Bridging Differences

Dear Deborah,

I want to be first in line to shout "hosanna" to your call for courtesy. I place courtesy up there in a pantheon alongside the cultivation of character and civic responsibility, as virtues that are intertwined and that do indeed help to make possible a democratic society. Indeed, without courtesy, character, and civic responsibility, I don't see how a democratic society can emerge or survive. So, yes, let us agree that these are noble goals that should be embedded in the daily life of every school, because without them, schools cannot achieve any goals other than babysitting or incarceration or daycare.

I certainly want to see better healthcare, better housing, less criminal behavior, fewer people in prison, higher voter participation, and less income disparity. I hope that in the long run, better education will contribute to these outcomes, but the link between schooling and these outcomes is indirect. If we want better healthcare and better housing and more equal income distribution—and I do—we must pursue these goals directly. We will not get them by making schools more effective.

We should pursue better education because we want everyone to have equal educational opportunity. We should pursue equal educational opportunity because we believe in fairness and because we believe that giving everyone an equal chance to get a good education is a valuable investment for our society and for individuals. Economists do not question that education is a vital component of social capital, and social capital is necessary for economic development.

I don't want to bore you, our readers, or myself by saying this again, but I keep remembering what Robert Merton once told me: You have to say important things a thousand times before the point really gets across. So, at the risk of being repetitive, let me state that children in East Harlem and rural Vermont and Los Angeles and Dallas need the same basic knowledge about mathematics and science as children of their age in Finland, Japan, France, and Canada. The basic facts and operations do not have a cultural component, although teachers in every school will have their own ways of bringing their students to understand those facts and operations. That is why I favor a national curriculum.

I would go further and say that children in the United States, in order to strengthen and maintain our democratic society, should have a shared knowledge of our founding documents and of our history. They can debate the meaning of those documents and that history 'til the cows come home, but let us teach them enough about those events and ideas so they can argue well and do so courteously.

I too, like you, want to see our schools produce a democratically minded citizenry. I agree that this should be first among many noble goals. I would add to those goals, as you did, courtesy, and then the cultivation of character. And I would take my stand that the production of democratically minded citizens requires a shared knowledge of our history and our government, as well as knowledge of other histories and governments. This is not by any means a "fixed intellectual tradition," as you put it, but rather the basics of our democratic life. If our children and grandchildren are ignorant of the struggles from which our democracy emerged and are ignorant of the ways in which our democracy has failed its ideals, then we are passing on to them nothing but empty words.

Now, assuming we have exhausted this subject for the moment, let us discuss the recent essay by Charles Murray in The New Criterion, which he calls "The Age of Educational Romanticism." The article is a slashing attack on No Child Left Behind, a law that neither of us defends. Unlike us, Murray attacks the law because it fails to recognize that some children are so intellectually limited that they can never be educated in any meaningful sense of the term. This is the key quote, his second paragraph: "Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement."

By Murray's definition, I am an educational romantic. But I don't belong in either of the camps that he describes. He says that romantics on the left believe that children of color, children of the poor, and girls are held back by racism and sexism, which, once removed, will unleash their gifts. And that romantics on the right believe that choice will unveil a new age of universal proficiency.

I don't identify with either position. I believe we can improve our schools. I believe there is "huge room for improvement." I believe that all children should have access to excellent education. And I have no doubt that almost all children not doing well in school have the potential to do much better.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

The question may be: Which aspects of the Finnish “answer” are most pertinent? Maybe we should simplify our alphabetic system, maybe we should improve healthcare, maybe we should have a more homogeneous society, maybe a national curriculum.

America’s “genius” has rested not on its fixed intellectual “tradition,” but on its enormous and equal respect for “practical smarts”—including thinking outside the box intellectually. We can force an artificial curricular consensus. But teachers forced to teach it, and students to learn it, will not succeed as well as they might in Finland—because their students are coming at the world from much more disparate views, customs, experiences, and values. And because some come from a state of poverty and ill health that Finland does not know.

I’m in the midst of reading a book that I think we would both applaud, entitled “No Place But Here, A Teacher’s Vocation in a Rural Community” by Garret Keizer. It was first published in 1988. I read it and try to imagine how a national curriculum would have affected Mr. Keizer’s and my life.

Granted, maybe rural northern Vermont and East Harlem are more alike than we pretend. But what about our particular expertise and passions? Or a new idea! I fear we’d lose us both. But equally I think we are far from understanding the potential of public schools to reach and transform the lives of what our “friend” Charles Murray (whose views we might explore in the future) sees as the God-given natural losers. There are too few examples of “what works” if we intend to reach his “unreachables” and “unteachables”—whose votes and views impact on our culture, who serve on our juries, who we call neighbors and friends, and whose intellect thus is critical to our future.

You and I might, in short, quote from different parts of Keizer’s book. You’d note that his freshman high school class reads "Antigone," "The Odyssey," "Macbeth," and Thomas Hardy’s "Return of the Native". None abridged or paraphrased.

I’d want all our readers to underline profusely from the chapter entitled “Courtesy”. Combating the common discourtesies of our larger culture requires huge self-conscious doses of adult modeling in school. “I avoid sharing anything with a class that a student would want to share with himself or herself alone. I avoid writing comments on top of a student’s writing, or putting a grade on top of a student’s name. We work one-to-one, not one-on-one. I ask permission before quoting from a composition…. I try to be certain that no students stand for any length of time while I sit…. I apologize, privately if the offense was private, publicly, if public…. With all of its opportunities for trespass, with all of its peculiar relationships, a school is a good place for younger and older people to discover the pleasure of reciprocal acknowledgement. Which is what courtesy is.” What a lesson in democracy!

Slightly reworded, we’d both probably appreciate his reprint of the F.F.A. Creed (Future Farmers of America). Maybe the one from Finland that you told us about and the F.F.A.’s are a good place to start. I know that many readers would like to find a magic bullet that could cure us of our schools’ problems. Me, too! Just as I’d like to find one to cure our larger social mess! The latter is no more easily fixed than the former, and vice versa. But I’d love a nationwide discourse about those two documents!

The Japanese have social promotion until the end of high school, and their teaching day is only slightly more than half as long as ours. The Chinese and Indian economies are booming, even though half of their citizens barely complete elementary school. Many a well-educated American graduate cannot find a job that couldn’t be done by a high school dropout. (And Massachusetts outperformed most of the world before MCAS.) But how much smarter would we have to be to justify the standard of living we cling to?

