Bridging Differences

Dear Diane,

I have been feeling sad during the past month. First came awareness that the health of an old colleague of mine has moved into its final stages. When she joined us at CPE 32 years ago, she was the first person my age to be my colleague. It was nice not to be a mother or mentor to someone. I learned so much from her. It's like losing a part of my own history.

Then came word of Gerald Bracey's sudden death. I was startled because his sharp-witted, clever, and yet erudite contribution to our work has been a life-saver to me over the years. Bracey's annual reports and his Phi Delta Kappan columns made me both wince and rub my hands in delight.

Then came news of Ted Sizer's death last week. I was at an AFT/NEA meeting of TURN in Washington, D.C., listening to "Arne" Duncan. (Asking us to call him Arne doesn't ring true to me—why is that?) My cell phone rang—confusion, embarrassment. Then came George Wood's words—"Ted died last night."

A week later, and it's still not believable. Can it be that he is not "there" for us, for his family, and for America's schools? But maybe that's the wrong way of thinking about it. Maybe he is still "there," but in a different way.

Ted was, first of all, a close friend—he and Nancy have been at my side on many a nerve-wracking occasion, and their home has always been open to me, as have their ideas. We met in Paris and introduced our granddaughters to each other at a lovely Paris restaurant. Mine still remembers the occasion. Was Ted a mentor? I think so, in the sense of that word that I like best. Not from the perspective of a "follower," but an aspiring colleague. His words and his actions represented the highest standard for what it was we should aspire.

That's what I mean by having standards. That is not lost.

He also met a high standard for friendship—both of a personal and collegial kind. He regularly showed up when any of us needed him—to speak to yet another chancellor or to another "ornery" school board member. He "used" his status in the most tactful way and that made all of us gain stature from him.

His patience-toleration level was much higher than mine; he would sit at meetings in which I poured forth my passionate opinions and not say a word. His face did not betray (as mine so often does) his opinion. At most, a benign and slightly amused look would on occasion pass over his features. Then, he would enter the conversation for a few minutes of laid-back words that changed the course of the discourse. I will "imagine" him at the next heated gathering I attend—and the words he might have uttered.

Whether it was at meetings or during school visits—he was a learner every second. His ears and eyes were taking in what I too often missed, or rushed by. His equanimity in the face of what would seem to be crisis situations buoyed me up. It did not appear to be the response born of naiveté or foolish optimism. We need to learn to pass this on to our colleagues in the field.

I met Ted 27 years ago. His background made me suspicious—Harvard, Andover, New England WASPS (white Anglo Saxon Protestantism). He was indeed all of these. But he took from each institution and culture what even I had to admire about them—and left the rest behind.

Ted, we shall overcome in time the obstacles facing us, and we will use the wisdom of your character and your ideas to do so. These ideas, propositions, and principles may not flourish tomorrow or even in my lifetime, as they didn't in your lifetime. But you made a huge difference in the lives of hundreds and thousands and more of us—those you taught formally and informally about how schools could be. The impact you have had can never be taken away from us. It has already changed the shape of so many schools and school people (including parents and kids). What lies at the heart of your mind and heart will persist, and persist, and never die.

Deborah

P.S.: It's interesting how different Ted Sizer and Gerald Bracey were. The gentle giant and the sharp-minded grouch. It would be a poorer world if we didn't have some of both!

P.S. 2: To add to Diane's Tuesday blog re. what the rich want for their children:
Michael Bloomberg: Spence (average class size: 16-18);
Joel Klein: Miss Porter's (average class size: 11);
Photo Anagnostopoulos (COO of NYC Education Department): Dalton (average class size: 15)
President Obama: Sidwell Friends (average class size: 15).

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

We've got to stop agreeing so much! I can't wait to read your new book so I can go into "attack mode" again. I always wonder, however, whether our disagreements are "fundamental" or based on our very different entries into the world of schooling. I think it's a bit of both. Your view that progressive education ideas became dominant at any time defied what I witnessed in schools I subbed in, sent my kids to, etc. (Even as it may well have swept the elite schools of education.) Your belief that there can be a curriculum that all could follow seems puzzling to me given what I also know about the kind of teachers and teaching you sought for your own kids, and even your reaction to CPESS. I just don't believe that if you were a classroom teacher you'd agree to follow someone's curriculum if you didn't agree with it. I'd rather impose a pedagogy than a curriculum, and you the other way around. But I suspect we both have in our head versions of each other's ideas that are not quite what the other means. We'll see.

