Professors of Education ADORE Bruce Price´s New Book On Education
Bruce Deitrick Price
June 23, 2009
Exults John Dewy, professor emeritus of education at Teachers College, "Price is a genius. He must have x-ray vision, so he could peer under every rock. Now we have to come out in the open and confess to the American public what we´ve been up to. Frankly, it´s very liberating. I think this can be a start of something big. Schools will actually teach stuff, you know, like facts and stuff. It still sound so crazy."
Gushes John O. Kilpatrick, professor emeritus of education at Harvard: "I tell you, I almost laughed myself silly reading Price´s book. Okay, I guess that´s what President Obama calls gallows humor. I mean, let´s face it. We´ve been mucking up the society pretty badly all these years and now this guy Price comes along and tells everybody what´s going on. So the choice is you slit your throat or laugh about it. I decided I´d laugh. Ha-ha-ha!"
By all reports, "THE EDUCATION ENIGMA" is short, entertaining, and intellectual, without an iota of jargon or pretension, easily read and enjoyed by people of all ages Education professors are stunned and amazed that such a thing is possible.
"Wow," says Dr. Jerome "Puffy" Bruckner of East Kansas Teachers College, "Price is like a beautiful UFO, you know like in ´Close Encounters.´ Groovy. For me it was like the first time I heard the Beatles, I had some really good dope, and the whole world just made sense."
The book contains sections on phonics, whole word, sophistry, the art of teaching, constructivism, Dewey, critical thinking, how to teach history, Pavlov, poetry, Montessori, Frank Smith, reform math, not to mention excursions into robots, Taoism, and Mick Jagger.
Dr. Alphonse Belle, a leading educator at Hunter College School of Education, is ecstatic, "I built my whole career on ignorance and illiteracy. Now we´ll get back in the trenches and actually teach people to read and write. It was a big shock getting used to this. Kids will be able to count, and multiply, divide, all that stuff. They´ll know that Paris is the capital of France? Wow!" The professor´s voice trails off. "Truth is, I´ve been leading a double life. All the time I was an authority on Self Esteeem programs for public schools, I was homeschooling two kids. Imagine that got out. I would´ve probably ended up in a paper shredder."
Invited to speak at the Harvard School of Graduate Education, Price presided over events that were reminescent of revival meetings. One night, all the standard texts were burned as future teachers chanted, "Basics are beautiful."
Only a few of the Old Guard have reservations about Price´s new-fangled approach. Professor Georgia Counts, one of America´s foremost educators, says, "Facts? That´s crazy talk! I hate this guy. We had this good thing going for years and years. Imagine you get to shape a whole country. Or, in our case, misshape. This is exciting work. Fifty million functional illiterates! You think these people just grow on trees? Heck no, each one of them requires hard work by a dedicated team of literacy professionals."
Dr. Stanley O. Hall, one of the country´s leading experts on reading, agrees: "Price is an extremist. He seems to feel that everybody just by being born has a right to read. Nonsense. When people can read, they are exposed to all kinds of vicious nonsense. Have you looked at the typical book recently, never mind magazines? No, no, no, we have got to say no to fools like Price. Literacy is vastly overrated for the average person. They are much better off with their TV sets and football games. We have designed schools to produce just the necessary amount of literacy. A few words here and there. What else do you need?"
Asked to comment on the revolution he has started, Price says, "I dreamed of promoting change we can believe in. I did it for the children."
(Please note: this article is satire. The ed professors are imaginary characters. Here´s a fact: THE EDUCATION ENIGMA, a look at education's dark side, is lively, smart, and available on Amazon. Also visit Improve-Education.org.)