As Keizer would say, what’s even worse is our failure to be thoughtful in the most basic senses of the world. Our tolerance of Guantanamo speaks more to my distress about our schools than international test comparisons. I can live with our being somewhere in the middle when it comes to math and science test scores, if we weren’t at the very bottom when it comes to domestic rates of incarceration, death penalties, income disparities, rates of voting, etc. Schools need to be places that are “accountable” for those comparisons, too. That I rest my hopes on “democracy” is not easy to justify by hard data, or evidence-based studies. It’s a leap of faith. But it is a leap we as citizens of this land have agreed to. That’s what makes it seem reasonable to me that we could demand that schools address it more seriously than they address calculus.

I can live with many ways to produce a democratically minded citizenry, if only we’d agree that it’s first among many noble goals! Just that. I suspect it starts with Keizer’s way of thinking about courtesy. What does it take to create school settings in which adults are responsible for that first step?

My defense of small schools was originally based on only one hope. That if the school was small enough the entire faculty could sit around one table and thrash things out—courteously. Only through such a process could the school’s adults hold themselves accountable for their impact on the young. We’ve gotten plenty of “smallish” schools, mandated ruthlessly from above, in which the faculty is still too large, too numb, or too powerless to sit around and thrash anything out, and where accountability is therefore conducted “discourteously”.

Best,
Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

Time to disagree. Finland is the answer. No, I don't mean that we should or can copy Finland, but that we can learn from the remarkable synthesis that Finland has achieved. Their schools meet all or most of your pedagogical criteria—they "focus on a playful and wonder-filled childhood," and they prize teacher autonomy and school autonomy. Yet they do so within the context of a specific and carefully wrought national core curriculum. What is essential for children in urban areas is also essential for children in the remote rural areas. Teachers are free to be creative and passionate because they are clear about what their job is. Their autonomy is freedom to teach, not curricular anarchy.

I would not suggest that we copy the Finnish core curriculum. It is theirs, not ours. But the lesson to be learned is that a common core curriculum is necessary so as to establish clear understandings within which pedagogical creativity can bloom and prosper.

I also do not agree with you about the curriculum in New York state. New York has had mandated Regents' examinations for high school graduation for the past century, but with these differences from a genuine core curriculum: First, only the highest-achieving students took those examinations until about 10 years ago; second, when the Regents' exams became a universal requirement, the content and expectations of the exams were dumbed down; third, a testing regime is not the same as a specific, coherent curriculum that shows a progression of ideas, knowledge, and skills from the earliest elementary grades to high school graduation.

Nor do I agree about the example of Massachusetts. That state developed excellent statewide curriculum frameworks after the passage of the 1993 education reform act, an act that pumped billions of new dollars into the schools in return for an agreement to set statewide standards and to develop examinations based on those standards. And you are right about this: Since the adoption and implementation of its superb curriculum frameworks, Massachusetts has soared to #1 in the nation on the tests of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The latest test results show that students in Massachusetts are #1 in reading and in mathematics. This was no accident, nor did it evolve from the independent, uncoordinated actions of the elected school boards. It is the fruit of an educational strategy that was tried and succeeded.

Certainly, as I pointed out, Finland is a homogeneous nation. It does not have anything like our religious, cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity.

I maintain that our diversity makes it hard for us to forge a national core curriculum, but our diversity makes it necessary that we do so. In a nation as diverse as ours, we need a common language and a large fund of shared values and references in order to talk to people who do not share our religious, cultural, ethnic, or racial background. In order to maintain a democratic society, we need to be able to communicate and exchange ideas, to sustain diverse coalitions, and to recognize our common goals and work together with others who are different from us. Collaboration requires some mutuality, and such mutuality is not possible without the ability to communicate and to recognize that "we are all in the same boat," we are part of the same community even as we are members of many other, different communities. This communication would be greatly facilitated, I believe, by a coherent curriculum that spans the years from elementary school through high school.

Without a national core curriculum, our schools are at the mercy of the low-level national curriculum created willy-nilly by test publishers and textbook publishers. Now, I know people in this business and know that they are upstanding citizens who are trying to give the states more or less what they want, while not stirring up any hornets' nests and not provoking any controversy. In effect, our highly decentralized system of schooling has left the issue of what to teach to commercial interests, those who write the standardized tests (they have to ask about something, they have to make assumptions about what students have learned) and those who compile (not write, but compile) the textbooks that are sold in every state (they too must assume what should be taught).

So, I would contend that we have a national curriculum; that it is in the hands of the marketplace and the educational publishing industry; and that it is no substitute for the national core curriculum that would emerge if we set our collective minds to the task of writing it. We have a default curriculum. I think we can do much better.

What Finland's example proves, I think, is that it is possible for a nation to have both what you believe in and what I believe in at the same time; that our ideas and agendas are not mutually exclusive. No, we should not copy Finland's curriculum. We should create our own. But yes, every school of education should have a course in which students read the national curricula of half a dozen other nations. We can all learn by studying how other nations, with different cultures and different challenges, managed to do it. It can be done. If done well, it works well. It does not sacrifice anything you care about, it does not destroy the creativity and passion of teachers, and it helps to improve the quality of education across the nation.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (60) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

I agree, Finland is not the answer. That’s my point! There isn’t one. Or even two or three. We can learn from others, but in the end we are responsible for using what we learn in our own setting—place, time, history and, of course, values.

It’s instructive—for me—to realize that the Finns focus on a playful and wonder-filled childhood, and postpone teaching reading until kids are 7 or older. It might be, as one blogger commented, that Finnish phonemes are simpler and thus one can learn to read faster there. Or it may be that they learn to read better because they haven’t been bored and defeated by too early an introduction to a passive learning process.

It may be that the common core curriculum that the Finns use could work anywhere or it may be that it’s a different thing altogether to discuss a common core for a country smaller than NYC (5 million), in which almost everyone is native born—and has been so for generation upon generation—versus a nation of 300-plus million in which the majority cannot trace their history in the USA back more than a hundred or so years.

(NY State has had a common core (with exams) for a century, and Massachusetts has had no state regulation—just elected school boards. Yet Massachusetts test scores compare well with most OED nations!)

It may be that the Finns’ common core of academics is assessed in ways so different from ours, and far less frequently, that to call them both “tests” is to confuse matters.

It may be that in a nation in which 80 percent are members of the same state-established church one can presume a level of “consensus” that a religiously divided nation like ours can’t.

It may be that the fullness of Finland’s welfare system—universal health care, relative income equality, etc.—would make them successful regardless of any of the above.

What we agree about, Diane, is the need to discuss the purposes of schooling. What shared criteria might we “answer to”? There are many ways to get at the latter without developing a detailed curriculum about what should be taught (at what age, in what sequence, and in what detail). Democracy is a form of accountability and maybe we can develop acceptable public bodies that we agree to answer to.

