Fad, Fraud, and Folly in Education

Martin A. Kozloff
Watson School of Education
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
November, 2002

The common view is that fads are ideas ("Bran is healthy."), materials (pet rocks), or activities (disco) that enter the social scene, acquire a certain cache as the "in" thing, gain momentum ("Everyone's doing it."), saturate the market or come to be seen as silly, hard, useless, or revolting (bran), and then disappear.  The view assumes that the public is fickle but always craving something new, and is gullible to a well-formed advertising pitch.  "It lowered my cholesterol," says Mrs. Reginald Moulke-Todd.
        The common view does not adequately capture the history of innovations in education (ranging from questionable to destructive), such as additive-free diets, "gentle teaching," "sensory integration," "full inclusion," and "facilitated communication" for persons with autism and other developmental disabilities; whole language, invented spelling, inquiry learning, discovery learning, learning styles, multiple intelligences, "brain-based teaching," constructivist math, portfolio assessment, authentic assessment, "journaling," self-esteem raising, "learning centers," "sustained silent reading," "developmentally appropriate practices," and "student centered" education for more typical students.
        For one thing, ordinary fads are cheap and harmless.  A pastel blue leisure suit in the 1970's cost $39.95 and when passe' (in two months) could be given to the Salvation Army.  In contrast, pernicious innovations in education waste time, money, energy, hope, learning opportunities, and the chances for beneficent outcomes.  Instead of being taught to feed himself, walk, point to things he wants, operate a tape player or computer, look at the faces of his parents, and turn the pages of books, the fully included 16 year old student with severe mental retardation sits strapped into a wheelchair in a high school history class.  He learns nothing whatever; his teachers know it's a cruel hoax, but "inclusion specialists" are satisfied with "social progress" (increased tolerance and social justice) and have higher self-esteem for a job well done.
        Second, the list of wasteful and pernicious ideas (pedagogies), materials (curricula), and activities ("practices") in education is not limited to passing fads.  Some destructive innovations exist for decades under the same name (whole language) and when finally mauled by sufficient data and popular magazine articles revealing their damaging effects, merely change their name (to "balanced literacy") and keep working at the same old stand.
        Third, fads are isolated events in the culture.  A pet rock inhabits an end table only.  A chronic, destructive education innovation infects a large circle.  For example, constructivism influences how education students are trained (they discover how to teach); how learning is understood (knowledge can't be transmitted, it must be created anew by each learner); what the ends of education will be (appreciation—not necessarily mastery—of literature; celebration of—not necessarily knowing much about—different cultures); how schools will be governed and organized (as "democratic communities of life-long learners"); and how teachers and schools will be evaluated and certified--according to portfolio "rubrics" of airy psychological dispositions ("Displays sensitivity," "Open to new ideas") and educationally correct shibboleths; e.g., If a multiple choice question on a certification exam says "developmentally appropriate," that's the right answer.
        Fourth, the history of education is blotched both by faddish ideas and methods that don't work and by persistent failure to institutionalize ideas and methods that do work (Finn & Ravitch, 1996; Ravitch, 2000).  In education, the tested, the true, the good, and the effective are fads.  For example, data on thousands of children in project Follow Through (Adams & Engelmann, 1996; Gersten, Keating, & Becker, 1988; Meyer, 1984; Meyer, Gersten, & Gutkin, 1983) showed that Direct Instruction and Applied Behavior Analysis fostered the highest achievement in reading and math—in contrast to so-called progressive, child-centered, "developmentally appropriate" curricula.  However, Direct Instruction and Applied Behavior Analysis were immediately and relentlessly attacked by sellers of the predominant, progressive and largely useless curricula tested in Project Through (Watkins, 1997), and until recently Direct Instruction and Applied Behavior Analysis were tolerated and marginalized as at best useful only for disadvantaged children and children with special needs.
        In summary, there are two sorts of pernicious innovations in education: (1) passing fads (e.g., state level portfolio assessment of new teachers), and (2) chronic malignancies (e.g., whole language).  Both are examples of folly and fraud. Folly is applied to innovations created and/or adopted by fools; that is, by persons and groups easily duped by rhetorical trickery (including their own) such as glittering generalities and evocative phrases ("authentic," "best practice")--and who don't know enough about research and verification properly to examine and discredit advertising claims.  Fraud is applied to innovations created and/or adopted by persons and groups operating in bad faith; that is, who
1. Claim to work in the interests of children, but in fact work in the interests of their own incomes, tenure, prestige, control, and self-importance.
2. Refuse to test the null hypothesis that their innovations don't work.
3. Refuse to conduct research according to the canons of verification; e.g., to use comparison groups, longitudinal designs, reliability checks, and objective data examined by noninterested parties, but instead favor qualitative classroom research with uncontrolled field notes and informal interviews easily used to gather anecdotes to support (but not to test and possibly invalidate) self-serving assertions about effectiveness.
4. Denigrate research that challenges their claims (e.g., that the Report of the National Reading Panel is politically motivated) and continue to advocate, use, or require other persons (e.g., new teachers) to use methods that are at best of questionable effectiveness and safety.
        It is tempting to believe that institutionalizing a scientific mode of thinking would reduce the rate and longevity of pernicious innovation in education.   Many wise persons have suggested this proposition (Ellis & Fouts, 1993; Carnine, 2000; Stone & Clements, 1998).  The assumption seems to be that if only the field accepted the moral obligation to do no harm, and in service of this obligation field tested innovations before they are disseminated—rejecting those that do not work—teachers and school children would no longer be ill-served by logically absurd "philosophies" and detrimental methods.  The young Plato believed this.  If his fellow citizens would only subject beliefs to the rule of reason they would know the true and the good, and would not choose falsehood and mischief.   But Plato discovered that his fellow citizens did not much care to engage in behavior (reasoning) that jeopardized self-serving and class-serving beliefs.  That is the case now.   Purveyors of chronic malignancy in education simply reject the idea that human learning and the quality of teaching can be measured objectively, and that objective data have much to say of any importance.  In this way they make themselves invulnerable to criticism. Therefore, it seems that the more effective course is to focus upstream to discover where pernicious innovations come from and how they so easily spread and become institutionalized—so that they may be preventeted.

