The pedagogy folk, i.e., those who spin elaborate theories about education from the rarefied heights of their ivory-tower aeries, are enthralled with the idea of “engagement.” They cough up lengthy academic tracts bristling with terminology: consider “The Construct Validity of Student Engagement: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis Approach.” I took a brief stab at the article itself and had the overall impression that the authors recommend polling one’s students and interpreting the results, but to tell the truth, your guess is as good as mine as to what they’re actually talking about. Nothing, probably.
Your basic Google search on “student engagement” will land you in a massive stew of theory, mostly in the form of overpriced PDFs from overpriced academic journals. Every once in a while a book might actually offer something concrete or useful. One such avoided the thicket of pedagogese in favor of clearly-written and interesting stories told by teachers. I read a good chunk of that one. While I emerged without any new ideas to speak of, I was filled with admiration for those hardy souls who were faced with such insurmountable challenges as making algebra interesting to inner-city gang-member kids or imparting some sense of English drama to the traumatized denizens of a low-rent community college. I’ll admit that I wasn’t quite as taken with the strategy described by a teacher of music appreciation in one of those bargain-basement community colleges: she dropped the great masters altogether and went for rap and hip-hop. She seems to have confused “engagement” with “pandering.” But I wasn’t there, so who am I to criticize? I should well imagine that Mozart and Beethoven were utterly wasted in such surroundings. Pearls before swine and all that. So she could very well have come up with the best possible solution to an impossible problem—i.e., she gave up on the high end and aimed straight for the gutter.
To call that “pandering” is a walloping no-no, just brimming over with political incorrectness, but it’s the truth and fastidiousness be damned. A while back some misguided bozos came up with the stupid notion that a college education should be a universal right. What a crock. I hate to point this out to the sob sisters, but The Great Pumpkin is not an equal-opportunity creator, and the evolutionary dice game mandates that intellectual abilities will vary widely. In far too many cases, that jaw-breaking pedagogese concerning “engagement” is being expended on the pipe dream that all students can be engineered into giving a tinker’s damn about literature, mathematics, art, music, philosophy, science, or any of the noble branches of human learning. But those supposedly disengaged students aren’t actually disengaged. They know what they really need, and it isn’t Aristotle. They’re not tuned out. They are merely suffering fools.
Consult Bleak House for the heartfelt comeuppance delivered to the predatory do-gooder Mrs. Pardiggle.
The answer seems to me to lie in the clever European system in which students upon exiting high school take an exam that determines their suitability to continue on into higher education. Those who do not have the goods for further academic pursuits may choose from a variety of trade schools, many of them partnerships between industry and government. That’s practical, smart, and downright enlightened. To put it bluntly, we don’t need any more eggheads terrorizing semi-literate undergrads with lofty bookchat theories. We don’t need any more teachers of non-subjects such as “gender studies” or “gay and lesbian literature” or “comic-book art” or the like, all designed to fill classroom desks that are far better left unoccupied.
What we need are more good plumbers. Good electricians. Good bricklayers. Good plasterers, roofers, landscapers, gardeners, car mechanics, sign painters, sanitation workers, bus and trolley drivers. The United States in particular is suffering from a lack of skilled workers in a shocking variety of fields. Legions of commentators spew gallons of flatulent gabble about the need for more computer literacy. Poppycock. Our roads are crumbling away to nowhere and we can’t seem to build anything worth shit, at least not within a reasonable time frame. Just how long did it take to design and build the new eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge? And how many design and construction flaws keep popping up? Compare that with the construction of both the Golden Gate and original Bay Bridges—both supercharged via FDR’s New Deal and built by hardy, well-trained, and dedicated construction workers who got the job done in style, with integrity, and without farting around for decades. They didn’t have to import their steel from China, either.
You want engaged students? Teach them something worthwhile for them to learn. For a kid in the top 5% of high school grads, that’s probably going to be the full panoply of Western civilization’s loftiest achievements, all delivered in the sacred precincts of a great American university. For a kid with a profound musical talent, go for broke at a conservatory. Artistic and mathematical talent have their appropriate venues. But for the bottom 40%? There’s nothing wrong with most of them that a solid trade couldn’t cure. Close the idiotic community colleges and replace them with tax-supported trade schools. Give those kids the training they need and ix-nay on the ooks-bay. Then let’s get our roads and bridges repaired, our infrastructure strengthened, our forests cultivated, and our buildings built.