The quoted three paragraphs of Finland’s “mission statement” sound fine to me. Central Park East Secondary School and Mission Hill would be happy to defend our work as a response to such a mission. But supporting “his or her mother tongue” and “cultural identity” is a mission, for example, that some Americans might not support. “Develop a democratic society”—would such a phrase appear in many a U.S. mission statement, rather than the paler “be a good citizen”? The Finnish mission suggests skills like “evaluate critically”, “create new culture”, “revitalize ways of thinking and acting” that some conservatives would argue don’t belong in mandatory K-12 schooling. It’s a radical statement that might not sit comfortably in our culture. (Sol Stern of The Sun might be nervous, for example.) (Editor's note: See this guest column by Sol Stern in eduwonkette.)

I can hear a lot of folks to the right and left of me feeling that Finland’s mission is insufficient/ wrong-headed or even evil. (Humph: “self-esteem!) Let’s put it out there for discussion for starters.

But even if we could unite behind a similar statement, it hardly leads to a single approach to either pedagogy or curriculum! Then, comes the hard part—of course—what subjects and pedagogies best achieve such ends? My solution? Let schools and districts defend how their solutions meet such a broad description of the role of K-12 education. Erin and Diana (two of our readers) raise the importance of “external” reviewers. Both make good points, and perhaps what was important about CPESS and MH’s graduation requirements was the way they included such public reviewers. It’s not a “do your own thing”—it’s the responsibility of any public institution to defend its “own” solution to democratically selected bodies in a publicly agreed upon manner.

Note also, Diane, that when I urge us to include the cultures that surround us, I am not suggesting that we applaud—or condemn them. What I’m arguing is that we won’t influence the minds of the young if we insist they park their ideas outside our schools, to be picked up at 3 p.m.. We don’t want to perpetuate the idea that there is a strictly “academic” way of reading, writing, and thinking. Persistently ignoring the cultural norms they are exposed to leaves them defenseless.

Making room for these realities (which includes the “ideology” of the market place, the political scene, and the arts) is risky. It’s safer to avoid them. But it’s precisely when teachers and students are passionate that their best and worst habits of mind emerge. That’s when I can really “assess” how my colleagues and my students use their minds! Sometimes it scares me, but it’s also what “educating” for democracy needs to tackle. I fear that it won’t happen “somewhere” else if we are afraid to let it happen within our schools.

Best,
Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

As you know, Americans have a long history of looking to other countries for answers to our educational problems. In the 19th Century, American educators traveled to Prussia to see the wonders of its national education system. In the 1960s, the British education system became the American educational Mecca because of its demonstrations of infant education and open classrooms (with an occasional side trip to Summerhill).

Recently, Finland has won admiration for its educational accomplishments—not long ago in a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal, and now in your address to your colleagues at the Forum for Education and Democracy. I note that you and the Journal identify Finland as a success because of its performance on international assessments; without those assessments, how would we know that Finland’s education system was worthy of discussion and emulation? We would be in the dark.

In some ways, Finland is not exactly a fitting role model for the United States. For one thing, it is a tiny nation, with about 5.3 million inhabitants (smaller than New York City). And unlike New York City, it is not notably diverse in ethnicity and religion: The population is overwhelmingly homogeneous, ethnically and religiously. More than 80 percent of Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which is recognized by the government as an established church (Finland has school prayer). More than 90 percent speak Finnish as their native language. Less than 3 percent of the population is foreign-born. Finland also has a demographic problem that we do not share: The birthrate is very low, and the population is aging. Perhaps this is an advantage for children, because they are prized. Finland is one of the most sparsely populated nations in Europe.

You are right about the wonderful schools and conditions for teaching in Finland. There is considerable local autonomy, school autonomy, and teacher autonomy. Finland has a very egalitarian school system, and its results on international assessments are impressive in every subject. The number of dropouts is small; the variance between high achievers and low achievers is also small. Another point that you might have made: Most of Finland’s schools are small. The majority of students are in schools with fewer than 500 students.

But there is yet another aspect of the Finnish education system that you did not mention. Finland has a strong and coherent national core curriculum. The core curriculum describes the general principles of instruction, as well as the specific knowledge and skills that students will acquire over the course of their basic education (from grades 1 through 9).

Finland doesn’t get great results by hiring excellent teachers and then leaving them to do whatever they choose. It specifies the subjects that will be studied, the objectives for each academic subject, and the assessment criteria for 8th grade. One reason, perhaps, that Finnish students excel in science is that there is a national course of study in physics for grades 7 through 9. The children study motion and force, vibrations and wave motion, heat, electricity, natural structures (including “radioactive decay; fission and fusion; ionizing radiation and its effect on animate nature; protection from radiation”). The national core curriculum has a carefully specified format of concepts, knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are to be taught not only in physics, but chemistry, biology, history, geography, social studies, languages, health, religion, ethics, music, visual arts, crafts, physical education, and home economics. (To learn more, click here and here.)

The content and objectives of each subject are thoughtfully detailed. Teachers have wide leeway in how they teach and in formulating their lessons. But the core content does not appear to be controversial or disputed.

This is precisely what I have been advocating in our dialogues for the past year, as well as for many years before that. I do not presume that a national core curriculum would solve all our problems, far from it. One need only look at eduwonkette’s recent post about violence in Chicago to see that our social problems are not confined to curricular issues, or to Richard Rothstein’s many writings about how issues of poverty restrict the ability of schools to teach children.

What I take from all this is that a nation will have more successful schools if it can arrive at a fundamental agreement about what the schools are supposed to do. If we leave matters at the disposal of every school and every teacher, to do as they see fit, we will not be following the Finnish model of success.

It is worth noting here the “mission statement” of the Finish education program: “Basic education is part of fundamental educational security. It has both an educational and an instructional mission. Its task on the one hand is to offer individuals the chance to acquire a general education and complete their educational obligations; and, on the other, to furnish society with a tool for developing educational capital and enhancing equality and a sense of community.”

“Basic education must provide an opportunity for diversified growth, learning, and the development of a healthy sense of self-esteem, so that the pupils can obtain the knowledge and skills they need in life, become capable of further study, and, as involved citizens, develop a democratic society. Basic education must also support each pupil’s linguistic and cultural identity and the development of his or her mother tongue. A further objective is to awaken a desire for lifelong learning.”

“In order to ensure social continuity and build the future, basic education assumes the tasks of transferring cultural tradition from one generation to the next, augmenting knowledge and skills, and increasing awareness of the values and ways of acting that form the foundation of society. It is also the mission of basic education to create new culture, revitalize ways of thinking and acting, and develop the pupil’s ability to evaluate critically.”

Tiny Finland cares about its children and its future. There is much here to admire.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

Well, we do disagree about what should happen in “our houses of learning.” Maybe that is the core of our disagreement, maybe not. We’ll see.

