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Doomed to Fail: The Built-InDefects of American Education

by Paul A. Zoch

Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004. 237 pp., $26.95.

As reviewed by Diane Ravitch

Paul Zoch manages to achieve whatsome might have thought impossible in

the opening words of his new book,Doomed to Fail: he criticizes the ThomasB. Fordham Foundation (Chester E.Finn Jr.) and the National Commissionon Teaching and America’s Future(Linda Darling-Hammond) for com-mitting the same error. Although thesetwo institutions are usually seen asantagonists,both,he says,blame teach-ers when students do not learn. Zochlumps together the Fordham Founda-tion report “Better Teachers, BetterSchools”and the National Commission’s

“What Matters Most” as reports thatassume a direct causal relationshipbetween a teacher’s actions and the stu-dents’ learning. Zoch contends that theyare both wrong. Students are responsi-ble for their learning, he writes. If theymake sufficient effort, pay attention, dotheir homework, and exercise self-dis-cipline, they will learn.

A high school teacher of the classicsfor nearly 20 years, Zoch has written astunning critique of American educa-

tion.He shows how reform after reformhas gone forward with the same assump-tions: that students are passive recipi-ents of instruction, that teachers are all-powerful molders of inert student clay,and that students have no responsibilityfor their own academic success.

Ultimately, Zoch maintains, all edu-cation is self-education. The secret of academic success is no different fromsuccess in other fields of endeavor, and

it involves hard work, the will to suc-ceed, and practice, practice, practice.Yet when students fail or become bored,critics insist that it is the teacher’s fault.

Zoch shows persuasively and in greatdetail that progressives derided instruc-tion but never held students account-able for their own learning; it is alwaysthe teacher who is to blame if the chil-dren aren’t motivated. Consequently,students have come to expect that theirteachers must entertain them. As one

of Zoch’s students said to him one day,“Maybe if you’d sing and dance, we’dlearn this stuff.”

Most of the book is a brilliant reca-pitulation of the history of Americaneducation, written from Zoch’s per-spective as a seasoned classroom teacher.He demonstrates convincingly thatAmerican education has been deeplyinfluenced by seemingly inconsistent

philosophies.His own personal lodestaris William James, the great Harvard psy-chologist, who understood that the keyto individual success is effort: the studentwho strives and persists in the face ofchallenge will succeed. James’s messageof personal responsibility and willpower,Zoch hastens to point out, is now con-sidered Victorian, old-fashioned, obso-lete. Yet he also notes that the studentswho “live in accordance with old-fashioned principles of effort and will tosucceed are the stars of our public

schools, the usually unsung heroes whoin the future will provide the great brain-power of our country. Such studentsare actively working to create their ownreality and destiny.” Sadly, he observes,students who live by these values learnthem at home, not at school, for ourpublic schools today are founded onan ideology diametrically opposed to James’s beliefs.

The current philosophy that domi-nates American education, Zoch

demonstrates, is a strange concoctionthat has produced our current woeful sit-uation.Behaviorists ( James B. Watson,Edward L.Thorndike,and B. F. Skinner)encouraged the view that students weresimple, passive,and easily manipulated.According to behaviorist principles, it isno longer “incumbent upon the studentto do what is necessary to succeed,” forit is the responsibility of the teacher “tofind the right stimulus that will cause a

Students are

responsible for their

learning. . . . If they

make sufficient effort,

pay attention,

do their homework, and

exercise self-discipline,

they will learn.

Reading, Writing, and WillpowerGetting Kids to Care

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student to respond as desired.” In thebehaviorist worldview, the environmentis all, and the student is passive and ashelpless as an infant.

Along come John Dewey, WilliamHeard Kilpatrick, Colonel FrancisParker, G. Stanley Hall, and other pro-gressives, whose philosophies relievedstudents of responsibility to make thenecessary effort to learn unless they

wanted to. Like the behaviorists,Deweysaw the classroom environment (cre-ated by the teacher) as ultimately deter-minative of whether students learn.Kil-patrick and other leading progressivesthought that if teachers could discoverchildren’s natural interests, then learn-ing would be easy and fun.Hall worriedthat studying hard was actually dan-gerous to children’s health. The possi-bility that a student might “struggle andstrain” to learn something not of hisown choosing was foreign to progressive

theorists. Indeed, they emphasized theimportance of joy, not effort. Zochshows that progressive dogmas aboutnatural learning are clearly in conflictwith the Jamesian philosophy of effortand insists that parents and teachersteach “the will to succeed” by settingclear expectations and demanding effort,not accepting laziness.

Zoch argues that the progressive phi-losophy, like behaviorism,puts the onuson the teacher to be perfect,imaginative,

ingenious, and all-powerful. Bothphilosophies assume that the teachercan and must create exactly the rightenvironment or the student will notlearn. Furthermore, if the teacher fol-lows progressivist dictates, she will neverexercise authority in the classroom butwill appeal instead to the children’s needsand interests. The teacher must be notonly entertaining but also able to indi-vidualize instruction for each child,who

is expected to learn at his or her own paceand in accordance with his or her indi-vidual learning style.The problem,Zochsays, is that teachers are expected towork hard to motivate kids, but kidsaren’t expected to do anything other thanwait for the teacher to motivate them.

As a classroom teacher in Texas,Zoch spices his narrative with a few of his own bitter experiences. This book

may have been inspired on the day heattended a professional developmentsession and received a document headed“Student Learning Occurs When . . .”Every succeeding statement describedwhat the teacher must do: 1. A teacheris skilled in teaching techniques; 2. Ateacher is skilled in identifying student

needs, etc. But not a single statementdescribed what the student must do.What most irritated Zoch was that theverb “occurs” is intransitive, implyingthat the student has no responsibility todo anything to make learning occur.

Zoch takes a few solid pokes at themuch-ballyhooed cognitive revolution,

brain-based learning, multiple intelli-gences, learning styles,and other faddishapproaches.All of them, he holds,havethe same effect, which is to absolve thestudents of any responsibility for theirachievement.Either they are just wiredthat way genetically or their teachershave failed to individualize instructionenough or make it joyful enough.

The paradox that Zoch highlights is

that the American public wants orderlyclassrooms with high standards, butAmerican parents don’t mean it when itcomes to their own child. Zoch sagelywarns: “Students must learn to createtheir own success and to succeed despiteinimical circumstances, for the simplereason that the circumstances of life willnever be optimal.” If we cannot expectstudents to achieve until every child hasa perfect teacher, Zoch warns, we willwait a long time indeed, because thenumber of such paragons will always

be small. We would do students a favor,he says, if we taught them that theirsuccess depends on what they do,not onwhat someone else does for them.

Strange that American educationshould have evolved according to a phi-losophy that is fundamentally at oddswith the self-reliance that has alwaysbeen a strong element in American soci-ety. It is as though entire communitieswere to decide that they could improvetheir football teams by spending mil-

lions on professional development forcoaches. Zoch’s engaging book, ifwidely read, will introduce an impor-tant element that has been missingfrom most of the talk about schoolreform: student effort.

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a

member of the Koret Task Force at the Hoover

Institution, Stanford University.

The paradox that Zoch

highlights is that the

American public wants

orderly classrooms

with high standards,

but American parents

don’t mean it

when it comes to

their own child.