Fix education in America

Shelving this for now

Just so I can find this later (damn you, non-searchable LJ):

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kukkurovaca/69269.html

So I picked up a book by Neil Postman on my pile of books to throw away before I move (I’m moving back to Seattle, if I haven’t mentioned it)

You have. I’ve occasionally wanted to read Postman, or, rather, felt badly that I hadn’t. Not much, mind you.

Here are some related questions that, at this very instant, seem interesting to me:

Is it best to intentionally and consciously run schools according to some fairly coherent theory?

I would be less interested in seeing a school run according to a theory (coherent or not) than in seeing a school run by theorists-or, rather, people skilled in theoretical as well as practical work. There are any number of reasons for this, not all of which will be immediately interesting to you, but for now I’ll just say that (a) you don’t act without a theory-though you may not be conscious, as you say, of the theory by which you act, and (b) whatever you do, you should try to do it well; therefore, better to have people who can do theory as well as practice.

However, theoretical constructions are always, or almost always, brittle; they do not flex and bend in quite the way the world does. Therefore, one does not want to precise and strong a theory dominating one’s work; rather, one should wish to be motivated by highly informed, passionately held, values and ethics.

In other words, begin with what you care about and what you want to do, find the questions that feel live for a person with those cares and desires, and then find the most workable answer you can. Classic James.

If a school isn’t intentionally following a particular theory, or if the school obviously isn’t being run according to the theory the administration claims it is, is it nonetheless appropriate to say the school is still following some theory?

What do you mean by “following”? Every human action reflects certain beliefs (in the form of assumptions, either explicit ones or implicit ones) about how the world is and how the world ought to be. In this sense, every action is theoretical. Some would say, here, “ideological,” but that word has a lot of communistic and/or postmodern baggage that, while it isn’t necessarily wrong or misleading or stupid, tends to bore me.

Mr. Gatto (Gato?) seems to think most schools are running according to some rather sinister theory, one that teaches conformity and confusion. But another perspective is that schools are a strange amalgamation of forces—what with departments fighting each other for more seat time and more
resources, parents and teachers upset at one another, unions in
conflict with the administration, etc.. —out of which can’t emerge anything worthy of the label “theory”.

Right. Many view schools as pure instruments of a specific ideology, monological tools for shaping subjects. Others view schools as battlegrounds, places that different viewpoints (ideologies, theories, philosophies) meet to fight to shape subjects. The former is the traditional structuralist standpoint; the latter is the more pluralistic post-structuralist standpoint. Well, ish. Post-structuralism still believes in ideologies; it just believes that many of them can happen together.

If you want the economics analogy, is communism right in reducing all phenomena in human society? Or should we begin from many different interacting principles? In practice, attempts to take such a broad view tend to lead us into the realm of fantasy—not a bad realm, but if we want to encounter reality, which is also a good realm, we need to stick a little closer to the nitty gritty, where what matters isn’t the theory you’re following, but whether or not your students are getting what they need.

Speaking of this “strange amalgamation of forces”, do schools need to be private or quasi-private (quasi-private referring perhaps to a charter school?) in order to implement a coherent philosophy of education?

::shrug:: What do we mean by, well any of those words? Any school where there are selection forces at work other than pure geography is going to have a character of its own to a greater degree than a neighborhood school; thus, charter schools, private schools, parochial schools, magnet schools, and certain other kinds of schools are all more themselves than your average neighborhood schools; but in what sense are charter schools and magnet schools (or, for that matter, parochial schools) really more “private” than “regular” public schools?

Also, I think there’s something problematic when you try to “implement” a philosophy of education. (I know this is at odds with many things I’ve said during discussions of world conquest.) I really do believe that asymmetrical power relations are the true original sin, and I really do believe that by the time you’ve entered into an educational situation as an adult, you’re morally in the red. Arendt was not totally wrong to call educational philosophers to task for wanting to take over the world by subordinating young minds because they could not do it with the sword.

But at the same time, she was wrong to think that there was any viable alternative to such tyranny; as Jaspers says, “Every human being is fated to be enmeshed in the power relations he lives by. This is the inevitable guilt of all, the guilt of human existence.” Jaspers goes on to say that, “It is counteracted by supporting the power that achieves what is right, the rights of man,” but I would say that while that’s cool, I don’t know for sure what the rights of man are, and I want the people on whom I’m inflicting my little piece of power to be in the conversation with me while I’m figuring it out.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s the sum total of democratic education, right there.

(And, of course, the problem with that is that (a) I know that all those people, however “those people” is defined, are not going to be as good at as I am (though of course many will be as good or better), and (b) I suspect that not all of them can be made to be as good as I am. This creates a conflict between my democratic sensibilities and my intellectual commitment to “truth or something like it.”)

And finally, do people who don’t spend a great deal of time in schools
—are perhaps people who only observe rather than participate in a
school—have a right to create educational theory?

Classic Dewey: Who the hell said education happened in schools? Who said it didn’t happen in other places?

Also, classic me: I’ve never observed that people who spend time around education are any better at understanding it than anyone else. And, of course, many of them are blinded by the power systems they occupy, a la classic Du Bois.