Your rumination on “the street” reminded me of one of my favorite figures in education history, and that is Junius Meriam of the University of Missouri. Meriam’s laboratory school at the university was featured in 1915 by John Dewey as one of the “schools of to-morrow” in his famous book of the same name. Meriam wrote a book called "Child Life and the Curriculum" (published in 1920), in which he described his school and his philosophy. In his view, modern education meant eliminating “isolated subjects of an abstract nature,” which turned out to be, as he put it, “practically all the content of our curriculum.” In his school, whatever was taught had to respond to the “real, present needs of the pupils.”

I was reminded of Meriam because he wrote about how he came to his philosophy. One of his students, a boy named Bobby, seemed to lose interest in school. One day, Meriam saw Bobby meeting with his “gang,” a group of other teen-age boys who met under a bridge. And what were they doing? They were cursing! Of course, they weren’t allowed to curse at home or in school. Meriam resolved that he would change his school so that boys like Bobby would not feel alienated from it. I always wondered whether that meant that he encouraged the whole gang, along with Bobby, to feel comfortable cursing in school.

But to return to the present. A large part of our disagreement has to do with your reference to “the street” and “popular culture.” I think we are envisioning different things. When I think of “the street,” I think of those aspects of youth behavior that adults should not tolerate, like profanity, rudeness, violence (lack of impulse control), semi-nudity, purposefully slovenly dress, etc. I don’t think any of this behavior belongs in school. I recall a day that I spent at a high school in Brooklyn where the principal and other administrators asked students to change to a school T-shirt when they were wearing revealing halters or sent them home if their clothing was so provocative that it would be a distraction from learning.

When I speak of our “popular culture,” I speak about the endless fascination of the media with rock stars, rap artists, athletes, and various others whose greatest attribute seems to be the wealth they have accumulated and their outsized, outrageous behavior. I admit my limitations, but I can’t see the value of studying the “art” of Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Justin Timberlake, or other current media stars. I certainly admire the physical grace of great athletes; the most important lesson we should all learn from them, I think, is self-discipline and devotion to one’s passion.

Funny you should bring up Ebonics in this context. I thought it was amusing that you thought it would be useful to teach the "grammar and language rules" of Ebonics; I found myself wondering if your school also taught the grammar and language rules of English! I would be surprised if you did, since grammar and usage have fallen out of favor for the past generation (against my wishes!). But this was not, obviously, the source of the controversy about Ebonics. My guess is that many people objected to teaching Ebonics because they see the public school as the one institution that teaches young people the tools they need to be successful in higher education or the modern workplace. In the past, that has meant teaching children from dozens of different cultures how to speak standard English. It was not a value judgment that standard English is better than other languages such as Spanish or French or Chinese, but that standard English is the language that people in this country need to get admitted to almost every university and to participate in civic life and to get jobs higher than entry level.

I think you are right that we see a national curriculum from different perspectives. You see it as one who is on the receiving end, and I see it as a problem of how to make it work so that it would be not only good enough to help kids, but good enough to be acceptable to the teachers who must implement it. I don’t think that a national curriculum would be the product of a single administration, not the Bush administration, nor the Hillary Clinton administration, nor the Barack Obama administration, nor the John McCain administration. I see a national curriculum as the product of a professional consensus, one that involves subject-matter experts, teachers, administrators, and even end-users of the public schools like college professors and journalists. I also see such a curriculum evolving from careful research on international curriculum standards about what students at various ages are expected to know and be able to do. And I envision a curriculum that in toto amounts to not more than 50 percent of the school day, so that there would be many variations and additions depending on the state, region, and locale. I also envision a curriculum that encourages projects, intensive study, and creative teaching.

I agree with you about the need for depth and passion. We certainly don’t have that now. Most teaching is determined by adherence to superficial textbooks.

I am not troubled by the mission statement at High Tech High. It is inoffensive, non-controversial, and vapid. How could anyone object to a promise to prepare kids to succeed in the society they live in? The goal is not the problem. The implementation is.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

Maybe I should not have thrown George Counts’ famous challenge into the mix. I sometimes have to remind myself that most people—even most educators—know very little education history and never read about why Counts asked “Dare the schools build a new social order?” At the time (1932), Counts was in his most radical phase, openly admiring the Soviet Union; his address was delivered to the Progressive Education Association, which at the time was enraptured with child-centered individualism. Counts said, in effect, dare to indoctrinate children, dare to throw aside your anachronistic beliefs in individualized education, dare to join the revolution, dare to demand a collectivist society. The convention was convulsed with discussion and debate, and for years educators argued about the role of schools in “building a new social order.”

By the end of the 1930s, Counts turned against the Soviet Union and the American Communist Party; he was elected president of the American Federation of Teachers, and he continued to write important books about education and society.

On the whole, I would say that the judgment of wise heads about the question he asked was not dissimilar from the one you offered: The schools cannot get too far ahead of the culture; they are not, by their nature, revolutionary organizations. Indeed, we look to the schools to pass on the wisdom, knowledge, and skills that have been accumulated over the years, and, in that sense, they are a conservative agency. And yes, they can change the social order by making us wiser, more civilized, smarter and better able to collaborate with others. But they can't improve the social order if they do no more than reflect what is.

Where I do disagree most vehemently with you is in your statement that the schools “must include ‘the street’ and the ‘popular culture’ if they are to influence it.” No! No! No! I respect your right to believe that, but I think it is a truly horrible idea. Parents do not send their children to school to learn the vulgar language, misogynistic and homophobic attitudes, racism, violence, and crude behavior that are common on “the street,” but to learn language, values, and behavior that is better than what they encounter outside school. Kids have plenty of time to indulge in the highs and lows of popular culture without wasting precious time in school. Maybe there are parents out there who do want their kids to go to school to find “the street” and “popular culture,” but I suspect they would be a small minority.

I speak for myself here, as do we all, when I contend that schools have the responsibility to introduce children and youth to the behavior, language, values, knowledge, and skills that they need to improve their lot in life, to prepare for college or the modern workplace. I also think that character-formation and citizenship are important goals of schooling. Schools cannot accept rudeness and crudeness and bullying, even if it is acceptable on “the street.” I do think schools exist to raise our sights, to make us better citizens, to encourage us to understand our rights and responsibilities, and to take charge of our lives as individuals. And, yes, I would like them to teach “the best that has been thought and said in the world.”

Now, can we reach agreement on what students should learn?

