Sirens’ Song—There be danger here, Will Robinson

Paul Richardson 2011

You probably remember the Sirens of Greek mythology. Homer’s
Odyssey is one of the more famous versions of the tale, but there were
many others. The basic kernel of the story was that the creatures
(Homer said 2, but other sources vary from 2 to 5) would sing their song
to lure mariners to shipwreck on the rocky shore of their island.
Odysseus in Homer’s version knows the legend and has himself lashed
to the mast tightly and tells his crew to plug their ears with beeswax and
not to free his bonds no matter how much he demands or pleads for them
to do so. As they travel within range of the songs Odysseus demands
and pleads for them to release him from his bonds and is not at peace
until they pass far enough away to be out of earshot of the Sirens’ songs.
Because the myths said that the Sirens would die if anyone escaped their
trap, the Sirens were no more.

In education the Sirens’ part is played by the schools of education.

There are a very few exceptions but their graduates do not make a dent
in the message carried in the Sirens’ songs of “process is all that matters,
learning is natural it doesn’t need to be taught, just make the kids feel
good about themselves and that is enough.” This romantic view of
learning is de rigueur in our society because the vast majority of
educators have been trained in education schools which were designed
in the 1930s to teach the Progressive principles of education. This anti-
content approach results in teachers (especially elementary level) who
don’t understand the subject matter well at all. This is in direct contrast
to the philosophy of nations where their children are getting a much
better education than ours as their achievement results prove year after
year and decade after decade.
So let’s consider a couple of examples:

 Music education—this field has escaped the “they will learn it on

their own naturally” approach. Why? Because you can’t teach
students to play a school band concert in front of the parents each
year without them understanding the notes, how to play them and
so forth. And the teachers have to know music reasonably well or
their students would give an embarrassing performance that would
surely leave the school and its music program subject to severe
criticism. The romantic approach is akin to that of Professor Hill
in The Music Man. Oh, it worked for him because it made a nice
story but his “think” system doesn’t work in the real world no
matter how strong the wishes that it would or should.

 Sports—this is another area where physical education teachers and

coaches know the skills required in the sports and how to teach
them to the kids. That dreaded “drill and kill” so criticized in
“normal, mainstream” subjects, you know the most important stuff,
works and is used widely by sports coaches. Why are they granted
a “waiver” from the Progressive party line? Dewey likened the
education system that really works as fascist because it was
structured to really teach subject knowledge. You could ask
yourself why the Progressives didn’t want kids to learn to their
potential. Perhaps because if they were well educated they would
see through the Progressives’ desire to have government experts
make the important decisions for us.
In sports as in music the obvious proof of whether the students learned
the skills and knowledge required to really perform is in the games with
their competitors and the public music performances. The question for
us then is how much longer will we see our students shipwrecked on the
future-reducing rocks because their educators couldn’t resist the Siren
Song of the technically wrong and “abysmal failure to work” education
school training.