Contemporary Essentialist Trends

is cumulative when what is learned at a lower grade level leads to and is added to by knowledge in succeeding grades or levels.35

Bagley crafted a finely tuned program of teacher education that moved teachers forward from preservice to professional classroom practice. Teachers need a knowledge base in the liberal arts and sciences, mastery of the skills and subjects they teach, and a repertoire of professional education experiences and methods that enables them to transmit essential skills and subjects efficiently and effectively to students. The successful passage from preservice to practice means that teachers can competently organize skills and subjects into units appropriate to students’ age and ability levels and competently teach them.

Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., a professor of history and a leader of the Council on Basic Education, reconceptualized essentialist principles into the theory of basic education. Bestor argued that schools should provide a sound education in the intellectual disciplines, which he defined as the fundamental ways of thinking found in history, science, mathematics, literature, language, and art. These intellectual disciplines were historically developed as people searched for cultural understanding, intellectual power, and useful knowledge.36

Essentialists charge that often popular and supposedly innovative methods that neglect systematic teacher-directed instruction in basic skills of reading, writing, computation, and the essential subjects have caused a serious decline in students’ academic performance and civility. Social-promotion policies, which advance students to higher grades to keep them with their age cohort even if they have not mastered grade-appropriate skills and subjects, have further eroded academic standards. These policies caused a serious decline in student achievement scores on standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT. In addition, a morally permissive environment in the schools has weakened fundamental values of civility, social responsibility, and patriotism.

6-7a contemporary Essentialist trends

Since the 1980s, there has been a movement to reassert selected aspects of essentialism in the Nation at Risk report, the NCLB Act, and the Common Core State Standards initiative. (For the history of this movement, see Chapter 5, The Historical Development of American Education). A Nation at Risk recommended a core of subjects, called the “new basics,” consisting of English, mathematics, science, social studies, and computer science that would have met the approval of Bagley, Bestor, and earlier essentialists.37

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001 (the NCLB) invoked the essentialist premise that schools should emphasize key basic skills, such as reading and mathematics, and that standardized tests should be used to objectively measure students’ academic achievement.38

The Common Core State Standards, announced in 2010, reveal a modified essentialist orientation. The standards identify English (language arts) and mathematics as basic subjects whose mastery is needed for success in education and in life.E. D. Hirsch, the author of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, sees the Common Core Standards as addressing the need for nationally shared key ideas that can serve as a reference point for all Americans.39 (See more discussion of the Common Core State Standards in Chapter 14, Curriculum and Instruction.)

35William C. Bagley, “An Essentialist Platform for the Advancement of American Education,” Educational Administration and Supervision 24 (April 1938), pp. 241–256. 36Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953); and Bestor, The Restoration of Learning: A Program for Redeeming the Unfulfilled Promise of American Education (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956). 37National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, 1983), pp. 5, 24. 38No Child Left Behind (Washington, DC: US Printing Office, 2001), pp. 1, 8–9. 39Common Core State Standards at www.corestandards.org, and the Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes at www.p21.org. Also, see Al Baker, “Culture Warrior, Gaining Ground: E. D. Hirsch Sees His Education Theories Taking Hold,” NYTimes.com, December 1, 2014, www.nytimes .com/2013/09/28/books/e-d-hirsch-sees-his-education-theories-taking-hold.html.