Dewey's Democracy and Education (1)

            In the “School as Special Environment” section, Dewey begins to move beyond training and socialization to discuss what “office” the school holds that makes it important in and of itself. He writes,

“…our daily associations cannot be trusted to make clear to the young the part played in our activities by remote physical energies, and by invisible structures.  Hence a special mode of social intercourse is instituted, the school, to care for such matters.”

            This quote is so important because it makes clear that idea school not only has a specific function beyond training young people to exhibit behaviors that will make them socially acceptable, or even preparing for the roles they will have in their own communities and nations, it exists because without it, we cannot help people make sense of the world outside their immediate communities.  There are people and systems whose actions affect ours, and vice versa, and schools are the formal institution whose job it is to teach people how that happens.  I think we forget that all too often, and/or we move the “making sense of the world” part of education to colleges and universities, leaving large groups of people out of the process.  He continues,     

“…it is the business of the school environment to eliminate, so far as possible, the unworthy features of the existing environment from the influence upon mental habitudes.  It establishes a purified medium of action…As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society.  The school is its chief agency for the accomplishment of this end”

            Dewey opened Democracy and Education with a discussion of human reproduction, and here he begins to discuss social reproduction, and the role the school has in shaping it.  Whereas previous thinkers we’ve looked at have talked about reason and its relation to morality, and the idea of humans becoming more moral with each generation if education is executed properly, I feel like Dewey articulates these ideas in a way that incorporates agency in a way other thinkers hadn’t.  For him, education and communication don’t exist in a vacuum.  So even as we become better thinkers or “reasoners”, the school has to make choices about what past human achievements are worth teaching in order to help create a better society. Just knowing things, or being able to reason, doesn’t make humans better over time. Dewey then goes on to say,

            “In the third place, it is the office of the school environment to balance the various elements in the social environment, and to see to it that each individual gets an opportunity to escape from the limitations of the social group in which he was born, and to come into living contact with the broader environment.  Such words as “society” and “community” are likely to be misleading, for they have the tendency to make us think that there is a single thing corresponding to the single word.”

            Humans, according to this passage, are equally limited in their ability to know about the world outside of their immediate society, no matter what social group their born into.  I know this passage can be used to argue for the importance of education because of its ability to help people gain better class positions.  But for me it’s a great reminder that any position in society is limited if it remains connected from the greater world. Furthermore, it reminds me to resist the idea that there is only one way to understand community and society, rather there are communities and societies, all acting upon and reacting to each other, making education much more complex, but also that much more necessary if you agree with Dewey’s idea of the purpose of schools.

Whitehead's Aims of Education

Whitehead, in The Aims of Education, posits that the main problem with education is that students receive far too many inert ideas during the course of their schooling.  Inert ideas are pieces of information that are given to students without any context, and they remain disconnected from other ideas because they are not used or tested.  Because this is the dominant pedagogy, students become “a disheartened crowd of young folk, inoculated against any outbreak of intellectual zeal.”

Whitehead is writing mostly about education that takes place after age 16, what we would think of a secondary and higher education.  He believes that training, which takes place until age 12, is mainly done in the home, by mothers.  In order for education to actually mean something, that is, for students to learn more than inert ideas, there is a process of learning that must take place for each idea or subject matter.  In addition to that process, people must realize that teaching itself is a craft that can’t be done by anyone, and can’t be measured in the objective manner that many propose.  A teacher has to be skilled to guide students through the educational process, and the way student learning is evaluated can’t be governed by sweeping generalizations about what students should be exposed to.  I think the paragraph on page 264 that begins with “The best procedure…” resonates today, as the dominant thinking about education today is that students’ progress can be measured objectively, as if their minds are “dead matter.”

The process, or rhythm of education, should, in Whitehead’s view, begin with the romance stage.  In this stage, the student’s interest is sparked in a subject or idea. The teacher must be careful at this stage not to enforce too much discipline around learning facts about the subject because that can “kill” the curiosity that the student has.  At the same time, however, the teacher has to be a skillful guide so that the student comes to the realization that there is so much more to learn about their interest.  The next stage is the precision stage, in which the student receives concrete knowledge about the subject, and the skills necessary to apply their knowledge in the final stage. The generalization stage is the one in which a student can apply the skill they learned in the precision stage to the larger world.  These stages together make knowledge useful and applicable in the world, which is something that Whitehead sees little of.  When experienced fully, the stages also allow the student to retain the sense of wonder they have about the world and their intellectual growth isn’t stunted.