I wonder at times what it's like to grow up in a society in which there are people whose bonuses are in the millions—many, many millions. Or annual salaries that are beyond most of our imagination in those big numbers we don't quite fathom. Surely, they can't "spend" it? But it represents the power to buy and sell ideas, information, political offices, and on and on. It unbalances the playing field beyond my wildest nightmares. And to get those bonuses when you failed—with built-in contracts that provide enormous pensions and severance pay—regardless of performance! And this from a business world that proclaims, if teachers get a few-thousand-dollar bonuses, they'd better work harder or smarter? Yes, I suppose I'd be less insulted if they offered a million to the top 10 teachers—based on anything they liked! It would be less demeaning.

If I had wanted to make a lot of money, would I have chosen to be a teacher? And to remain for 40-plus years inside the classroom and schoolhouse? I recall that when I got the MacArthur, reporters asked me whether I would now leave and do something more important. I used the money instead to support a teacher-led reform organization in NYC. (I also took my family on a vacation.) But the award was mostly important because it gained me respect—suddenly I was an "expert." Earlier, I had been invited to panels as the "voice" from the classroom, and folks from the university and the business world were there as the experts.

I was, as reader Erin notes, not looking for ways to "tweak" the system or get a few points more on test scores (which were the rage when I began teaching, too); I wanted to figure out (for myself, I suppose) what it would take to create a different life trajectory for ordinary kids. I happened to live in communities where the schools mostly served children of color, so that's where I worked, too. But the issue is broader—because the vast majority of our citizens are—I believe—poorly educated given the responsibility they possess for writing our future destiny.

I discovered, lo and behold, that what worked for the mostly rich kids who attended the independent progressive school I had gone to worked for all kids—with tweaks. If Obama, Duncan, Klein et al would send their kids to schools with small class sizes, then so should other families do the same. If their teachers had a variety of professional perks, so should ours. If their teachers had the freedom to explore new topics, to create environments that responded to children's interests and the world around them—so should it be for others.

Of course, there are more traditional elite schools—but they, too, tend to be smaller schools with smaller class sizes and they teach a full range of human endeavor—the arts, music, sports, etc. Oh, how I envied that, given my inability to give my students both the "basics" and the "extras." I made compromises that seemed immoral to me—but choices I felt we had to accept given time, budgets, and mandates.

I spent last Saturday evening with students and families who came to CPE in 1974 and many years thereafter—we now educate at CPE the children of our children—and hope to be around for their children, too. The power of their ideas—not mine or our teachers alone—was what drove the school. And it helped make it a place that adults enjoyed and were inspired by—constantly in a state of "relearning."

It could be. And, alas, the charters are in many ways less free than we were within "the system"—and most don't use what freedom they possess to be labs for the rest of us. But two quite remarkable superintendents—Anthony Alvarado and Steve Phillips—between them created a K-12 "district" larger than most cities in which school people redesigned what "regular" schooling could be. CPE was "merely" one of many—and many survive, hanging on by a thread, but determined to persist in going against the grain.

Deborah

P.S. Did I tell you about a marvelous book by Garrett Delavan, The Teacher's Attention (Temple University)? Delevan makes the case for smaller schools and smaller classes, or as he calls it "relationship load reduction." Delavan is a high school teacher in Salt Lake City.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (68) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Fair enough. The “idea” might even be good (downplaying college education and going straight for occupational education at 18), but getting from here to there is a puzzle to me, too, even if it were the right idea. Under far more egalitarian circumstances I can see how we might re-organize so that we put most of our hopes in K-12, plus lots of opportunities (like Elderhostels for less elderly people) for a widely available general education at all ages—more “school-like” settings where novices and experts gather to satisfy their curiosity.

But continually flogging the old horse isn’t going to turn it into an automobile. We simply go from one failed idea (if that isn’t often too grandiose a name for them) to another. I was watching amusing Newsreel footage from the 40s about progressive education as “the answer.” A kind of boot-camp schooling in “academics” for the young followed by 21st Century skills for adolescents seems to be latest “new” idea. At least for the masses.

The NCLB “idea”—other than the name—has obviously now failed every test under the sun, but its proponents are still high on it and I don’t see that changing very soon. Even on its own terms—standardized test scores—it has only succeeded when it can teach directly to the test of choice. On NAEP, kids have at best not lost ground for the past decade. And what kind of measure is even NAEP of an “educated” citizenry? Nor has the past decade seen improvement in graduation rates, college attendance, or college graduation rates. (See Alain Jehlen’s summary on the NEA Web site.)

