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Ron
Unz spearheaded campaigns in California, Arizona, Colorado and Massachusetts
to dismantle bilingual education programs. He is the Chairman and
Founder of English for the Children, a national advocacy organization
aimed at replacing bilingual education with English immersion throughout
the country. A theoretical physicist by training, Mr. Unz is the
Chairman of Wall Street Analytics, Inc., a Palo Alto-based financial
services software company that he founded in New York City in 1987.
Mr. Unz holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University,
Cambridge University, and Stanford University. |
"There's a tremendous amount of evidence that
by around 1990 or so California had one of the worst educational
systems in the country."
"The reason the test scores fell so dramatically by
1990 according to very many people's opinion and a lot of evidence
was that California radically revised its curriculum in the mid
to late 1980s under the spur of educational fads."
"American schools of education may or may not be good
at turning out good quality teachers, but they are extremely good
at turning out extremely damaging educational fads."
"It's not that less money is being spent today
because of Prop 13, actually more money is being spent today than
ever was spent before, much more than was spent prior to Prop 13."
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JOHN
MERROW
Tell me about going to public school in Columbia.
RON UNZ
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley part of Los Angeles. And I attended
some of the elementary schools there, and then junior high, and then
North Hollywood High School. It was probably a very typical school.
Certainly not one of the top academic schools. And back then most
middle class Californians assumed that their children would be going
to public school. And that is, unfortunately, no longer the case.
JOHN MERROW
So when you were in elementary school, were your classes crowded?
RON UNZ
I think they were fairly average. As I remember, most of the classes
back then had about 30 to 35 students. And some of them may have had
as few as 25 students. But certainly that was long before class size
reduction. So by and large, the classes back then, say, 25, 30 years
ago, were far more crowded than they are today.
JOHN MERROW
When you were in school were the tiles falling down from the ceiling?
RON UNZ
Well, generally, no. But in any case, it is my experience, both in
my own education, in all the conversations I've had with other people,
and my personal observation, that there is absolutely no relationship
between the physical quality of the school and the academic output
produced. For example, when I went to college some of the best students
came from the New York City schools, like Stuyvesant and the Bronx
High School of Science. And they were always telling me stories of
how dreadful those schools were in their physical quality. They were
just decrepit, they had very few physical resources. But they regularly
produced the top-ranking students in the United States, far better
students in many cases than the Andovers, or the Exeters, or the elite
private schools. So there's really very little relationship between
the physical plant and the academic output.
JOHN MERROW
When you went to school, were there rats or anything like that in
your classrooms?
RON UNZ
No, and as far as I know I doubt there are today either except in
extreme examples. As far as I can see - and because of my activities
I’ve been to a number of public schools, probably a hundred
in the last five years - I’d say probably the biggest difference
I notice is that in parts of Los Angeles the schools certainly are
more crowded than they were when I was there. Also, security is more
of an issue.
But I really see no indication that the physical plant is any worse.
And even besides that, the amount of money that goes into producing
the school seems to have a minimal connection to the quality of the
physical plant that comes out the other end.
JOHN MERROW
So is it your contention that whatever's wrong with the California
public schools it's not a shortage of money?
RON UNZ
Absolutely. And in fact, here's the most interesting fact on
that. It turns out during the same period of time that California
public schools moved from by many accounts the best in the nation
to becoming maybe the worst in the nation, the per student spending
adjusted for inflation increased by 150 percent. Now if you increase
the spending by 150 percent per student above and beyond inflation
and quality declines dramatically, it becomes a very arguable point
whether the spending is really the main factor or whether it's
other factors.
JOHN MERROW
If it's not money, what explains this fall from grace?
RON UNZ
The answer is very simple. It's curriculum more than anything
else. In other words, the reason the test scores fell so dramatically
by 1990 according to very many people's opinion and a lot of
evidence was that California radically revised its curriculum in the
mid to late 1980s under the spur of educational fads. The state shifted
from a mixed reading system to a whole language oriented system. They
got rid of traditional math and moved to what might be called inventive
math. Constructive science, self esteem. The emphasis became entirely
on these educational fads rather than on traditional educational quality.
JOHN MERROW
So the solution is traditional educational approaches?
