Insult to Intelligence: The Bureaucratic Invasion of Our Classrooms

by Frank Smith

Common sense tells us that drilling, testing, and grading have nothing to do with how babies, children, and adults really learn. And research backs this up. Students who had been asked to write regularly without being taught to punctuate, for instance, ended a term not only writing but punctuating much better than students in a neighboring class who had been regularly drilled, tested, and graded solely on punctuation. This must be the most tedious, least rewarding, and least effective teaching that students have to endure. But false theory, political pressures, business opportunism, and harried administrators have persuaded us to accept this bureaucratic travesty of teaching as the real think. Insult to Intelligence focuses particularly on children learning to read and write, the area in which Smith has made his reputation. But his six-point manifesto on learning and teaching is applicable at every level of education, and in the context of America's ongoing struggle to upgrade the teaching profession and to raise national standards of literacy, his book is nothing less than a call to arms.

Genres: Education

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Frank Smith was a psycholinguist recognized for his contributions in linguistics and cognitive psychology. He was contributor to research on the nature of the reading process together with researchers such as George Armitage Miller, Kenneth S. Goodman (see Ken Goodman), Paul A. Kolers, Jane W. Torrey, Jane Mackworth, Richard Venezky, Robert Calfee, and Julian Hochberg. Smith and Goodman were singled out as originators of the modern psycholinguistic approach to reading instruction.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult book to rate. It is well-written, easy to read, and informative. At the end of the day, I don't recommend reading it, except to those whose interest is educational archaeology. Published in 1986, the book takes the reader on a survey tour of education initiatives that have been tried and abandoned over the years. The provocative title refers to programmatic or systematic methods of education, which are roundly denounced as "drill and kill" for the first two thirds of the book. In the last third, a revolutionary new method of teaching reading and writing is revealed (spoiler alert!) -- whole language. Those interested in the "Common Core" curriculum may be interested in tracing its evolution from 1986 to today. What follows are some observations as I read the book.

"There was growing academic excitement in the mid-1960s because of the radical theories and trenchant arguments of a brash young American linguist at MIT named Noam Chomsky." The author counts himself a fan, and savvy readers will notice the influence throughout the book.

A major theme of the book: "The myth is that learning can be guaranteed if instruction is delivered systematically, one small piece at a time." (Curiously, the book itself is laid out quite systematically, which should have created some cognitive dissonance in the author's mind.) This point is made over and over, page after page, chapter after chapter. "Students are plagued with drills, grades, and tests." Programmatic instruction is labeled as "trivialized and coercive" and "founded upon a misguided and irrelevant theory of learning." The author states that "In Insult to Intelligence I will catalog stupidities committed by ignorant though often well-intentioned people who impose meaningless tasks and demeaning tests on students in the expectation that worthwhile learning will occur."

1986 was still the early days of personal computing. The book cites the TRS-80, for example. Unsurprisingly, computer-based instruction suffers considerable abuse. "Uncertain or lazy teachers who cannot think of more productive ways of using computers will open the classroom doors to the programs. They will admit the agent of their own destruction." Thirty years on, it seems clear that computer-based instruction hasn't led to the destruction of teachers. But that kind of hyperbole abounds. Testing is tyranny, because it causes children "to be secretive and competitive" and to learn "that reading and writing are boring and difficult," and "collaboration is cheating."

The premise of whole language is posited that since children learn to speak "incidentally," they should more naturally and effectively learn to read and write "incidentally" also. "Children have difficulty in learning anything that to them seems to have no purpose." For that reason, programmatic instruction "is a totally unnecessary and inadequate means of teaching children to talk, and why the drill-and-test type program is such a misguided means of trying to teach children to read and write."

The classroom as a club is an interesting metaphor.

Children join the literacy club the way they join the spoken language club -- with the implicit act of mutual acceptance: "You're one of us," "I want to be just like you." There are no special admission requirements, no entry fees.

Those who have become accustomed to social media will recognize the virtual club as an organizing mechanism on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. "Our club memberships are our identity." This is a much bigger point than just learning to read.

If we see ourselves as members of a club, then we can't help learning to be like members of the club. But if we regard ourselves as outside a club, then our brains will resist any learning that might falsely identify us a club members.

The author employs this technique in the construction of the book, inviting readers to join his "resistance" club, and to treat those he disagrees with pejoratively. The same phenomenon exists on social media. E.g., "It is okay to punch a Nazi. Anyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi. Therefore, it is okay to punch anyone who disagrees with me."

Why should deciding (or being taught) that we don't belong to a club have such a disastrous effect on learning? If we do not belong to a particular club, then we do not apprentice ourselves to people who are members of that club. Our minds fail to engage with the demonstrations that are provided for us -- they do not become part of us. We cease seeing ourselves as "that kind of a person."

Much of the book is devoted to the denunciation of programmatic educational methods, i.e., "cages of systematic instruction." Toward the end, the author begins to address the question of what teachers should be doing instead. A core principle of the author's non-systematic approach is to do away with testing. "Students could learn much more in the schools we have today, if the teachers and students were trusted." The mindset is summed up this way: "We don't teach reading. We let it happen. You trust a kid to learn to read."

