Editor: Here is a slightly different version of our post below about Bill Ayers. In it, he asks followers to sign and forward a petition to President Obama. In it he recommends that the President appoint Linda Darling-Hammond as Secretary of State. The petition currently has 810 signatures. A link follows the post.
Argues Ayers:
It is time to set American education on that course, and a strong step in that direction would be appointing Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond as Secretary of Education. A teacher and recognized scholar/researcher for decades, Dr.Darling-Hammond will not be swayed by big money or political expediency or the latest fads. She will be independent, professional and principled. We can then return to the precious but fragile ideal that must power education in a democracy: Every human being is of incalculable value, and the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each.
Here is the full version:
President Obama: Replace Arne Duncan with Linda Darling-Hammond
By Bill Ayers
Dear Mr. President:
You and Secretary Arne Duncan-endorsed in your efforts by Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a host of reactionary politicians and pundits-now bear a major responsibility for a toxic agenda of "school reform."
The three most trumpeted and simultaneously most destructive aspects of the united "school reform" agenda are these:
1) turning over public assets and spaces to private management;
2) dismantling and opposing any independent, collective voice of teachers; and
3) reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score.
While there's absolutely no substantive proof that this approach improves schooling for children, it chugs along unfazed. Race to the Top is but one example of incentivizing bad behavior and backward ideas about education:
It's one state against another, this school against that one, and my second grade in fierce competition with the second grade across the hall.
Arne Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (as did our three sons); you sent your kids to Lab, and so did your friend Rahm Emanuel. There students found small classes, abundant resources, and opportunities to experiment and explore, ask questions and pursue answers to the far limits, and a minimum of time-out for standardized testing. They found, as well, a respected and unionized teacher corps, people who were committed to a life-long career in teaching and who were encouraged to work cooperatively for their mutual benefit (and who never would settle for being judged, assessed, rewarded, or punished based on student test scores).
In a vibrant democracy, whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children. Every child deserves the type of education your children receive.
It is time to set American education on that course, and a strong step in that direction would be appointing Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond as Secretary of Education. A teacher and recognized scholar/researcher for decades, Dr.
Darling-Hammond will not be swayed by big money or political expediency or the latest fads. She will be independent, professional and principled. We can then return to the precious but fragile ideal that must power education in a democracy: Every human being is of incalculable value, and the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each.
That's why I created a petition to President Barack Obama, which says:
"Mr. President: Prove your support for a deep and rich curriculum for all students regardless of circumstance or background. Fire Arne Duncan and appoint Linda Darling-Hammond as Secretary of Education. "
Will you sign my petition? Click here to add your name:
http://signon.org/sign/president-obama-replace-1?source=c.fwd
http://signon.org/sign/president-obama-replace-1?source=c.fwd&r_by=4535475&r_by=4535475
Thanks!
William Ayers
Showing posts with label democratic education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democratic education. Show all posts
Monday, November 19, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Bill Ayers’ Open Letter to President Obama
Editor: Readers will remember an article in an earlier issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy by Bill Ayers, entitled, “Singing in Dark Times.” The letter below has been circulating on the web with requests to interested readers to forward it on to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In his critique of the administration's direction for educational reform, Ayers points out three areas that have become particularly toxic and destructive for an education required for sustaining democratic life.
Writes Ayers:
Dear President Obama: Congratulations!
I’m sure this is a moment you want to savor, a time to take a deep breath, get some rest, hydrate, regain your balance, and take a long walk in the sunshine. It might be as well a good time to reflect, rethink, recharge, and perhaps reignite. I sincerely hope that it is, and I urge you to put education on your reflective agenda.
The landscape of “educational reform” is currently littered with rubble and ruin and wreckage on all sides. Sadly, your administration has contributed significantly to the mounting catastrophe. You’re not alone: The toxic materials have been assembled as a bipartisan endeavor over many years, and the efforts of the last several administrations are now organized into a coherent push mobilized and led by a merry band of billionaires including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Walton, and Eli Broad.
Whether inept or clueless or malevolent—who’s to say?—these titans have worked relentlessly to take up all the available space, preaching, persuading, promoting, and, when all else fails, spreading around massive amounts of cash to promote their particular brand of school change as common sense. You and Secretary Arne Duncan—endorsed in your efforts by Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a host of reactionary politicians and pundits—now bear a major responsibility for that agenda.
The three most trumpeted and simultaneously most destructive aspects of the united “school reform” agenda are these: turning over public assets and spaces to private management; dismantling and opposing any independent, collective voice of teachers; and reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score. While there’s absolutely no substantive proof that this approach improves schooling for children, it chugs along unfazed—fact-free, faith-based reform at its core, resting firmly on rank ideology rather than any evidence whatsoever.
The three pillars of this agenda are nested in a seductive but wholly inaccurate metaphor: Education is a commodity like any other—a car or a refrigerator, a box of bolts or a screwdriver—that is bought and sold in the marketplace. Within this controlling metaphor the schoolhouse is assumed to be a business run by a CEO, with teachers as workers and students as the raw material bumping along the assembly line while information is incrementally stuffed into their little up-turned heads.
It’s rather easy to begin to think that “downsizing” the least productive units, “outsourcing” and “privatizing” a space that was once public, is a natural event. Teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the “outcomes” (winners and losers) becomes a rational proxy for learning; “zero tolerance” for student misbehavior turns out to be a stand-in for child development or justice; and a range of sanctions on students, teachers, and schools—but never on lawmakers, foundations, corporations, or high officials (they call it “accountability")—is logical and level-headed.
I urge you to resist these policies and reject the dominant metaphor as wrong in the sense of inaccurate as well as wrong in the sense of immoral.
Education is a fundamental human right, not a product. In a free society education is based on a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being; it’s constructed on the principle that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each, and, conversely, that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all. Further, while schooling in every totalitarian society on earth foregrounds obedience and conformity, education in a democracy emphasizes initiative, courage, imagination, and entrepreneurship in order to encourage students to develop minds of their own.
When the aim of education and the sole measure of success is competitive, learning becomes exclusively selfish, and there is no obvious social motive to pursue it. People are turned against one another as every difference becomes a potential deficit. Getting ahead is the primary goal in such places, and mutual assistance, which can be so natural in other human affairs, is severely restricted or banned. It’s no wonder that cheating scandals are rampant in our country and fraudulent claims are commonplace.
Race to the Top is but one example of incentivizing bad behavior and backward ideas about education as the Secretary of Education begins to look and act like a program officer for some charity rather than the leading educator for all children: It’s one state against another, this school against that one, and my second grade in fierce competition with the second grade across the hall.
You have opposed privatizing social security, pointing out the terrible risks the market would impose on seniors if the voucher plan were ever adopted. And yet you’ve supported—in effect—putting the most endangered young people at risk through a similar scheme. We need to expand, deepen, and fortify the public space, especially for the most vulnerable, not turn it over to private managers. The current gold rush of for-profit colleges gobbling up student loans is but one cautionary tale.
You’ve said that you defend working people and their right to organize and yet you have publicly and noisily maligned teachers and their unions on several occasions. You need to consider that good working conditions are good teaching conditions, and that good teaching conditions are good learning conditions. We can’t have the best learning conditions if teachers are forced away from the table, or if the teaching corps is reduced to a team of short-termers and school tourists.
