Dear Editor,
As a public educator, I commend Eric Keller for having high expectations for his children, their school and the institution of public education as a whole. I suggest that if he has concerns about his children’s grades or if he desires an explanation of the pedagogy informing their “multi-step sequential nightmare,” he need only inquire and his children’s teachers will reply.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find, no matter how “cantankerous” (per Merriam-Webster: “difficult or irritating to deal with”) or “outspoken” you are. Communication with parents is an essential part of a teacher’s job. His letter implies that instead of going straight to the source, however, he pursued answers somewhere on the Internet. As a sober-minded seeker of wisdom, he is unafraid to offend people with rigorous questions, but I fear that he may have made a few basic errors in methodology.
Based on Mr. Keller’s previous writing, I fear he has an attitude toward public education that is hardly favorable or even open-minded. The spirit of scientific inquiry is to seek truth, rather than simply reinforce previously formed opinions. To quote Scottish writer Andrew Lang, “I shall try not to use statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts, for support rather than for illumination.” This lends itself to confirmation bias, the tendency to focus on, recall and prefer information that confirms our preconceptions.
Another common error is drawing overly broad conclusions from limited data. Citing only two studies and condemning the educational system is a prime example of the fallacy of hasty generalization. Using too small a data set will magnify the effects of errors and render the conclusions invalid. To be more specific, to use data from 2019-2022 to condemn public education is to ignore the massive disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic during that precise time period. I will freely acknowledge that the quality of education provided to students during the end of the 2019-20 school year was far below standard. Pandemic restrictions continued to play havoc with schools well into the next academic year before a return to what we consider normal. The learning loss caused by that disruption was tangible at the time and the ripple effect still continues today. That said, it is disingenuous to place blame for this at the feet of public education. My colleagues strive to do the best we can for our students in the face of numerous challenges, of which the pandemic was a large one, but still just another in a long line.
Viewing Mr. Keller in the best possible light, he is acting in the spirit of the Socratic gadfly, challenging hide-bound institutions, making them question their assumptions and keeping them from becoming complacent. To be useful to society, this endeavor must be done with intellectual honesty, openly and rigorously rather than on the basis of skewed samples being used to reinforce preformed opinions.
Brian Farkas
South Beaver Township,
Pennsylvania