RON UNZ
The solution is to undo the damage that was done by these fads and
that caused the decline. The way you get there is not spending and
it's not structural changes, but it's returning to traditional
academic subjects, science and math and English and reading and getting
rid of these fads that have done so much damage to the public schools.
JOHN MERROW
You haven’t said anything about immigration, anything about
a huge influx of kids who may be coming to school at age 12 or 13
for the first time.
RON UNZ
You’ve raised a very good point, and certainly one of the factors
behind the decline in average test scores in California is a huge
influx of impoverished, primarily Latino immigrants. Obviously people
coming from poor families, poorly educated families, will have a harder
time getting high test scores when they go to school. But the decline
was just as apparent among white middle class or upper middle class
students and that decline was caused by academic standards and the
shift to fads.
Also, it's true that a lot of Latino students we’re talking
about enter school not knowing English. But there's actually
a misconception that many of them come here at the age of 12 never
having been in an American school before. In fact, almost all Latino
students in California who are limited English start school here when
they’re five or six years old. Over half were born in California
or born in the rest of the United States, and most of the rest arrive
when they’re very young. So those students start school when
they’re five or six, and if they don’t know how to read
and write English by the time they’re ten or 11, it's
the fault of the schools and not the fault of their family.
JOHN MERROW
So part of your solution is English immersion?
RON UNZ
Exactly. Most of these Latinos we’re talking about in many ways
are very similar to the earlier waves of eastern and southern European
immigrants who came to the United States around the turn of the century.
The Greeks and Italians and Jews and prior to that the Irish and the
Germans, they came here many times poor, they came here not knowing
English, they came here sometimes illiterate in their own native language.
And the schools back then taught them English, they taught them how
to read and write, and they ended up prospering and becoming successful
members of the society. So the California schools and Texas schools
and New York schools have to do for the current generation of immigrant
children exactly what they did for those children 80 and 90 and 100
years ago.
JOHN MERROW
Some of us watching this might say, "Boy, that guy is glossing
over some serious problems..."
RON UNZ
Well, I’m not saying that the children of impoverished Latino
farm workers whose parents are illiterate in every language will in
enormous numbers be going to become Harvard theoretical physicists.
That takes a couple of generations. What I am saying is these public
schools can give them exactly the same good solid basic education
it gave similar waves of impoverished immigrant children back at the
turn of the last century. And again, there were problems back then.
Lots of children of poor immigrant families dropped out. Many of them
didn’t go on to college. Things certainly weren’t perfect.
But everyone who looks back now says that Italians and Greeks and
Germans all are doing pretty well in our society, and today's
immigrants, if they’re given the proper education in the public
schools, can do just as well.
JOHN MERROW
Is California moving in the right direction?
RON UNZ
Absolutely it's moving in the right direction. The bottom line
is the single greatest change for good that has occurred in the public
schools in the last eight or ten years has been shifting away from
whole language towards phonics. Phonics works; whole language doesn’t
work. It's still a battle to make this change on a district
by district and school by school basis, but that's the reason
I think more than anything we’re seeing such dramatic gains
in the test scores of millions of students in the California public
schools.
JOHN MERROW
Are you optimistic?
RON UNZ
I’d say I’m reasonably optimistic. I think the necessary
dramatic changes in the public schools - getting rid of bilingual
education, getting rid of whole language, getting rid of the self
esteem nonsense, shifting back to traditional academic subjects and
testing the programs that teach those subjects, with the state-wide
standardized testing system - those are very necessary changes that
have taken place, and I think they’re definitely moving the
schools in the right direction.
The future of California public schools right now is very closely
linked to the future of immigrant Latino students in those public
schools. Most of those students were born in the United States, but
they do come from immigrant families, so you can describe them as
immigrant children.
And I think all the evidence is that if those children are given the
same opportunities that they should be given and that other waves
of immigrants were given, they’ll do just as well. And in fact,
when you look at the dramatic rise in Latino test scores in California,
it hasn’t solely been because of getting rid of bilingual education,
it hasn’t solely been because of getting back to phonics, but
all those things together, together with the testing program, show
that the average test scores of millions of Latino students have doubled
in the last four years. Now when the percentage of Latino immigrant
students in California that are scoring at or about the national average
doubles in four years, you have to be optimistic.
JOHN MERROW
Is there a message in the California story for the rest of the country?
RON UNZ
The message is basic standard traditional education works, testing
works, educational fads are a disaster. |
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