You have declared your support for a deep and rich curriculum for all students regardless of circumstance or background, and yet your policies rely on a relentless regimen of standardized testing, and test scores as the sole measure of progress.
You should certainly pause and reconsider. What’s done is done, but you can demonstrate wisdom and true leadership if you pull back now and correct these dreadful mistakes.
In a vibrant democracy, whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children. Arne Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (as did our three sons); you sent your kids to Lab, and so did your friend Rahm Emanuel. There students found small classes, abundant resources, and opportunities to experiment and explore, ask questions and pursue answers to the far limits, and a minimum of time-out for standardized testing. They found, as well, a respected and unionized teacher corps, people who were committed to a life-long career in teaching and who were encouraged to work cooperatively for their mutual benefit (and who never would settle for being judged, assessed, rewarded, or punished based on student test scores).
Good enough for you, good enough for the privileged, then it must be good enough for the kids in public schools everywhere—a standard to be aspired to and worked toward. Any other ideal for our schools, in the words of John Dewey who founded the school you chose for your daughters, “is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy.”
Sincerely,
William Ayers
Writes Ayers:
The three most trumpeted and simultaneously most destructive aspects of the united “school reform” agenda are these: turning over public assets and spaces to private management; dismantling and opposing any independent, collective voice of teachers; and reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score.We thought our readers would be interested in reading Professor Ayers’ most recent post.
An Open Letter to President Obama from Bill Ayers
By William Ayers
Dear President Obama: Congratulations!
I’m sure this is a moment you want to savor, a time to take a deep breath, get some rest, hydrate, regain your balance, and take a long walk in the sunshine. It might be as well a good time to reflect, rethink, recharge, and perhaps reignite. I sincerely hope that it is, and I urge you to put education on your reflective agenda.
The landscape of “educational reform” is currently littered with rubble and ruin and wreckage on all sides. Sadly, your administration has contributed significantly to the mounting catastrophe. You’re not alone: The toxic materials have been assembled as a bipartisan endeavor over many years, and the efforts of the last several administrations are now organized into a coherent push mobilized and led by a merry band of billionaires including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Walton, and Eli Broad.
Whether inept or clueless or malevolent—who’s to say?—these titans have worked relentlessly to take up all the available space, preaching, persuading, promoting, and, when all else fails, spreading around massive amounts of cash to promote their particular brand of school change as common sense. You and Secretary Arne Duncan—endorsed in your efforts by Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a host of reactionary politicians and pundits—now bear a major responsibility for that agenda.
The three most trumpeted and simultaneously most destructive aspects of the united “school reform” agenda are these: turning over public assets and spaces to private management; dismantling and opposing any independent, collective voice of teachers; and reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score. While there’s absolutely no substantive proof that this approach improves schooling for children, it chugs along unfazed—fact-free, faith-based reform at its core, resting firmly on rank ideology rather than any evidence whatsoever.
The three pillars of this agenda are nested in a seductive but wholly inaccurate metaphor: Education is a commodity like any other—a car or a refrigerator, a box of bolts or a screwdriver—that is bought and sold in the marketplace. Within this controlling metaphor the schoolhouse is assumed to be a business run by a CEO, with teachers as workers and students as the raw material bumping along the assembly line while information is incrementally stuffed into their little up-turned heads.
It’s rather easy to begin to think that “downsizing” the least productive units, “outsourcing” and “privatizing” a space that was once public, is a natural event. Teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the “outcomes” (winners and losers) becomes a rational proxy for learning; “zero tolerance” for student misbehavior turns out to be a stand-in for child development or justice; and a range of sanctions on students, teachers, and schools—but never on lawmakers, foundations, corporations, or high officials (they call it “accountability")—is logical and level-headed.
I urge you to resist these policies and reject the dominant metaphor as wrong in the sense of inaccurate as well as wrong in the sense of immoral.
Education is a fundamental human right, not a product. In a free society education is based on a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being; it’s constructed on the principle that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each, and, conversely, that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all. Further, while schooling in every totalitarian society on earth foregrounds obedience and conformity, education in a democracy emphasizes initiative, courage, imagination, and entrepreneurship in order to encourage students to develop minds of their own.
When the aim of education and the sole measure of success is competitive, learning becomes exclusively selfish, and there is no obvious social motive to pursue it. People are turned against one another as every difference becomes a potential deficit. Getting ahead is the primary goal in such places, and mutual assistance, which can be so natural in other human affairs, is severely restricted or banned. It’s no wonder that cheating scandals are rampant in our country and fraudulent claims are commonplace.
Race to the Top is but one example of incentivizing bad behavior and backward ideas about education as the Secretary of Education begins to look and act like a program officer for some charity rather than the leading educator for all children: It’s one state against another, this school against that one, and my second grade in fierce competition with the second grade across the hall.
You have opposed privatizing social security, pointing out the terrible risks the market would impose on seniors if the voucher plan were ever adopted. And yet you’ve supported—in effect—putting the most endangered young people at risk through a similar scheme. We need to expand, deepen, and fortify the public space, especially for the most vulnerable, not turn it over to private managers. The current gold rush of for-profit colleges gobbling up student loans is but one cautionary tale.
You’ve said that you defend working people and their right to organize and yet you have publicly and noisily maligned teachers and their unions on several occasions. You need to consider that good working conditions are good teaching conditions, and that good teaching conditions are good learning conditions. We can’t have the best learning conditions if teachers are forced away from the table, or if the teaching corps is reduced to a team of short-termers and school tourists.
You have declared your support for a deep and rich curriculum for all students regardless of circumstance or background, and yet your policies rely on a relentless regimen of standardized testing, and test scores as the sole measure of progress.
You should certainly pause and reconsider. What’s done is done, but you can demonstrate wisdom and true leadership if you pull back now and correct these dreadful mistakes.
In a vibrant democracy, whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children. Arne Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (as did our three sons); you sent your kids to Lab, and so did your friend Rahm Emanuel. There students found small classes, abundant resources, and opportunities to experiment and explore, ask questions and pursue answers to the far limits, and a minimum of time-out for standardized testing. They found, as well, a respected and unionized teacher corps, people who were committed to a life-long career in teaching and who were encouraged to work cooperatively for their mutual benefit (and who never would settle for being judged, assessed, rewarded, or punished based on student test scores).
Good enough for you, good enough for the privileged, then it must be good enough for the kids in public schools everywhere—a standard to be aspired to and worked toward. Any other ideal for our schools, in the words of John Dewey who founded the school you chose for your daughters, “is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy.”
Sincerely,
William Ayers
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
What is Public about Public Education: Jim Strickland's Thoughts to the National League of Democratic Schools
Editor: Jim Strickland has been a long-time believer in an education for sustaining democratic life. He is also the former regional coordinator for the Western region of the National League of Democratic Schools and a special education teacher in Washington State. Jim has written several posts for us in the past and also has written for Dick Clark's blog, Community and Education, that we talked about in the memorial to Dick below. We welcome Jim's latest reflections on "Citizenship as Education," and thank him for his permission to reprint it here. Jim writes that it was a response to his reading of Benjamin Barber's Strong Democracy, and believes that "Barber's participatory understanding of democracy and citizenship provides a powerful context for our work in education." The National League of Democratic Schools in which the journal participates has become richer because of the work of both Jim and Dick.