This section examines conditions (folly and fraud) that breed and nurture acute and chronic infestations of pernicious nonsense in education and that as well work to marginalize or destroy what is true and beneficial.  We focus on Romantic modernism; anomie and egoism; incentives for continual innovation; absence of contract, contact, and accountability; and education schools as the primordial soup of infection.

Romantic Modernism
        Romantic modernism is a large thread in our culture that helps both to nurture and organize a critique of contemporary western society.  Romantic modernism is a rejection of the modern world (technology, globalism) and its social institutions and value orientations; e.g., capitalism (seen as aggressive, greedy, destructive), representative government (seen as authoritarian), the middle class family (seen as patriarchal, stressing hard work and self-denial—no fun), organized religion (imposing an external morality), and schools (oppressive, biased towards western dead white patriarchal Europeans).  Romantic modernism calls for a return to the alleged innocence, freedom, equality, naturalism, and community of older times (Grossen, 1998; Hirsch, 1996, 2001; Rice, 2002; Stone, 1996).  Following are core propositions of Romantic modernism.
1. The individual is naturally good.
2. The individual is naturally a moral being who will choose the right.
3. The individual is naturally able to construct knowledge—create concepts, propositions, moral principles, and other generalizations.
4. The individual is naturally spontaneous and creative; health depends on unstifled spontaneity.
5. Society is hierarchical, routinized, regimented. Its knowledge systems contain pre-formed concepts, propositions, values, and other generalizations.  Its systems of roles, statuses, norms, and obligations (in schools, families, religions, and political associations) constitute pre-formed identities, moral codes, and life courses.  In summary, society is naturally repressive; it inhibits the full development of the individual.  It is crippling.  It is the source of misery and of the perversion of natural goodness.
        Romantic modernism is superficial Marxism without the scholarly effort to determine what traditional societies really are like; without the honesty to ask whether contemporary society is as crass, regimented, and stifling as claimed; and without the intelligence even to wonder whether civilized society that protects individuality and "natural rights" is possible without some degree of external authority, and whether intellectual development is anything other than internalizing, applying, and building upon external bodies of knowledge, such as grammar, syntax, reasoning, math, and so forth.      
        Moreover, Romantic modernist propositions are the largest producer of pernicious innovation in education—namely, so called progressive, child-centered, holistic, developmentally appropriate education, with its "philosophical" wing of postmodernists and critical theorists—the education "intelligentsia"  (e.g., Henri Giroux, Michael Apple, Peter McLaren).   In other words, fads (such as portfolio assessment of new teachers) and chronic mischief (such as constructivism and whole language) are the spawn of Romantic modernism; their tenets are simple translations of Romantic modernist propositions into education jargon.

        Romantic Modernism Incarnate as Progressivism.   Following are some general tenets of progressivism (easily found in publications such as Brooks & Brooks, 1993;  Bredekamp & Copple, 1997; Davis, Maher, & Noddings, 1990;  DeVries & Zan, 1994; von Glasersfeld, 1984, 1995; Zemelman, Daniels, & Hyde,1998), followed in the next section by their translation into the "philosophy" and practice of whole language.

