Open for Topics

This space is for anyone who would like to raise a topic or make a statement.  It will start as a comment, but I'll change that.

Purpose

"The work will have to be done from the ground up, and it will have to be done by us."

--Kevin Baker

"You've got to have allies. The thought of the Committees of Correspondence in the American  Revolution is never far from my mind. People have got to stay in touch somehow. They have to meet and talk. But that's a network, not a community."

--Wendell Berry, July 2008, The Sun

The purpose of this blog is to provide a forum for those who, like me, find themselves alienated from both sides of the current debate on education in America. While I am certainly willing to listen to opposing viewpoints, I find no shortage of material representing the progressive or corporatist positions on education. My main interest is hearing from like-minded people and creating a forum for them to express and discuss their views. While I am well aware of the danger of only listening to those who agree with you, I am also aware that we sometimes need a refuge from the storm and the opportunity to refine our ideas with sympathetic colleagues.

I should note that this is very much a preliminary effort. I haven't put together a blog or website before, so my efforts are crude. More importantly, my thoughts are half-formed because they have been developed in almost complete isolation. Starting a measured, respectful, challenging conversation is the whole point.

The Current Problem

The current debates on education seem to me to miss the point. My thinking doesn't fit easily into either camp, and I have little confidence that either of our political parties will develop policies that would put our schools on the right course. I'm sure I'm not alone.

On one hand we have the progressives, who rightly oppose education “reform” efforts, but who also advocate the progressive "student-centered" approach that I and many others find ineffective. The progressives have done a good job of identifying many of the current "reform" efforts as being backed by corporate money in service of highly questionable ends. However, they then defend the progressive methods that have helped to create the crisis in the first place. 

On the other hand we have the conservative “reformers” who generally advocate a more traditional "teacher-centered" approach to teaching, but often in service of ends which violate my values: environmental destruction, an economy based on unlimited growth and unlimited wealth accumulation, union-busting, and politicized content. Their position, it seems to me, essentially accepts that America is and should be an oligarchy. I don't accept that. It is discouraging to look for an alternative to progressive orthodoxy only to find forums and discussion groups filled with people spouting off about their gun collections, ridiculing the notion of climate change, and smearing unions.

This is the conundrum. Many progressives realize that an education reform movement imposed by a handful of billionaires is an affront to any reasonable notion of democracy. However, the conservatives can rightly reply that ineffective schools, schools that fail to adequately teach students to read and write, are also a fundamental threat to our democracy. It seems to me the solution is for us to find a way to build effective schools independent of corporate influence. These days, corporate influence is so prevalent in every aspect of our government that it seems that such schools might need to be independent of government funding and influence as well.

By setting things up this way, I don't mean to say that there are only two positions. The situation is complex, and is made more complicated by the presence on both sides of centrists who largely agree on the desirability of a highly stratified society run by a degreed elite. In many aspects this matter isn't an either/or proposition. For example, some aspects of progressive education are valuable, as responsible critics such as E.D. Hirsch and Diane Ravitch have long maintained. In addition, there is no room for romantic visions of the past. It isn't a matter of returning to some bygone era where schools were perfect. However, I think an even-handed look at the past will present us with many invaluable ideas. While we need to create categories for discussion, such categories need not limit our thoughts. On the contrary, the existence of other possibilities is the basis for hope. 

I'd like to be part of building a school or a school system that remembers that the purpose of public education in America is to prepare students for democratic citizenship (as opposed to job training), is independent of corporate money and influence, and follows the basic model of a liberal arts education. I invite anyone who shares this general goal to send his or her thoughts.

Some useful perspectives on the schism between progressive and traditional education are found in the following books:

The Schools We Need by E.D. Hirsch

Left Back by Diane Ravitch

The Academic Achievement Challenge by Jeanne Chall

A recent article that does a great job of making the case for the value of more traditional, teacher-guided instruction compared to the student-centered, constructivist approach, appeared in the Spring 2012 of the American Federation of Teachers' American Educator. It is a careful, nuanced study that points out situations where elements of the constructivist approach are useful. American Educator does a fine job of challenging progressive education orthodoxy and provides a strong refutation of the current attacks on teachers' unions as being hide-bound and obstructionist.

http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/

The View from the Ground

I work in a school where I don't feel good about the way we practice education. Our classes have vestiges of the traditional purpose of education--we teach English and history--but our express purpose is to prepare students for the world of work. We talk about a respectful environment geared toward learning, but we aren't able to provide it. I don't think it is unrealistic or utopian to believe that education doesn't have to be like this. Social critics such as Christopher Lasch and Wendell Berry, and many others, have been saying for many years that the American education system primarily serves the consumer economy. I agree and I don't think this can go on. We need to find a new direction.

Influences and a disclaimer

Bias declared: I lean to the left. However, with regards to the left, generally speaking, the pedagogical practices often associated with them disturb me. Ever since I attended a Teacher Education Program, I have found myself alienated from the mainstream of progressive thought. And so I consider myself a left-leaning independent. In any event, teaching methods don't need to align with politics. The best thinkers and writers are often those who transcend left and right.

