Good Teaching Initiative Richard Speaker Blog: Entry Two: The Dark Side of Education

Conformity! Conformity! Conformity!

Much of the American rhetoric of education is about the ameliorative effects of education. All politicians support education. Usually political cant from both the left and right is produced by those who have been successful in traditional schooling and want to make more people like themselves. Their pervasive attitude is that schools provide a curriculum where one size fits all, despite years of lip-service indicating that this does not work. Most teacher, administrators, politicians, and parents want their children in high academic tracks; they have acquires a level of cultural capital and they want their children to have advantage of that capital. They all want students to perform well on standardized measures and move through learning at the same pace because they were born in the same year. They want them to wear uniforms so that they look more uniform and any deviation can be stomped out.

Political thinking about education is flawed magical thinking that has schools running learners through the same program year after year without attention to whether it meets their needs or provides optimal learning. It considered them all the same and expects that they can all perform the same at all times. Its greatest flaw is the idea that all children are at the same place when they enter school and that teachers (who are all the same) should be able to provide all learners with the same experiences and get the same results. This is close to insanity because no one has begun to consider the initial conditions where each child starts and how to provide optimal instruction for every learner, except classroom teachers. Furthermore the only ones who can provide optimal instruction and learning conditions are teacher, and only good teacher at that! Social justice, upward mobility, and multiple routes to access education are common in U. S. thought by both conservatives who tout programs like The Great Books and high educational rigor and liberals who tout choice of non-canonical literatures and developing the “whole child”.

A more sinister view of education comes from the work of Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu and others related to the purpose of education. They claim that access to cultural capital is a limited resource and that the real purpose of education is to reproduce the status quo of the elite class through limiting access to cultural capital, except to a very few who are used by the elite to show that the schools are meritocratic. This idea borders on a conspiracy theory of the purpose of education, which I will call the DARK SIDE.

The DARK SIDE holds to the idea that the main purpose of education is to discriminate against those who do not perform in the standard way that the schools and their evil or ignorant political masters define as appropriate. The child must be molded into an automaton, performing in the roles chosen by society and conforming, obeying all sources of authority, while demonstrating performances of quality and exceptional ability on demand for the edification of society to achieve access to cultural capital and, of course, wealth. Significant proportions of children must grow into adults who are docile, obedient, and conforming. Only a small elite group should be allowed access to further education because it is only merited by the most outstanding of learners. Inevitably these most outstanding of learners come from homogeneous privileged classes, except for a small number of others who are used to show that education is meritocratic.

Analysis from the DARK SIDE holds that both liberal and conservative approaches come from a fundamentally flawed understanding of schools as institutions and children as learners, but there is nothing that anyone can do about it because of the social fabric of civilization and the hierarchy of social animals like humans. Most Americans believe that politicians are for school improvement; most politicians believe that they are for school improvement, but they don’t know enough about schools and organizations to get beyond their autobiographical experiences with classrooms from elementary through high school and into college. They don’t understand the difficulties built into human-based services, and generally they fear change. The result is a system of testing that hides its real purpose: to ensure that those not from the privileged classes are validated in schools that are deemed successful and that most learners not of privilege are relegated to a constant turmoil in failing schools that focus more and more on control, testing, and punishment for poor performance.

The DARK SIDE proposes schools are designed to control learners, make them accept their position in society, and provides teachers who are novice interchangeable widgets who can be fired at the administration’s whim. Most of these schools start with children who are seen as deficient and unable to perform. Their language is vulgar and non-standard. These schools tend to have middle and lower class children and teachers. A sizeable percentage of children in these schools are identified as needing special education. Very few students in these schools are identified as gifted or talented, even when the display the same behaviors as children who receive this designation elsewhere. The curricula of the schools within the DARK SIDE tend to foster uniformity and suppression with a focus on whole group activities, based on external guidelines that do not allow any flexibility. Any expressive performance or natural behavior of learners is repressed and punished, if it strays even a tiny bit from the “high cultural standards” of the task masters. Students are encouraged to pass tests and to review the same material over and over because they are constantly viewed as misunderstanding; their curricula tend to be limited to reading and mathematics, with approval for rote performance rather than thinking or application or creativity. Teaching methods tend to feature drill and practice focused on test rather than knowing and learning. These students are encouraged to apply to mediocre and failing high schools, and college is seldom mentioned. The child who diverges is seen as a nail that must be pounded down with all the rest.

What we’re doing now, under the regime of the DARK SIDE, is re-segregating our schools and school-age population according to social class, race, and gender. The hierarchy of schools from top to bottom has independent private schools (the most expensive), other private schools, parochial and religious schools, public charter schools, various public magnet schools, regular public schools, and failing public schools.

What should we do? The large-scale reforms are failing. They need to be replaced with more small-scale innovations that are based in communities led by good teachers and excellent administrators who know teaching and learning and the community life of the children at the school. Good teachers need to take leadership roles in this process and show their expertise. Good administrators need to participate in this process while letting teachers work together to build cohesive curricula that foster child development in all academic and social areas.

This view, which leaves the DARK SIDE behind, is that schools are designed to improve functionality of the learners and the community in which they live. Most of these schools start with teachers who believe children are bright and capable, and their language is fluent and creative, but often not Standard Formal American English. These schools tend to have middle and upper class children and teachers (although this need not be the case). Only a small percentage of children in these schools are identified as needing special education, and the categories of special programs are most often for gifted and talented students. The curricula of the schools tend to foster individual creativity and productivity with a balance of individual, small-group, and whole group activities, many tailored to the individual or group of participating students, using a wide range of materials and multimedia. The performances of learners are celebrated as natural and important. Students are encouraged to excel and study more advanced topics because they are constantly making meaning; their curricula include the full range of disciplines with ample time. Teaching methods tend to be active and engaging. These students are encouraged to apply to elite high schools and to go to college. The child who diverges is seen as a flower that must be nurtured to maintain creativity and develop excellence as a unique individual.

Good Teaching Initiative Richard Speaker Blog

Monday, March 21, 2011

Entry Two: The Dark Side of Education

No comments:

Post a Comment