After a “lost decade,” let’s restore high expectations for students
Does any field have a weaker grasp of its own history than education?
Last week, I hosted a discussion at the American Enterprise Institute on “Bringing High Expectations Back to Education.” The event, which can be viewed on YouTube, was kicked off by a presentation by Steven Wilson, an ed reform fixture who has a book coming out on the subject. Listening to his talk, I found myself feeling frustrated, even infuriated: Efforts to raise rigor and expectations in education have consistently faced strident opposition.
Wilson cited a litany of disheartening examples stretching back more than a century of education experts making a virtue of holding children to low expectations for their putative benefit: When the “Committee of Ten” appointed by the National Education Association in 1892 proposed a liberal arts education for all American high school students, for example, G. Stanley Hall, a prominent psychologist and educator rejected the idea, claiming most students were part of a “great army of incapables.” Half a century later, the “life adjustment” education movement of the 1940s, asserted that the majority of high school students were not college-bound and should therefore focus on practical skills like health and hygiene, homemaking, or vocational training, rather than rigorous academics.