1.  Instruction should be developmentally appropriate.  We know what is and is not developmentally appropriate.  Sitting at desks; responding quickly and reliably to teacher questions and  requests; teacher directed lessons; instruction in reading, spelling, and writing for young children; and instruction to mastery—these are not developmentally  appropriate.
        The phrase developmentally appropriate is a rhetorical device by which self-styled “child-centered” educators and publishers try to convince gullible education students, teachers, and parents that what they sell (“inquiry learning,” “discovery learning,” “constructivism,” “whole language”) is good, and that direct instruction, practice, and teaching elemental skills first are bad.  There is no serious research whatever to support claims about what is developmentally appropriate.  Instead, the validation is nothing more than repetition of this vapid phrase—a chant.  The pernicious side is that advocates of "developmentally appropriate practices" believe that preschool and early elementary age children (even young children with known disabilities) should not be taught language and reading in a systematic fashion because this would be unnatural. Consequently, advocates of "dap" either do not know (are so blinded by their beliefs that they do not care) that disadvantaged students and students with disabilities will be denied exactly the sort of instruction they need to catch up with advantaged peers.  (See Hart and Risley's Meaningful differences.) This is how "educational philosophy" means the same as "the higher immorality."

2. The teacher should be a facilitator rather than a transmitter of knowledge.  Students must discover and construct knowledge on their own.
        This claim rests on the fallacy of false binary opposition; either teachers teach or students construct knowledge, but not both.  It is a rhetorical device used by progressive educators to claim the moral and educational high ground.  And it is consistent with the Romantic notion that bodies of knowledge impose categories on the individual, and therefore suppress their natural ability to think and to be creative.  However, the preponderance of scientific research supports the teacher actually teaching—showing students how to solve problems, leading them through solutions, testing or checking to see if students have gotten it, correcting all errors, giving more examples, and providing more practice and opportunities for independent application in the future.  Following is a quotation—riddled with logical fallacies, such as ad hominem, prejudicial language, and false binary opposition---that reveals the Romantic modernist opposition to teacher directed instruction.
 

We see two major assumptions of the behaviorist approach that contrast with the assumptions of the constructivist approach. The first broad assumption of the behaviorist approach is that environmental stimuli shape and control individual behavior responses. This assumption reflects the view that the child's interests and purposes are irrelevant and leads to teacher-centered power assertion in relation to children. This is in contrast to the constructivist view that the individual must actively construct knowledge, including stimuli and responses. The reader will recognize the practical implications of this behaviorist assumption as contradictory to constructivist cooperation in relation to children. (DeVries and Zan, 1994)

3. Students do not need to be taught in a logical  progression of tasks with precisely designed instructional communication.  Most children learn well enough in "messy," natural environments.
          This proposition rests on the Romantic opposition to technological progress, the idea that there can be bodies of knowledge external to the individual, and that there can be a set of uniformly effective ways to teach.  The progressive educator feels stifled by the obligation to be technically proficient and to follow protocols created by other persons.  However these are not problems in medicine and other fields where professionals serve clients well precisely because professionals follow (and perhaps improve) tested protocols.  Note both the Romantic modernism and logical fallacies of (ad hominem and prejudicial language) embedded in the following critique of direct instruction.
 

Accompanying the call for the direct instruction of skills is a managerial, minimally democratic, predetermined, do-as-you're-told-because-it-will-be-good-for-you form of instruction. Outcomes are narrowly instrumental, focusing on test scores of skills, word identification, and delimited conceptions of reading comprehension. It is a scripted pedagogy for producing compliant, conformist, competitive students and adults. (Coles, 1998)

4.  Homogeneous grouping based on students’ current skills is bad.  It lowers self-esteem and creates tracks.  It is discrimination.  Groups should be heterogeneous.
        This proposition, as with the others, trades on the alleged pro-egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism of Romantic modernism.  Grouping is essentially hierarchical; hierarchy is a perversion of (a mythical state of) natural equality.  In fact, teachers learn very quickly that children in the same class are not equal--are not identical.  Some students need more learning opportunities, assistance, individual attention, and practice than other students.  Some students are ready for harder material than other students.  Teaching to a heterogeneous group means that students get the same instruction despite their differences.  Therefore, few students receive the kind of instruction from which they would most benefit.  Ironically, the call for heterogeneous grouping means that students' initial differences really do become tracks because the neediest students fall even farther behind (Grossen, 1996).  In special education, ideological antagonism to homogeneous grouping is found in the full inclusion movement—the result of which is that students with severe disabilities are placed in politically correct classrooms where they learn little that is useful.

