Null, J. Wesley and Ravitch, Diane. (Eds). (2006). Forgotten Heroes of American Education: The Great Tradition of Teaching Teachers. Reviewed by Barbara Slater Stern, James Madison University

Null, J. Wesley and Ravitch, Diane. (Eds). (2006). Forgotten Heroes of American Education: The Great Tradition of Teaching Teachers. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, Inc. Pp. xxix+623 $39.95 (Papercover) ISBN 1-59311-447-8 $73.25 (Hardcover)   ISBN 1-59311-448-6 Reviewed by Barbara Slater Stern James Madison University July 26, 2006 Forgotten Heroes of American Education opens with the statement that it “contains representative writings by significant writers who challenged mainstream thinking” (p. xi). Editors Null and Ravitch contend that Progressive educational theory had so infiltrated American education during the 20th century that the individuals included in this volume were voices “crying in the wilderness” to generally unresponsive audiences. This, according to the editors, is the central problem with American education: popular Progressive theories have ruined the schools with ideas about child-centered education, a lack of moral clarity and a lack of rigorous academic standards for all children. As one of the “brainwashed” teacher educators this volume is addressing, I take great umbrage at the manner in which Null frames his attack. In his introduction, Null focuses on the image of American education in general and the teaching profession in particular as being “shattered.” He argues that the only alternative to a “failed Progressive educational philosophy” is this volume of readings (p. xxi). That is debatable. My first problem with this volume started with Null’s introduction. On page xxii, he attempts to draw a distinction between "progressive" in an historical sense and "Progressive" in a philosophical sense. As a history teacher, I spent a considerable amount of class time teaching my U.S. history students the difference between adjectives and proper nouns, for example "democrat and Democrat," the former representing a political idea and the latter a political party. In the case of Null’s introduction, it seems that in an historical sense Progressive is not an adjective but rather a proper noun representing an era and a political party with a platform of beliefs. Those beliefs may also be defined as a philosophy; and, certainly as far as a traditional foundations of American education course goes, teacher educators do refer to Progressivism as a philosophy (as they also teach pre-service teachers about Perennialism, Essentialism, Social Reconstructionism, and Existentialism, at a minimum). And, I will even accept the editors’ statements that most teacher educators accept Progressivism as the best way to educate students. I might go so far as to criticize some schools of education for removing the necessity of a traditional foundations course from their required curriculum. However, I am not at all sure that the reason for that is as clear as Null and Ravitch imply. Far from the idea that foundational studies are not needed because all that matters is preparation on methods and not a careful understanding of the intellectual issues surrounding education, the truth for me, here in Virginia, is quite different. The Virginia State Department of Education is considering removing the requirement for foundational studies, and the university is trying to hold on to the course. The state’s reasoning behind this move most likely has more to do with alternative routes to certification and filling teacher shortages than a genuine concern with highly qualified teachers in classrooms as specified by the No Child Left Behind legislation. If marginalization of the teaching profession (p. xxviii) is the issue, the problem is less the ever increasing burden of coursework required by the state for traditional teacher licensure than the myriad programs allowing teachers to acquire their jobs without proper preparation for entering the classroom. Forgotten Heroes of American Education reads more like a diatribe addressed to teacher educators and college administrators than a serious discussion of how to prepare teachers for the America of the 21st century. The idea that teacher educators emphasize the what and the how of teaching while ignoring the why (p. xxiv) is simply insulting and not likely to induce the target audience for this volume to keep reading. The contention that Progressivism has no moral basis when historically the movement arose from the period of the Social Gospel and some of its most famous leaders were from religious families is ignoring basic facts of American history. What the “heroes” in this volume—William Bagley, Charles DeGarmo, David Felmley, William Torrey Harris, Isaac Leon Kandel, Charles Alexander McMurry, William C. Ruediger, and Edward Austin Sheldon—have in common is a belief that traditional academic studies combined with discipline and character education are the route to solving all problems in America's schools. What interests me about these educators is that the short biographies that Null uses in his introduction to each set of readings reveal that two of them, Harris and Sheldon, never completed their college education prior to becoming teachers. Now that they are in charge, they may have ideas about what everyone else needs, but it clearly didn’t resonate with them while they were in school! Further, the structure of this volume is very problematic. The first 273 pages are excerpts from the writings of William Bagley. These writings are often repetitive and this reader wishes that Null could have culled these articles more thoroughly instead of haranguing the reader with the same ideas repeated in different forums. In fact, one gets the sense that since Null's own doctoral work focused on Bagley and he later published a book on Bagley based on his dissertation, it appears that he just wanted a place to reprint all the materials he gathered for this earlier work. The same could be said for the large number of articles by Kandel, Null’s current focus of research. Thus, this volume lacks balance: one article each by DeGarmo, Felmley, Ruediger and Sheldon respectively but 30 by Bagley, 9 by Kandel and 6 by Harris. And what do some of these articles stress? Well they vary, but most either focus on character education, the need for rigorous academics for both students and pre-service teachers during their academic preparation, and several on the case for teaching Latin in the schools. Given that these articles were written before much of the research on brain-based learning was undertaken, the case for Latin as brain training might be understandable. But we now have evidence that the brain is not a muscle and that learning a subject in depth might be more advisable than focusing on Latin, a subject no longer necessary even for Roman Catholics. If we consider the historical setting for the rise of Progressivism in America —industrialization, immigration and urbanization—a time of upheaval in American society when the traditional agricultural and rural nature of our society was being challenged on multiple fronts coupled with the rise of new fields of study—e.g. political science, sociology and psychology—we can understand why challenges like Progressivism to traditional educational methods arose. If we accept the idea that change has again