Whitehead notes that it is possible for the student to move through all stages in one subject but not in others, meaning that meaningful knowledge can be developed in one subject, but be stunted in another.  I could see that happening a lot with students at the high school and college level, because they have so many different teachers and professors, and depending on how the teacher approaches the subject, and how they handle discipline, that romance stage could either be encouraged or stifled.  From what I understand, a student has to be intrigued by a subject, and that initial intrigue is what can set the process in motion.  But I’m wondering must the student discover the subject themselves, or can it be something that is introduced by the teacher as long as that teacher lets the curiosity develop and lead to questions which move into the precision stage?

Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman

            In Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft asserts that the primary problem with education is that it is denied to women.  This has been done, according to her, because men have decided to consider women only as objects of attraction, not as human beings capable of reason.  If they were considered to be the latter, they would need the education afforded to men.  If they received that education, they would be fit for both of their roles: citizens and wives/mothers.  Because they haven’t received it, they have only been able to become what society has shaped them into: silly people only concerned with fashion and lapdogs.

            Vindication,  though it is most obviously a response to Rousseau, is a reconsideration of Kant’s and Plato’s ideas in that it pushes readers to think about the purpose of reason, the place of morality, and the end goal(s) of education.  While I think the piece definitely had its limitations (which Jane Roland Martin highlighted in the afterword), I found myself agreeing with a lot of what Wollstonecraft proposed, and I could definitely see how these issues are pertinent to education and feminist concerns today.

            I appreciate the importance that Wollstonecraft placed on socialization.  While I don’t agree that a woman who’s concerned with appearances can’t also be brilliant, I think that we’re still, as a society, trying figure out how we understand the connection between what we think of as femininity, and intellect. American women are still primarily encouraged to be beautiful objects before they are encouraged to be smart and independent, if for no other reason than it gives them more impetus to buy things that will make them appear beautiful.  And even though traditional marriage is being challenged every moment, I still think there’s overwhelming pressure on women to be wives and mothers as a testament to their “true” womanhood. Even the most successful, famous women (heterosexual or not) aren’t considered “complete” until they have a partner and kids. Wollstonecraft talked about women’s illegitimate, or “false”, power: their ability to use feminine wiles to attract men. She contended that for as long as women thought of that power as their main source of power, they’d be victims of patriarchy. To not give up the power of feminine beauty and embrace the power that comes with being considered a rational human being, to Wollstonecraft, was a true sign of lacking intellectual capacity. To some extent, I agree with her, especially when we think about women in this country who, not more than sixty years ago, were urged to go to college to find a husband, not to pursue a degree that would be used for work outside of the home, and thus led lives that they considered unfulfilling.  But I also think that a complete rejection of feminine attributes isn’t necessary for women to be taken seriously.  Although I’m alive now, and in Wollstonecraft’s time, there wasn’t the “middle ground” that we have today (which Roland also takes up).

I can’t help thinking about this in light of celebrity culture, though.  We still celebrate silly women who don’t (appear to) think about anything important.  We pay them lots of money to do this, and we even let kids emulate them. And they have lapdogs…

Kant's Lectures on Pedagogy

          Reading Kant’s Lectures on Pedagogy forced me to revisit lots of the themes we’ve been discussing so far: the purpose of education, the stages of mental and moral development, the relationship between teachers and parents, the relationship between students and society and so on.  Because Kant believed that the purpose of education was to give humans a way to morally perfect themselves, it made perfect sense that the parts of the lectures that were compiled had the most to do with morality, and how to educate children to become morally sounds members of society. According to Kant, that meant recognizing that children are children, and that there is such a thing as developmentally appropriate pedagogy, which we also learned from Rousseau.  But from Kant we also get the sense, as we did from Locke, that there are some things that tutors or parents must do early on to ensure that their children don’t become spoiled or shameful.  If they do, they won’t become adults who care about the well being of humanity, which defeats the purpose of education to Kant.  One passage forced me to question how we’re dealing with this issue today,

“Children must be taught only those things that are suitable to their age.  Some parents are pleased when their children can talk in a precocious manner at an early age…It is just as insufferable when a child already wants to keep up with the latest fashions…But children become vain when one chatters to them quite early about how beautiful they are…Finery is not suitable to children…But the parents must also attach no value to these things, not look at themselves in the mirror, for here as everywhere example is all-powerful and reinforces or destroys good teaching” (Kant).