The term “public education” can be understood in a couple of different ways. One common meaning is related to its funding source. Public education is education that is publicly funded, as in our public schools and other publicly financed educational programs.
Another meaning of public education, however, is related to its primary purpose. In this view, public education refers to our intentional efforts to create a public – that is, a body of citizens who have the inclination and the capacity to participate in the ongoing and responsible practice of self-government. This broader understanding of public education encompasses the work done by our public schools, but extends far beyond them to include the institutions and political, economic, and social structures of the larger community.
This kind of public education – citizenship education – is a community responsibility. And, as is the case with other types of learning, it is best learned by doing. In other words, the best way to become a true citizen is in the actual practice of citizenship. Citizenship is its own education. And to make this education possible, it is our job as a community to ensure that real opportunities for citizen participation are widely and continuously available, known to the community, and actively supported.
So what does the practice of citizenship look like? I like to think of citizenship as simply doing my part to make my community work. And in a democracy, that means participating at some level in the practice of self-government. Voting, yes, but much more than that. Democracy can be understood as a continuous process of mutual transformation. It is a respectful “give and take” that results in beneficial growth to all those involved.
And this process is driven by, more than anything else, ongoing and thoughtful dialogue. Yes, the foundation of democracy is the very human act of just talking with each other. It is through this never-ending public conversation that we come to understand each other, grapple with new ideas, enlarge our thinking, and ultimately solve problems and make decisions together. This kind of citizenship is the most transformative kind of education there is. You cannot emerge unchanged because continuous and responsible change is the name of the game.
But this kind of public education – citizenship education – doesn’t just happen all by itself. We have to intentionally create the forums for it to flourish. Here are a few suggestions to get us started. We could begin by:
1) Creating more opportunities for nonpartisan dialogue around issues that are important to us (this could include regular citizens’ forums and neighborhood assemblies).
2) Finding ways to integrate the practice of citizenship more seamlessly into our daily lives, even at the workplace (this could include an increase in workplace democracy and giving employees paid time off for participation in citizenship activities).
3) Raising expectations for citizenship by empowering citizen groups with real decision-making authority and promoting a culture of ownership.
4) Exploring new ways to increase participatory citizenship in our schools (this could include more participatory modes of school governance, regular civic action involving school-community partnerships, and making citizenship a primary measure of student success).
Citizenship, like democracy, is a way of living that stretches us to grow and brings out the best we can be. It is the common arena in which we define ourselves both as individuals and in terms of our relationships with others. Citizenship is how we hammer out a vision for community that works for us all – today.
But what works today may not work tomorrow, so this process can never stop. I want to live in a world where growth never stops, where learning never stops, where the human conversation never stops. And to me, that’s what public education is all about.
Citizenship as Education
by
Jim Strickland
The term “public education” can be understood in a couple of different ways. One common meaning is related to its funding source. Public education is education that is publicly funded, as in our public schools and other publicly financed educational programs.
Another meaning of public education, however, is related to its primary purpose. In this view, public education refers to our intentional efforts to create a public – that is, a body of citizens who have the inclination and the capacity to participate in the ongoing and responsible practice of self-government. This broader understanding of public education encompasses the work done by our public schools, but extends far beyond them to include the institutions and political, economic, and social structures of the larger community.
This kind of public education – citizenship education – is a community responsibility. And, as is the case with other types of learning, it is best learned by doing. In other words, the best way to become a true citizen is in the actual practice of citizenship. Citizenship is its own education. And to make this education possible, it is our job as a community to ensure that real opportunities for citizen participation are widely and continuously available, known to the community, and actively supported.
So what does the practice of citizenship look like? I like to think of citizenship as simply doing my part to make my community work. And in a democracy, that means participating at some level in the practice of self-government. Voting, yes, but much more than that. Democracy can be understood as a continuous process of mutual transformation. It is a respectful “give and take” that results in beneficial growth to all those involved.
And this process is driven by, more than anything else, ongoing and thoughtful dialogue. Yes, the foundation of democracy is the very human act of just talking with each other. It is through this never-ending public conversation that we come to understand each other, grapple with new ideas, enlarge our thinking, and ultimately solve problems and make decisions together. This kind of citizenship is the most transformative kind of education there is. You cannot emerge unchanged because continuous and responsible change is the name of the game.
But this kind of public education – citizenship education – doesn’t just happen all by itself. We have to intentionally create the forums for it to flourish. Here are a few suggestions to get us started. We could begin by:
1) Creating more opportunities for nonpartisan dialogue around issues that are important to us (this could include regular citizens’ forums and neighborhood assemblies).
2) Finding ways to integrate the practice of citizenship more seamlessly into our daily lives, even at the workplace (this could include an increase in workplace democracy and giving employees paid time off for participation in citizenship activities).
3) Raising expectations for citizenship by empowering citizen groups with real decision-making authority and promoting a culture of ownership.
4) Exploring new ways to increase participatory citizenship in our schools (this could include more participatory modes of school governance, regular civic action involving school-community partnerships, and making citizenship a primary measure of student success).
Citizenship, like democracy, is a way of living that stretches us to grow and brings out the best we can be. It is the common arena in which we define ourselves both as individuals and in terms of our relationships with others. Citizenship is how we hammer out a vision for community that works for us all – today.
But what works today may not work tomorrow, so this process can never stop. I want to live in a world where growth never stops, where learning never stops, where the human conversation never stops. And to me, that’s what public education is all about.
Monday, July 30, 2012
In Memory: Richard “Dick” Clark 1936-2012
I was saddened to hear of Dick Clark’s passing on July 6th. I saw Dick just last month at the conference of the National League of Democratic Schools in Seattle, a network of schools across the nation, started by John Goodlad, that has been a laboratory for democratic practices. The Journal of Educational Controversy and its partner school in the Educational Institute for Democratic Renewal have been part of the movement since 2004 and we have written about it many times on this blog.
Dick shared his thoughts along with John Goodlad and stayed for some two hours. His voice was strong and his arguments compelling even while his body was weak. He fought the good fight right to the end and will be missed. I have a link on my blog to the blog, Community and Education, that he had been writing over the years as well as a special link to "Washington Happenings" where he followed the significant events in our state. It was very helpful for my readers. Dick believed in the public purposes of education and kept arguing for a democratic vision right to the end. We hope to continue his concerns in the media and in the public debate. Indeed, Dick’s call for scholars to advance the Agenda for Democracy is echoed in our journal’s mission to bring scholars in their capacity as public intellectuals into conversation with the public and its legislators.
Dick’s last post on his blog was an inspiring message to those committed to the League’s Agenda for Democracy. We reprint it here so Dick’s voice will continue through our readers.