I certainly agree with the importance of preparing young people for citizenship, as voters, jurors, and members of the larger political society. To me, that implies a knowledge of American history, world history, civics, and government. A friend who teaches in a private university told me that his students have no idea what a grand jury is, or where the state of Illinois is located in the U.S. I think that preparation for good citizenship implies knowledge of the Constitution, our political institutions, and our history.

And I endorse every other recommendation you offer, except that I don’t agree with your statement that “we not try to mandate any course specifics [in science] or define levels of competence.” Both Advanced Placement courses and International Baccalaureate courses do mandate course specifics; that is what most people find valuable in both approaches. Instead of a generic “biology” or “chemistry” or “U.S. history” course, there is actually a syllabus that is understood by the teachers and the students. I think that is a good idea that is helpful to everyone concerned. Of course, people who don’t want to do A.P. or I.B. don’t do them.

I guess where we disagree is on that phrase “with the details and assessment left to those closest to the students.” I think there is value in establishing a state framework for courses and for end-of-course exams. Teachers are usually the best judges of whether their students are learning and how well they are learning. Yet there is value, I contend, in external assessments. Just as we do not expect people to judge their own worthiness to practice law or medicine or to drive a car, we should accept external measurements of classroom learning.

I grant you that in the current atmosphere, testing has a bad odor. Under pressure from NCLB to produce dramatic results, states and districts are over-testing, are emphasizing basic skills to the exclusion of almost everything else, and are really missing the opportunity to use testing to help inform teaching and learning. Now, there are districts that are using test scores to judge students, teachers, principals, and schools, even though the tests are not built to sustain these weighty judgments.

We must somehow develop the educational leadership to put testing into perspective and use it more wisely. So long as we have school systems run by non-educators, that is not likely to happen. But I do not think the day will ever come—or should ever come—when every teacher and every school will decide what to teach and how to assess themselves. No other profession does it. No public institution gets public dollars without some form of public accountability. The question that must somehow be solved is how to provide public accountability while ditching the stupid and non-educative regime of sanctions and incentives that is now being fastened around the necks of American educators.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

We do agree: Violence is not the essential reason that schools are unsuccessful. We agree that violence is not caused by schools, and that in every community the schools are the safest environment that students are likely to encounter. That was not the point, however, that I was making. The point was that we live in a society where authority of all kinds has been eroded, that the media regularly and consistently undermines adult authority, and that schools are no longer safe from the intrusions of the street and the popular culture. No matter whether schools are progressive or traditional (are there any such?), no matter what their curriculum, they still must worry about knives, guns, disrespect, theft, drugs, alcohol, pregnant 14-year-olds, and what happens in the bathrooms. It ain’t “Little House on the Prairie” anymore.

OK, that’s just the way it is. We have learned, these past few decades, to lower our expectations, even our ideals. We have learned to tolerate intolerable behavior.

I also wrote that this climate change was not a function of whether a school was traditional or progressive. You responded to my post with a ringing defense of progressive schools, and I was left to ponder a conundrum. We have in the past disagreed about where to place the burden of social reform. Sometimes I have argued, perhaps too strongly, that schools—or rather, great education—could build a better social order (echoing the famous 1932 challenge of George Counts to his colleagues “Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order?”). You, Richard Rothstein, and many others, have taken the opposite tack, that schools—no matter how wonderful—cannot alone reverse the corrosive effects of poverty. Over time, I have altered my views about what schools can accomplish on their own and about their limited ability to replace or compensate for other social and economic policy changes. They can provide educational opportunity but they cannot build a new social order.

Thus I am left confused and dumbstruck—well, not really dumbstruck—when you switch gears and propose that the problems of disconnected, angry adolescence can be solved by creating the right kind of progressive school. I am not persuaded.

Last week, I went to hear Professor Richard Pring, the director of the British evaluation team called the Nuffield Review. He spoke passionately about the wrong turn that British education has taken in the past generation. His complaints about over-testing and about the marginalization of teachers would have heartened you, I feel certain. He had a few choice words for Sir Michael Barber, who moved rather smoothly from advising the government of Tony Blair to working for McKinsey & Company, where the mantra is (and I paraphrase): “What matters most is what can be measured; whatever can be measured can be controlled.” Professor Pring commented that Barber was bringing to America the same dismal regime of testing and accountability that had proved so toxic and ineffective in England (see my earlier blog in which I released—with his permission—Pring’s unpublished letter to The New York Times). He also was amused that the New York City Department of Education was paying several millions of dollars to British educators (the Cambridge Education Group) to evaluate the schools, because their “expertise” is no greater than that of local N.Y.C. educators. And his comments about the Orwellian nature of the business language that has invaded the vocabulary of educators were priceless.

At one point in the discussion, a teacher asked Mr. Pring whether he was proposing that schools should make up their own curriculum, and he said he was not. He said that there must be a framework, some overarching agreement on what should be taught in school.

I like that idea. What would such a framework look like? That would be a good starting point for our next exchange.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

You’ve opened a can of worms—or something like that. There’s so much in your last letter to take on that I’m at a loss about where to start. Our readers—especially teachers—really got excited talking about disciplining the unruly.

Is there more brutal violence today than in yesteryears? I’m always suspicious of such claims—although assuredly guns are more deadly—but I don’t want to argue that point. Nor the lesser one, that forms of disrespect of authority are worse than ever. But I contend that schools are a safer place for kids and teachers than the neighborhoods they are located in. Maybe we can settle this with hard data, maybe not. I may just be one of those lucky people who experienced virtually no overt violence toward adults in the schools where I worked. The worst was a five-year-old who kicked me hard enough to do real damage.

But the essential reason kids are unruly, I would argue, is boredom, feeling dumb, and feeling “dissed”. They respond with intolerable rudeness. They enrage us by just not taking the work we prepare, and our concerns for their futures, seriously.

You state that “classrooms should be for students who want to learn.” “Learn,” or want to learn what we want to teach them? There wouldn’t be many left if the latter was required. The only thing we’ve convinced kids (and families) is that, without a diploma, they are economically and socially at a serious disadvantage. The major arguments on behalf of the academic objectives of schools are patently unpersuasive. We spend millions trying to convince disbelieving youngsters about the “practical” purposes of history and math, which leads us to undermining both. One of my sons, a math major in college, has trouble helping his 16-year-old daughter with her trigonometry homework. It doesn’t make sense to him. None of the members of our family—which includes an architect, data processor, college professor, head of information systems for a major nonprofit, school teachers, artist’s agent, and social worker—for example—have used calculus or trigonometry in their adult lives.

Yes, a historical mindset (wondering “how come?” and “who says so?") is vital. The TV commentators covering the primary season drive me crazy with their lack of historical knowledge or perspective—yet I’ll bet they all took the required number of history courses, went to the best schools, and could pass a test on basic historical facts. They just lack historical curiosity. In fact, an argument could be made that the nations that know their history best seem least willing to learn from it! There is no “evidence-based” research for or against such claims—and the kids know it.