5.  Teachers should not correct errors immediately and consistently.  Error correction makes students dependent on the teacher and threatens self-esteem.
        This prescription flows from the Romantic and nativist notions that students construct knowledge and therefore should not be taught directly.  The problem is that when teachers do not teach students what errors are and how to correct them, many students do not figure it out on their own.  Therefore, errors are repeated and in time students have huge knowledge gaps that are impossible to fill without an enormous expenditure of time and effort; e.g., reteaching basic math skills to students who have no idea what is going on in algebra class (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1998) and placement in special education as "learning disabled."  Predictably, these students end up both unskilled and with low self-esteem.

6.  Frequent practice is not an effective way to foster mastery and high self-expectations.  Practice is boring and inhibits creativity.  Drill and kill.
        This proposition rests on the Romantic deification of the individual.  Practice and its product (uniform proficiency) are seen as regimentation and therefore an assault on individuality.  In contrast, artists (martial, dance, music, painting) and athletes know (and the preponderance of scientific research shows) that practice is the only sure route to mastery and the realization of some of the highest values, such as grace, endurance, and precision.
 
7.  Teachers should create their own curricula and lesson plans, rather than follow field-tested programs.  Programs disempower teachers and hinder self-expression.
        This statement expresses the Romantic idea that to receive knowledge diminishes the individual and places him or her beneath the oppressive weight of external authority.  However, as with other propositions in the Romantic dogma, this fosters sham, because teachers—with virtually no training in how to design instruction—are obliged to prepare not a few lessons but year-long curricula in reading, math, spelling, writing, science, and so on.  The task is impossible and means that their students receive ill-designed instruction.  Moreover it means that teachers are implicitly field-testing each lesson on their own students.  It is doubtful that many families want their children to be part of such experiments. Instead of empowering teachers, this article of faith leads to the disempowerment of teachers as they are denied tools (field tested programs) that would make them more effective.  Doubtless an underlying reason why education professors and ed schools abhor effective field tested programs in math, reading, spelling, writing, and other subjects is that these programs make education courses and education professors' endless innovations irrelevant to new and veteran teachers alike.

         Progressivism Incarnate in Whole Language.  Following are quotations from prominent advocates of whole language.  The quotations translate core Romantic modernist and progressivist  propositions into  educational jargon that serves whole language.  However, every one of the propositions is contrary both to common intelligence and to the preponderance of scientific research on reading (National Reading Panel, 2000).
 

Children must develop reading strategies by and for themselves. (Weaver, 1988)

Knowledge of reading is developed through the practice of reading, not through anything that is taught at school. (Smith, 1973)

When language (oral or written) is an integral part of functioning of a community and is used around and with neophytes, it is learned 'incidentally'. (Artwergen, Edelsky, & Flores, 1987)

Learning is continuous, spontaneous, and effortless, requiring no particular attention, conscious motivation, or specific reinforcement. (Smith, 1992)

...when parents and teachers plan children's environment and activities carefully so that literacy is an integral part of everything they do, then literacy learning becomes a natural and meaningful part of children's everyday lives. When you create this kind of environment, there is no need to set aside time to teach formal lessons to children about reading and writing. Children will learn about written language because it is a part of their life. (Schickendanz, 1986)

Children can develop and use an intuitive knowledge of letter-sound correspondences [without] any phonics instruction [or] without deliberate instruction from adults. (Weaver, 1980)

        Scientific Research at Odds with the Core Propositions of Folly (Romanticism and Progressivism).  Contrast the above propositions from the canons of Romanticism and progressivism (the ideas behind fad and fraud) and whole language (the incarnation of fad and fraud) with the following propositions—that have the strongest and longest history of empirical support and on which rest effective field tested curricula and instructional methods (Adams and Engelmann, 1997; Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1998; Brophy & Good, 1986; Cotton, 1995; Ellis & Worthington, 1994; Kameenui, & Simmons, 1990; Kozloff, 2002; Rosenshine, 1986, 1997; Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986; Walberg & Paik, 2000).

1.  The teacher knows and can state exactly what he or she wants students to learn at all times; i.e., the teacher can say exactly what students will be able to do.
 

"I am teaching the strategy for decoding words.  By the end of the week, students will accurately and rapidly sound out sit, sam, am, can, man, fit, and ran."

"I am teaching the concept democracy.  By the end of the lesson, students will state the verbal definition of democracy, identify democratic and nondemocratic forms of political society, and develop examples and non examples of democracies."

"I am increasing fluency at math facts.  By the end of the week, students will solve at least 10 one-digit adding and subtracting problems per minute with at least 90 percent accuracy."

When objectives are this clear, teachers are able to plan exactly how to teach and how to evaluate the effects of instruction.

2.  The teacher systematically fosters the different sorts of changes that define mastery—acquisition (accuracy); fluency (accuracy and speed); assembling elements (e.g., knowledge of sound-symbol relationships and reading left to right) into larger wholes (sounding out words); generalization of knowledge to new examples; retention of skill over time; and independence from teacher supervision.

