History of Schooling?
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[edit] On the Power and the Limits of Schooling
An earlier version of this page had a question mark, in effect, for the title, since no one is too sure what the most descriptive name for schools might be. Other options could be "Neo-Marxism and Education". Or "Accountability vs. Humanistic Development in Schooling". Or lots of other things...
[edit] Prior Passes
Here are two versions of the question about which to construct a bibliography. Posting them, before having worked out (or written) exactly what is unsatisfactory in them, gives a point of departure.
- 12/2005 version
- Public education has a remarkable task. Its charge is nothing short of ensuring the continuity of society and its values, while simultaneously developing children in a way that enables their intelligent participation in and criticism of that society and its norms and institutions. If it is taken for granted that the United States education system has achieved modest progress toward achieving the tasks given to schools by the rhetoric that established them as publicly funded endeavors and legitimized their proliferation, it should be equally uncontroversial to claim that public education is nevertheless far from finishing the job. If it is doubtful that such an accomplishment of the historic purposes of public education is possible – especially given that education has been and continues to be touted as the panacea for any number of social ills – it is also unclear how to get the public system to head in an appropriate direction, and still less clear whether there will ever be agreement as to what an appropriate direction might be. It is further discouraging that the one certainty regarding public education seems to be the widespread sentiment that schools are only maintaining the status quo at best or foundering in this morass at worst. One question is to what extent is this inertia of the public education system in achieving its historical and rhetorical purposes due to the way in which schools have been evaluated – both formally and culturally?
- 9/2006 version
- I am interested in how considerations of Justice might resolve or mitigate the competing claims many constituents of the public education system have on other members of that system. From my exposure to educational history it seems that there is a tension between the rhetoric employed to establish and perpetuate the public education system and the historical reality/achievements of that system's administration. The system has more often achieved the uncritical reproduction of the socioeconomic order instead of the informed polity capable of the artful transformation of society promised by rhetoric. More blunty, I feel that fiscal accountability (which seems to dominate policy discourse) is achieved at the expense of humanistic ideals (which seems to dominate pedagogical theory) and vice versa. Yet it was those very ideals that originally sold the polity on the need to fund the public education system. I need to research and analyze the historical disparity between the promises/aims of the education system and its delivery on those promises/aims.
Eric Strome 21:37, 24 January 2007 (EST)
[edit] Schooling and Education
We can start reflecting on the statement above — "Public education has a remarkable task. Its charge is nothing short of ensuring the continuity of society and its values, while simultaneously developing children in a way that enables their intelligent participation in and criticism of that society and its norms and institutions." Such a statement reflects a usage pervasive in our public discourse. Recently at Teachers College a distinguished historian of education spoke about "The Federal Role in Education, Past and Present: Who's in the Policy Arena?"[1]. The talk really concerned the Federal role in K-12 schooling, certainly an important topic, but one that might be quite different from the Federal role in education, which might involve all sorts of subtle topics having to do with preserving respect for the rule of law, the nurturing of civic virtue within the citizenry, framing the principles of intellectual property to maximize the creative strength of the culture, and many, many other matters, large, small, and highly diverse.
Consider a representative statement in an important new report preparing the ground for reauthorization of the nation's No Child Left Behind legislation —
. . . A high-achieving education system that succeeds for every student, in every school . . . must ensure that children are academically proficient, are able to meet the demands of good citizenship and have a sense of self-worth and accomplishment that comes from a high-quality education and the opportunities it affords. We must close achievement gaps and raise expectations for all so that each child can be prepared to succeed in the future and the nation can remain preeminent in the global economy.[2]
As an elementary question of prudence, we must ask whether schools can ensure that children achieve academically proficiency, become exemplary citizens, and attain a sense of self-worth. As rhetoric it sounds good, but think concretely of the many children in stressed situations, poorly nourished, ill-housed, in communities where most people are coping at the edge of desperation, or other children seethe, isolated in relative comfort, as their parents and neighbors are far distant, working late to keep up apparent advantages. What, being realistic, can schools deliver? Do we fundamentally misunderstand our options by conflating schooling and education? Robbie McClintock 21:38, 21 February 2007 (EST)
Moving Beyond Celebration
Eric, recently Teachers College Record included an article by Diana Hess (2005), which I think speaks to some of the points you raised - Moving Beyond Celebration: Challenging Curricular Orthodoxy in the Teaching of Brown and Its Legacies. While you might notice the reference to Brown and see why I had been reading it, I think it speaks to the issues of inequity in educational opportunities, the curricular approach towards "celebrating" constitutional and educational landmarks or milestones, and the seemingly inert approach to teaching how to think critically about ourselves, our policies, our nation, etc. One pertinent quote:
The argument that classrooms are typically places where controversy is avoided is hardly new. James Banks (1996) has noted this as one of the defining differences between "school" and "academic knowledge. School knowledge is often presented as "static" and "settled," while academic knowledge is, almost by definition, a cauldron of competing perspectives and ideologies. User:sp2143-Sharon Pierson 24 March 2008
[edit] Works for consideration
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean Claude Passeron. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 1977, 1990)
Bowles, Samuel & Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976)
Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1968)
Schwartz, Robert B.; Marian A. Robinson, “Goals 2000 and the Standards Movement” in Brookings Papers on Education Policy, ed. Diane Ravitch (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000)
Meyer, Robert H., “Can Schools be Held Accountable for Good Performance? A Critique of Common Educational Performance Indicators” in Essays on the Economics of Education, ed. Emily P. Hoffman (Kalamazoo: W.E. Upjohn Institute, 1993)
Gradstein, Mark, Moshe Justman, Volker Meier, The Political Economy of Education: Implications for Growth and Inequality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005)
National Research Council, Scientific Research in Education. Committee on Scientific Principles for Education Research, Shavelson, Richard J., and Towne, Lisa, eds., (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2002)
