The Blab Meets the Blob

I recently had the opportunity to visit an old school in Dayton, Ohio. It was a preserved model of the schools that dotted the country in the last century. While there, our group of administrators and partners was subjected to lessons given by a teacher who taught us the old-fashioned way. While the whole experience was fascinating, especially the evidence about those things that have and have not changed, the most interesting moment came when we were all asked to read, out loud, simultaneously from different passages in the venerable McGuffey Reader. Imagine the noise! This cacophony of sound was known as "blab school," and it is amazing that anyone learned to read in those "good old days." And for those who may be wishing for simpler times, and who think that readers were better then, we must note that reading literacy in America is higher today than at any point in history. The least literate portion of our population is the elderly, who were subjected to these methods in their childhood.

The real lesson I received revolved around the fact that we were visiting the school during the same week the nation's governors and business leaders were meeting at the national education summit in Palisades, N.Y., to determine the future of American education. The rhetoric as a result of the summit was very reminiscent of the meaningless babble I heard at "blab school." I had to wonder how a group of reportedly intelligent and well-informed people could get together and restate so much bad information, and create an atmosphere so counterproductive to the future of education. (See Education...