For me thus far, belonging to AED Scholars has been an honor. I feel privileged to be in the company of so many gifted, ethical and like-minded educators. It gives me some measure of comfort to know that others are doing the work to which we have a collective commitment. However, I do not feel as though I have been a very good steward of the agenda beyond my own personal actions day to day. That is to say, I feel that I have promoted democratic ideals whenever and wherever possible, but have not deliberately or publically connected them to AED. Very few people who have read my scholarship or with whom I interact day to day understand that my behavior is motivated by AED. Perhaps one of the best things we can do as AED scholars is make our commitment more public. It would not be a small thing to agree to use a common symbol of our work that acknowledges our group, one that links us to the agenda and to one another.
How are linked? What kind of relationships exist among the AED scholars? Thus far we have been primarily a community of ideals, not so much a community of place or even a discourse community (in the sense that we share scholarship on a regular basis). The AED scholars may not feel that it’s necessary to draw together as yet another freestanding entity. Do we wish to add to the current constellation of groups and institutions to which we belong? I would argue that we do need to draw together, that we do need to be an organizing center and that we do need to become a strong community of mind. We need to be so simply because our mission is to further the agenda. I once asked John [Goodlad] what he meant when he used this phrase, for he uses it quite often. What does it mean to further the Agenda? Does it mean further develop the agenda or does it mean to better disseminate the Agenda? John was pretty clear that he meant the latter. If that is so, it implies enlisting others to share our values and see the world, and what is important in it, as we do. If you follow that reasoning, then the AED Scholars’ role would be to formulate an identity and expand our influence. We would go as many other organizations have gone – increase our membership, accumulate resources, undertake “missionary” work, mentor new scholars into this group, become better known. Surely we know how to do this. The question is, do we have the will?
I can think of six strategies for pulling a group such as ours together: 1. Write a text in which we each take responsibility for a section or chapter. 2. Convene together to present papers and discuss ways to support one another. 3. Make presentations about aspects of the agenda at state and national meetings. 4. Create a virtual community using all of the tools available to us on the World Wide Web. 5. Band together with other groups and organizations that share our values. 6. Construct a common syllabus and see that it gets institutionalized in our college or university.
I am sorry that I do not have more imaginative suggestions. The key in making this group more viable is for those of us involved to make a conscious pledge to devote a portion of every week/month/year to furthering the agenda through collaborating together. I look forward to seeing other ideas and suggestions.
Posted by Dick Clark at 11:54 AM June 23, 2012
Dick shared his thoughts along with John Goodlad and stayed for some two hours. His voice was strong and his arguments compelling even while his body was weak. He fought the good fight right to the end and will be missed. I have a link on my blog to the blog, Community and Education, that he had been writing over the years as well as a special link to "Washington Happenings" where he followed the significant events in our state. It was very helpful for my readers. Dick believed in the public purposes of education and kept arguing for a democratic vision right to the end. We hope to continue his concerns in the media and in the public debate. Indeed, Dick’s call for scholars to advance the Agenda for Democracy is echoed in our journal’s mission to bring scholars in their capacity as public intellectuals into conversation with the public and its legislators.
Dick’s last post on his blog was an inspiring message to those committed to the League’s Agenda for Democracy. We reprint it here so Dick’s voice will continue through our readers.
Make AED [Agenda for Democracy] Scholars an Organizing Center
By Dick Clark
Can the AED Scholars Become an Organizing Center?
The Institute works to advance the Agenda for Education in a Democracy. This Agenda consists of a four-part mission, a set of strategies to achieve that mission, and conditions that are necessary to carry out the strategies.There is little doubt about the commitment to the Agenda for Education in a Democracy among the AED scholars. I suspect we live out that commitment everyday and in every aspect of our work. The question before us, as I understand it, is not about commitment to the work of furthering the Agenda, but about whether or not we, as a group of scholars, want to be an organizing center for its promotion. Surely we are all enmeshed in a web of groups and institutions that occupy all of our waking hours (and some of our sleeping hours as well). We endeavor to exercise responsible influence on the groups and institutions within our spheres.
The agenda is mission driven and research based. It seeks to:
• Foster in the nation's young the skills, attitudes, and knowledge necessary for effective participation in a social and political democracy.To accomplish this mission, schools and universities seek simultaneous renewal of schools and the education of educators. They do so by putting in place the conditions necessary to renewing the nation's schools and its democracy.
• Ensure that all youths have access to those understandings and skills required for satisfying and responsible lives regardless of race, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or birth language.
• Develop and provide continuing support to educators who nurture the learning and well being of every student.
• Ensure that educators are competent and committed to serving as stewards of their schools.
For me thus far, belonging to AED Scholars has been an honor. I feel privileged to be in the company of so many gifted, ethical and like-minded educators. It gives me some measure of comfort to know that others are doing the work to which we have a collective commitment. However, I do not feel as though I have been a very good steward of the agenda beyond my own personal actions day to day. That is to say, I feel that I have promoted democratic ideals whenever and wherever possible, but have not deliberately or publically connected them to AED. Very few people who have read my scholarship or with whom I interact day to day understand that my behavior is motivated by AED. Perhaps one of the best things we can do as AED scholars is make our commitment more public. It would not be a small thing to agree to use a common symbol of our work that acknowledges our group, one that links us to the agenda and to one another.
How are linked? What kind of relationships exist among the AED scholars? Thus far we have been primarily a community of ideals, not so much a community of place or even a discourse community (in the sense that we share scholarship on a regular basis). The AED scholars may not feel that it’s necessary to draw together as yet another freestanding entity. Do we wish to add to the current constellation of groups and institutions to which we belong? I would argue that we do need to draw together, that we do need to be an organizing center and that we do need to become a strong community of mind. We need to be so simply because our mission is to further the agenda. I once asked John [Goodlad] what he meant when he used this phrase, for he uses it quite often. What does it mean to further the Agenda? Does it mean further develop the agenda or does it mean to better disseminate the Agenda? John was pretty clear that he meant the latter. If that is so, it implies enlisting others to share our values and see the world, and what is important in it, as we do. If you follow that reasoning, then the AED Scholars’ role would be to formulate an identity and expand our influence. We would go as many other organizations have gone – increase our membership, accumulate resources, undertake “missionary” work, mentor new scholars into this group, become better known. Surely we know how to do this. The question is, do we have the will?
I can think of six strategies for pulling a group such as ours together: 1. Write a text in which we each take responsibility for a section or chapter. 2. Convene together to present papers and discuss ways to support one another. 3. Make presentations about aspects of the agenda at state and national meetings. 4. Create a virtual community using all of the tools available to us on the World Wide Web. 5. Band together with other groups and organizations that share our values. 6. Construct a common syllabus and see that it gets institutionalized in our college or university.
I am sorry that I do not have more imaginative suggestions. The key in making this group more viable is for those of us involved to make a conscious pledge to devote a portion of every week/month/year to furthering the agenda through collaborating together. I look forward to seeing other ideas and suggestions.
Posted by Dick Clark at 11:54 AM June 23, 2012
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
A Fresh Analogy for Democratic Schools and Democratic Life
Editor: Sometimes a fresh analogy can unplug our thinking and open avenues for new perspectives and questions. In the post below, Jim Strickland, regional coordinator of the National League of Democratic Schools, offers one such analogy. Jim's earlier post on a Declaration of Education Rights stirred some interesting discussions. Perhaps, his latest post can stimulate us to think about the "plugs" in our collective lives.
