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An authoritative examination into the collapse of the scientific method in American education and intellectual life, and the resulting collateral damage.
Edmund writes with verve, and adds more than a dollop of spice by offering $100,000 to certain organizations that prove him wrong. He doggedly advances the notion that America’s egghead community—led by influential intellectuals such as James B. Conant (Harvard president, 1933-1953)—perpetrated a monumental blunder in denigrating the use of the scientific method. In turn, writes Edmund, Conant’s crowd opened the doors to the slipshod thinking that has ruined American education. Fads such as “look-say reading instruction,” “new math” and “new new math” followed in a confusing progression that continues to this day in charter schools and the self-esteem movement. Edmund contends that researchers, using scientific methods, should have halted the process in its tracks by determining quickly the winners and losers among these trendy programs, rather than falling for the “do your own thing” philosophy espoused by Conant and crew. Furthermore, the trial and error method taught by natural philosophers and used by classical scientists has not lost its relevance in a “do as you please” world. Edmund is dumfounded by educators’ unwillingness to use testing and analysis to determine what works best in the classroom. Instead, he writes, the useless debate continues unabated, and the blunder continues its proliferation.
On the doorstep of age 90, Edmund has performed a national service.
-- Kirkus Discoveries
According to Norman Edmund, a blunder occurred in the way education has been approached that has had a negative impact on it for over fifty years. This blunder has caused trillions of dollars to be spent trying to fix a faulty system, with most of the blame going to "bad" schools and "bad" teachers. However, as Edmund points out, this blunder was created by and continues to be proffered by the highest echelon of our educational thinkers.
What is this blunder? In the late forties, James B. Conant, then president of Harvard University, looked at the accomplishments of both Harvard’s School of Law and School of Business and decided a similar approach to the teaching of science would be as successful. Instead of focusing on the scientific method as had been done in the past, he thought it would be wiser to focus on the case study formula of his two successful schools. Further, he argued that there was no scientific method, so nothing would be lost by abandoning its teaching. Being a respected educator and leader of one of the country's top schools, his views soon spread throughout all of education.
How is this a blunder? By Edmund's reasoning, instead of science students being taught a fundamental, fail-safe approach to problem solving, they have been left roaming foreign lands unsure of their surroundings and how to proceed. Also, argument against the existence of the scientific method has had ramifications in all education, not just in teaching science. Everyone seems to agree that the present educational system needs improving, but no one seems to know how to go about it. Edmund argues that the scientific method could be adopted and used to find viable solutions to this problem, as it is designed to weed out what doesn’t work before it is implemented.
Norman Edmund is the founder of Edmund Scientific Company, which he ran from 1942 to 1975. In 1989 he decided to come out of retirement and has spent the past fifteen years doing specialized research on the scientific method and its effects on education. He is so sure of his research that he is offering $100,000 of his own money to certain organizations that can prove him wrong.
Extensively researched, this 640 page book can be daunting at first. To counteract this, it is well organized and its material clearly stated. For anyone looking for a way to improve the current educational system by going to the source of its problems, this makes for a very enlightening read.
-- Jeremiah Gilbert, ForeWordreviews.com
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