It’s time at the very least to open ourselves up to some rethinking about how, where, when, and what good schooling should be about. Including reexamining some old ideas. Just as it may at last be time to reconsider the Dvorak keyboard, proposed in 1936 and adopted at the time at the University of Chicago’s Lab School. It may be that modern technology not only makes the "qwerty" keyboard passé, but the new technology may offer a way to phase the Dvorak in painlessly.

It may just be a matter of resources. After all, the richest kids go to schools with 12-15 kids per class, the poorest to 25-30 per class. Of course, the richest kids get good test scores in large classes also, if that’s our only measure of merit. Maybe we just have to make everyone rich. And yes, some of those reforms (better pay, better healthcare, etc., would help).

But if we still hold to the idea that democracy is the best form of governance, even the rich man’s school isn’t designed to teach the young a lot about sharing their power and wealth—and given the current state of America, not much about running a successful economy!

So I go back to thinking it’s a good time for folks like us to enlarge the public’s imagination about what “could be” and stop arguing about the hopelessness of the current wave of small-minded and stingy reforms being offered by the Rhees/Kleins et al of the world. More of the same isn’t going to get us anywhere much different. It’s any big sense of “possibilities” that seems missing in a lot of the current reforms—not just in education. The old “new deal” was much more refreshing than the one we seem embarked on today. It’s time to energize the discussion with some new big ideas.

We both know that on the biggest question—of human potential—Murray is dead wrong. It takes only one example to prove that point. It is no longer a matter of hope or faith for me, but experience. Although one example doesn’t demonstrate how it can be done on a larger scale.

The “other guys” have had their little experiment with our kids. It isn’t working. How can we at least open the doors again—as they were for a short period in the 80s and early 90s—for those who want to really be experimental? I had hoped that charters would at least produce some fresh ideas. In fact, constrained as they are by the same set of shabby goals (higher test scores) they’ve mostly “pioneered” only more of the same.

We agree, I think. What we’ve been calling reform for the past 15 to 20 years is not going to work, never has and never will. It’s a waste of energy to keep proving our point. Let’s move on and think about how we might release energy for exploring other paths—at least for those ready to move on. It hurts too much to be so discouraging to the many young people I meet who want to teach at the old CPESS and can’t find many places as exciting today, places that can offer them a lifetime of useful work in the company of interesting and powerful colleagues.

Let us dream with them about how they might unleash such efforts again.

Deb

P.S. Diane and others—check out Mike Rose’s latest blog for a fine summation of the “two sides” of reform—and read his books if you haven’t.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I acknowledge that I have been influenced in my thinking by my frequent exchanges with you. A friend warned me the other day that I have been giving aid and comfort to the anti-testing crowd, which he said was a terrible thing. I think he got it wrong. I am not (nor have I ever been) “anti-testing,” but I am surely more alert to the misuses and abuses of testing. To the extent that I have been sensitized to these things by you, then I thank you.

However, I am not prepared to follow you to the next step, which is to question why we “incarcerate” kids in schools at all. In my research, I have occasionally come across progressivist thinkers who asked the questions you now raise, who dream of a day when work, play, and learning all wondrously merge, and “education” takes place in the fields and the activities of daily life. I have never succumbed to the lure of abolishing institutions, especially the institutions of schooling that we have. I continue to hope that we can make them better places for learning—and you have done a good bit in your lifetime to advance that aspiration.

The “down with schools” and “liberate the child” from the classroom types have never persuaded me that children will in any way be better off if they grow up in fields and factories, if they are left to find their way without adult supervision, if they are left to the tender mercies of employers, the media, and even (in some cases) their families.

And still I fear the mantle of conformity that seems to have descended on American childhood. Last week, I wrote about the eccentric and highly accomplished Claiborne Pell, and one of our most brilliant readers, Diana Senechal, wrote to ask what happens to eccentric children today. I responded that they are probably put on Ritalin or assigned to special education. How sad! I think of my own grandchildren, whose lives are closely monitored, and compare them with my childhood, when I was free to roam far and wide on my bicycle after school, so long as I was home in time for dinner.

Is it that we live in a more dangerous time? I don’t know. But I don’t think that the obvious answer is to “de-school” children. I don’t think you will pull me along with you on that journey.

As you well know, I have done my share of complaining about the business types—and the phonies who think they are thinking like business types (when in fact they are clueless about teaching and learning and therefore lean on incentives, data, and an attitude of toughness to mask their ignorance of curriculum and instruction). Nonetheless, I share their expressed concern about improving the achievement and knowledge of our nation’s children. As a nation, I do believe we will be helped or harmed in the future by the way we educate our children today.

