Washington's education world packed the Progressive Policy Institute's conference room last week to witness this town's modern equivalent of gladiatorial combat. Renegade school of education professor David Steiner, who turned against his own last year in a blistering study of education schools' coursework, debated Gettysburg professor Dan Butin, the lone scholar who has been willing to challenge Steiner's findings in writing (though others have engaged in less scholarly stealth tactics).

Given the attention Steiner has gotten, Butin was probably correct when he observed that the uproar over Steiner's study (essentially an analysis of what students were assigned to read in education courses at the country's top schools of ed) signified more than mere technical disagreements over Steiner's analysis, but a referendum on whether ed schools deserve to exist. In his review, Steiner did not tread lightly, claiming to have disclosed the depth to which ed schools impart a leftist leaning "edu-dogma," where discourse is dangerously limited, where there is a lack of important historical and contemporary perspectives, and where pedagogical approaches are championed for their ideology rather than their effectiveness.

While Butin deserves great credit for his honesty and effort, his defense of the ed school mindset fell flat with a resounding thud. Let's acknowledge, though, that it's pretty hard for academics to defend such a lopsided approach to education, where students frequently read such gurus as John Dewey and Jonothan Kozol but are not once challenged by the Black-White Test Score Gap, Eric Hanushek, or E.D. Hirsch. Butin's only hope of success was to prove that the approach taken by ed schools isn't lopsided—but he clearly wasn’t able to do so. Steiner leaped on Butin's own findings, pointing out that Butin's replication study provided more evidence of bias, most notably within Butin’s list of nearly 400 reading assignments collected from the 89 courses he reviewed.

Butin, insisting his list of readings was irrelevant and still incomplete, preferred instead to focus on his critique of ed schools as relying too heavily on textbooks over primary sources.

“Most of the time," Butin argued, "[students] get pre-digested, pre-selected, pre-thought ideas" found in textbooks.

Shall we bemoan the shallowness of ed school training or decry the death of academic pursuit that it represents?

A marked man himself for his crusade, Steiner senses doom. "The whole history of liberalism is at stake in this disagreement. Butin's position is that you can read only left-wing texts and achieve an informed, critical, deep analysis. This is an embracing of fundamentalism… It is the exposure to different points of view that is at the core of liberal thinking."

Perhaps not fundamentalism, but certainly absolutism. Butin's repeated assertions that balance is advisable but not necessary in a discussion of educational theories and policies is disturbing, but at least it explains how his colleagues could consider themselves scholars while not just disparaging but blocking ideas that they do not share. “This whole notion of balance seems theoretically suspect,??? he argued, and later criticized Steiner for "confusing balance as the goal rather than the means" to an end.

Butin agreed that "on some theoretical level" it is important to represent the views of others, but argued that making sure his students "understand or agree with Hirsch" is simply not the point of an education program. "My point is for them to figure out who they are as teachers, what their philosophy is."

Butin lost the opportunity to make some legitimate headway by not posing an important rhetorical question. If the shoe were on the other foot, that is, if ed schools espoused a conservative view at the expense of all others, would Steiner and company be so indignant? Steiner might claim so—he in fact may not be altogether comfortable with his anti-ed school bedfellows these days—but there would be far too many who would have to admit that they would relish such a scenario.

Boiled down to its essence, Butin puts forward a view of teacher education as alchemy. He describes a process that denies students access to ideas and theories that challenge present orthodoxy, and that never offers the chance to question, challenge and debate education theory, but that he nonetheless thinks turns them into teachers who can think critically and are able to change their minds on the basis of new evidence.

A full tape of the debate moderated by education journalist Tom Toch can be heard at www.contentinstitute.org. You'll need a password to get into the site; for user type in "guest"; for password, type in "content".