Borderland

It’s the last day of school, the kids are gone for the summer, and I’m writing a little book review here. This book was not recommended to me. I found it almost by accident at the library when I was there on an errand. It was written nearly 60 years ago, and the fact that nobody ever mentioned it to me is the reason I’m writing this now.

No education professor, no colleague, no-body ever said to me, “You know, Dewey laid out a theory of what makes experiences educative – or not – in Experience and Education. And, along the way, he touched on just about every major controversy in the discourse of school reform.”

I wish someone had told me to read it long ago because so many things would have made sense, sooner. I’ve read it twice in the last week. It’s a short book, and it’s a conceptual roadmap for progressive change in schools.

I have to resist the urge to clutter this with quotes. But maybe this, from page 1, will get me rolling:

The history of educational theory is marked by opposition between the idea that education is development from within and that it is formation from without; that it is based upon natural endowments and that education is a process of overcoming natural inclination and substituting in its place habits acquired under external pressure.

OK. So there it is in bold strokes. Advocacy for school policies splits into two main camps, the instructivists and the constructivists. Dewey calls them ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’ schools. He reminds us that we needn’t reject one view only to uncritically endorse it’s opposite. He urges us not to confuse experience with activity, to know the difference between authority and leadership, and to understand that freedom from rigid control is not the same as license.

What is wanted, he says, is the development of some general principles of learning through personal experience along with the understanding that these, alone, will not solve any problems. Rather, they present us with new sets of problems that are worth exploring and talking about. Subject matter still needs to be organized, but along what lines? Guidance must still be exercised, but to what end? Experience, he reminds us, can as easily be miseducative as it can be educative.

He suggests that we use ‘continuity’ and ‘interaction’ as two principles for educative experience, since they provide links from the past to the future, and require us to pay attention to the responses of students to whatever situation they may find themselves in. Preparing kids for an imagined future by insisting that they ignore the present is a self-defeating practice.

Rarely, I’ve observed, is NOTHING learned in school. Unfortunately, what’s learned too much of the time is that some subjects are more interesting than others, that some teachers are better than others, that some people are smarter than others. What is learned best is an idea that runs constantly in the background, which is that school is not about learning as much as it’s about getting credit for fulfilling other people’s expectations. I want to avoid this kind of lesson if I can, next year.

A democratic participation structure for schools is recommended, since persuasion makes for a higher quality experience than coercion. I have to build more opportunities into the school day to discuss “issues,” and provide my students with more decision-making opportunities to make this happen.

We were on a field trip the other day, hiking up a steep hillside when a tired young lady asked me, “Why do we have to do this?” Funny, that nobody ever asks me that question about routine things they’re given to do in the classroom. But projects are often hard work.

I told her, “Sometimes we need to put it all together.”

This little book was an inspiration to work toward that end. Advocacy for change is off the mark, because talking about “reform” means that nothing new is likely to happen.

Summer vacation soon – just a few administrative things to take care of over the next few days.