Inside U.S. Schools

Despite all the exciting reforms in U.S. schools, a prime problem remains. That problem is teachers--teachers who do not understand math and foreign languages, teachers unequipped to carry out new methods such as programed learning, teachers who cannot recognize the hunger of children to learn, teachers who may simply be none too bright. So says a reporter who lately spent 30 months in the rarely performed effort of finding out exactly what goes on in U.S. classrooms.

Bankrolled by his bestseller on advertising, Madison Avenue, U.S.A., Martin Prager Mayer, 33, spent 30 months visiting 1,000 classrooms in 150 schools across the U.S. and Europe. This week he published his findings in The Schools (Harper; $4.95). His summary: "The higher one's view of the human potential, the more one will dislike the schools as they actually exist."

"Good People." Mayer is quick to qualify his charge with praise for the expertness of thousands of teachers and for the overall decency of the profession. He points out that U.S. teachers have less independence than teachers in any other Western country (New York City alone has more school administrators than all of France) and less national status (in Russia since Peter the Great, high school principals have had civil service rank matching army generals). The wonder is not that "every school system has its hard-faced bitches, its callous routiners, its cynical slobs, its politicians, its lazy and indifferent time servers.'' The striking thing is that "teachers by and large are good people."

But kind hearts are not enough to waken young minds. That job takes deep knowledge of a subject and the ability to translate it. On both accounts, says Mayer, U.S. teachers score low. In part, this is the legacy of progressivism's pseudo science of "educational research," which insists that children not learn ahead of schedule. Emphasis on curiosity, says Mayer, "has simply disappeared from educational literature."

Oh-Oh-Relax. Any good kindergarten teacher knows that her kids in fact yearn to read. But Johnny can't read at 4 1/2 because "research shows" that "reading readiness" comes at 6 1/2. Even when he gets the chance, it may not be worth it. The fatuous "basal reader" with its Oh-Oh-Sue-said trivia destroys all joy in words. Mayer calls this "the most serious single criticism that can be made of the schools."

Since about one-third of all U.S. children fail to achieve "minimum standards" in first grade, one result is the "relaxed" second grade that goes little beyond repeating first grade. Mayer describes a second-grade class at the Mill School, Whittier, Calif. The kids are writing, "and everybody wants to write," but the bell sounds. " 'It's recess time,' calls the teacher. 'Oh, NO!' cry the youngsters. 'You just put your work down, and don't forget your idea,' Mrs. Mullen says with her endless cheerfulness. 'We'll come right back to it after you've played.' "

Spaghetti & IQ. Such underestimation, says Mayer, is appallingly prevalent. The Denver school system, for example, officially "does not expect 'knowledge of order of alphabet' until junior high school." In general, the junior high seventh grade is deliberately easier than sixth grade so that everybody can "catch up." Sample class plan in New York City: "Industrial arts. Boys and girls wear aprons and hats; prepare spaghetti luncheon and eat it." As for bright children, grade-skipping is widely disapproved on grounds of "mental health." The approved practice is "enrichment"--not real digging at math or mythology but puerile "current events."

Even worse, says Mayer, is the "general agreement" that "only a small fraction of children are truly educable on the secondary level." This is an illusion, owing to overreliance on IQ scores, which in fact can be raised by training. An example is New York City's "Higher Horizons" program, which has raised low IQs among "culturally deprived" children simply by inspiring them to aim for college (TIME, Oct. 12, 1959). Mayer suggests that U.S. education's test craze is largely a crutch for inadequate teaching. Good teachers take IQs lightly. At Louisville's Manly Junior High School, for example, one girl with an IQ in the "barely educable 80s" is in the top group "because she works hard and gets all A's." Mayer pointedly quotes John Stuart Mill: "A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do never does all he can."

Method Teaching. The same goes for teachers, says Mayer, and new methods can show the way. But all too often, those methods are completely alien to teacher training. At the University of Utah, Mayer recorded the kind of "methods" that education students actually do learn.

Said a nasal little lady professor: "Now, your first-grade paper must be nine by twelve inches in size, and the lines must run the length of the page. Some school systems use eight by ten-and-a-half paper, but I think that's a bad mistake. Before that, you use a crayon. Now, why do you think you use a crayon?"

A girl timidly raised her hand: "It's smoother than a pencil."

"That's right, you're thinking!" cried the professor. Then she rattled into a discourse on the "readiness crayon," which "is to be used only--only on unlined paper . . . if your principal and the people in positions of leadership give you such materials . . . Then you move on to pencil. There are three primary pencils with different circumferences . . ."

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