3.  Instruction is a logically progressive sequence.  It begins with elemental skills (e.g., counting, math facts) and moves to increasingly complex skills (adding, subtracting, solving word problems, using these skills in other places; e.g., adding the number of plates and cups in a cupboard at home).  Students are always taught pre-skills needed for next lessons.

4.  The curriculum focuses on a skill (e.g., the strategy for multiplying two-digit numbers) until it is mastered before the teacher moves to another kind of skill (e.g., decimals).  Otherwise, students master nothing, and basically have to start all over next year.

5.  The teacher moves at a brisk pace—to sustain attention and get more taught.

6.  The teacher stays focused and keeps students focused on the task at hand.  Lectures, demonstrations, and discussions do not wander off.

7.  The teacher corrects all errors immediately.  "That word is 'snap.'  What word? snap.  Spell snap.  s  n  a  p.  Read the sentence again."

8.  The teacher immediately tests or checks whether students are getting what he or she is trying to teach.  "Okay, your turn to read these words" or "Now, you solve this problem yourselves."  If some students make errors, the teacher re-teaches the problem spot.  This shows that the teacher understands that:
(a) The only solid measure of teaching effectiveness is students using what the teacher taught; and
(b) The teacher must check teaching effectiveness every time he or she teaches something new--the next letter/sound relationship (m says mmm), the next vocabulary word, the next rule, the next fact.  This means that the teacher might be checking understanding 30 or more times per lesson.

9.  The teacher often asks questions of the whole group, and has the whole group respond together.  "Who wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence?"  The teacher also calls on individual students, asking the question first.  "When was the Declaration signed?  (Pause for think time)  Johnny."

10.  The teacher gives specific praise.  "Excellent for reading that passage with no errors!"  Not, "Good reading."

11.  Homework is not used to teach the skill; e.g., how to multiply, spell new words, or write a paper.  (This should be done in school.)  Homework is used to generalize or apply skills learned in school.

        This section reveals a strong contrast between (1) the core beliefs of Romantic modernism and their translation into general so-called progressive, child-centered education, and then into chronic forms of pernicious pedagogy such as whole language; and (2) a set of empirical generalizations, instructional methods, and field tested curricula derived from the preponderance of scientific research--that are largely rejected by progressivists, who at this time control education.  The next section provides part of an answer to the question,  How can a field so readily adopt and institutionalize ideas and methods (fad and fraud) that fly in the face of both common sense ("Teach kids the sounds made by the letters.") and scientific research?

Anomie and Egoism
            Medical doctors do not prescribe coffee enemas as a treatment for ovarian cancer--although some "New Age healers" have done so.  No physician could logically deduce coffee enemas from the medical knowledge base on biology in general and cancer in particular.   A physician suggesting such a treatment would be deemed mad.  In other words, medical practice rests on a shared and strong knowledge base of empirically robust propositions.  The knowledge base is part of the stock of common knowledge expected of qualified physicians.   It helps to foster social cohesion among physicians (they see themselves as part of and sharing something larger) which in turn (1) lends moral authority to the knowledge base that is independent of the individual; (2) makes each physician morally responsible for acting in accordance with the knowledge base; and (3) makes each physician's actions (assessment, diagnosis, prescription, treatment) evaluatable in relation to the knowledge base and accountable to the field as a whole.  In summary, physicians—as physicians--cannot think and act as they please (egoistically) and still consider themselves morally responsible, competent, and respectable.  They cannot prescribe treatments that have no basis in research or that are known not to work, and avoid punishment.  The same may be said of engineering, architecture, military operations, business decisions, farming, barbering, and other serious endeavors.
            Not so in the field of education.  Education does not have a knowledge base shared within and across teachers and education professors, schools, districts, states, and education schools--a knowledge base that rests on scientific research; i.e., experimental, quantitative, longitudinal, replicated research whose findings are turned into conclusions and instructional implications only after they are examined in the light of the rules of right reasoning.   Despite the preponderance of scientific research that yields clear and strong generalizations (listed above), there is no agreement on such fundamental issues as: (1) the desirability of logically precise communication and a logical progression of tasks; (2) error correction; (3) practice; (4) when teachers should be more directive and when students should guide their own endeavors; (5) when skills are best taught in isolation (e.g., word lists or math facts) and when they are best taught in context (in sentences, in problems); (6) whether all tasks should be taught to near mastery before going on, or whether the same tasks should be revisited again and again until they are learned.  In other words, education is an anomic culture.  Progressive ideas, methods, and curricula are not generated and legitimized by a solid and shared body of empirical propositions that say, If you do X, Y will happen.  (Rather, they are generated and legitimized by beliefs in the dogma of Romanticism and progressivism.) Nor are progressive ideas, methods, and curricula rejected because they are logically absurd and harmful to children.  (Rather, they are sustained by beliefs in the dogma of Romanticism and progressivism.)
            For progressivists, few empirical research generalizations and rules for reasoning appear to be accepted as independent and as having an authority greater than what the education guru, ed professor, or ed school may think of them, and that therefore oblige intellectually honest persons to reject groundless beliefs and fanciful innovations.  Indeed, Romantic modernism and its derivations--constructivism and postmodernism--attack the possibility that there can be any truths and rules for reasoning external to the individual.  This is because independent truths and rules (given the egoism bred by the Romantic modernist thought world) are said to stifle the academic freedom and creativity of the individual.
            Lacking (indeed, working hard to ensure there will be no) institutionalized rules for reasoning (testing, falsifying) that say "This is absurd.  Go no further.", and encouraged by Romantic beliefs that knowledge is relative and that individuals construct what is true for them, progressive education innovators operate in a state of self-created egoism.  This enables them—as individuals and special "philosophy" groups—to take themselves to be the final judges of what is true, effective, and good.  Therefore, when critics ask for objective data and experimental research to test the claims of innovators, these requests are understood as attacks.  Unfortunately, anomie and egoism help to sustain flawed curricula that damage the life chances of many children who depend on the honesty, humility, and rationality of educators.  Note the interesting take on moral responsibility in the following lines of a whole language advocate.
 