Where I part company with today’s so-called reformers is that they think that test scores alone are adequate measures of “achievement.” I, however, do not. I hope for the day when schools are expected to teach not only reading and math but history, geography, science, the arts, literature, civics, and a foreign language, and to attend to students’ health and personal development. To me, such a rounded approach to education seems self-evident. It is what the “best and wisest” among us want for our own children. I wonder why our society is so willing to listen to the small-minded “reformers” who are willing to inflict on other people’s children what they would never tolerate for their own?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Actually, I do not now nor ever have believed that teachers of K-12 schools could create a new social order. It's neither accurate nor healthy for us to think that's our job.

A minor clarification: You write: “no matter whether schools are progressive or traditional (are there any such??)… "

I was wondering if the parenthesis meant you weren’t sure there were any progressive, traditional, or either of the two! If you recall that was one of our very long ago and far away arguments—my contention that progressive education had barely ever been tried in urban public schools. But I suppose that in your sense of “the traditional”, there probably weren’t a lot of those either. A new thought for me!

It is interesting when we seem to switch sides. John (a reader of ours) also thinks I switched sides. I don’t think I ever believed schools could build a better or a new social order. I think Counts was wrong in 1932, and many of my best friends are wrong today. But schools can help or hinder in creating the changes and sustaining them.

But yes, schools can and do impact on how our youth see themselves and society. So I want the impact to be on behalf of intellectual independence and feistiness. I don’t think that in this kind of period we’re prepared to have many such schools, or consistently move in a direction that allows for their long-term sustainability. I also think that while “good enough” schools would take various forms, they would need to be staffed by strong-minded and independently powerful adults, who join with parents and students to create respectful, trusting communities of learners. This assumes a form of “trust” that powerful people are far from feeling toward “ordinary” people, and “ordinary” people are far from feeling toward those different from themselves. And both for reasons I can’t magically mandate an end to.

That’s where I have changed since my revolutionary youth. I still want that “revolution”—but it can’t lead to a fairer, more democratic, and less fearful future unless it comes about at a pace that accords with the culture of its citizens. That means schools must include “the street” and the “popular culture” if they are to influence it. I’m not an optimist about the chances, but I think it’s worth a try.

At a time when failed business leaders get raises worth millions, while principals are offered a pittance for meeting so-called “bottom lines,” it’s hard to take reform rhetoric too seriously.

Meanwhile, let’s you and I play with the range of “overarching” agreements that might allow for the degree of incompatibility that is actually out there to coexist. Some examples are perhaps intended to seem absurd and I may—over time—decide I don’t agree with them all:

(1) That regardless of what other purposes schools serve they must justify their curriculum choices and assessment systems (at a minimum) as serving to prepare young people for the day they become eligible voters, jurors, and full-scale members of the larger political society.

(2) That for this and other purposes (e.g. employment and enjoyment of life) every one should have a basic level of competence (maybe something like Seymour Papert’s definition of fluency that I’ll describe at another time) in reading, writing, speaking, arithmetic, basic algebra, and statistics/probability. Can we agree on a single measure for defining and assessing this? No, but maybe we can agree on a set of ways?

(3) That all schools demonstrate that students have had a variety of opportunities to explore deeply at least one field of science, with a focus on understanding the nature of science. But that we not try to mandate any course specifics or define levels of competence. That should be left close to the action.

(4) That all schools engage in a study of the foundations and underlying assumptions of a democratic polity, the U.S. Constitution, its origins, the trade-offs, balances/tensions, and how they are reflected in contemporary politics; plus, familiarity with alternate systems of democratic and undemocratic governance. Again, with the details and assessment left to those closest to the students.

(5) That provisions exist in every locality for students to have access at public expense to public schools or programs that provide for a deeper and heavier focus on one or more specialization, where doing so does not impact on racial or class segregation.

(6) Importantly: That the public system provide after-school, summer and, above all, post-graduate educational experiences for all citizens so that the ideal of “life-long learning” is available at any and all ages at a modest fee or none! Let’s stop trying to ram everything into kids by age 18.

(7) And finally, that the details of such arrangements be overseen by publicly selected laymen—oops, off topic.**

I hope these provoke and outrage. But it’s a starting point for us, Diane.

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | 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,

You are so right—both about language misuse and the idea that we need to pay teachers, parents and kids for test scores! We may disagree a bit on the vocational ed issue—more on that at a later time. I'm going to digress for a long moment (1,000 words) to respond to some of our readers' inquiries and arguments. Readers are urged to go to the comment section (see below) and read them yourselves, and then add your two cents—or more.

