Borderland

A quick trip through my local used bookstore almost always turns up a gem or two. From Total Eclipse, in Teaching A Stone to Talk, by Annie Dillard:

We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet’s crust. As adults we are almost all adept at waking up. We have so mastered the transition we have forgotten we ever learned it. Yet it is a transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerge. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Value-less, I might add-until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use.

This passage captures a preoccupation I’ve lately indulged, thinking about the difficulties of translating education research into practice; about what it means to haul our wealth up to the surface in a form that students can use. How do we know if we’ve done that? Sifting through the rhetoric about scientifically based reading research, and knowing what works in general, or what should work in principle, or what worked in the past is very different from knowing what needs to be done in any given moment.

Starting with the abstractions of models and theories, or even clearly defined examples which are usually passed on through some form of training or reading experience, we’re challenged to make connections between the ideal and our own concrete reality. People who want the same things for kids might arrive at entirely different conclusions about the best way to make those things happen. And, of course, people don’t entirely agree on what they want for kids.

Annie Dillard’s call to wakefulness is a challenge for us to recognize and act on the opportunities we have to meet one another at more than a superficial level. When she says that “as adults we are all adept at waking up” I’m reminded of an email message I received several months ago from a blogging correspondent who told me about a teaching she was offered at a Zen retreat in Korea – “Very easy “get” enlightened! Very hard “stay” enlightened!” said the master.

We need to clarify what it is that we want for students, because if we don’t “stay enlightened” other people will take it upon themselves to tell us what we should want. People say that there’s more to teaching than what is tested. In fact, education standards include much more than what is tested. We should have a good idea of a wide range of possibilities for schooling if we want to avoid the trap of teaching to the test.

An article in Kappan by David Ferrero, “Does ‘Research Based’ Mean ‘Value Neutral’?” helped me come to terms with what’s often going on when people disagree about what should be happening in school. He says

The point here is that translating research into practice is not as straightforward as we often pretend. While the research can usually tell us something useful about how to teach — or how not to teach — it does so at a high level of abstraction. Furthermore, research tells us almost nothing about what to teach and why to teach it. This is because what and why aren’t empirical questions; they are normative ones….I’ve witnessed again and again the confusion and conflicts created when educators and school coaches confuse the empirical and the normative.

Criticisms that someone’s approach is “too ideological” ignores the fact that all approaches, and all research designs, are laden with ideological commitments. Ferrero believes that if educators were more aware of the influences of their own values, and those of their colleagues and critics, and in “scientifically-based” research, we’d be able to diffuse a lot of tension and begin having a more productive discussion about the dimensions of the teacher’s craft. He offers a typological review of educational philosophies, which I summarize in order help recognize them in practice.

Briefly, they include traditional and progressive approaches, and another that does not neatly fit into either category.

Traditional approaches:

• Classical liberal arts – embraces an ancient view of the educated person, reaching back to classical Greece, in which mastery of traditional academic disciplines is the mark of an educated person. Popular advocates include Jacques Barzun and Mortimer Adler.
• Pragmatic traditionalism – in which education is seen as mastery of knowledge and skills that are considered important within a given society. From this point of view, cultural knowledge is seen as essential for competent social and intellectual participation in the community at large. Advocates include E.D. Hirsch, Diane Ravitch, and Chester Finn.
• Moral traditionalism – going back to Plato, education should focus on the conservation of traditional ways of knowing and acting toward others. It emphasizes discipline and respect for authority. William Bennett is a contemporary advocate.

Progressive approaches:

• Democratic/communitarian – embodying an anti-industrialist stance, including elements of romanticism and socialism, this approach stresses cooperation and egalitarianism. Within this model, curricula are grounded in the students’ physical and social environment, encouraging them to become problem solvers. John Dewey, Theodore Sizer, and Deborah Meier all are associated with this philosophical approach.
• Romantic individualism – seeks to nurture the uniqueness of each child. Stressing creativity, spontaneity, and individualization, this vision rejects the idea of curriculum and rules. A.S. Neill’s Summerhill School is the best-known example.
• Social reconstructionism – rooted in Marxism, and opposed to industrial capitalism, this vision stresses inquiring about dominant power structures, viewing schools as tools for social justice. It embraces an issues-based curricula that encourages students to engage in collective problem solving. Proponents include bell hooks, Michael Apple, and Paolo Freire.

Contemporary approach:

• Human capital developmentalism – beginning with Horace Mann and the efficiency movement of the early 20th century, schooling is aligned with economic development and individual economic opportunity. It shares many features of pragmatic traditionalism, viewing what is taught in school as preparation for participation in the economy. This is the view that has brought us standards-based reform.

Looking through the list, we might recognize that no teacher is ideologically pure in practice – none I’ve ever met, anyway – since individual teachers embrace various elements of many of these visions for schooling. Once we begin to recognize our own biases and commitments, I think we can begin to sort through the talk about what schooling is, could be, and should be about. Until we do that, though, we run the risk of being batted around by the pendulum of reform as it inexorably swings in the political wind.

I put this little Philosophy of Education primer together because Ferrero’s article so nicely summarized the possibilities, and so ably identified the main problem teachers have in responding to what has become a cacophony of voices calling for standards-based reform. Before we can “haul our wealth up to the surface,” we have to know what to reach for.

Sources:
Dillard, A. (1982). Teaching A Stone to Talk. New York: HarperCollins.
Ferrero, D.J. (2005). Does ‘Research Based’ Mean ‘Value Neutral’? Phi Delta Kappan. 86:6, 424.