A Renewal Analogy
by
by
Jim Strickland
National League of Democratic Schools
I'm in the middle of reading an Einstein biography and was struck by how certain physical processes are mimicked in the institutional world. For example, imagine the whirlpool created as water drains from a sink. The whirlpool is a real entity, but its existence depends on the dynamic interaction between the water, gravity, rotation of the earth, and the open drain. Plug the drain (stop the dynamic process) and the whirlpool disappears.
In similar fashion, healthy, democratic schools are like these whirlpools -- products of a dynamic process, the process of continuous renewal. You can stir the water with a stick, but cannot create a sustainable entity (whirlpool) without unplugging the drain. In this analogy, I think of the open drain as the creative power of ongoing dialogue -- the bedrock foundation of the renewal process. Trying to have healthy, democratic schools (or any healthy institution) without the dynamic motion made possible by the "open drain" is an exercise in futility -- like trying to preserve whirlpools without motion.
Here's to you "plug pullers" of the world...!
Here's to you "plug pullers" of the world...!
Friday, July 15, 2011
A DECLARATION OF EDUCATION RIGHTS
Editor: As many of our readers know, the Educational Institute for Democratic Renewal that houses the Journal of Educational Controversy participates in John Goodlad's National League of Democratic Schools. Jim Strickland, the regional coordinator for the Western region of the League and a special education teacher in Washington State, has prepared this "Declaration of Education Rights" document that we want to share with our readers for their thoughts. Jim is putting together two education rights workshops this summer -- one in Portland at the AERO conference (http://www.educationrevolution.org/ ) and one in Washington, DC at the Save Our Schools March conference (http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/). He is hoping to establish some sort of Education Rights Task Force to continue this work.
Abstract
In the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a Declaration of Education Rights would serve as a common ethical standard, or moral compass, for education in a democracy by which we can guide our practice, develop programs and policies, and continuously evaluate our efforts. In this essay, readers are invited to review proposed articles for such a declaration and suggest possible revisions and/or additions. The ultimate goal will be to produce a collaborative document that can be submitted to other groups for consideration, input, and eventual adoption.
Ever since December 10, 1948 when it was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has stood as an international moral beacon of human dignity and freedom. The Universal Declaration was never meant to be the final word on human rights, nor was it intended to impose a single model of right conduct on all nations. The Universal Declaration was written to be a living document, reinterpreted and reinvented by each succeeding generation, a common standard that can be brought to life in different settings in a variety of legitimate ways.
Education today is in dire need of just such a common ethical standard. Not a legally binding prescription, but a moral compass by which we can guide our practice, develop our programs and policies, and evaluate our results. In our ongoing efforts to provide the education our children deserve and our world so desperately needs, we need a mutual commitment to values that will inspire us and keep us from drifting off course. In education, as in all areas of life, if we do not decide where we are going, someone will be happy to decide for us.
It is in this spirit that the following suggestion for a Declaration of Education Rights (DER) is being proposed. These 13 articles were inspired from a variety of sources, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Alternative Education Resource Organization (www.educationrevolution.org), the Institute for Democratic Education in America (www.democraticeducation.org), and the Institute for Educational Inquiry’s Agenda for Education in a Democracy (www.ieiseattle.org). Each article is followed by comments which note the source and/or clarify the article’s intent or implications.
In order to be effective, a Declaration of Education Rights must balance several competing requirements. A DER must:
1) Establish the conditions necessary to promote and preserve basic human and civil rights.
2) Address the values and requirements of democracy. For our purposes, we are using a broad definition of democracy as a value system – a way of living and working together based on freedom, justice, equality, and mutual respect. [“Democracy first and foremost, is a shared way of life. It begins with who we are as individuals and the relationships we have with those around us, and it radiates outward from that center to encompass all of humanity… it is, in essence, about human relationships.” (Goodlad, et al, Education for Everyone, p. 82)]
3) Ensure the conditions necessary for the continuous growth, self-development, and creative participation of the learner.
4) Differentiate between education -- a community responsibility -- and schooling -- one component of this larger context.
Whereas a healthy, sustainable democracy requires the thoughtful and effective participation of its citizenry…
Whereas optimum political, social, and economic participation requires certain fundamental capacities and conditions…
Whereas it is the responsibility of democratic society to intentionally foster the development of these capacities and conditions essential to its continued vitality and to that of its citizens…
Now, therefore, this Declaration of Education Rights is proclaimed as a common standard of achievement for the continuous growth and self-realization of all people in the context of democratic community.
Article 1
Everyone has the right to participate meaningfully in his/her own education and the educational decisions that affect him/her. These decisions include those establishing the purposes, content, and assessment of learning activities.
COMMENTS: The right to participate in the decisions that affect us is a basic principle of democracy. The Institute for Democratic Education in America (www.democraticeducation.org) applies this concept to education in their stated mission “to ensure that all young people can participate meaningfully in their education and gain the tools to build a just, democratic, and sustainable world.” John Dewey also emphasized the importance of participation – “There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active co-operation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.” (Dewey, Experience and Education, p. 67) This article implies access to self-directed learning opportunities whenever possible.
Article 2
Everyone has the right to an education directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
COMMENTS: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26. This right guards against overly narrow definitions of education as primarily a means to the economic and political ends of the powers that be.
Article 3
Everyone has the right to an education that acknowledges and respects his/her cultural, religious, and/or ethnic heritage.
COMMENTS: Every educational system is based on a particular set of beliefs, assumptions, and cultural perspectives. Without overt acknowledgement and respect for the cultural, religious, and/or ethnic heritage of the student, there is real danger that these important sources of personal and cultural identity will be undermined.
Article 4
Everyone has the right to an education that acknowledges multiple ways of knowing and assists in the exploration and understanding of various world views.
COMMENTS: A cornerstone of democracy is the realization that other people may see and experience the world differently from us. Engaging in thoughtful dialogue that leads to a deeper understanding of one another is critical in our work for peaceful coexistence in a diverse world, as well as a critical evaluation of our own perspective.
Article 5
Everyone has the right to an education that fosters the capacities necessary for effective participation in a social and political democracy.
COMMENTS: From the Institute for Educational Inquiry’s Agenda for Education in a Democracy (www.ieiseattle.org). Democracy by definition depends on the thoughtful and effective participation of its citizens.
Article 6
Everyone has the right to an education that fosters the capacities necessary to lead responsible and satisfying lives.
COMMENTS: From the Institute for Educational Inquiry’s Agenda for Education in a Democracy (www.ieiseattle.org). This emphasizes the second part of the dual role of education noted by John Goodlad in Democracy, Education, and the Schools – “The mission of schooling comes down to two related kinds of enculturation; no other institution is so charged. The first is for political and social responsibility as a citizen. The second is for maximum individual development, for full participation in the human conversation (with the concept of conversation expanded into a metaphor for the whole of daily living).” (John Goodlad in Soder, Roger, Ed., Democracy, Education, and the Schools, p. 112)
Article 7
All educational institutions shall unambiguously reflect the values of democracy in their policies, practices, curriculum, organizational structures, and outcomes.