Saying that we are determined to teach every child to read does not mean that we will teach every child to read…. The best we can do ... is ... to ensure that, if not every child lives up to our hopes, there is a minimum of guilt and anguish on the part of teachers, students, and parents."  (Smith, 1992)

Incentives to Mischief Disguised as Child-centered Innovation
            Instruction in many subjects is or could be routine.  Most children can be easily taught reading, math, spelling, writing, history, literature, and other subjects—if instruction is well designed.  This is true for students with and without disabilities.  Moreover, knowledge of exactly how to teach these subjects could easily be put (and has been put) in a disseminable form, such as commercial curricula --Reading Mastery from SRA/McGraw-Hill, Basic Skill Builders from Sopris West, and Skills for School Success from Curriculum Associates.   However, there is an incentive in education not to routinize and package effective instruction—although this would increase teachers' effectiveness and benefit their students.  Instead, there is an incentive continually to revolutionize pedagogy and technique. This is because packaging effective curricula for easy distribution would mean that the field of education no longer has much business for education consultants, education professors, education researchers (on mundane subjects—such as reading and math--that have been pretty well covered by 100,000 articles), gurus, workshop promoters, and certifiers.   Having little business, they would soon be out of business.  This helps to explain why the above list of self-interested parties in education work diligently to convince school systems, funding sources, government agencies, consumer groups, and families that there is still so much to learn, that teaching is an art, not a science, and that there are still so many problems to solve.  Therefore, each next innovation (e.g., brain-based teaching) must be understood not as an example of increasing wisdom, but as creation of a new need and set of products.

Absence of Contract, Contact, and Accountability
            In medicine, law, and business, clients contract with service providers; clients generally have direct contact with service providers, and clients can hold service providers accountable for failing to deliver contracted outcomes or for operating in violation of professional standards.  This is not the case in education.  Education innovators (e.g., professors, workshop promoters, publishers) do not have a contract with students, families, teachers, schools, or districts.  They rarely interact in a direct way with the persons and organizations affected by their innovations.  They receive no corrective consequences for "products" that were not properly field-tested or when they fail to deliver promised outcomes.  "Your students will be lifelong learners."
            This distance between innovators and their subjects (not customers, clients, or partners) enables innovators to treat the whole process as a form of self-aggrandizing play.  For example, education professors adopt a "new philosophy" (say, constructivism or postmodernism); they think of interesting ways it could be applied to schools (a discovery approach to teaching grammar); they have exciting conversations with like-minded colleagues; they get a grant (or at least get a school) that will enable them to implement their new idea; they take some kind of data that supports what they already believe; and then publish a series of articles and give papers at conferences—all validated by their peers' approval--that bring tenure and prestige.  In time, the novelty wears off and they move on to another hot idea—leaving behind tenth graders who are still "struggling writers."  In summary, there can be no compelling sense of moral responsibility where self-importance and arrogance are bred by egoism, where no adverse consequences follow fraud and folly, and where there is no external, professional code similar to the Hippocratic oath in medicine.

