Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 1: Stedman The Achievement Crisis is Real: A Review of The Manufactured Crisis
9 April 1996Dan Cline
DHC@PAWNEE.ASTATE.EDUBerliner & Biddle have taken some heavy hits for the Manufactured Crisis and for their response to Stedman's first response to the book. His second response, "Respecting the evidence..." is apparently being received on this list as a balanced and correct refutation of the major claims made by Berliner & Biddle and I suppose it is -- it is certainly a significant and thoughtful contribution on its own. However, I think responses to these works by policy analysts and scholars of whatever pursuasion, even the critics of the schools among them, should perhaps rise above conclusions based just on hunches derived from personal encounters. Andrew Coulson, for example, characterizes as "unsupported" and "far fetched" Berliner & Biddle's contention that American students are more broadly educated than their foreign counterparts based on his observation that in "personal travels" in Europe, "it is common to encounter high school and college students who speak two, three or even four languages fluently" and are well versed in international events (by what measure, not stated). As long as we are on personal experience, I was raised in the Dakotas speaking German, English and Russian, as were my mother and her sixteen brother and sisters, out of economic necessity -- farmers couln't do business with farmers and businesses from other communities in the area who spoke other languages unless they were conversant in those languages. Since none of them (myself being the exception) attended school beyond the eighth grade, I wonder to what extent being multilingual is a measure of being "broadly educated." I wonder if being multilingual in Europe isn't more a function of close proximity of nations (like New York and Pennsylvania) and ready access to television broadcasts in many languages rather than a function of curriculum in the schools. I am not sure whether Berliner & Biddle were making an empirical knowledge claim or a simple assertion that American students are more broadly educated, but in either case, an examination of the claim or assertion is more enlightened by empirical evidence, rather than recitation of impressions from personal encounters alone--the latter can certainly lead to hypotheses to be subjected to empirical test.