I do not think that high schools like The MET (Big Picture) are “watering down” young people’s experience, although they do not teach any academics and the kids spend nearly half their school time as mentees to interesting adults—generally in non-academic settings. My friend, MET co-founder Dennis Littky, and I argue about it. But the evidence? The kids in the 50 or so small MET schools seem more engaged in learning, more respectful of the adult world and of adults, have regained their curiosity about the world and about how others live in it, and are more eager to go to college than students at almost any other “reform model” I’m aware of. And get in. It’s weird and true. At my old high school (CPESS) we were more traditional—in our way—but we lost some kids whom I think might have made it at the Met. We did a watered-down version of the MET starting with 7th grade kids. A majority, when interviewed many years later, reported that those experiences were key factors in their lives, often more responsible for their getting into college and taking schooling seriously.

We need to offer many opportunities for citizens young and old to re-enter the world of “academia”—the humanities and sciences “for their own sake" or for second-career purposes. We live longer lives than ever. K-12 schooling should have whetted one’s appetite for more. Preparing youngsters to be “good” adults requires settings that represent the serious work of the world in truly serious and engaging ways.

We cannot afford to “teach down to those who are restless.” A powerful point, Diane.

What the Nation at Risk and other such pronouncements bypassed was talking about purposes. Ask kids, ask parents, ask your own friends—and I’ll bet most give the same answers my kindergarten kids gave me: schools are to prepare you for schools; and, without proof that you did well in school, your future employment is limited. That’s a set-up for “talking down,” I’d contend.

Isolating kids for whom this is not enough of an answer to temper their distrust, fear, anger, disappointment, and sense of disrespect (occasionally worse) will have at best minimal impact. The numbers will grow. Take the one “bad” kid out of a teacher’s class and, lo and behold, another takes his/her place. The history of special ed is a reminder of where this leads. Still we’re agreed that some form of “special ed” was needed, and so, too, some ways of separating kids from others for a time. It happens now in most schools. Most separate themselves entirely by the time they reach 16 or 17.

Then we spend millions coaxing them back!

Making schools more systematic, programmed, and “scripted," using more carrots and sticks is one answer. One reader, Kim, described it well in one of her posts. It reminded me of how surprised I was that B. F. Skinner’s "Walden Two" was a description of his utopia. I assumed it was meant as a frightening vision of the future. Kim and I may never agree on “best practice,” but how does one settle such matters? How about Dennis’ way? Yours vs. mine? Can we tolerate living with such incompatibilities? Accepting the trade-offs?

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

I was just sitting down to reply to your post and thought I would first scan my email. I opened the daily email from ASCD SmartBrief, which links to interesting stories about schools across the nation. There was a story from Pontiac, Mich., with this headline: “Teacher Recovers from Attack: Police Say 3 students Assaulted Northern High instructor, who has a fractured skull, a broken rib and an injured lung.” This incident occurred because the teacher told several students to leave the boys’ restroom. They followed him to his classroom and beat him up. The president of the Pontiac Education Association said, “Teachers are in a war zone, and we should be getting combat pay. Teachers are scared going into their jobs every day, in both the middle schools and high schools.”

Now, I do not mean to suggest this kind of violence is typical. Thank God, it is not. But what I do suggest is that there is a level of disrespect and misbehavior that has become commonplace in many schools. Readers say it is confined to urban schools, and they may be right. You say that if I go back to the “Little House on the Prairie” books, I will see that restless, school-averse, mischievous children were always part of the educational landscape. Huckleberry Finn didn’t like school; neither did Tom Sawyer. True.

I am reminded of my own historical research about the schools of the 19th Century and early 20th Century. Educational authorities then complained about students who were “wild” because they chewed gum or spoke out of turn. In one extreme incident, a boy was reprimanded for throwing stones at another boy after school. When you look at the actual behavior of students who were “out of line,” it seems awfully tame as compared with students today who look the teacher in the eye and say “— you.” Or who beat up their teacher or classmates in school with no regard to the consequences.

As one of our readers said, classrooms should be for students who want to learn. Those who don’t want to learn should not be allowed to make life impossible for the teacher and the willing students. Why not charter schools for the kids who hate school? Give them a chance, free of all the usual bureaucratic restraints, to show what they can do with the students who don't want to be students.

I don’t think this is really about progressive vs. traditional education. The John Dewey High School in New York City was "locked-down" on March 26 when a gun fell out of a student's backpack. This school has always been known for its progressive methods and curriculum, which has nothing to do with this student's decision to bring a gun to school.

As I have often insisted, there are many strands to the progressive education movement. Since I like you so much, I put you in the strand I admire, the educators who were trying to figure out (as you said in your last post) how to “reexamine the power and nature of the ‘academics’ so that they connect with the curiosity and interest of the young…”

The strand that I find objectionable (I wrote about this at length in "Left Back") was the progressivism that not only “watered down” the curriculum but made no effort to connect with the curiosity and interest of the young. They simply didn't want the children of working-class and poor families to have any contact with what we call the academic curriculum. They didn't consider these kids worthy. There were progressives like David Snedden of Teachers College (and commissioner of education in Massachusetts) who wanted the schools to focus on vocational and industrial education, except for the privileged few who were college-bound. There were progressives like John Franklin Bobbitt and W.W. Charters (the creators of the curriculum field) who tried to turn the curriculum into job-preparation only. There were progressives like those in the life adjustment movement of the 1940s and 1950s who thought that 60 percent of the population were unsuited to either an academic or a vocational education and needed only to be “adjusted” to their lowly station in life.

John Dewey’s own school at the University of Chicago was rich with academics. Teachers worked really hard, collaboratively, to connect deep understanding of history, literature, science, and mathematics to the lives of their students. When I read the curriculum of the Dewey School, I realize how much we have lost. The school did have a curriculum. It was academic, but brought to life by inspired planning and teaching. The Dewey School did not teach down to those who were restless. Of course, as a private university school whose students were mainly children of faculty, it did have a huge socioeconomic advantage.

If every school in the U.S. had the curriculum—the coherent, content-rich curriculum of the Dewey School in Chicago—and the well-educated, reflective, selfless teachers at that school, we would be in great shape.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

To pursue the theme: Words are indeed elusive—I might even dare to claim that we are constantly “constructing” new meanings for old words, while also digging around to recover old meanings. Of course, some aspects of our occasional rants are the result of use of language that borders on misuse, even on occasional abuse—plain lies.

