The Flaw in Student-Centered Learning

July 20, 1998

The Flaw in Student-Centered Learning

By HEATHER MAC DONALD
n a surprise vote last week, the New York State Board of Regents declined to lock in the education establishment's monopoly on teacher training. Rather than requiring all future teachers to get an education degree before stepping inside a classroom, the Regents left open the possibility that well-educated, qualified teachers could bypass the ordeal of education school and still be certified.
This unexpected turnabout will come as welcome news to anyone who has spent time in an education school. Last spring I observed "Curriculum and Teaching in Elementary Education," a course offered by City College.
For the first 15 minutes of one class, students answered the following questions in their journals: "What excites me about teaching?" "What concerns me about teaching?" And, most critically, "What was it like to do this writing?"
After the students read aloud their jottings, the teacher asked, "What was it like to listen to each other's responses?" Then, summing up their comments in flawless ed-school-ese, the teacher announced, "So writing gave you permission to think on paper about what's there."
Next, the students moved into small groups to discuss a handout. After 10 minutes of mostly off-topic conversation, the teacher suggested, "Let's talk about how you felt in these small groups."
By this time, the students were learning ed-speak. "It shifted the comfort zone," one explained.
"I felt really comfortable," another student added.
"I had trust there."
"Let's talk about that," the teacher said.
This strange exercise was training for the "student-centered classroom," which has been the dominant educational model over the last several decades. In such a classroom, the teacher is not supposed to teach, since teaching is considered too hierarchical and authoritarian.
Worse, traditional lecturing presumes that the teacher actually knows something the students don't, an idea that is anathema to ed-school egalitarianism. The ideal student-centered classroom lacks a fixed curriculum. The student's own interests determine what he or she learns, with the teacher acting as mere "facilitator."
The "collaborative" group reigns supreme in the student-centered classroom, where students allegedly teach one another. In fact, the opposite occurs. Group discussion inevitably drifts away from algebra or the Missouri Compromise to more pressing matters, like last weekend's parties. Most group members sit passively while the local extrovert takes over.

With their unerring instinct for bad policy, ed schools promote group learning incessantly. But why? Students need no help in socializing. They do need to learn how to sit still, pay close attention and engage in intelligent discussion with an adult.
Education school might be justified if its theories produced literate, knowledgeable students. But they do not. Student-centered learning, along with pervasive official disdain for memorization and book learning, is turning out students who lack a basic grasp of history, math and English.
No wonder many new teachers, confronted by their students' need for structure and discipline, particularly in urban schools, have jettisoned free-form progressive methods. And no wonder California recently rejected "whole language" reading theory, another progressive nostrum, after its reading scores hit rock bottom.
Unfortunately, 12 states are ready to follow the "teacher professionalization" model. This is precisely the wrong direction to go in. Instead, states and local school districts should seek out potential teachers with a firm grasp of subject matter and basic skills and expedite their entry to the classroom. New York has the opportunity to lead the way.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.

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