They'll Never Learn.

Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, by Diane Ravitch (Simon & Schuster, 555 pp., $30)

In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the execrable pedophile Humbert Humbert visits the school his stepdaughter is to attend and learns of its educational philosophy: "We are not so much concerned . . . with having our students become bookworms," the headmistress lectures him authoritatively, "or be able to reel off all the capitals of Europe which nobody knows anyway, or learn by heart the dates of forgotten battles. What we are concerned with is the adjustment of the child to group life. This is why we stress the four D's: Dramatics, Dance, Debating, and Dating."

If you thought such outlandish pedagogical notions could only be the product of satirical fantasy, you will find Diane Ravitch's invaluable new book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, most enlightening. Ravitch is the distinguished educationist who helped ignite the debate about declining school standards while serving in the Department of Education during the Bush administration. In her new book she documents the history of the progressive movement in American education that began in the 1890s and continues in the present, as well as the noble battle fought against it throughout the century by stalwart traditionalists. She presents her story mainly by sketching out the various arguments of the principal figures on both sides, but also provides cogent commentary and analysis. We thereby learn how awfully close to the mark Nabokov's satire was.

The progressives' major purpose was to drain the curriculum of academic content (language and literature, science and mathematics, history, the arts, and foreign languages) in favor of a roster of practical courses supposedly designed to equip the student for adulthood, centered on things like health, home, family, community, consumerism, personal development, and, yes, even group living, dating, and choosing a mate. If you ever looked at recent furors over condom distribution and "self-esteem" and wondered how on earth the schools had gotten involved in such things to begin with, this is the reason.

The progressives were self-described social engineers, and their overall objective was to use the schools to shape the social order. John Dewey-the godfather of progressive ed-and his many followers disdained subject matter and focused instead on the process of learning, emphasizing the child's own interests, experiences, activities, and adjust- ment to society. Many progressives were also elitists, as the word is pejoratively used nowadays; it is they who felt that only college-bound students should receive academic preparation, while the rest should be tracked into commercial and vocational curricula.

Thanks to opposition from tradition-minded parents and teachers and from traditional educationists and intellectuals (including Robert Maynard Hutchins, Howard Mumford Jones, and unsung heroes such as Isaac L. Kandel) who wanted an academic program for all students, the progressives did not succeed in banishing academic content completely. At times, it seems, textbooks had practically to be pried out of the cold, dead hands of educators determined to continue with their subject matter in violation of the new dictates being advanced by various educational commissions.

But over time the progressives succeeded in injecting a lot of low-level, extra-academic fluff into the curriculum, especially in the nonacademic tracks; in diluting solid book-learning in favor of learning based on experience, activity, entertainment, and students' (often self-professed) "needs"; in condemning many young people to narrow vocationalism; and in seriously diminishing the ability of public schools to provide a good basic education in an orderly and disciplined environment, especially to the poor black children who needed it most. Furthermore, as the century advanced, there were fewer and fewer teachers sufficiently trained in the older models to be able to resist.

Things got much worse when, atop this rampant anti-intellectualism, the Sixties inflicted its "liberationist, pseudorevolutionary consciousness," its demand for "open education" focused on creativity and spontaneity, and its denigration of authority and morality. Schools lost the residual discipline and rigor that had persisted despite the progressive movement, and became disordered, dangerous, and dirty.

By the 1980s, the decline of required core curricula and the proliferation of electives on the secondary level meant a diminished education for just about everyone. One extensive study revealed that in the average school, students had only three hours each day of instructional time, the rest being devoted to nonacademic activities. Course credit was given for cheerleading, student government, yearbook, and "mass media." In California the only statewide requirement for high-school graduation was two years of physical education, and students were taking such subjects as homemaking, restaurant management, "food for singles," and "exploring childhood."

Since the publication of the landmark study A Nation at Risk in 1983, there has been some improvement, but the battle remains decidedly uphill. "Whole language" reading instruction continues despite a consensus that phonics instruction is needed in the early stages of the reading process. Efforts to establish standards for various subjects have faltered against the hard core of progressivism that remains, the rise of recent intellectual developments such as postmodernism, deconstruction, and relativism, and the proliferation of anti-Western and anti-American attitudes among the education elites.

Towards the end of the book, Ravitch diplomatically grants the progressives some due, but from much of her discussion it would seem that America's children would have been better off if the progressives had been given their own island in the remote Pacific. At different times they argued not only against subject matter, but against homework, tests, grades, and any kind of instruction whatsoever. The dreadful John Dewey, whose ideas, like those of Karl Marx, were supposedly always being misunderstood or misapplied, believed that the importance of reading would decline in the technological age and recommended postponing reading instruction until age eight. John Holt, author of the influential book How Children Fail (1964), wrote that children should learn only what they want to know, as much or as little. The few contributions the progressives did make, like the use of movable desks and field trips or the creation of more cheerful classrooms, do not seem worth the price. (Indeed, the toy-like, cartoonish nature of school supplies available today, as well as the distressingly informal dress of most schoolchildren, leads one to believe that classrooms have become entirely too cheerful.) But Ravitch wisely cautions against polarizing the debate between progressives and traditionalists. Instead she counsels taking the best from both, dropping the extraneous social-engineering projects the schools have taken on, and getting down to the business of ensuring that "nearly all . . . pupils gain literacy and numeracy, as well as a good understanding of history and the sciences, literature, and a foreign language." She insists also that schools must spurn value-free relativism and "teach children the importance of honesty, personal responsibility, intellectual curiosity, industry, kindness, empathy, and courage."

Ravitch's overall recommendations are excellent, but some questions arise. She argues, for example, that an academic curriculum should be provided to all students. Is vocational and commercial training such a bad idea, however, as long as it is voluntary and embedded in a program that includes solid academic courses? Similarly, Ravitch rightly disdains IQ testing that condemns a child to a substandard education, though she does accept "ability grouping," arguing that such grouping need only affect the "pace" of instruction, not the "quality." But surely at some point the slower pace would have to affect qualitative achievement.

Likewise, Ravitch refrains from endorsing old-fashioned methods like recitation and memorization, but perhaps a measure of the dreaded "rote learning" might actually pack more into the regular school day and offer balance to the freer forms of instruction currently in use.

A final point concerns multiculturalism. Ravitch disdains ethnic-particularist models like Afrocentrism, but favors cultural-pluralist models in which students learn about many cultures. Ravitch certainly earned her stripes a decade ago in her battle with the Afro-centrists (in which she was branded a "sophisticated Texas Jew" by the infamous Leonard Jeffries). But it may be time to recognize that the "good" forms of multiculturalism have become the moderate front by which "bad" multiculturalism with its underlying political agenda have taken over our schools. Even the pluralist model is used to promote the idea that all cultures are equal and that our own culture is of no special historical importance.

But such questions are only testimony to Diane Ravitch's continuing importance to the education debates. Her artful recounting of the history and consequences of the reform movement in America's schools adds incalculably to our understanding of the present state of education, and is a contribution that only a scholar of Ravitch's stature could have made.