My opinions on education come from my experience as a working teacher, and my reading of the work of writers such as Jeanne Chall, Bernard Knox, Christopher Lasch, Wendell Berry, E.D. Hirsch, Diane Ravitch, and Diane Senechal. Of course, by no means should my writing on this site be seen as a reflection of the views of these authors. I have had only the most cursory communication with a few of them. None of the people listed here, or any others mentioned on this site, have endorsed my positions.

Various Useful Thoughts

"Instead of dismissing direct democracy as irrelevant to modern conditions, we need to recreate it on a large scale."  --Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites, 171

"It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are."
--Wendell Berry

Guiding Principles for Discussion

This forum is definitely not for everyone. It is open to discussion and to reasoned criticism, but it is designed to give like-minded people the chance to contact each other and develop their ideas. If someone wants to make the case for the corporate Ed "Reform" movement, there are plenty of other places to do so. The corporate Ed "Reform" movement is a goliath, spending millions of dollars to spread its viewpoint. It has a dominant influence on both of our major political parties and most of the nation's newspapers. We need spaces to discuss and produce alternatives to the corporate control of our schools and our society. 

We must be civil. In one sense there is little to be said here, but our standards of civility have fallen so low that we now need to make the obvious explicit. There is no excuse for name-calling or personal insults, even directed against the "bad guys." As angry as I get sometimes and no matter how much I disagree with their positions, I try to remember that most people are doing what they think is best.  

Fun is fun, but snide remarks not only impede the work, they render it moot. Literacy and education are a means to an end, that end being treating others with care and decency.  If we are cranky and snotty, the game is already over. Rude comments are always an attempt to rob someone of their dignity and are therefore indefensible and counter-productive.

Don’t question someone’s motivation without evidence. Yes, in some cases their motivation can be pretty clear, or inexplicable without dark motives, but in general we want to give people the benefit of the doubt.

The point is what is right, not who is right. Those who lose sight of this often end up clinging to mistaken positions to avoid being seen as wrong. We need to practice a certain amount of detachment. 

Discussion is the starting point, not the end. Christopher Lasch's comments provide insight: 

"We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy. Information, usually seen as the precondition of debate, is better understood as its by-product. When we get into arguments that focus and fully engage our attention, we become avid seekers of relevant information." (1995, 163) 

I dislike blogs. I think they are a very poor substitute for live conversation. But I can't currently think of alternatives for contacting people across long distances. Unfortunately, reading most blogs about education is frustrating and dispiriting. Typically I find a few worthwhile comments interspersed with a great deal of snarky indulgence. In the end, nothing gets decided and no action is taken. The purpose of this forum is discussion about the course of action to take in order to restore the democratic purpose of public education. 

Core Principles

The Purpose of Education is Preparation for Citizenship in a Democracy

It is amazing how rarely the debate raging in America over education touches on the question of purpose. I suspect that part of the explanation is that many people in positions of power would prefer not to address the fact that education has been turned from its original purpose of serving democracy and instead now serves the perceived needs of the economy. We can only speculate why this is the case. In any event, the most widespread conception of the purpose of education is job training. That is the perception that I held right up through most of my college education, and it is not only the position of those in power, but by necessity is the position of the majority of Americans. Nevertheless, they are wrong. And so was I.

The best statement I've found on the true purpose of education comes from a classical scholar, the late Bernard Knox, in his essay, The Walls of Thebes. The entire essay is richly rewarding, but I will quote from his conclusion:

[That] group of studies we call the humanities came into being as an education for democracy, a training in free citizenship; all through its long history it has been the advocate of free thought and speech; it has flourished most brilliantly wherever those freedoms were respected and faced repression and banishment wherever they were not.  And this is the strongest argument for the humanities today.  Not that they will lead to positions of emolument--it is no longer true and was an ignoble argument to start with; not that they will make the individual life a richer, deeper experience—though this is true; but that they will prepare the young mind for the momentous choices, the critical decisions which face our world today. (1993, 105)

Knox goes on to make a distinction crucial to any serious discussion of education:

"The Greeks relegated practical skills, techne, to a lower sphere; the ideal of a free man was leisure, schole, and the pursuit of wisdom which it permitted."

There are two important ideas in Knox's conclusion. The first is that the purpose of education is preparing young minds for self-governance. The second is that the proper form of education to accomplish this is the humanities, as traditionally conceived.

Education is a Human Activity

Except perhaps for some rather trivial tasks, education must have human activity at its center. The extensive use of computers for teaching is a continuation of the same process that has seen people replaced by machines in numerous other activities, including farming. The notion that education is a drudgery that people can be "freed" from to pursue more important or pleasurable activities is a tragic mistake. It isn't healthy or effective for students to be sat in front of a screen to be taught by a software program or a video.

I will acknowledge that software and video can accomplish some learning tasks. This doesn't mean that they are the best way of doing so. Determining what is best will involve thinking of our values, and reckoning things which can't be quantified. We can't allow those who stand to make a killing selling us machines and services set the terms for this reckoning. Those of us who want to be the humans at the center of this activity must learn to conduct ourselves in such a way that we can demonstrate a clear advantage to our being there.