Thought one. I asked Erin Johnson to give me countries (excluding city-states like Hong Kong and Singapore) that consistently outperformed the US. Here's the list: Finland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands and Korea.

Erin says this is based on 2000 and 2003 test scores. Of course, we are assuming that the data is trustworthy: that all populations are included, that approximately the same percentage of students are still in school at the age at which the tests are given, that the translations are equally good etc, etc. Also, one needs to believe that such test are measuring more than I think they do. But still…. (Note “Instructivist”: even thermometers are not always a reliable way to tell if you are sick.)

Interestingly, in that list of six, all are very small compared to the USA and, except for Korea (I assume South Korea), they are (to the best of my knowledge) all advanced welfare states (compared to the USA) in terms of health care, etc. Income differentials are also less extreme. This might mean that tests are measuring other qualities that indirectly affect schooling. (See article by Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein in The American Prospect, October 2007). Rothstein also comments that differences may be real but small. The top 15 may all differ by a few more or less questions right. Also, just which of these—surely not all?—outperform our economy?

Two. Any nasty cracks about lawyers, businessmen and 22-year-olds running NYC's Department of Education—which several readers chided us for—are not an attack on any of these categories of people. It's just that while I wouldn't feel comfortable if I were asked to be in charge of responding to the current banking crisis or reorganizing legal training, I'm troubled at how comfortable lawyers and bankers are at making decisions in my field. I think my opinions on both business and law are worth hearing—and I'm glad to hear theirs on K-12 schooling. But I shudder to realize that they are literally "in charge" of it. They fail both the vision and experience test for being “president” of schooling.

Three. Now for the fascinating issue that Daniel Polansky raised, and which perhaps Cal was also suggesting. That there is something unreal about my claiming that all (or almost all) students can engage in "high level" thinking. You've got me, Daniel! I fell into the trap of using a short-cut phrase I actually hate, and for just the reason Daniel aptly notes. If there's a "high," it's only because there's a "low." It's the dilemma we face whenever we insist on comparative terminology. No matter how fast the kids get in line to come in from recess there will also be exactly the same number at the end of the line—one. And one at the front, and so on and so forth.

What we have grown accustomed to calling "high level thinking"—and which somehow most rich kids are assumed to possess—is the smarts to think "abstractly," to be interested and able to be playful about abstract ideas, to pursue puzzling anomalies with curiosity and tenacity, to find the world interesting and to wonder "how come" and "so what"? (And to feel entitled to be taken seriously.)

Properly taught we can all be far more musical than we realize. Some will even have a knack that places them on a very different level of "play”—giftedness. But there's no basic divide between folks who are good with “their hands" vs. "their heads." Read Mike Rose's "The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker." There is no doubt that I was smarter and wiser than the 5-year-olds in my class—but there were “abstract” observations that my students made that pushed me intellectually. They weren't being "cute," they were playing with ideas that pushed my adult thinking, to a “higher level"? Read my first book, "The Power of Their Ideas," for more on this subject. I could go on forever. But it's a capacity that is insufficiently exercised in our schools, even for kids at the top of the socioeconomic ladder.

So much of our language leads us to make unnecessary comparisons that lead us into shallow traps. Like Daniel, I've been annoyed at the rhetoric of "all children can learn." It's an incomplete sentence. A good sound bite. But, learn what? Mice learn, too. It turns out they, too, learn how to behave—get in line, raise their paws, walk silently through the maze, etc.

I am arguing that virtually all humans can learn the same "kind" of stuff that rich kids do. (The rich can learn more, too!) But, yes, it takes a different kind of setting than the one I sadly see in most of our schools. Too often, elementary school is not a place where children can explore ideas and make powerful observations. Few are the schools in which “Ignorance” (like disagreement) is prized. It used to drive me crazy how kids who couldn't be dragged away from an activity that fascinated them at age 5 were considered ADD, unable to sit still and learn a year later. Ever wonder why parents in so many schools greet their children at 3 p.m. with questions about whether they were "good" in school today?

Given the reality of life, can we get kids to learn all the things we want them to by 18? But 18 is only about 1/5 of our life span. I only got interested in math at the age of 35. Big deal. But what I never doubted was that I was smart enough to do some things well and smart enough to join most of the conversations that would shape the future.

That's the strand in "progressive" education that appealed to me.

Diane?