Education Schools as the Primordial Soup of Fad, Folly, and Fraud
            Schools of education are for the most part the source of pernicious innovations.  They are the carriers of Romantic-progressivist doctrine.  They induct new teachers and administrators into the Romantic-progressivist thought world, and thereby ensure that another generation is prepared to receive and accept progressivist innovations (Hirsch, 1996; Ravitch, 2000).  For example, ed school teacher training curricula rest on and are misguided by empirically weak and logically flawed progressivist (constructivist, child centered, developmentally appropriate) shibboleths concerning how children learn and therefore how children should and should not be taught.  A small sample of these were listed in an earlier section; e.g., drill and kill, teachers should facilitate but not directly teach, students should construct knowledge.  These are repeated in course after course, book after book, and exam after exam in education schools (Kramer, 1991).
            At the same time, ed schools do not adequately teach students the logic of scientific reasoning; specifically, how to define concepts and judge the adequacy of definitions; how to assess the logical validity of an education professor's or writer's argument and the credibility of conclusions.  Nor do ed schools commonly have students read original works (to see if in fact Piaget said what is claimed for him), to read original research articles, meta-analyses, and other literature reviews.  The result is that ed students do not have the skill to determine the validity of the progressivist propositions and curricula they are taught; they must rely on what their professors tell them to believe.
            Moreover, a shared intellectual poverty that favors Romantic-progressivist doctrine is sustained in ed schools because education professors typically read little that challenges what they already believe; they ignore research that invalidates their child-centered, constructivist thought world; and they mount disingenuous arguments against the preponderance of scientific research that challenges what they teach. For example, education professors do not as a matter of course and scholarly obligation read the Report of the National Reading Panel (one of many huge literature reviews), and do not have their students read this and other reviews.  Or, they dismiss these reviews, and teach their students to dismiss these reviews, with off-handed comments such as "All research is flawed" or "This document is biased." This self-imposed and self-defensive ignorance helps to ensure that what education professors believe and teach remains, to them, unchallenged.  In addition, ed schools sustain a Romantic-progressivist thought world by hiring persons who are educationally correct—i.e., who believe the same doctrine as the committee that hires them, and therefore won't upset existing relations of power or challenge anyone to think very hard.
 

There are two sorts of pernicious innovations in education:  passing fads (e.g., "multiple intelligence") and chronic malignancies (whole language). Both waste time, money, energy, teachers' efforts and goodwill, and children's opportunities to master skills.  Both forms of pernicious innovation rest on the emotional appeal of an empirically empty Romantic modernist critique of contemporary social institutions and values (primary folly) translated into progressivist education shibboleths and jargon (derivative folly) that are used to generate and then to sustain allegedly-novel (but rarely field tested and almost always worthless) "practices" (fraud) that provide prestige, tenure, privilege, publication, easy money, and power to their promoters.  Fads, folly and fraud are to a great extent located in schools of education, and will continue as long as they are allowed.

Adams, G.L., & Engelmann, S. (1996).  Research on Direct Instruction:  25 years beyond DISTAR.   Seattle, WA:  Educational Achievement Systems.

Anderson, J.R., Reder, L.M., & Simon, H.A. (1998). Applications and misapplications of cognitive psychology to mathematics education.  Department of Psychology.  Carnegie Mellon University.  Pittsburgh, PA.  On-line at http://act.psy.cmu.edu/personal/ja/misapplied.html.

Artwergen, B., Edelsky, C. & Flores, B. (1987). Whole language: What's new? Reading Teacher 41, 144-154.

Bock, G., Stebbins, L., & Proper, E. (1977). Education as experimentation: A planned variation model (Volume IV-A & B).  Effects of follow through models.   Washington, D.C.:  Abt Associates.

Bredekamp, S.B. & Copple, C. (1997).  Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs.  Washington, D.C. : National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Brophy, J., & Good, T. (1986).  Teacher behavior and student achievement.  In M. Wittock (Ed), Third handbook of research on teaching (pp. 328-375).  Chicago, IL:  Rand McNally.

Brooks, J.G., & Brooks, M.G. (1993). In search of understanding: The case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Carnine, D. (200).  Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices (And What It Would Take to Make Education More Like Medicine). Washington, DC :  The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.  On-line at http://www.edexcellence.net/library/carnine.html

Cobb, C., Wood, T., & Yackel, E. (1990). "Chapter 9. Classrooms as learning environments for teachers and researchers.  In R.B. Davis, C.A. Maher, & N. Noddings (Eds.), Constructivist views on the teaching and learning of mathematics (pp. 125-146). Reston, VA: The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc.

Coles, G. (December 2, 1998). No end to the reading wars. Education Week.

Cotton, K. (1995). Effective school practices:  A research synthesis 1995 Update.  http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/esp/esp95.html

Davis, R.B., Maher, C.A., & Noddings, N. (Eds.) (1990).  Constructivist views on the teaching and learning of mathematics (pp. 125-146). Reston, VA: The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc.

DeVries, R., & Zan, B. (1994). Moral classrooms, moral children. New York: Teachers College Press.