Or to state
things more properly, can educational theories coming from someone
that’s not firmly “grounded” in schools actually help improve schools?

If you’re asking what can actually help schools, I’ve found that some of the following are useful: clear insight, respect for other people, especially kids, a sense of limitations, integrity, an iron will, and a strong, flexible, curious mind. These things tend to go along with a workable (though sometimes a mundane) philosophical perspective, and are strengthened by it. A good philosophical perspective in their absence is not going to do much for a school. In other words, theory is a good tool, but it is not a primary force.

Are they perhaps too out of touch with what’s possible, and even
what’s desirable? Or perhaps they can help create positive change,
but only if some revolutionarily-minded group of teachers get together
and decide they’ve come up with the next great thing?

There are a wide variety of things that will kill a reform. In fact, it’s almost impossible for a reform to ever really be implemented, let alone for one to succeed. Not having good teachers at your back is one of them. Not having parents and students on board is another, and honestly I don’t think one is more serious than the other.

Now, I don’t expect that we would find the ultimate answer to all the questions of education from a childless middle-aged man sitting at a bus stop and approached on whim. People who haven’t been around schools but have good ideas about how to fix education will probably get into schools soon enough, and then they’ll be people who’ve been around schools. Or else they’ll get bored and do something else…..

Self-debrief:

It’s interesting that I threw back texts at you; I’ve been around religion enough to recognize this as a characteristic response of a person who doesn’t have the answers himself; but it’s more than just a kneejerk defense; it’s also an attempt to redefine the context of the conversation. People like to get back to the bible (or the Koran, or the Vedas, or whatever) because it brings them back into contact with a certain kind of reality—the reality of the centuries-spanning traditions that shape the conversation they’re having. So, I don’t feel too bad about drawing on my personal canon. Plus, I’ve established that I haven’t forgotten everything I ever knew, which is a serious concern these days.

Also, as I mentioned, what I’ve said here may differ from what I’ve said in some of our theory-rich conversations. I guess I’m in a more practical mood, or I guess I thought you were. Or something. In any case, while I do like theory a lot, and what I do is motivated and shaped by theory (and of course by other factors), you get almost nowhere from starting from the premise of a dichotomy of theory and practice. This is the cardinal insight of pragmatism: that separating theory from practice leads to both sterile theory and sterile practice.

And, again as with a religious dialog, I’ve tried to undermine your questions rather than provide good answers for them; hopefully the undermining was nonetheless, if not insightful, at least incite-ful….

i’ve only been to public school and let me tell you. i was a cow. the bell rings and mooooooove! you have 5 minutes to get to the next room you need to be in. i was a number. my number was 1003684. straight up! i was at berkeley high and there was about 3000 other people like me, also numbers. the school had the most money per student being spent, but 90% of that money was going to the a.p. classes and then everyone else (including myself) was getting screwed. so much drama went down. like the first year i was there, the building with the offices and shit got BURNT DOWN!!! BY THE PRINCABLE!!!! swear to god!

It’s interesting to think a bit about the history of education: education has always been a primary home of the “golden age” syndrome, and has often, especially recently, been the subject of a chronic-crisis condition: there is always a crisis, everything is always the worst it has ever been, and we must to take radical immediate action, right the hell now!

Now, on the one hand, we can say (with Tyak and Cuban of Tinkering Toward Utopia ) that, contrary to all this, education has generally been improving. And, as ridiculous as this sounds, it’s largely true. (This isn’t really what T+C say; their claim is more subtle and perceptive-but still) But this would mask the fact that it is also true that education has never really, on any large scale, lived up to the needs of democracy as envisioned by thinkers like Plato, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Dewey-in fact, it has always fallen far short. And in this sense there really is a chronic crisis, but that crisis is undermined by the kind of sensationalistic rhetoric that almost everyone, on both sides of the political spectrum, and including the best minds of educational theory and practice, has used in relation to education.

There are no quick or technical fixes to the real ground-level problems of education. They are problems of culture, of professionalism, of philosophy-in the gritty, personal sense of, say, William James-and ethics and civics. Virtue. Good and evil. Rights and obligations. You can’t solve these problems with a better lesson plan. You can’t even solve them with phonics. Properly speaking, you can’t solve them at all, for they are perennial problems (I have the feeling I’ve just badly misspelled that word) that, as (I think) Kierkegaard pointed out, every generations has to rediscover and confront for itself…

i guess one way to fix education in america is to … become education in america?

I’ve started a bit… its hard. Once you’re in the trenches it’s kinda nice because you see simple ways here and there that you actaully can fix whats wrong… well – at least one kid or class at a time, ya know? I guess the way to do this is to think globally (er, nationally) and act locally? It helps you to make you feel like you are doing something about it i suppose.

If anyone is interested in researching education reform/philosophy, i really recommend reading some John Dewey from about 100 years ago. That dude had it head on. Blame Thorndike for the mess of a system we have.

Shrinking budgets, State take overs, mindless and intentional inequities, institutionalized racism, sexism, classism, rampant homophobia, “teaching to the tests”, and an overiding attitude towards students and families that is demeaning and dehumanzing-
Where, how, when, do we begin????