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

I’m reminded that for 50 years the USSR claimed to be a democracy (and its rulers socialists), and so did England (for some of that time), Sweden, and … Dewey. In other words, studying the common roots of progressivism historically is valuable, yet it leads us only so far—it risks lumping together disparate meanings and movements. That does not negate the value of books (like yours) that try to track their common and uncommon histories. It’s well to remember that Progressive was a word used by Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, the inventors of standardized testing, populists, both the leaders of industry and early labor union leaders—including some virulent racists, xenophobics, etc. But it’s also critical to make distinctions in talking about this disparate group.

By this same measure, of course, all of western civilization—including the history of the term democracy—has to be read keeping in mind the racial and class biases embedded in their usage.

Even the progressive schools that most closely allied with Dewey’s ideas in education had very different interpretations of how best to implement them. Partly because they were fascinated by different concerns, partly because their kids and families and communities were different, the worlds around them differed, and the knowledge base about human learning didn’t stay the same. And yes! Virtually all of the schools of the pre-WWII era—including both progressive and traditional—were infected with racism and class’ism in ways that seem shocking to us today, as well as what I guess I might call, “smart’ism.” Many of those private schools weren’t then nor now open to all kids, not even all rich white kids, but only to rich white so-called academically smart ones.

I shall reread “Left Back”. I think I got so mad at some points that I began to skim it. Did you do the same with mine? But I read, as you know, with some praise and criticism, other works of yours. It’s worth also re-reading the work of those who tried to introduce progressive (in my sense) ideas into settings for poor and working-class kids—Maria Montessori, the work of Leonard Covello in East Harlem, the accounts of early freedom schools in the south, a wonderful book called “The Boys of Barbiano”.

Re Charters and Bobbitt—I was only responding to the quote you included. Their claim that if we require the young to study “academics” for 12 years we need to defend its utility seems reasonable. To be “useful” does not need to mean that it can immediately be put to use to get rich, powerful, or famous.

It is no more obvious (or realistic) to assume that all kids must be masters (proficient) at history than masters of the piano (after 8 years of study I failed to come close to mastery in the latter). I’m inclined (some days) to think playing an instrument, even at a merely beginner's level, should be expected of any educated person! Or the visual arts? Or carpentry? Choices must be made. Should it be the same choice for all—regardless of interests, talents, etc?

We probably disagree whether shoemaking—if not exclusively taught to poor and black children—might be as intellectually enlightening (see the Sizer chapter on a high school shop class) as the vast majority of academic courses. When I watch my landscape gardener introduce her interns to the field of gardening I am listening to someone with an acute appreciation of “the habits of mind” I described last Monday. I’m less concerned about exposure to a “common core” than exposure to good intellectual habits rigorously applied to all worthwhile tasks or studies.

Re Summerhill?? I intended to distinguish progressive ed from Summerhill—as far from what Dewey meant as scripted learning is—in opposite directions. My colleague Ted Chittenden, formerly at ETS, maps it out into four quadrants. The two axes represent student initiative and adult initiative. He puts traditional education in the quadrant where adults take initiative and kids don’t, Summerhill where kids do and adults don’t, scripted lessons in the quadrant where neither kids nor teachers do, and progressive education where both do.

It’s intriguing to consider that my progressive forebears were probably closer to your views on testing than mine. My disagreement is far from, as you call it, “out of hand”. I held standardized tests in high regard until I tried them out on the real kids I worked with (including my own kids)—about which I wrote at length in both Dissent (1981) and “In Schools We Trust”. My subsequent research in the field amazed me; and like many of the most distinguished testing experts alive today, I concluded that they do not measure what they are purported to measure and contain inevitable bias. If they were simply used as another piece of interesting evidence, and not prepped for, they could add to our knowledge (especially for large populations versus individuals). But for the past 35 years we’ve been misusing them to the point at which they literally mislead us.

I’d argue that no exams—even our wonderful Portfolios at CPESS (or NYU PhD exams)—are ever more than a clue, sound but inconclusive evidence. Even the driver’s road test is just a small sample of the full range of what it means to be a decent driver. This may be part of a larger personal/philosophical disagreement, Diane than a debatable one. You suggest that “it is because we disagree about progressivism—even in its most exalted form—that we disagree about other particulars”. Maybe it’s the other way around! It’s teasing these out that makes our dialogue interesting to me.

On another front, it’s thought-provoking to notice what kind of schooling issues seem to require zero “scientific proof”. Clearly NCLB is an example of an untested experiment being carried out on all of America’s public school children. And Klein’s various reorganization schemes are another grand untested experiment. The NY Times reported this week that both the Gates and Broad Foundations are pumping $60 million into politicking for their untested theories: national policy dictating longer school days, a national curriculum and teachers paid on the basis of their students’ test performance.