But at the heart of our conversation is our conscious effort to avoid placing each other into neat boxes, thus parodying each other’s ideas, while doing a little rethinking about our own language as we go along. Example. I don’t even understand what E.D. Hirsch Jr. can mean by saying that his “common curriculum” takes up only 50 percent of the time. “The time”? How can we know ahead of time what “the time” allotment needs to be? Like my old story about Darrel’s insistence that rocks were alive that turned a two-day kindergarten curriculum into a year-long study. Nor can I understand our commenter, Mr. Dickey, when he tells us of the delights of teaching from a script. My failure to understand is, Dickey argues, due to the fact that I haven’t tried it. Partly. Also because we may have different ends in mind. I want authentic conversationalists, kids who don’t follow a script; so I figure I have to model it. (Incidentally, I urge readers to read the voices of our commenters—and Diane and my occasional responses to them.)

I just got back from several extended trips—to the Midwest, and then to Philly. Tomorrow I take off for a week in California. It makes it hard to “stay on task.” I may, Diane, thus delay responding to your thoughts about pay for performance. But I think it’s an idea that resonates best to those who don’t dare to imagine that schools can aspire to “great” learning (like taking Darrell's theory seriously), and whose notion of greatness in teaching has been compromised by testing. They have settled for beating the odds on test scores, thus missing the whole point of being a well-educated member of the world.

A few eclectic comments.

(1) As I browse through the program of the New York State Association for the Education of Young Children’s annual conference I note how little it responds to the current assault on early childhood. In contrast, The New York Times highlighted it in a recent Sunday magazine piece, PBS is showing a video produced by Michigan television called “Where Do The Children Play”, and NPR’s Morning Edition addressed the absence of play on Feb 21. So why isn’t play a major concern for AEYC?

(2) Education Week ran a big story (Feb. 20) on research into the value of homework. The headline “reveals” that acceptance of homework is widespread. But perhaps more importantly, the story notes that the kids struggling most found it least useful. Maybe the fact that 40 percent of all parents said it was mostly busywork would have been a more apt headline. The dean of my own university is quoted as saying that better homework is the answer. It would be interesting to think about what the life of a teacher would be like if we gave our students more appropriately tailored assignments, not to mention reading and commenting on them each week. (The arithmetic is pretty easy: in H.S.: 150x5 minutes. And would five minutes per student really be enough to help us design and respond appropriately?) There’s a huge gap between real-life teacher time and how policymakers calculate it.

There’s a connect between (1) and (2) above, I suspect.

It’s when I’m inside schools, or get the chance to talk with people in the field, that my mind starts churning. I miss having my own home base, but there are trade-offs to this new way of life I seem to have settled into. I keep confronting the realities faced in real-life time and policymaker time. The gap between the national education conversation and the inside-the-school conversation is too wide. I’m not arguing, Diane, for there being no gap at all. The retreat I go to annually of the North Dakota Study group is designed, not always perfectly, to enlarge in-school conversations. It’s the absence of two-way bridges across it. (And on which side of the bridge the power lies.)

The three-day Grinnell College “convocation” I spoke at last week was a great example of “bridging”. We listened to speakers from the U.S. Department of Education, Ed Sector, two Midwestern state superintendents, as well as young teachers working in urban schools throughout the Midwest: all trying to deal with the gap between policy and its implementation. We need more of this. (See Deborahmeier.com). Last weekend’s session on ethnography and schooling at the U of Penn wonderfully addressed the topic, too.

Then I noticed that one of my favorite magazines—Commonweal—was into the theme, too. The opening editorial was entitled “Bridge Closed”. It explores issues of censorship within the Catholic Church and its institutions, quoting “bridge closer” Bishop Braxton’s words of 1981: “The moving viewpoint of my different responsibilities has awakened in me the desire to build bridges of meaning across sometimes hostile waters.” It’s as much needed now as it was then, the editors chide. Braxton’s 1981 words are a perfect description of how I feel as I travel around the country. And not just on matters of education. E.J. Dionne Jr. has a piece in the same issue of Commonweal that jarred me into thinking about the history of bridging religious differences, one that progressives must always engage in. (“Faith and Politics”)

So maybe we’re part of a newfangled fad of some sort. (Horrors. You and me part of a fad?)

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

I don’t want to argue about the word “constructivism” because words can, I agree, be slippery. But I urge you not to parody that viewpoint. There are few—if any—schools (in the public sector at least) where teachers are just “guides on the side.” Never were! I’ve seen hapless teachers. But not purposely. I also think that you have misread Dewey’s "The Way Out of Educational Confusion”. Or should I say “differently read”? (joke) I think he meant it in the same way as Ted Sizer did in describing a mindless Honor’s English course vs. a rigorous Shop class! In reality, few children in our science classes are learning the principles of science. The name of the course is not what interests either of us.

Neither guide on the side nor sage on the stage—let that be our bridging motto.

Two visual images have been most helpful to me. One comes from my colleague Ted Chittenden (retired researcher at ETS—the testing people) and the other from David Hawkins (the late physicist at the U of Colorado). I wish I had the technical skill to represent their diagrams visually right here.

Chittenden’s: Picture two axes crossing. One pointing east and the other north. Imagine the one pointing east is called “teacher initiative” and the one pointing north is “student initiative”. That produces four quadrants. In the high teacher/low student quadrant, he placed what we think of as traditional classrooms—with the teacher pouring forth knowledge to a fairly passive audience. In the low teacher/high student quadrant, he placed the much ballyhooed—and rarely practiced—“free school” Summerhill’ian model. In the low teacher and student quadrant, he put what once was called “mastery learning”, also “individualized instruction”, otherwise also known as “scripted learning”. Neither teacher nor student were in a position to take much initiative. Naturally, my favorite quadrant was the one in the far opposite corner in which both student and teacher were major actors, engaged in a balancing act that needed to be carefully constructed and structured, teacher by teacher and class by class (with help).

David Hawkins': Imagine a triangle. In one corner is the teacher, in another the student, and in the third was X, the object/course being studied. The relationship between teacher and student was formed in the process of “uncovering” the meaning or nature of X—the object of study. It was, I immediately recognized, a diagram that my parents had described as Talmudic study! It worked best if the X was of genuine interest to the teacher—something he felt was revealing, useful, and particularly so for the students he was teaching. But also for himself. While they were not equals in terms of knowledge or wisdom, the best lessons were those in which they were equally interested in hearing about the X and from each other. The course of study was an open road depending on how they heard each other. They might, over the course of time, discover that they agreed about baseball or Mozart—or disagreed. But the burning question was how they understood the X before them. (Keep in mind, I like this best in the context of a community of teachers and learners.)