COMMENTS: As Marshall McLuhan noted, the medium is the message. Dewey also emphasized the critical importance of the lessons we learn indirectly by way of the educational environment – “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.” (Dewey, Experience and Education, p. 48) Democracy can only really be learned by a process of immersion. To be effective and sustainable, the means used must be aligned with the ends desired.
Article 8
P-12 education shall be free, as well as equitably and adequately funded. Technical, professional, and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of capacity.
COMMENTS: Adapted from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26. The emphasis on higher education being equally accessible to all on the basis of capacity implies (but does not explicitly guarantee) the removal of economic barriers to such participation when appropriate.
Article 9
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education in which their children participate.
COMMENTS: From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26. The UDHR version reads, “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” The wording was changed to reflect an understanding of education not as something that can be given or imposed, but as something that requires the free participation of the learner. This article was originally included in the UDHR in the aftermath of WWII as a way to prevent oppressive regimes from using state mandated educational programs to indoctrinate its citizens.
Article 10
Everyone has the right to an education that acknowledges our place within the natural world, respects the interconnectedness of all life, and promotes the building of a just and sustainable world.
COMMENTS: This ecological literacy (see Orr, Ecological Literacy, 1992) is increasingly being recognized as essential not only to our quality of life, but to our very survival as a species and to the long-term health of our planet. The latter portion is taken in part from IDEA’s mission statement (see comments on Article 1).
Article 11
Education shall be compulsory through the primary years and freely available thereafter until the age of majority. No minor shall be denied access to a free and appropriate educational program for any reason. Furthermore, no person shall be compelled to participate in any educational program that does not protect the full range of these rights.
COMMENTS: The UDHR states that elementary education shall be compulsory, presumably to ensure the basic educational foundation required for optimum self-development and for effective political, social, and economic participation. After the primary years, the emphasis shifts from compulsory participation on the part of the individual to compulsory service on the part of society, with participation being optional at the discretion of the learner. This acknowledges the fact that coercive educational techniques are inherently counterproductive to “the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” as well as to the health and viability of democracy itself.
Article 12
Given that education is an ongoing process that extends far beyond the bounds of formal schooling, everyone has the right to live in an educative community that purposely contributes to the continuous growth and well-being of all its members.
COMMENTS: This highlights the difference between schooling and education, and promotes a vision of education as a community responsibility. Implied is the need to continuously advocate and work for the creation of truly educative communities. For our purposes, an educative community can be understood as one which depends on the real work and creative participation of each of its members, as well as actively promoting and protecting human and civil rights.
Article 13
No one shall be denied access to employment or postsecondary education, or be discriminated against in any way solely on the basis of P-12 academic credentials.
COMMENTS: It is unethical to use any criteria for employment that are not clearly necessary for the successful performance of the particular job being sought. Given the broad and varied nature of high school graduation requirements, for example, this cannot be said to apply to the high school diploma. This article also makes more feasible the development of and participation in alternative approaches to learning that do not result in standard academic credentials.
Another implication of this article is that schools will have to attract learners on the basis of the skills and experiences they have to offer rather than because they are the sole gatekeepers to economic participation. It safeguards against the accumulation of too much power in the education establishment to determine and/or limit the future opportunities of citizens. It does, however, leave open the possibility of using P-12 academic credentials and measures as one of several sources of information used together to assess a person’s aptitude for particular postsecondary jobs and programs.
Conclusion
The time has come for us to take a stand on what we believe to be the purpose and proper nature of education in our democracy. This Declaration of Education Rights is a first attempt to do just that – an articulation of values and principles intended to serve as a moral and functional compass for education in America.
Thomas Jefferson sparked a political revolution when he wrote that “we hold these truths to be self-evident”. But the moral and philosophical revolution that produced these truths had been steadily growing in our hearts and minds for hundreds of years. Jefferson merely affirmed them and recognized their revolutionary implications.
Like its inspiration, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration of Education Rights contains some ideas that are intuitive and others that are more daring, but all of them reflect a revolution in thinking that is already under way. The implications are profound and far reaching.
In order to make this document as sound and powerful as it needs to be, we are asking for your feedback. Input will be used to refine this document for future use in public forums across the nation. Imagine the long-term impact of its official adoption, not only by schools, school districts, and educational organizations, but by state and federal departments of education as well.
Without a clear vision, it is inevitable that education will continue to drift in the winds of various political, economic, and special interest agendas. And as we drift, our children, our democracy, and our planet will suffer. Please help us chart the course for a redefinition of education that celebrates individuality while simultaneously promoting democracy – that reinforces creativity, nurtures greatness, and helps to build a just and sustainable world.
Toward a Declaration of Education Rights
by Jim Strickland
The National League of Democratic Schools
The National League of Democratic Schools
Abstract
In the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a Declaration of Education Rights would serve as a common ethical standard, or moral compass, for education in a democracy by which we can guide our practice, develop programs and policies, and continuously evaluate our efforts. In this essay, readers are invited to review proposed articles for such a declaration and suggest possible revisions and/or additions. The ultimate goal will be to produce a collaborative document that can be submitted to other groups for consideration, input, and eventual adoption.
Ever since December 10, 1948 when it was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has stood as an international moral beacon of human dignity and freedom. The Universal Declaration was never meant to be the final word on human rights, nor was it intended to impose a single model of right conduct on all nations. The Universal Declaration was written to be a living document, reinterpreted and reinvented by each succeeding generation, a common standard that can be brought to life in different settings in a variety of legitimate ways.
Education today is in dire need of just such a common ethical standard. Not a legally binding prescription, but a moral compass by which we can guide our practice, develop our programs and policies, and evaluate our results. In our ongoing efforts to provide the education our children deserve and our world so desperately needs, we need a mutual commitment to values that will inspire us and keep us from drifting off course. In education, as in all areas of life, if we do not decide where we are going, someone will be happy to decide for us.
It is in this spirit that the following suggestion for a Declaration of Education Rights (DER) is being proposed. These 13 articles were inspired from a variety of sources, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Alternative Education Resource Organization (www.educationrevolution.org), the Institute for Democratic Education in America (www.democraticeducation.org), and the Institute for Educational Inquiry’s Agenda for Education in a Democracy (www.ieiseattle.org). Each article is followed by comments which note the source and/or clarify the article’s intent or implications.
In order to be effective, a Declaration of Education Rights must balance several competing requirements. A DER must:
1) Establish the conditions necessary to promote and preserve basic human and civil rights.
2) Address the values and requirements of democracy. For our purposes, we are using a broad definition of democracy as a value system – a way of living and working together based on freedom, justice, equality, and mutual respect. [“Democracy first and foremost, is a shared way of life. It begins with who we are as individuals and the relationships we have with those around us, and it radiates outward from that center to encompass all of humanity… it is, in essence, about human relationships.” (Goodlad, et al, Education for Everyone, p. 82)]
3) Ensure the conditions necessary for the continuous growth, self-development, and creative participation of the learner.
4) Differentiate between education -- a community responsibility -- and schooling -- one component of this larger context.