Ellis, A., & Fouts, J. (1993).  Research on Educational Innovations. Princeton, NJ: Eye on Education.

Ellis, E.S., & Worthington, L.A. (1994).  Research synthesis on effective teaching principles and the design of Quality tools for educators.  On-line at http://idea.uoregon.edu/~ncite/documents/techrep/tech05.pdf

Finn, C.E., & Ravitch, D.R. (1996).  Education reform 1995-1996.  Part IV. Instruction.   The tyranny of dogma.  Washington, DC:  Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.  On-line at http://www.fordhamfoundation.org/library/epciv.html.

Gersten, R., Keating, T., & Becker, W.C. (1988).  Continued impact of the Direct Instruction model:  Longitudinal studies of Follow Through students.  Education and Treatment of Children, 11, 318-327.

Grossen, B. (1996).  How shall we group to achieve excellence with equity. Eugene, OR:  University of Oregon.

Grossen, B.  (1998).  Child-Directed Teaching Methods: A Discriminatory Practice of Western Education.
University of Oregon.  On-line at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~bgrossen/cdp.htm

Hirsch, E.D., Jr. (1996).  The schools we need and why we don't have them. New York: Doubleday.

Hirsch, E.D., Jr. (2001b). The roots of the education wars.  Education Next, Spring.  On-line at http://www.educationnext.org/unabridged/2001sp/hirsch.html

Kameenui, E.J., & Simmons, D.C. (1990).  Designing instructional strategies.  Columbus, OH:  Merrill.

Kozloff, M.A. (2002). Three requirements of effective instruction.  On-line at http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/scaffolding.pdf

Kramer, R. (1991).  Ed school follies: The miseducation of America's teachers.  New York: Free Press.

Meyer, L. (1984).  Long-term academic effects of the Direct Instruction Project Follow Through.  Elementary School Journal, 84, 380-394.

Meyer, L., Gersten, R., & Gutkin, J. (1983).  Direct instruction:  A Project Follow Through success story in an inner-city school.  Elementary School Journal, 84, 241-252.

National Reading Panel. (2000).  Teaching children to read.  National Institute of Child Health and Development.  Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services.

Noddings, N. (1990).  Constructivism in mathematics education.  In R. Davis, C. Maher, & N. Noddings (Eds.), Constructivist views on the teaching and learning of mathematics.  Reston, VA:  National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Ravitch, D.R. (2000).  Left back:  A century of failed school reforms.  New York: Simon & Schuster.

Rice, J.R. (2002).  The therapeutic school.  Society, 32, 2, 19-27.

Rosenshine, B. (1997).  Advances in research on instruction.  On-line at http://epaa.asu.edu/barak/barak.html

Rosenshine, B. (1986).  Synthesis of research on explicit teaching.  Educational Leadership, 43, 60-69.

Rosenshine, B., & Stevens,  (1986).  Teaching functions.  In M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (Third edition) (pp 376-391).  New York:  McMillan.

Schickendanz, J.A. (1986). More than the ABC's: The early stages of reading and writing. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Smith, F. (1973). Psychology and reading. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Smith, F. (1992). Learning to read: The never-ending debate. Phi Delta Kappan, 74, 432-441.

Stone, J.E. (1996).  Developmentalism: An obscure but pervasive restriction on educational improvement.  On-line at Education Policy Archives, http://olam.ed.asu.edu/epaa/v4n8.html

Stone, J. E. & Clements, A. (1998). Research and innovation: Let the buyer beware.  In Robert R. Spillane & Paul Regnier (Eds.). The superintendent of the future  (pp.59-97). Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers.

von Glasersfeld, E. (1984).  An introduction to radical constructivism.  In P. Watzlawick (Ed.), The invented reality.  New York:  Norton.

von Glasersfeld, E. (1995).  A constructivist approach to teaching mathematics.  In L.P. Stefe & J. Gale (Eds), Constructivism in education.  Hillsdale, NJ:  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Walberg, H.H.J., & Paik, S. (2000).  Effective education practices.  Educational practices series.  International Academy of Education.  International Bureau of Education.
http://www.ibe.unesco.org/International/Publications/EducationalPractices/EducationalPracticesSeriesPdf/prac06e.pdf.

Watkins, C. (1997).  Project Follow Through:  A case study of contingencies influencing instructional practices of the educational establishment. Cambridge, MA:  Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies.  See http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adiep/ft/watkins.htm

Weaver, C. (1988). Reading process and practice. Exeter, NH: Heinemann.

Weaver, C. (1980). Psycholinguistics and reading. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop.

Zemelman, S., Daniels, H., & Hyde, A. (1998).  Best practice: New standards for teaching and learning in America's schools.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.