By Paul Moreno 

February 24 -- Wealthy investor Peter Lynch and his wife have given a gift of over $10 million to the Boston College School of Education. 

“The Lynches said one reason they made the gift to the School of Education was its commitment to improving city elementary and secondary schools,” the AP reported. 

That’s like giving Pol Pot $10 million to improve Cambodia. 

Along with public school administrators and teacher unions, schools of education are the principal cause of the destruction of public schools, producing the ideas that have ruined education.  Over the past century they have given us all the nostrums of “progressive education,” from “life adjustment” and the “open classroom” to “outcome-based education” and self-esteem.  They are, in short, the brains of what former Education Secretary William Bennett calls “the blob”—the public education establishment comprised of unions, administrators and politicians. 

The BC School of Education is probably no better and no worse than most teacher education programs.  A quick glance at its publications shows the standard devotion to pedagogical fads and political correctness.  If some of the Lynches’ $10 million goes to hire more faculty, for example, the school says that “Applications are especially encouraged from persons who would enhance the ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity of the School of Education.”  The school is currently seeking applicants in special education and bilingual education (the most damaging and expensive of today’s educational fads), as well as those enthusiastic about  “educational technology,” the newest money pit.  In all cases, the school seeks faculty who pursue "teaching/teacher education for social justice"—that is, social workers or therapists rather than teachers. 

The school’s newsletter contains a complaint by one of its students about the newly instituted teacher competency tests, distressed at having spent an hour and a half “pouring” over questions until, “My wrist and elbow started to hurt!”  One of the school’s assistant deans serves on the federal government’s Gender Equity Expert Panel, and another recommends a book on "queer theory" that "brings to the unenlightened and uninformed reader a quick view of the toll that homophobia can take on gay academics," saying that it is especially valuable for "the reader who has not yet begun to think critically and honestly about the heterosexism inherent in the patriarchal structures that are our institutions of higher learning." 

The Lynch’s gift to the blob is especially regrettable in light of the fact that there are so many other worthy alternatives that need funding.  Ted Forstmann and John Walton have pledged $100 million to provide scholarships so that poor students can escape the schools created by the ed schools, and the response has been overwhelming. 

Here in Massachusetts there are many private schools that would do great things with the Lynches’ millions, instead of providing more bad ideas.  Most of all, the money could have been used for the uphill fight for private and parochial school vouchers in Massachusetts.  Instead, their gift will make it easier for the already well-funded foes of quality schools to defeat it. 

Massachusetts has doubled spending on public education in its “reform” effort, and the results coming in are further proof that the system cannot be reformed so long as the powers that ruined public education remain in control of it.  The Lynches have squandered a chance to provide meaningful alternatives to the system and instead have reinforced it.  Their generosity will end up hurting the children they want to help. 
 

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