Wendell Berry and Education

The work of Wendell Berry has had a tremendous influence on my thinking in general, and especially on my thinking about teaching. Comparing Berry's work to others whom I admire, I think the quality that makes his work stand out is its grounding. His work is literally rooted in the earth. This rootedness is a quality of agrarian thought. He makes this point in his essay, "Money Versus Goods": "My economic point of view is from the ground level." So much of what I read about education never touches the ground. Of course, we do need to look at the big picture on occasion, but we must always return to what happens on the ground. Many of the other thinkers I admire never address the practical realities of teaching. Many of them have never taught in a public school. I realize they can't take individual situations into account when writing about curriculum, or methods, or policy, but they must at least acknowledge the problem of application. If they don't, they merely add to the accumulation of well-meant advice. Berry can't address unique ground level problems, either, but he never lets their existence fall from sight.

When I think of using Wendell Berry’s work to help address the current problems of education in America, I think in general rather than specific terms. I’m not talking about including his essays in the curriculum, or about teaching sustainable farming, although both of those things might be useful. I am thinking more about applying the general principles he discusses to education. As a start, I’ll list a few of these principles below.

Reading the Classics

One of the most important elements of Wendell Berry’s work is his defense of the traditional liberal arts. Throughout his work he refers to canonical works and writers such as the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton and Blake. To be sure, he frequently discusses the work of contemporary writers and those from recent centuries, but he has a firm grounding in the classics and knows their value. This puts him firmly in line with Bernard Knox, whose work I refer to in the list of core principles.

Wendell Berry discusses the readings that have influenced him on pages 4-5 of Imagination in Place, 2010.

Education as Preservation and Transmission

A related idea to his use of classic literature is the notion of education as the preservation and transmission of what is good and useful in our culture. This stands in stark contrast to progressive education’s focus on “subversion” and disruption. It is also a stark difference from consumer-driven education’s fascination with the new and its reflexive scorn for the past. I don’t want to oversimplify this. No sound thinker promotes uncritical acceptance of tradition. But uncritical acceptance of the present and a technologically-driven future is equally unsound, and far more common these days. This reflexive scorn for the past and uncritical acceptance of the corporate view of the future is widespread. Conservatives might have been expected to stand against this, but they appear to view corporate prerogatives as sacrosanct. 

In terms of Wendell Berry’s thinking, what I find interesting and valuable are the parallels between his long focus on preserving and passing on the best in our agricultural tradition, and what we need to be doing in education. The pattern is clear and instructive. To live responsibly, we need to preserve the earth. To preserve the earth, we need to preserve and transmit sound agricultural practices. Likewise, to teach responsibly, we need to preserve and transmit what is valuable about our culture. We cannot do this in a system designed and operated by people with a long history of making profit by destroying these things.


Imposed from Above

Though it was written 20 years ago, this passage sums up my opposition the corporate Ed "Reform" movement pretty well. It is inherently undemocratic. Almost every time I hear Bill Gates talk about the work of his foundation, he refers to the "smart" people who are going to find solutions to our problems. I can't see that happening. The statement below is part of the preface to Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Democracy, "The Joy of Sales Resistance," and it leads into a fruitful list of the truths of the "new commercialized education":

I am more and more impressed by the generality of the assumption that human lives are properly to be invented by an academic-corporate-governmental elite and then either sold to their passive and choiceless  recipients or doled out to them in the manner of welfare payments. Any necessary thinking--so the assumption goes--will be done by certified smart people in offices, laboratories, boardrooms, and other high places and then will be handed down to supposedly unsmart people in low places--who will also be expected to do whatever actual work cannot be done by machines.

Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community (xii)


Furthermore

Wendell Berry's work provides the basis for much more discussion, of course. For now I'll say that I find it important because of the context it provides. The work of Diane Ravitch and E.D. Hirsch may bear more directly on current educational policy debates, but Wendell Berry's work serves to place all of this in a larger context. I can think of some educational writers and researchers whose work I find excellent, but who seem to share many of the cultural assumptions that Berry has demolished. Without questioning some of those assumptions, I think we'll never find our way out of this mess.

Farming and Teaching

I find hope in Wendell Berry's example of holding out against seemingly insurmountable odds. These days it seems that public education is under relentless attack. Teachers seem to have become the favorite scapegoats of politicians and business leaders. But farmers have undergone a far longer and much more severe process of elimination. Berry provides an inspiring example of determination and perseverance. And although many things have gotten worse in the decades since he started writing and speaking out against industrialized agriculture, he can rightly point to a great deal of positive change.

Someone I talked with recently commented that if you replace "farming" with "teaching" and "agribusiness" with "modern education," many of Berry's statements still stand true.

Here is an example that occurred to me while reading "A Long Job, Too Late to Quit," from Citizenship Papers.


"We must recognize, moreover, that our [public schooling] can survive only by becoming better than it has ever been, more skillful at meeting the need of both the [students] and the [society]." (80)

I think this is important because I think the best way to oppose corporate control of education is to identify and practice the best methods to achieve the genuine purpose of education in a democracy.