The Conspiracy of Ignorance

by Gross, Martin L.

• ISBN13: 9780060194581
• ISBN10: 0060194588
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-08-06
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

The Verdict is in: American students perform poorly in all subjects on nationwide exams, as well as scoring near the bottom in math among 21 nations, outperforming only Cyprus and South Africa. Why? In this startling investigation of schools and the teaching profession, Martin L. Gross reveals that there is a "conspiracy of ignorance" by the education establishment that has stubbornly set low academic standards in the selection and training of teachers and in watered-down student curriculum and textbooks. This, plus grade inflation, over-psychologized schools, a reliance on false theories, a stifling bureaucracy, and politicized teachers unions, have retarded student progress. Challenging the professionalization of teaching, Gross offers a provocative Bill of Indictment of this system, along with remedies that will finally give children the education they deserve.

Author Biography

Martin L. Gross is the New York Times bestselling author of The Government Racket, A Call for Revolution, and The Tax Racket, as well as The End of Sanity, The Brain Watchers, The Doctors, and The Psychological Society. He is the recipient of the NEA's School Bell Award, and has been a faculty member of the New School for Social Research and an adjunct associate professor of Social Science at New York University. He lives and works in Connecticut.

Table of Contents

An Indictment of the Education Establishment	1	(15)
The Decline of Teaching and Learning
A Tale of American Student Failure	16	(23)
Domestic Ignorance and International Embarrassment
The Making of a Modern Teacher	39	(32)
Weak Selection and a ``Mickey Mouse'' Education
The Debased Reading Curriculum	71	(19)
Whatever Happened to Phonics?
Licensing and Certification of Teachers	90	(14)
A Nationwide Sham
The Debased General Curriculum	104	(25)
Whatever Happened to Geography and Trigonometry?
The Psychologized Classroom	129	(20)
Counseling, Personality Testing, and Dr. Freud
Private, Parochial, and Charter Schools	149	(26)
Superior Education and a Matter of Choice
Alternate Certification of Teachers	175	(10)
Competition from a Brighter ``Untrained'' Cadre
Middle School and High School	185	(26)
Legions of Abandoned Minds
The Teachers' Unions	211	(15)
Using Schools as a Political Tool
The Establishment and the Community	226	(29)
Unscholarly Administrators, Weak School Boards, and Pliant PTAs
Conclusion
How to Reform, Rebuild, and Regain Our Public Schools	246	(9)
Endnotes and Bibliography	255	(22)
Index	277