermine...traditional values in many of our schools." She goes on to say,
"Beliefs driving radical equity include the leveling of achievement and the
desire for equality of outcomes. This is in stark contrast with the premise
underlying our nation's founding principles."
The
middle school reform movement has sabotaged America's schools, and this
intellectual genocide needs to be stopped. In one sense, while middle school
reformers have not made all students equal, they have given all students subject to
their poisonous methods something in common: none can
achieve their full potential.
Jonathan
Butcher is a Research Assistant in Domestic Policy at The
Heritage Foundation.
Further
reading:
"War
Against Excellence" website