Herbert A. Bharati, a professor of education from India on leave to spend a year at Mallory College, gave a talk on the campus last night to members of the College Planning Committee, which is preparing a report "Mallory for the 21st Century." Below are excerpts from his talk, "An Outsider Ventures Inside." Bharati is a well-known educator with an international reputation. He is the author of several books and was asked to speak to the Committee about his observations of education in the United States. The public was invited. More than 200 people, students, townspeople and faculty members attended.
By trying to be decent and democratic, your higher educational systems in this country have lowered standards and misled two generations of students. Affirmative action, bilingualism, multiculturalism, emphasis on self-esteem, sensitivity training—well-meant attempts to offer education to all. But all have failed to educate, as we define an educated person.
Affirmative action has led to the admission of students who cannot handle college work. They soon learn this and drop out. The graduation rates for these poorly trained students are miniscule. For every one who manages to make it, five do not. One could call the program an exercise in cynicism, promising young men and women what you knew is absolutely beyond their grasp.
All affirmative action amounted to is a chance for these students to fail disastrously.
We set up remediation programs, which were nothing but high school courses. Most students in the programs could not handle the work but were pushed ahead. The taxpayer was deceived by this cynical venture into paying twice and thrice for the same educational effort, which usually ended in failure.
The same can be said for bilingual programs, a political sop to pressure groups. The smart parents refused to allow their children to take part in them; they came here to function in an English-speaking system. And yet bilingual programs exist even at the college level.
Instead of asking students to be responsible for their education, we replaced expectations for verbal and mathematical skills with therapy. Students were to feel good about themselves. So grades were out, tests unfair. Schools became social agencies. Students could excuse their behavior, their failures by assigning blame—parents, society, illness.
Standards? Social agencies have their own, and these became the standards for higher education.
After the talk, there was a silence broken after 20 seconds by scattered applause.