It would be fun if more of our readers would weigh in on these issues! There’s a space somewhere for comments: readers, use it!

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

You choose to set aside the "complex idea of nomenclature," but I don't. Not out of orneriness, but because I wrote a book about the varieties of progressivism, as did Lawrence Cremin ("The Transformation of the School"). Educators who saw themselves in the mainstream of progressivism, and who at the time were acknowledged as such, were responsible for the advent and mass production of standardized testing and intelligence testing; for tracking of students into academic and vocational education; and for such extremes as "life adjustment education," where the intellectual stuff was withheld from all but about 20 percent of the students.

You would prefer to stick with only the form of progressivism identified with Dewey's Lab School, and I can understand why. Dewey's Lab School, the Lincoln School, and the Dalton School had a wonderful curriculum, not a Summerhill approach at all. I spent quite a lot of time getting very excited about what was happening in those schools, but it did not pass my notice that the Lab School at the University of Chicago in Dewey's brief time had about 4 students for each adult, and that the students were the children of university faculty and other professionals. Their families were white and professional. Nor were the Dalton School or the Lincoln School (where I believe the student body included children of the Rockefeller family) known for their economic, cultural or racial diversity.

Since I am writing from a hotel computer while on travel, I don't have my books nearby, but I do recall that all of these private "experimental" schools had a wonderful, rich, coherent academic curriculum, augmented by lively hands-on activities and projects, taught by top-notch teachers to very small classes. The children were not doing whatever they wanted to do. Teachers today would have a great time reading a description of the courses at the Dewey school, as described in a book called "The Dewey School" by two of its teachers.

If you don't see anything wrong with the curriculum analyses and recommendations of W.W. Charters and John Franklin Bobbitt, then you need to read some of their studies and proposals. They were as far from the Dewey tradition as one could imagine. Bobbitt, in particular, was an efficiency expert who tried to do a cost-benefit analysis for every course, and concluded that there was nothing to be gained by teaching much more than vocational studies.

I think you never read my book "Left Back," which looks at the ideas of these guys rather closely. Consider along with them the work of their fellow "progressive" Thomas Jesse Jones, widely credited as the founder of the social studies. As a teacher, he introduced the first program in "social studies" at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, a school for native Americans and black students. His idea of social studies was that it would prepare students to assume their future role in society, learning about their place in society (and not aspiring far above it). Jones (who was white and a social worker) prepared a massive federal study of black schools in the South (it may be found in major libraries, titled "Negro Education"). In that survey, which was used by philanthropists deciding what to do about the condition of black education, Jones complained repeatedly about black parents and communities who wanted the wrong kind of education for their children; he complained about schools that were giving their students an academic education and insisted that they should be realistic and should align themselves with "modern," "progressive" education that emphasizes practical skills like making bricks, domestic service, shoeing horses, matwork, canning, and other occupations that were then open to black workers. W.E.B. DuBois referred to Jones' survey as "dangerous" and "sinister."

And I can't let John Dewey off the hook altogether. If you go back and re-read his "Schools of To-Morrow" (1915), you will find a chapter praising a segregated black school in Indianapolis that was teaching its students how to be shoemakers. That chapter, surrounded by descriptions of schools where children were doing exciting, mind-opening explorations, is an embarrassment. And it reminds me how many progressive educators thought that vocationalism was the same as progressivism.

I love your emphasis on learning how to think, thinking about evidence and its credibility, looking for patterns, etc. I associate this approach with you and Ted Sizer. This is NOT, however, what I associate with Summerhill. As you know, A.S. Neill said again and again that children should get lessons only when they wanted lessons. If they didn't want them, it was okay with him. He reveled in the fact that some children in his "school" went for years without a lesson. Forgive me, but I think that the Meier/Sizer strand of progressivism is not only different from Summerhill, but suffers embarrassment when linked with Summerhill. Summerhill is the form of progressivism that is the basis for the New Yorker cartoon where a child plaintively asks his teacher, "Do we have to do what we want to do today?"

So, yes, we continue to agree and disagree. We may never actually "bridge our differences," but it helps to air them.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Amen. Right on target. And well said, to boot.

So, let's leave Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg for a while, although it's hard to do. The amazing thing is—as you note—the complete lack of accountability behind their schemes. Like many a revolutionary the object seems to be to ensure that the past is smashed and cannot be put together again, in the hopes that something new and glorious will emerge out of the ashes. The only hint we have about the "new" is that it should be market driven, "competitive", and rest largely on test scores—or whatever some future Mayor chooses to believe in?