If you read Eleanor Duckworth’s “The Having of Wonderful Ideas”—which we used as our text when we started Mission Hill—you’ll get the flavor of how this affected the relationships between the Mission Hill staff—who were after all, also of very different levels of knowledge, experience, and expertise.

These two diagrams changed my way of thinking about the difference between teaching and learning—the latter being my burning passion. It also, oddly enough, changed forever my way of thinking about politics. “Campaigning” on behalf of certain ideas and policies is a process of trying to connect with an audience—finding the bridges between their experiences and yours. In the process you hope to “convert” them to your politics, but lo and behold, they also make you reexamine your own. But it’s hard work.

The constraints you describe seem unnecessary. Worse. In fact, it is precisely the degree to which we have always had a traditional curriculum in real-life that explains our fascination with Oprah Winfrey and Marilyn Monroe. In large part, our differences are now, and always have been, over the "what is” happening in the world of schooling not “what should.”

I believe we’ve rarely encountered in our classrooms—above all those in which the least advantaged sit—teachers who exude the authenticity, curiosity, and authority that makes Oprah so fascinating to them. And surely you can’t blame Progressive Education for the age-old fascination with fame and beauty.

More seriously: The measure of my success as a teacher is not in what I taught them, but “what they picked up on their own” afterwards that wasn’t accessible or valued before. If teachers doubt the possibility of influencing the “afterwards”, Diane, I don’t know how they can stick to it. Of course, you need to be careful of what you wish for.

What the young teacher from KIPP told me last week rings in my ears—how his practices changed when he discovered what happened to his KIPP 8th graders when they went to high school. I may have my quarrels with KIPP, but I have no quarrels with his priorities. I’m intrigued, as he is, by the way schools impact on our way of thinking, writing, speaking, tackling novel dilemmas, treating others, responding to truth claims (like the ones our mutual friend Mayor Bloomberg likes to make about NYC’s schools).

Finally, getting into the mind of the foundation leaders is beyond me. Small schools are still high on my agenda, although I worry more about the trade-offs necessitated by our rush to mandate smallness. Possibly they just see it as easier to do than changing what really goes on in that Triangle that Hawkins described. I’m fearful that the “curriculum reformers” are making a similar mistake.

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Debbie,

Words are slippery things.

Take the idea of “constructivism.” Yes, I agree with you that we all “construct” knowledge as we encounter new ideas. We try to make sense of new ideas by fitting them to what we already know, using the vocabulary and experiences that we have already accumulated. If we have a meager vocabulary—or none at all, as when we visit a foreign country and are unfamiliar with the language—and if we have no experiences that are connected to the new ideas, then we will not be able to do much constructing of knowledge.

So the job of the school becomes one of conscientiously, purposefully building the vocabulary and background knowledge of students so that they can use them dynamically to understand new ideas and enlarge their knowledge.

There is another sort of constructivism in which students are busily discovering whatever they want to discover or trying to figure out through inquiry what the teacher knows but refuses to teach them or sitting around idly because they don’t know what they feel like discovering today. This is not the sort of classroom I admire. I have never much cottoned to the idea of the teacher as a “guide on the side, rather than a sage on the stage.” I tend to like the happy medium: the teacher who has clear aims, who knows what knowledge he or she is trying to convey, and who figures out imaginative, creative, innovative ways to teach it.

I don’t think that teachers are hamstrung or hampered by knowing that the 5th grade social studies curriculum will be focused on the Colonial era in U.S. history or that in 6th grade the curriculum will be focused on the Ancient World. It would seem to me to be helpful to teachers to know, in a general way, what they are expected to teach. My own children went to a progressive school where the 5th grade every year was devoted to the study of ancient Greece. The kids loved it.

I don’t imagine any circumstances in which my “ideal curriculum” would interfere with the imagination, professionalism, or creativity of any teacher, unless he or she wanted no curriculum at all.

It troubles me when I learn of surveys where American teenagers say that Oprah Winfrey and Marilyn Monroe are among the 10 most important figures in American history. Or surveys showing that Americans select John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan as the best presidents in history. These surveys lead me to believe that people are identifying figures they have heard about or remember or saw on television, and that they actually have little or no knowledge of American history. I shudder to think how little most people know today about world affairs, world history, or geography.

I have always believed that one of the most important jobs of the schools was to provide equal, democratic access to knowledge. I confess that I do believe in the value of a fairly traditional curriculum, at least in the subjects that I know most about, history and literature. It may be that reading the writing of other students is a wonderful classroom activity, but I would hate to see kids graduate from high school and college without ever reading classic American, British, and world literature. Maybe they will pick it up on their own, but I doubt it.

I do believe that it is possible to make a distinction between more and less important knowledge, information, and skills. If there were not, how could we educate, how could we decide what to teach every day?

I recall reading a passage from John Dewey in his book "The Way Out of Educational Confusion" where he said that it was futile to establish a hierarchy of values among studies, to say that one was more valuable than another. Thus he argued that there was no reason to favor a course in zoology over a course in laundry work, since either might be narrow and confining, and either might be a source of understanding. In theory, I suppose, this might be true, but in reality, the children who were studying zoology were learning the principles of science, while those in the laundry work course were learning to wash and press clothes.

Far be it from me to take on John Dewey, let alone Deborah Meier on these subjects. We do disagree.

And yes, I think it is bizarre to mandate constructivism, as Joel Klein did in New York City. But please note that phonics is not doing fine in the New York City schools. The last time I checked, no education school in the city was even teaching phonics to future teachers, except for special ed teachers. The mandated reading program was and is “balanced literacy.” There were no gains in reading for New York City kids on NAEP over these past four and a half years in which balanced literacy was mandated.

I need your help to figure out the small school puzzle. I know that the Gates Foundation pumped a billion dollars into small high schools. In every urban district, maybe in suburban ones, too, small schools are in. For reasons I don’t understand, there seems to be a convergence between the small school movement that you pioneered and the interests of the billionaire philanthropic sector. Why? Help me understand how this happened.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

I just read a column about Sol Stern in The New York Times on why vouchers aren't the answer. I'm glad he's given up on them; alas, he has joined you in viewing a standard curriculum reform as the answer. The dilemma for me is not who is right on curriculum or phonics but with the idea of imposing either solution.

Democracy uses the tool of "majority wins" because sometimes only one decision is feasible: we either go to war or don't, build the highway or don't. But I'm a libertarian wherever I can be—like about the ways we organize knowledge, which knowledge is most important, and how best to help this or that particular human being learn. And within very broad limits, how we raise our kids. So while we can justify decisions about curriculum and pedagogy being made at any level of government, there are, I believe, strong reasons to keep these matters close to the site of learning. (Which doesn't equal "anything goes.") One reason has to do with the purpose of schooling, and the other has to do with the health of democratic life. H