Declaration of Education Rights
PreambleWhereas a healthy, sustainable democracy requires the thoughtful and effective participation of its citizenry…
Whereas optimum political, social, and economic participation requires certain fundamental capacities and conditions…
Whereas it is the responsibility of democratic society to intentionally foster the development of these capacities and conditions essential to its continued vitality and to that of its citizens…
Now, therefore, this Declaration of Education Rights is proclaimed as a common standard of achievement for the continuous growth and self-realization of all people in the context of democratic community.
Article 1
Everyone has the right to participate meaningfully in his/her own education and the educational decisions that affect him/her. These decisions include those establishing the purposes, content, and assessment of learning activities.
COMMENTS: The right to participate in the decisions that affect us is a basic principle of democracy. The Institute for Democratic Education in America (www.democraticeducation.org) applies this concept to education in their stated mission “to ensure that all young people can participate meaningfully in their education and gain the tools to build a just, democratic, and sustainable world.” John Dewey also emphasized the importance of participation – “There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active co-operation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.” (Dewey, Experience and Education, p. 67) This article implies access to self-directed learning opportunities whenever possible.
Article 2
Everyone has the right to an education directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
COMMENTS: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26. This right guards against overly narrow definitions of education as primarily a means to the economic and political ends of the powers that be.
Article 3
Everyone has the right to an education that acknowledges and respects his/her cultural, religious, and/or ethnic heritage.
COMMENTS: Every educational system is based on a particular set of beliefs, assumptions, and cultural perspectives. Without overt acknowledgement and respect for the cultural, religious, and/or ethnic heritage of the student, there is real danger that these important sources of personal and cultural identity will be undermined.
Article 4
Everyone has the right to an education that acknowledges multiple ways of knowing and assists in the exploration and understanding of various world views.
COMMENTS: A cornerstone of democracy is the realization that other people may see and experience the world differently from us. Engaging in thoughtful dialogue that leads to a deeper understanding of one another is critical in our work for peaceful coexistence in a diverse world, as well as a critical evaluation of our own perspective.
Article 5
Everyone has the right to an education that fosters the capacities necessary for effective participation in a social and political democracy.
COMMENTS: From the Institute for Educational Inquiry’s Agenda for Education in a Democracy (www.ieiseattle.org). Democracy by definition depends on the thoughtful and effective participation of its citizens.
Article 6
Everyone has the right to an education that fosters the capacities necessary to lead responsible and satisfying lives.
COMMENTS: From the Institute for Educational Inquiry’s Agenda for Education in a Democracy (www.ieiseattle.org). This emphasizes the second part of the dual role of education noted by John Goodlad in Democracy, Education, and the Schools – “The mission of schooling comes down to two related kinds of enculturation; no other institution is so charged. The first is for political and social responsibility as a citizen. The second is for maximum individual development, for full participation in the human conversation (with the concept of conversation expanded into a metaphor for the whole of daily living).” (John Goodlad in Soder, Roger, Ed., Democracy, Education, and the Schools, p. 112)
Article 7
All educational institutions shall unambiguously reflect the values of democracy in their policies, practices, curriculum, organizational structures, and outcomes.
COMMENTS: As Marshall McLuhan noted, the medium is the message. Dewey also emphasized the critical importance of the lessons we learn indirectly by way of the educational environment – “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.” (Dewey, Experience and Education, p. 48) Democracy can only really be learned by a process of immersion. To be effective and sustainable, the means used must be aligned with the ends desired.
Article 8
P-12 education shall be free, as well as equitably and adequately funded. Technical, professional, and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of capacity.
COMMENTS: Adapted from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26. The emphasis on higher education being equally accessible to all on the basis of capacity implies (but does not explicitly guarantee) the removal of economic barriers to such participation when appropriate.
Article 9
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education in which their children participate.
COMMENTS: From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26. The UDHR version reads, “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” The wording was changed to reflect an understanding of education not as something that can be given or imposed, but as something that requires the free participation of the learner. This article was originally included in the UDHR in the aftermath of WWII as a way to prevent oppressive regimes from using state mandated educational programs to indoctrinate its citizens.
Article 10
Everyone has the right to an education that acknowledges our place within the natural world, respects the interconnectedness of all life, and promotes the building of a just and sustainable world.
COMMENTS: This ecological literacy (see Orr, Ecological Literacy, 1992) is increasingly being recognized as essential not only to our quality of life, but to our very survival as a species and to the long-term health of our planet. The latter portion is taken in part from IDEA’s mission statement (see comments on Article 1).
Article 11
Education shall be compulsory through the primary years and freely available thereafter until the age of majority. No minor shall be denied access to a free and appropriate educational program for any reason. Furthermore, no person shall be compelled to participate in any educational program that does not protect the full range of these rights.
COMMENTS: The UDHR states that elementary education shall be compulsory, presumably to ensure the basic educational foundation required for optimum self-development and for effective political, social, and economic participation. After the primary years, the emphasis shifts from compulsory participation on the part of the individual to compulsory service on the part of society, with participation being optional at the discretion of the learner. This acknowledges the fact that coercive educational techniques are inherently counterproductive to “the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” as well as to the health and viability of democracy itself.
Article 12
Given that education is an ongoing process that extends far beyond the bounds of formal schooling, everyone has the right to live in an educative community that purposely contributes to the continuous growth and well-being of all its members.
COMMENTS: This highlights the difference between schooling and education, and promotes a vision of education as a community responsibility. Implied is the need to continuously advocate and work for the creation of truly educative communities. For our purposes, an educative community can be understood as one which depends on the real work and creative participation of each of its members, as well as actively promoting and protecting human and civil rights.
Article 13
No one shall be denied access to employment or postsecondary education, or be discriminated against in any way solely on the basis of P-12 academic credentials.
COMMENTS: It is unethical to use any criteria for employment that are not clearly necessary for the successful performance of the particular job being sought. Given the broad and varied nature of high school graduation requirements, for example, this cannot be said to apply to the high school diploma. This article also makes more feasible the development of and participation in alternative approaches to learning that do not result in standard academic credentials.
Another implication of this article is that schools will have to attract learners on the basis of the skills and experiences they have to offer rather than because they are the sole gatekeepers to economic participation. It safeguards against the accumulation of too much power in the education establishment to determine and/or limit the future opportunities of citizens. It does, however, leave open the possibility of using P-12 academic credentials and measures as one of several sources of information used together to assess a person’s aptitude for particular postsecondary jobs and programs.
Conclusion
The time has come for us to take a stand on what we believe to be the purpose and proper nature of education in our democracy. This Declaration of Education Rights is a first attempt to do just that – an articulation of values and principles intended to serve as a moral and functional compass for education in America.
Thomas Jefferson sparked a political revolution when he wrote that “we hold these truths to be self-evident”. But the moral and philosophical revolution that produced these truths had been steadily growing in our hearts and minds for hundreds of years. Jefferson merely affirmed them and recognized their revolutionary implications.
Like its inspiration, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration of Education Rights contains some ideas that are intuitive and others that are more daring, but all of them reflect a revolution in thinking that is already under way. The implications are profound and far reaching.
