What makes a science? A science must have theories that lead to hypotheses which can be tested empirically under conditions that control the variables involved and the initial conditions. A science must have data, and the data must be used to decide whether the hypotheses of the empirical test can be falsified or must stand as unrefuted. Thus, scientific knowledge, theories, and hypotheses are always open to change, revision, and updating based of further work in the field.
What are the initial conditions that must be considered in a school setting? Each individual is unique. Child, teacher, administrator, bureaucrat, politician: each brings an autobiography to the school setting; some are rank beginners, others have years of experience in the institution while some few have become specialists in some particular area. Each has knowledge, interests, skills, and expectations, developed within a particular cultural group. Some of these groups have traditionally had access to power; others have not.
Politicians are fond of saying, “one size does not fit all,” and that they support education, but they are hypocrites. Beware of policy wonks; they have a view that bruits conformity and lacks the nuance to deal with complex systems, and every classroom is a complex system.
Educational measurements rarely control for initial conditions. They rarely consider growth. The NCLB Act and the accountability systems fostered by it require all students to perform on the single annual snapshot of the school. When should these snapshots be taken? Why? NCLB proscribes that the snapshots be taken annually for accountability as defined by the state boards of education and state legislature.
How is a replicable model possible when each situation is unique with differing initial conditions, participants, and cultures? Perhaps what we should be looking for are broad design parameters and patterns which researchers and innovators can use to guide the construction of technology enhanced learning for teachers and their students. Instead of looking for the grail (to use a metaphor), we should be looking for the fresh water that will sustain our lives and provide insights into how we can design curriculums that incorporate teacher and student voices from the beginning rather than at the end. Schools never keep pace with the emerging technologies and advances in thought because the prime movers in the schools (teachers and students) are hamstrung by time constraining mandates and the conservative traditions of educational institutions. Instead of doing, teachers and students are required to pretend most of the time; instead of learning, teachers and students are required to demonstrate on minimal competency measures disguised as high stakes tests. This critique is not new because John Dewey said basically the same thing over 100 years ago, and in that hundred plus years, our educational systems have worked to maintain themselves and to hide the patterns of subverting change and the new.
Education is a cottage industry in a techno-bureaucratic world. Each classroom has unique characteristics that the bureaucrats and politicians want to stamp out because of uniform accountability, misrecognition of the purposes of education, misunderstanding of the functions of tests, and quality control. Most want to use technology and data as mechanisms of this control, but in the flattened hierarchy of social networking, teachers can and must subvert this process of control by communicating their strategies of resistance and modeling the processes of social equity. One increasing problem in the U.S. is fear – fear promulgated by the politicians, bureaucrats, and government to try to manipulate the outcomes of many events where they need a herd mentality to rush panicked legislators and their constituents into controlling legalisms. Indeed, education is a political act, and education cannot be separated from human politics.
Political and social discourse now moves through a wide range of multimedia, accessible to those who use the Internet and TV as their information sources. Critical consumers of multimedia are embedding themselves in this discourse and finding various modes of resistance and demonstration from e-mail to blogs to political activisms. Some drop out of various parts of the discourse while participating in others, but their presence can be amassed in a variety of ways that include the ballot box, nonviolent actions, and, in the most feared status, violence. The violence is not just symbolic, although the symbolism of selection of terror targets is essential; it is physical and often the last refuge of the marginalized. What seems missing from the political and critical dialogue on terror as defined by the political hegemony and their violent radical counterculture is the discourse on marginalization that leads to the acceptance of violence as an appropriate resort. Indeed, the very discourse on terror among the political hegemonic powers and the fear that they have engendered among their populations may perform the act of radicalization that leads to the violence of radicalized fanatics.
The topics of caring and liberation are not currently part of this political and social discourse. Instead there is the ethos of “getting my share” and “taking what I can grab from anyone so long as I’m not caught,” which are combined in a view of life as a zero sum game where the expressive agent (me) will receive fewer of the benefits, rights, and privileges of living in a wealthy society if the other (the marginalized you or generic “other” who belongs to some difference class, caste, or group, vaguely defined) receives more. This view ignores the importance of vast and complex economic systems in which most live and favors a conservation that radicalizes the “other” into a demonic presence. It replaces the general passive view of “living in a golden age” with an active apocalyptic fear of the present and future.
