I’m not much of a historian, and I’d never heard of George Counts until I learned about this speech. Addressing the Progressive Education Association’s annual conference, Counts described a world that seems all too familiar:
We live in troublous times; we live in an age of profound change; we live in an age of revolution….Today we are witnessing the rise of civilization quite without precedent in human history — a civilization which is founded on science, technology, and machinery, which possesses the most extraordinary power, and which is rapidly making the entire world a single great society. As a consequence of forces already released, whether in the field of economics, politics, morals, religion, or art, the old molds are being broken. And the peoples of the earth are seething with strange ideas and passions.
-from Dare Progressive Education be Progressive? 1932.
Counts delivered his speech during the height of the Great Depression, and his remarks stunned his audience, as he pointed a finger directly at their liberal complacency, implicating them in the perpetuation of the inequities they condemned. He acknowledged that the progressive education movement had achieved success in effecting positive changes to what might be generally classified as student-centered teaching practices. But Counts took progressives to task for the elitist orientation of their advocacy for school reforms, which he believed was rooted in a liberal individualism that has “elaborated no theory of social welfare.” He said that progressives lacked the moral backbone to make sacrifices, calling them “romantic sentimentalists.”
He said,
If Progressive Education is to be genuinely progressive, it must…establish an organic relation with the community, develop a realistic and comprehensive theory of welfare, fashion a compelling and challenging vision of human destiny, and become somewhat less frightened than it is today at the bogeys of imposition and indoctrination. In a word, Progressive Education cannot build its program out of the interests of the children: it cannot place its trust in a child-centered school.
How has anything changed since then? The problems that prompted his concerns seem remarkably immune to revision since they are still with us. And I wonder about my own role as a teacher in the cultural reproduction of a society in which privilege is measured by skin color, dialect, and material wealth. What am I willing to sacrifice? How will being a “good teacher” make any significant difference for kids whose social class marks them as most unlikely to succeed? What sacrifices might be necessary?
Counts believed that fundamental changes in the economic system were necessary, and the social agenda that he proposed is fraught with ethical contradictions for teachers. Artichoke and Lawrence Lessig are both thinking about the difficulty of working within a corrupt system without first acknowledging its corruption. As am I.
7 Comments
You’re hitting the nail on the head here. I’m a government teacher in Baltimore. There’s an incredible tension between the ideal society presented in government curricula and the reality that my students face every day. I go back and forth on whether I should teach my students that America is their country or whether I should teach them that the government is out to get them. I think both are true.
You know, you wouldn’t have as many verbal contortions, and your writing would be much easier to read if you could just admit that you are a communist. You don’t need to admit it to your readers, it’s pretty clear to us. You need to admit it to yourself.
You may find shame in being a communist, you may even think I am trying to insult you (I’m not, in fact some of my best friends aren’t any smarter than you) but I assure you most of your readers would be inspired by a definitive statement of such.
Just a thought. Carry on.
Subtlety is lost on some people. And Brian is, as always, wrong. But he’s here because we all need to laugh now and then.
Peace.
Sooooooo. Doug is a capitalist.
Watch for his next musings in which he surprises us all and promotes vouchers in order to give underprivileged kids the right to choose the school they will attend. Perhaps he will even advocate closing down under-performing schools, abolishing teacher’s tenure in favor of giving good teachers better pay than poor teachers, and requiring teachers to have a degree in the subject they are teaching. (No, that last one isn’t capitalism related, it’s just common sense.)
We are all waiting with baited breath.
I feel that I have to comment. I had a conversation via email with Rafe Esquivel not too long ago looking at some of these same issues.
Is the end of Progressive Education really not child centered schools? In that case…are we not already there with the “standards” agenda that greets me at each turn.
That is frightening.
Teaching in the southwest, in a bilingual classroom, I relate entirely to your comment : “How will being a “good teacher” make any significant difference for kids whose social class marks them as most unlikely to succeed? What sacrifices might be necessary? ” My kids’ home language, citizenship status and cultural values make them easy targets for failure. Often I feel like Sisyphus.
We might define “failure” within the contexts of what we are now versus what we say we are now, nationally A Nation of Immigrants or a Nation with immigrants.
I’ve been on a cliff lately looking at what I’ve been doing in several “contexts” in America, teaching poor kids, poor immigrant kids, really awesome kids actually who have made my life pretty cool. But also doing so under some pretty severe conditions without the supports i think most people assume exist and work. But we kind of realize sometimes we haven’t worked that out, say when we roll up the windows and lock the doors driving in certain parts of our cities.
The first thing I always say when we talk here about teaching is ‘teaching them what’? And that is an interestingly complex thing to write about.And to talk to, Standards point to the basic frames of content but give not an iota of concern to a person, their life context, how to apply skill sets and to what end to do this….its as if arming a child with an encycolpedic mind and no understanding of their nature and their relative applications of content might be a good way to go…I think it’s interesting we actually talk this Standard based way at all, and what tat says of us is very American. Then after the why, then to do what. And it winds around within my personal evolution as well as my educational one. Because as insightful as the present education regime is, it surely has relatively nothing to offer reflection and designing success for all students. It can however to a whale of a job of defining a few winners and pointing out how to separate those who can from those who cannot.
Systematic replication of an underclass seems worthy of examination.
To me.
Both psychologically, biologically, educationally, societally and as a tool for advantaging, deflecting a real look at the nature of having and not having seems to be a cultural phenom.
Boy, this was a good post to come read. I’m lost in my thoughts this morning with it’s implications.
Having just toured up Big Sur by Esalen and pulling out the thinking of many years of my life in CA I’m processing what I know about kids and people, recognizing potentials in children and developing skill sets and possibilities versus limiting by definitions, defining results and proscriptions within my ‘context’…I’m thinking. I always notice pathology models versus other models.And the anger they generate. Do you hear this? The fury. And right now I’m very interested in models which look quite differently than the ones that have come to choke public education’s frames of references.
Thanks, Doug.
And by the by I don’t know Brian but he seems to be a bit rabid. But if we need a good definitive statement of the Bush educational agendas I know exactly who can distill it. Again teachers show up, try to work with students, try to do good things, try to model the paths of tolerance and compassion and fail about everyday to do it to the level that we want to reach. But we have to try.
Opps sorry for a few unedited mistakes, moving too fast to go cook some lunch for my kids.
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