The author also puts forth "The Learner's Manifesto." Teachers, he says, have "a common enemy." Teachers are confronted with "the obstacles and oppression of programmatic instruction." As a result, "there is a resistance movement." The author then goes on to catalog "leaders in the many clubs of resistance to mindless education." Interestingly, in the many examples given, it's really hard to tell how successful these initiatives were, as there are precious few metrics or results. Of course, since testing is considered anathema, this is conveniently explained away. "A teacher who cannot tell without a test whether a student is learning should not be in the classroom. Faces reveal when students are not learning."

Thirty years later, how has this worked out? Are students arriving more prepared for college today? "The implication seems to be that educational standards have declined because students have been trying to sneak into college without being qualified." In fact, the situation is worse now than it has ever been. Many universities are requiring an extra first year (or two) of remedial instruction to teach first years what they should have learned in high school. Graduating in four years has now become the exception, which is great for universities, as they get an extra year or two of tuition. Meanwhile, international studies show US students at the bottom of the industrialized world. Guess what pedagogical approach the nations at the top are using? A little googling will prove that there is an inverse relationship between per-pupil public school spending and achievement on the SAT/ACT. There is clearly a problem, and it's not the teachers in the classroom. (With some exceptions, to be fair.)

Would it make sense to investigate what teachers are most successful? What schools are most successful? Would it make sense to emulate those teachers and those schools? Instead of inventing new educational methods every decade or so, and turning the educational system on its head with every new generation? Would it make sense to utilize whole language in combination with programmatic methods, rather than just using one and vilifying the other? Might some students learn better with programmatic methods and others learn better with whole language methods? Might some PhD educators have a prejudice against programmatic methods because they, personally, don't learn best that way? Are we accounting sufficiently for differences in learning style and personality type? Might we consider different classrooms, or different schools, that employ varying educational methods? And might we allow parents and student to choose which best suits their needs?

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found Frank Smith’s name in an endnote in an Alfie Kohn book and decided to check him out. In this book, Smith rails against what he calls “the nonsense industry”— programmatic instruction that is lockstep and focused on discrete, isolated skills. As he was describing the ideal language classroom, I was thinking, “Hmm, this sure sounds a lot like whole language.” Sure enough, he’s one of the big names associated with the whole language movement. I briefly considered tossing the book aside, but I’m glad I gave it a chance. As is the case with most movements in education, there isn’t anything inherently bad about the whole language philosophy. It turned bad when it was adopted in entirety by school systems and enforced to the exclusion of phonics. Whenever the education “experts” think they have the next big thing, instead of integrating the best aspects with what’s already working, they overcorrect and make a mess of things.

Two myths, Smith writes, had a hold on education when the book was written (and still have a hold today, I’d argue): First, the myth of quality-controlled education: Instruction will succeed if it is delivered to students of all ages in the same systematic way that part of industrial products are assembled, with constant monitoring all along the line. Second, the myth of the omniscient outsider: People outside the classroom can make better instructional decisions than teachers who actually know and see students. He gives a brief history of the transfer of control from teachers to external authorities, which ramped up in the panic after Sputnik in 1957. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 mandated educational research, so agencies and institutions sprang up all over and began taking advantage of federal funds. The act also attempted to redress socioeconomic inequality through the public schools, which gave rise to constant evaluation of students. Constant evaluation, he points out, is also key for state governments as they direct and defend the expenditure of taxes for public education.

I don’t agree with everything Smith says; for example, I’m not a fan of heterogeneous grouping. I do like his metaphor that learning must be like being “part of a club.” The four criteria of a successful “learning club” are no grades, no coercion, no restriction (e.g., in terms of grouping and timetables), and no status (in other words, the teacher acts as a mentor, collaborator, and fellow learner). Good teachers, he says, are interested in what they teach and enjoy working with learners.

Pithy quotations:

“‘Accountability’ is the standard term for the belief that teachers will teach better if they are constantly and publicly confronted with the consequences of their teaching, in the form of numerical test results. I am not against accountability. I think society has a right to expect teachers to promote student learning to the utmost, just as society demands that physicians do everything possible to advance and maintain the health of patients. But society does not tell physicians how to practice medicine. Teachers are given responsibility without autonomy. . . Ironically, the procedures that are supposed to ensure that teachers teach effectively prevent them from doing so” (150).

“Teachers are--or should be--the experts. They should not expect others to be better qualified and more authoritative in changing the teaching world for them” (246).

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smith is a brilliant writer on language learning and learning in general. His writing is engaging and full of humor, metaphor and examples to acquaint the reader with the his take on learning theory. this book is more of a clear attack on how politics and bureaucracy often take precedence over what teachers know and actual learning theory.

[Cara · Rating 4 out of 5]

written before No Child Left Behind and the Internet, but still good