A message of caring and liberation is viewed as feminized and weak. Liberation of others is conceived as stealing from self or from future generations of the me-group, but especially my immediate children. Media biases are swallowed without critical consideration; currently all intellectuals, progressives, and liberals are ipso facto evil and bent on destroying the nature of society and the privileges of the me-group. Especially threatened are those who have a vested worldview of being a privileged group, selected by some moral, ethical, or theocratic criteria, and directions for their own salvation. Their caring and liberation is directed at their me-group and hate is directed at all other as the me-group defines “other.” The me-group is particular worried about anything that suggests that their continued existence might be under threat: reproduction and the erotic must be carefully controlled, so pregnant women must produce more offspring. and the “evil” of homosexuality must be extirpated. Power and the good must be concentrated in the members of the me-group, in what can hardly be called anything but racist, from most points of view (of course, all outside the me-group).
The me-group rejects living in a mixed, multicultural society where others have the same rights and privileges and responsibilities. They want homogenized culture focused on theirs as the only “correct” viewpoint and decry all variation while, hypocritically, wanting to select from all the possible consumables of the market-driven consumer society. They fail to see culture as a vial, changing and now multi-technologically-based system. They see poverty, difference, and youth as forces that could subvert their status quo and must be diverted into “appropriate” social activities through indoctrination and cycles of failure. The me-group fears that their culture is dying or at least losing power because of the “invasion” of so many purveyors of difference. In attempts to control the use of power in their favor, the me-group reverts to symbolic violence and works to redefine curriculum, “truth,” and the schools into centers for the indoctrination of the “other” into the me-group realities of power reproduction. The current systems of school accountability are designed to control access to knowledge and thinking of the poor and marginalized by ensuring that they are housed in failing schools that will continue to be reorganized to prevent strong teachers from developing caring, libratory, and socially progressive critical questioning from the students and their parents, because the accountability is being held as an objective measure of the success of the school rather than an instrument of social and racial oppression. The me-group wants the “other” to accept their power and domination rather than to question it, and, more to the point, become participants in the oppression fostered by accountability.
The me-group builds an ethno-centered consciousness, a group consciousness that controls its members. The only possible discourse is self-discourse within the group; the only possible consciousness is within the me-group and its shared discourses. Any contrary information or viewpoint is immediately rejected. Any attempt to break the cycles of the me-group navel-staring becomes a radical attack on the me-group. The me-group radicalizes for defense of its own. The attacks on the me-group status quo bring out an arsenal of virulent speech and the threat of physical violence in violation of the qualities of civil public discourse and respect for others and their opinions. Part of this is because the me-group only chooses to read me-group messages unless threatened in some way, building a self-reinforcing dispotia of beliefs and control without the goal of symbiotic collusion with other groups.
Too many amateurs are at the helm. Administrators and central administrator are not highly trained professionals in education; they choose teachers who are rank amateurs rather than one that are highly trained and involved in personal professional development.They have increasing difficulty even identifying a good teacher and good teaching. Thus, we need a Good Teaching Initiative to lead the way into a more balanced and expanding curriculum led by good teachers who are expert at meeting learner needs.
Further Reading:
Delpit, Lisa, & Perry, Theresa. (eds.). The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children. Beacon Press: Boston.
Dewey, John. (1939). Freedom and Culture. G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York.
Dewey, John. (1920). The School and Society. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.
Glasersfeld, Ernst V. (1996). Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning. Falmer Press: London.
Hooks, Bell. (2004). We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. Routledge: New York.
Hooks, Bell. (2000). Where We Stand: Class Matters. Routledge: New York.
Kuhn, Thomas. S. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (3rd Ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Lakatos, Imre, & Musgrave, (Eds.). (1970). Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Volume 4: Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London, 1965. Cambridge University Press.
Noddings, Nel. (1998). Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy. University of California Press: Berkeley, CA.
Noddings, Nel. (1998). Philosophy of Education. Westview Press: Boulder, CO.
Popper, Karl. (2002). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge Classics.
Speaker, R., Laskowitz, R., Thompson, C., Speaker, P., Chauvin, B., Darby, D. & Willis, E. (2005, October). Collections, Critical Selections and the Teaching Repertoire: Examples from Autobiographical Memoirs and Multimedia Teaching Units. In R. E. Griffin, S. B. Chandler, & B. D. Cowden (Eds.) Visual literacy and development: An African experience (pp. 187-196). International Visual Literacy Association: Pilanesburg, South Africa.
Turiel, Elliot. (??). The Culture of Morality: Social Development, Context, and Conflict. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England.
Good Teaching Initiative Richard Speaker Blog
GTIrbs.blogspot.com
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