Point by point how Frank Bruni goes wrong on "coddling"

Frank Bruni, the restaurant critic turned general columnist at the NYTimes, has started chiming in on education reform.

This Sunday, he responded to the Arne Duncan "white suburban mom" gaffe by suggesting American children are too coddled.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/opinion/sunday/bruni-are-kids-too-coddled.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r...

I like Bruni. His personal narrative of an overweight child coming to terms with food issues is compelling. Generally speaking, he is a gracious writer and, I suspect, we agree on most political issues.

But from start to finish in this essay he is wrong and, at points, breathtakingly obtuse and uninformed.

1) Bruni begins his argument by suggesting schools are wrong to bar (no pun intended) post bar or bat mitzvah (although he doesn't mention bat mitzvah) t-shirts at school. This is the practice of wearing a souvenir from the celebration to school -- usually on the following Monday. Schools stopped the practice because, unfortunately and predictably, some kids would do this to remind others they had not been invited. The schools thus impose  a simple courtesy that most kids and parents, including hosts, appreciate. Girls as young as 5 are now taught not to talk about who is coming to their birthday parties because it might unnecessarily sting. Ms. Manners agrees; Bruni thinks it weak. But if a group at a workplace chose to "band" together to intimidate others in this way  they, at minimum, would be hauled down to HR. Why pick out an institutional practice to support and maintain civility and basic decency as weakness?
2) Bruni moves from Bar Mitzvah t-shirts to the Common Core, calling it a "laudable set of guidelines that emphasize analytical thinking over rote memorization." This is pure marketing and jargon. The CC is, in part, a curriculum like so many others and one can argue its flaws or weaknesses. But the notion that American schools have been teaching "rote memorization" was not true in Lincoln's time and it isn't true in the 20th or 21st  century. The CC is one curricula of many invented and will be a thing of memory in 5 to 7 years if not sooner. Most curricula teach "analytical" thinking. Frankly, even rote memorization forces a kind of analytical thinking (the latter something of an empty phrase).
3) Bruni then says that the "welling hysteria" (careful, Frank, this all started with Duncan's sexist comments about Moms, don't double-down with such loaded sexist terms like "hysteria") derives from "right wing alarmists" who see the CC as a federal takeover and "left-wing paranoiacs" who "imagine some conspiracy to ultimately privatize education." The suggestion from Bruni is that both political responses are without legitimacy. But it is simply a fact that teachers and teacher unions and the Department of Education (Bill Bennett aside) have been the foe of the "right" for some time. And it is equally true that many -- if not most -- reformers believe entirely in privatization and are self-proclaimed advocates of altering public education for ever. That is certainly true in my home state of Michigan. No paranoia is possible when someone is, indeed, trying to end your existence. Frank here just does not know the political terrain he is discussing.
4) Bruni then laments that some parents and educators believe school should be enjoyed. This is bad, he seems to think, and related to CC. But the Greeks believed one learned best when enjoying (hence the invention of rhetoric), a notion embraced by Humanists like Erasmus and Sir Thomas More and Sir Philip Sydney who knew that to persuade one must teach AND delight. This educational history has been supported by scores of researchers, including Vivian Paley at the U. of Chicago Lab School where Arne Duncan and so many others thrived.
5) Bruni then holds up complaints from school social workers and parents about kids traumatized by CC and other kinds of over testing. Most of those complaints come from early childhood folks (and parents) who weren't consulted by CC creators. The fact that the CC knew nothing about child development is clear now even to some of its staunchest supporters. And the goofy tests imposed on first graders makes this clear.
6) Bruni then notes it a shame that a parent of a losing player filed a complaint of bullying against another high school football team in Texas after losing 91-0. I don't know if "bullying" is the right charge here, but if any high school coach runs up a score like this there should be some formal response. There usually is, even if the "formal" response is just breaking someone's nose. No responsible coach or player would argue otherwise. On this one, Frank, you just seem way out of your league and life experience.
7) Bruni gets worse the more he gets in to sports. He complains of "rotating" Captains on teams (take it from this coach and former Big Ten Scholarship athlete [football]) this isn't a bad practice for youths. They all learn leadership, and kids at a certain age may not be ready for "captaincy" traditionally understood. The notion that one 12 year old should be "captain" is, well, just a bit off.
8) Bruni then whines that schools have 20 or 30 valedictorians. Uh, Frank, have you ever tried to sort out in a high powered high school with 300 or so kids all taking AP classes of different sorts why you should distinguish a 3.96 GPA from a 3.98 when there are a host of complicating factors? Schools recognize what professional statisticians tell them. Some "distinctions" are statistically irrelevant. The NYTimes has a number of fine columnists. Could you rank them for me? Without explaining why Maureen Dowd is an apple and Thomas Friedman an orange?
9) Bruni finishes with a quote from David Coleman, the CC architect. This is just a boring and tedious finish, stylistically speaking. Coleman warns that other countries aren't complaining, they are asking how they can do better. There is so much wrong with this kind of generalization -- other than how boring it is -- one doesn't know where to start. American students not bogged down by intense poverty do just fine if not terrific in the PISA business.

But let me say just this: the rest of the world, Frank, isn't made up exclusively of rapacious competitors trying to eat us alive. If anything, that describes us. And even if you imagine or dread scores of Chinese engineers taking over  the NYTimes,  "innovatively disrupting" education for profit and ideology won't keep you safe.