We see this a lot with youth today. They are thrust into what we may consider adult activity and consumption patterns for a multitude of reasons: parents and family members give kids material things to compensate for whatever is lacking at home, youth are able to live a large part of their lives outside of their parents’ supervision because of the time spent in “virtual reality” or just outside of the home, parents want to be their children’s “friends” because they think it will keep kids emotionally close to them so they allow behavior that they would otherwise deem inappropriate, parents think that kids’ who take on  adult qualities are more mature or “smarter” so they encourage it, kids feel that they have to take on adult traits at a young age because they are caregivers and/or responsible family members really early on, etc. I’m wondering, what’s the school’s role in all of this?  Are teachers and administrators responsible for addressing these kinds of behavior as they see it in their students? Or is it solely the responsibility of the family?  

Rousseau's Emile

“There would be no difficulty if our three educations were merely different.  But what is to be done when they are at cross purposes?  Consistency is plainly impossible when we seek to educate a man for others, instead of for himself.  If we have to combat either nature or society, we must choose between making a man or making a citizen.  We cannot make both.  There is an inevitable conflict of aims, from which come two opposing forms of education: the one communal and public, the other individual and domestic.” –Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau writes the above quote in the first few pages of Emile, right after he begins to establish where education “comes from” (nature, men or things) and what it’s purpose should be (to make a man).  He argues, contrary to Locke, that childhood is not simply a pre-cursor to manhood; therefore children should not be treated as “little adults”, but should be allowed to live naturally as children. They should be introduced to reason and morality as they have the capacity to understand it and use them.  As children, they will only understand the huge concepts in “bits and pieces”, and even then, we can’t be sure that children are understanding concepts as we would like them to, because they may not have arrived at stage of development that would allow them to take in such complex ideas. I agree that as educators we should be careful not to infringe upon childhood too early with ideas that students have plenty of time to learn.  I also appreciate Rousseau’s understanding of the difficulty it takes to at once produce a person who can live for themselves and function in a society full of people with different needs.  That task will always be a difficult one.  Unfortunately, I think some people have given up on educating children for anything besides a very narrow idea of success…

I saw the movie Waiting for Superman this weekend.  It was supposed to be about schools, I think. But what it was really about (at least one of the things it was about) was the misunderstanding American folks have about the purposes of education. It was based on the premise that American schools are failing, and failing is defined as having a high drop-out rate, having low standardized test scores, and producing students that are inadequately prepared for high-skilled tech jobs that Americans must hold in order for our country to remain economically competitive.  Our education system will be deemed successful, according to the movie, when all American students are proficient in math and science, they go to college, and get the best jobs. For schools to produce these kinds of students, they need to have to have great teachers. Great teachers are those who are the most charismatic, innovative and produce high standardized test scores in their classes. These great teachers are out there, but can’t succeed at their jobs because they are outnumbered by bad teachers who are allowed to continue teaching under the protection of the teachers’ unions. So where can students go to learn from great teachers only? Where can they get the education needed to make them successful in the future economy? Where can great teachers continue to be great without having to worry about bad teachers screwing up their work? Charter schools. 

Obviously, I’m leaving some parts of the movie out.  But I think the premise that success is only material wealth, and that it can only be produced in very few educational spaces, is faulty, especially when it’s so closely linked to the economic power of the nation.  At the same time educating kids to be critical thinkers and members of communities is looked down upon, we’re expected to work really hard for the big American “community” without question. 