accelerated in recent decades brought about by our current wave of immigration, the telecommunication and technological revolution we are undergoing, the globalization of the economy and international terrorism, can we seriously believe that the case for Latin is going to prepare America’s future citizens for the world they will inherit? Never really stated in this book when character education is discussed is the underlying message of European, Christian values. When the Progressives are charged with being moral relativists with the Essentialists here presented as their foil, the underlying values being presented do not take into account the diversity of our population. There seems to be some assumption that values are known and accepted without ever really being delineated. To believe that non-Westerners, believers in natural law, or (God forbid) atheists have no values is insulting to any student of history. The real question is, whose values and who decides? For Null and Ravitch this is clearly not open to discussion; but for anyone looking at current events in the 21st century, this is an important discussion centered around far more than rigorous academics. This brings me to the last section of this book, the “forgotten essays” of John Dewey. Here the editors take the position that Dewey, who is not listed in Null’s introduction as the founder of Progressivism, an honor he reserves for psychologists like Thorndike and Hall, was unhappy with the development of Progressivism in education but that teacher educators do not know that fact while they worship at the feet of their hero. It is no secret that many leaders have their ideas taken out of context or carried to a place that they did not mean for them to go. No serious student of Dewey could possibly ignore the essays included in this volume. Several Progressive educators moved to places Dewey disapproved of, e.g., Counts and Rugg in their beliefs about using schools to reform society and their espousal of what today is called Existentialist philosophy that more rightly relates to Romanticism and Rousseau. The larger problem with Dewey’s idea has always been that to be a teacher—excuse me, I meant facilitator—in a Progressive school would require a Renaissance education or a team of educators to truly enact a problem-based curriculum. The editors of Forgotten Heroes of American Education think facilitator is a bad term for teacher and that we should not confuse these roles. As I waded my way through this volume, my husband, a college administrator and professor of political science (a prime candidate for the stated target audience for this text) was reading Teaching with Your Mouth Shut (Finkel, 2000) and telling me how he would try these ideas with his class in the fall and recommend that deans of his university read the book. The real problem with facilitating as a teaching method is knowing how to guide your students effectively; how to take student concerns and “manipulate” them into a curriculum of study that insures no gaps. Speaking at students instead of with them, telling them what they must do instead of working with their interests, and punishing them with threats of meaningless multiple-choice tests that supposedly reflect “rigorous standards” without including a place to check for true understanding is not really education in any meaningful sense. While I disagree with Null that education is shattered, I do agree that there are problems and, there are things to be learned from the readings included in this book. Surely the importance of teacher education and the responsibility of all members of the university community in educating future teachers is a worthy goal that these readings discuss. An idea that might have been worth pursuing in this text would have been the concept of the one-credit seminar accompanying each academic course that would focus on how one would teach the material being learned by the pre-service teacher. The charges that in many (but not all as implied) colleges of education “method” is more important than subject matter also has some credence. And while I concur that deep subject matter is important, much of Linda Darling-Hammond’s recent research backs the idea that pedagogical knowledge is extremely important, possibly more important than just subject matter knowledge for successful teaching. Surely no serious educator disagrees that deep pedagogical content knowledge is the best recipe for successful teaching. More disturbing in terms of teacher educators is the editors' repeated contention that colleges of education and their faculty are greedy and are only about the pursuit of research dollars and not about educating pre-service teachers. This is an assumption that I cannot understand, given the colleagues I have the honor of knowing across my years in the academy, and the editors do not provide any data to back up their attack. What the introductions to this volume and to the reading selections in the volume create is diatribe about Progressive education without the real understanding that true Progressive education has never been tried in any large-scale project for a sustained period in this nation. The comments made about the 8-year study (p. 423) are open to debate, as others dispute the claim that the data were inconclusive. Schools have always been based on traditional, and to a great extent, college track education. Where there have been vocational projects, they have been under-funded or in many cases lacked the rigorous underpinnings of projects like today’s programs (e.g., Tech-Prep) seek to remedy. If the purpose of education is to prepare American youth for citizenship in our democracy and to ensure their successful entry into the adult world, then the question of how to best achieve that result has surely not been found in a traditional, cookie cutter education for all students. In her foreword to this volume, Ravitch, in discussing W.E.B. DuBois, states that “the only way that schools transform society is by making children more intelligent. This requires excellent teachers and excellent teaching” (p. xv). I do not believe anyone would disagree with that statement. But, the question of how best to prepare those teachers and bring that teaching to widespread fruition is still, in my mind, an open question. Certainly the readings in this volume do not convince me that the solution to the problems of American education in the 21st century is sole reliance on the readings in this volume. I would like to see a real attempt to enact a truly Progressive education program on a wide scale for a sustained period of time. Then I would be willing to gather data and analyze which philosophy and accompanying methodology yields the best results for the largest number of our future citizens. Reference Finkel, Donald L. (2000). Teaching with Your Mouth Shut. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, Boynton/Cook Publishers. About the Reviewer Barbara Slater Stern is an Associate Professor in the Department of Middle, Secondary and Math Education at James Madison University. She teaches courses in curriculum, foundations and methods of teaching middle and secondary social studies. She is the editor of Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue, the publication of the American Association of Teaching and Curriculum. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.