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School Daze: The Disruptive Effects of Teacher Training
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10020 |
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BOOK WORLD
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4 / 1986 |
1,964 Words |
| Author
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Carl W. Salser
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EDUCATION'S SMOKING GUN
How Teachers Colleges Have Destroyed Education in America
Reginald G. Damerell
New York: Freundlich Books
312 pp., $17.95
When it came to writing Education's Smoking Gun, Reginald Damerell's background in advertising proved both a blessing and a curse. The author spent twenty years in the advertising business before becoming a professor of education at the University of Massachusetts. This background was a blessing because it meant that his insights were relatively unsullied by any prior exposure to the murky world of so-called "teacher training." Its curse was that in no way did it prepare him for the intellectual dishonesty that pervades our schools of education.
True, we often think of advertising as a frenetic, unreal world of wham, and sometimes, even shame; but compared to the labyrinthian improbity of teacher training, good advertising agencies are the epitome of honesty and detached scientific application.
Damerell points out that when he arrived at the University of Massachusetts he had a full head of hair, which had receded only slightly from where it had been in his youth. Then, in the middle of his first semester as a faculty member, he began to lose it. Indeed, within two weeks, he had lost all of his hair--including eyebrows, eyelashes, and facial hair. A dermatologist diagnosed his problem as alopecia universalis.
Although Damerell no doubt looked upon the loss of his hair as a problem, he nevertheless recognized that it was less of a problem than it was a symptom of a much greater problem. It was not until some seven years later that he finally admitted to himself what he probably had recognized from the very beginning: that the university's School of Education was not only "unredeemed mindlessness," but also the cause of his alopecia universalis. He had repressed that knowledge in order to continue as a faculty member.
He admits that, "With numbness of mind, I foundered from one course to another during my first three or four years. (And then,) through my fourth to seventh year, my numbness of mind slowly but surely thawed." Even so, it was another four or five years before he took the necessary steps to sever his ties with the unreal, unproductive, and unprincipled world of teacher training.
A cross section of Damerell's experience at the University of Massachusetts will provide the reader with some valuable insights:
·University policy prohibited the use of Graduate Record Examination scores when considering applicants for doctoral programs--even if the scores were, in effect, nearly zero. The rationale was that the use of such scores might reflect an unsympathetic attitude toward minority students.
·Damerell found that it was not wise for any professor in the School of Education to ever fail a minority student. Those with failing scores were simply given a "P" for pass
·In March 1975, the author was asked
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