I’m not completely sure how Rousseau’s idea of the citizen and the man would fit here. I suppose our society would be exactly the thing Rousseau would want to get kids away from, because we’re obviously teaching them very early on about competition, standardization and segregation, long before they know what they’re getting into.  I suppose he would continue to argue that Plato’s republic has long since been dead, so educating someone to be a “citizen” in our day and age is worthless.  They could only turn out to be greedy and individualistic, devoid of all of the characteristics he would value.

Locke's Thoughts on Education

“Therefore, if we seek the roots of what is valuable in modern education philosophy, we must turn to Locke’s Thoughts on Education, even if many of its specific recommendations are now wholly out of date or irrelevant.” – Peter Gay

Must we?

I think I understand Gay’s point, that Locke’s thinking about education was revolutionary in its day, and that it provided a foundation for the way we understand the child and modern education.  I would also agree, somewhat, that because reading Locke gives us historical perspective, it is important to revisit. But I’m not sure that I agree that if we’re looking for the roots of what’s valuable in modern education philosophy, we must turn to Locke, especially if we see its irrelevancies, and those irrelevancies have implications for how we understand education in terms of class, race, culture and gender. What I mean is, if we know that Locke was really only concerned, in this piece, with the education of boys in the highest social class, and we agree that some of his specific suggestions are irrelevant, and we’re undecided in education circles about the issues he raises: curriculum, discipline, purpose schooling’s purpose, how necessary is it to revisit him with the vigor that Gay suggests? And I guess my question would stand for many thinkers we study.  (And I’m really not asking this to be flip, I’m actually trying to understand how to use this information in a meaningful way.)

I spent the weekend in San Francisco at a conference for social justice educators. (I’m not convinced that anyone really knows what they’re talking about anymore when they use the term “social justice”, myself included, but I digress.)  There were classroom teachers, youth organizers, education non-profit workers, professors, academics-in-training and administrators in attendance.  Two keynote addresses were given, one by an administrator of a social justice school in California, the other by XXX. who many hoped would be the US Secretary of Education when Barack Obama was elected president. The work that attendees were doing varied from teaching in public schools, to advising school districts on how their schools might create meaningful relationships with community organizations, to working in political campaigns, and even within these discussions among educators who’ve been in this field for decades, the thinkers that people were citing were ones that had specific class or race or gender analyses. That’s what seemed to matter most for this crowd, even in the midst of the dominant post-racial, pro-economic competitiveness discourse that happening around education now. So, for this movement, the “social-justice” (for lack of a better term) educational movement, what’s the importance of Locke?

On The Teacher

            St. Augustine considers truth and where it comes from in On The Teacher.  He has a conversation with his son, Adeodatus, and during this conversation, the two men try to make sense of what language is for, how it helps teachers pass information to their students, and how understanding actually comes about.  Augustine comes to the conclusion that comprehension does not happen simply because a teacher “gives” knowledge to a student by explaining something to them, it happens when the information is “shown” to the student in a way that is conducive to their comprehension.  This kind of teaching, however, is best performed by Christ, “the teacher within”.   Philip Quinn writes,

“Christ teaches by showing or presenting directly to the learners’ mind, not signs for things, but the intelligible things signified by such signs….In short, like human teaching, divine teaching is showing rather than telling.  The difference is that the divine teacher can show the learners mind intelligible things and human teachers cannot.”

I understand Augustine’s ideas about the “teacher within” in much the same way I understand the theory of the “forms”: as humans we can only understand so much about the world and our lives, that there is some ultimate truth that we will never know.  According to that theory, as humans we will not reach perfection, we can only strive for it, and what we see and experience in our lives are earthly versions of the true forms.  But where do these ideas, and Augustine’s, leave teachers?

I think Augustine’s philosophy is helpful in that it takes some of the “pressure” off of teachers by making it clear that they are not the only people responsible for students’ understanding. No matter how well a teacher teaches, in theory, there is some revelation to the mind that happens only when a third party makes comprehension possible.  But, if we take that theory too far in the other direction, it could lead us to a place where we think that teachers aren’t valuable at all.  This kind of thinking is evident in scripted curricula and teaching practices that are designed so that “anyone can teach”.  They devalue the position of the teacher, and in so doing, limit the possibility of what a great teacher can do when allowed to use their creativity and the wisdom they’ve gained as practicing teachers.