A Conservative Teacher’s Take on ‘What Is Wrong With Our Schools’
A Conservative Teacher’s Take on ‘What Is Wrong With Our Schools’
Daniel Buck is a middle school English teacher in Wisconsin who’s recently
published his first book, What Is Wrong With Our Schools: The Ideology
Impoverishing Education in America and How We Can Do Better for Our Students
(John Catt Educational, 2022). When he’s not working on lesson plans, Buck is
a senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute and has contributed to
outlets like the Wall Street Journal, National Affairs, National Review, City
Journal, and RealClearEducation. Buck is one of the most prominent
conservative teacher voices in education today. Given that, and the fraught
climate of schoolhouse politics, I thought it worth chatting with him about
his experiences, perspective, and new book. Here’s what he had to say.
Daniel: It’s a polemical book with a rather simple argument: All of the trendy
debates about education ranging from funding to class size or even school
choice miss a foundational flaw in our system. We have built schooling on
incorrect first principles and faulty ideas about how students learn. I trace
out the competing ideologies in American education through an intellectual
history and then dive into more specific debates about curriculum,
instruction, behavioral policies, and others.
Daniel: A publisher reached out and asked me to. The more interesting question
is why I started writing. I was in grad school, encountering these radically
progressive and politicized ideas about education, and I needed an outlet to
process, contend with, and make sense of it all. As I wrote, more and more
teachers and parents reached out asking me what were the alternatives to John
Dewey or Paulo Freire—veritable educational saints—and I didn’t always have a
succinct answer. If not project-based learning or critical pedagogy, what
else? This book is my attempt at answering that very question.
Rick: Can you say more about the “ideology” that you reference in the title?
Daniel: Really, I should have made the title plural, referencing instead
“ideologies.” There are two. At the turn of the 20th century, progressive
education was the pedagogical philosophy du jour. With its roots in European
romanticism, progressive education holds that society and its traditions are
corrupting. In the spirit of Rousseau, any imposition of traditional academics
or rote learning merely snuffs out a child’s inherent goodness. As such, no
content is worth learning in itself but only that which naturally appeals to
the child.
The second ideology is critical pedagogy. It goes a step further, following
the work of Paulo Freire. It suggests that not only should we keep society and
traditions from molding the child—we should encourage children to mold and
remake society. It’s overtly radical and the reason we see so much politics
creeping into American classrooms. As an educator and observer of education, I
see progressive pedagogy as apolitical albeit painfully mediocre, critical
pedagogy as self-consciously radical and destructive.
Rick: I’m sure plenty of readers push back when you say that. I suspect many
tell you that anti-racism and DEI are just a healthy, necessary response to
real problems. How do you respond?
Daniel: The most frequent contention I see is that anti-racism, DEI, CRT, or
whatever trendy acronym is just the teaching of “accurate history.” Well,
they’re not. I’ve taught the beautiful poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, evils
of chattel slavery through Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, reality of
redlining and segregation through A Raisin in the Sun, and trials of the civil
rights movement through Martin Luther King’s letters and speeches. But in
teaching these units, I always emphasize that these historical crimes and
evils occurred in spite of American ideals, that our improving political
equality is a fulfillment of our founding documents, not a repudiation of
them. DEI and anti-racism aren’t teaching accurate history; rather, they use
history as a cudgel to condemn classical liberalism and our exceptional
American system.
Rick: In the book, you talk about some of your own formative classroom
experiences. What are one or two that loom particularly large when you think
about your own evolution?
Daniel: My first year teaching was particularly formative. I did everything
that I learned in university. My students designed their own behavioral rules,
they chose their own books, I formulated my lessons based on their interests,
I built relationships, and still everything was chaotic. Progressives like to
prattle on about emotional safe spaces; my classroom was bordering on
physically unsafe. There were no fights inside it, but it certainly got close
a few times. It wasn’t until I learned to assert some healthy adult authority
in the room and guide the classroom through great literature that things
slowly came into order. I saw that progressive education wasn’t working and
started to look for something else.
Rick: It can feel like our debates are stuck in a doom loop right now, where
we just talk past one another. Have you found thinkers or colleagues who see
issues differently but with whom you’ve still been able to constructively
engage or find points of agreement?
Daniel: Unsurprisingly, to me at least, I’ve found a lot of teachers both
online and in person agree with me. They want to keep Shakespeare on the
curriculum and dole out consequences to kids who misbehave. It’s
administrators, professors, activists, and journalists with whom I have the
most ideological clashes. When it comes to in-person conversations, such
disagreement has proved tense but remains civil. Online, it’s hopeless.
Rick: I feel like I don’t read much that’s written by right-leaning teachers,
even though polling tells us there are plenty of them. Am I just missing it?
Daniel: In every school that I’ve taught at, there have always been a handful
of teachers on the political right. We speak in whispers behind closed doors.
There are plenty, but many just don’t think it’s worth the professional or
interpersonal strain that comes with speaking out. We have to work with our
administrators and want cordial relationships with colleagues. Picking
political fights in the teachers’ lounge jeopardizes that professional peace.
That being said, as I mentioned before, most teachers have many values that
are traditionally associated with conservatism—local control, smaller
bureaucracies, classically influenced curriculum, strict discipline
structures—even if they don’t identify as conservatives per se.
Daniel: In particular right now, I think the movement away from punitive
discipline and consequences will prove most immediately disastrous. Based on
the progressive notion that discipline and consequences are oppressive, this
puts classrooms at risk for serious disruptive behavior. Schools in chaos
cannot function no matter how exquisite their curriculum.
Daniel: The reading lists in university preparation programs need an overhaul.
Progressives like John Dewey and critical pedagogues like Paulo Freire or
Henry Giroux dominate education school curricula. They’re the equivalent of
homeopathy or chakra enthusiasts on medical school websites. If any
educational conservatives like E.D. Hirsch gets mentioned in these programs,
it’s usually with derision. Getting more cognitive science or even a single
conservative into the hands of prospective teachers would be a major win.
Daniel: Many have been quick to criticize it or me for various reasons: They
think the subtitle is too long or that I have an insufficient number of years
in the classroom to speak with authority. It’s rarely an argument and more a
thinly veiled ad hominem. The irony of it all is that none of the criticism
comes from folks who have read the book. Every review or comment from someone
who has actually cracked a page is positive.
Daniel: Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to best build educational
alternatives and more substantively replace the dusty progressivism in our
schools. That could mean staying in the classroom, writing full time,
returning to the schools of education that I so loathe, working for an
existing organization, helping craft a good curriculum, or who knows what
else. So, I’m trying to figure that out myself.