Enough on them for a moment.

Let's go back to your earlier critique of progressive education, and then, another day to the idea of a national curriculum and assessment system.

Let's take it more slowly—separating for the moment the complex idea of nomenclature (the history of the word progressive—which has meant so many different things to so many different people)—from the form of progressivism largely identified with John Dewey's efforts, and those of his "ilk". It includes the interesting crowd that gathered around schools like Chicago's Lab School, Lincoln, Parker, Dalton, Ethical Culture and Bank Street, founded to think through the connections between democracy and education. A concept of progressivism central also to the work of Jean Piaget, the post WW II Infant School movement in England, Ted Sizer, etc. There's a strong and common thread that runs through this list. It borrows probably from both traditional ideas and those that grew out of what's sometimes called "free schools" (Summerhill, etc). Schools inclined to Dewey's form of "progressivism" were seeking classrooms and schools that were simultaneously highly respectful of teacher and adult initiative and judgment, and the importance of the child initiative and judgment (what was called in early-childhood-education jargon—the agency of the child.) Probably, too, these were school people with a foot in academia and another foot in the social and political movements of their time.

This tradition contrasts to equally "innovative" reform efforts that script both teachers and kids—which seem popular again these days. Some reformers saw teacher and kid as empty vessels, some one, some the other, and some neither. (Even those who saw children as empty vessels often wanted to fill them with different things.)

The question Dewey asked was: What must we do to prepare the young for a society that proclaims everyone a member of the ruling class, that rests on the fragile and new idea that being a citizen is every one's vocation? Does this simply translate into claiming that every member of the ruling class needs to become an academic expert, or that whatever the small ruling classes of the 19th Century taught their male young is right (only now for everyone)? You refer, I suspect (?) disapprovingly, to a Charters and a Bobbitt who wanted to replace academics with "activities and tasks that would be useful in the adult world." What concerns you with that Bobbit/Charters aim?

What's wrong with demanding of Academics that they persuade us of their utility? Alas, when parents and average citizens applaud the importance of academic subjects it's generally because they misunderstand (confusing them with the 3 Rs), or because they fatalistically accept the proposition that it's a game that must be played in order to get a diploma, which in turn is a license to pursue utterly unacademic ends. There is no love affair between the American public and "the academy"—as Bush (like many a past politician) takes pains to remind us. I want a love affair.

The American public has, I contend, always viewed "academics" in one of the three ways I heard it used on the radio on my way to the airport. (Once again the car is one of my favorite solitary think tanks.) One time it was used to mean irrelevant—no longer pertinent, once it was used to mean boring, and finally to mean obtuse.

You and I have a much higher regard for academia, its history, traditions and importance; you are an eminent member of the academy.

I make a distinction between being academic and being intellectual, "smart", etc. And since I believe that "all children" rhetoric, I assume human beings with some exceptions are all potential intellectuals, but not all potential academics (or all any other form of "smarts"—except a common "citizen" smarts.) Fortunately, one can embrace multiple smarts. I think all citizens should be people who accept responsibility for their ideas and who, on the whole, enjoy the responsibility. This includes the "play of ideas" which does not always take academic forms.

The "five habits of mind" (see below) were a rough, unfinished attempt to get at what such "play" might look like at some Sizer-led schools. These "habits were an effort to describe the essential responses of adults in their vocation of citizenship (and, fortunately, useful for a lot else as well). Such habits were, as Sizer noted in "Horace's Compromise" (1985), better exercised in the shop class he described and not at all in most high school academic courses he observed.

I've a lot to say about why having a national course of study and national exams to go with them are a bad idea, some of which flows from the preceding. But, first, let's see where we part company on this description of progressivism.

(It's eminently clear that Bloomberg and Klein are counting on NYC citizens not exercising such habits of mind, for example.)

Best,

Deborah

p.s. Briefly, the five habits that defined "using one's mind well" in some of the Coalition "progressive" schools are summed up as follows. Being in the habit, whenever confronting something of interest and importance, of asking:

(1) How do we know what's true or not true? How credible is our evidence?
(2) Is there an alternate story? Perspective? How might this look from another viewpoint?
(3) Is there a connection between x and y? A pattern? Have I come across this before?
(4) What if... supposing that…? Could it have been otherwise if x not y had intervened?
(5) And finally, "who cares"? Does it matter? (And, perhaps, to whom?)

Posted by Deborah Meier at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)