In order to make this document as sound and powerful as it needs to be, we are asking for your feedback. Input will be used to refine this document for future use in public forums across the nation. Imagine the long-term impact of its official adoption, not only by schools, school districts, and educational organizations, but by state and federal departments of education as well.
Without a clear vision, it is inevitable that education will continue to drift in the winds of various political, economic, and special interest agendas. And as we drift, our children, our democracy, and our planet will suffer. Please help us chart the course for a redefinition of education that celebrates individuality while simultaneously promoting democracy – that reinforces creativity, nurtures greatness, and helps to build a just and sustainable world.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Our Partner School to Provide Leadership to Community in Promoting Childhood Literacy
As many of our readers already know, the Educational Institute for Democratic Renewal at the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University, that houses the Journal of Educational Controversy, also partners with a creative, innovative and progressive school, the Whatcom Day Academy, to promote a democratic vision on what schools can be. Our work together is also associated with the League of Democratic Schools, a project initiated by educator, John Goodlad. On our institute’s page, readers can read about the philosophy of the school and view some of the videos featuring actual practices in the school along with a slide show of student art in which Susan Donnelly, the head of the school, guides the viewer into seeing more deeply into the artistic creations and evolution of young children’s drawings. On that page, the viewer can also view a section of a public forum that the Institute sponsored, in which teacher, Vale Hartley, describes her use of Socratic questioning with her young students along with short video clips that illustrate her technique. Readers can also read Vale’s article in our journal’s issue on Schooling as if Democracy Matters and Susan’s articles in our issue on Art, Social Imagination and Democratic Education.
One of the goals of both the Institute and the Whatcom Day Academy is to provide leadership to the community. I am so pleased to announce that Susan Donnelly in conjunction with Professor Matthew Miller of Western Washington University has received a $30000 grant that will enable them to both develop new ideas for childhood literacy practices but also to share their ideas with the community.
Congratulations to Susan and Matt. We hope to share more about this in future blogs.
But our readers will not have to wait too long to learn more about Susan’s school. Susan Donnelly is the co-editor for the upcoming summer issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy. In addition to our printed articles, readers can anticipate a lot of video footage highlighting innovative practices in schools. The theme for the issue is, “The Education and Schools Our Children Deserve.” For a look at another school in the League, see our post below on Schools that Make a Difference: A Look at the League of Democratic Schools.
One of the goals of both the Institute and the Whatcom Day Academy is to provide leadership to the community. I am so pleased to announce that Susan Donnelly in conjunction with Professor Matthew Miller of Western Washington University has received a $30000 grant that will enable them to both develop new ideas for childhood literacy practices but also to share their ideas with the community.
Congratulations to Susan and Matt. We hope to share more about this in future blogs.
But our readers will not have to wait too long to learn more about Susan’s school. Susan Donnelly is the co-editor for the upcoming summer issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy. In addition to our printed articles, readers can anticipate a lot of video footage highlighting innovative practices in schools. The theme for the issue is, “The Education and Schools Our Children Deserve.” For a look at another school in the League, see our post below on Schools that Make a Difference: A Look at the League of Democratic Schools.
Friday, February 18, 2011
John Dewey: America's philosopher of democracy and his importance to education
Our journal's consulting editor, A.G. Rud, Dean of the College of Education at Washington State University, has produced a short YouTube video on "John Dewey: America's philosopher of democracy and his importance to education." As one commentary on YouTube put it, "Well done. Not an easy task to give an overview of JD and his more than 700 articles in 140 journals, and approximately 40 books." We agree.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
New Curriculum on Democracy and Jazz
Many of our readers will be interested in a new curriculum produced at Teachers College, Columbia University called, “Let Freedom Swing: Conversations on Democracy and Jazz.” On the eve of President Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009, a concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC brought together Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and jazz musician, Wynton Marsalis. It was from this event that the idea of a curriculum based on two American traditions – jazz and democracy – was conceived. Readers can access the DVDs and study guide at: http://letfreedomswing.org//
From the website: “Three key themes structure the videos and study guide: “We the People,” “E Pluribus Unum” (From Many, One), and “A More Perfect Union.” Each video is about six minutes in length. The study guide contains questions for discussion, teaching activities, and additional resources. The website contains the three videos, the study guide, information about the project, and additional print, digital, and video resources.”
The journal has published an earlier article on another curriculum produced at Teachers College called, “Teaching the Levees: An Exercise in Democratic Dialogue.” We are planning on publishing an article on this latest curriculum in our upcoming issue next summer.
From the website: “Three key themes structure the videos and study guide: “We the People,” “E Pluribus Unum” (From Many, One), and “A More Perfect Union.” Each video is about six minutes in length. The study guide contains questions for discussion, teaching activities, and additional resources. The website contains the three videos, the study guide, information about the project, and additional print, digital, and video resources.”
The journal has published an earlier article on another curriculum produced at Teachers College called, “Teaching the Levees: An Exercise in Democratic Dialogue.” We are planning on publishing an article on this latest curriculum in our upcoming issue next summer.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Time for a Serious National Conversation on the Public Purposes of our Schools: An Interview with Bill Ayers
Readers will find the interview with Bill Ayers from Truthout.org an interesting departure from the mainsteam media's superficial coverage of our national debate on school reform. We reprint it in its entirety with permission from Truthout.org. In his interview, Ayers talks about the public purposes of schooling -- something often left out of the economic and privatized goals that have dominated the national debate -- and the real social and human conditions that need to be addressed. For readers who would like to read the article we published by Bill Ayers in our special issue on "Schooling as if Democracy Matters," go to: "Singing in Dark Times."
Back to School: An Interview With Bill Ayers
Friday 01 October 2010
by: Maya Schenwar, Executive Director, t r u t h o u t Interview
Reprinted by permission from Truthout.org
As the 2010-2011 school year grumbled to a start - and millions of public school students settled into overcrowded, underfunded, under-resourced classrooms - I sat down in Chicago with education theorist and activist Bill Ayers to discuss true democracy, false reform and his latest book (co-authored with cartoonist Ryan Alexander-Tanner), "To Teach: The Journey in Comics." In an educational culture increasingly permeated by top-down marketplace values, Ayers, who taught primary school for years, still believes in the possibility of a schooliverse where every teacher is respected and every student is valued as a full human being, where collaborative learning and growth trump the school-eat-school "Race to the Top." And by the end of our conversation, I did, too.
Maya Schenwar: In "To Teach," you talk about how a good school is defined by good teachers. What do you think of this practice that's been circling the country, of "reconstituting" schools and firing all the teachers? Does that logic work?
Bill Ayers: Not at all - not even close.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The Global Infestation of U.S. Educational Ideas: A Cautionary Thought by Author Kay Ann Taylor
Editors: Today we welcome a post by guest blogger, Kay Ann Taylor. Our readers will remember the article that we published in our winter 2009 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy by Kay Ann Taylor, entitled, Poverty's Multiple Dimensions. In today's post, Dr. Taylor reflects on her recent visit to a conference she attended in Istanbul, Turkey where she learned about the extent that the United States focus on standardized testing has had on the educational thinking in other nations. Historically, U.S. educational ideas have had an influence around the world. Our author asks us to think about what ideas we are exporting today and if this is the "best the U.S. has to offer."
Exporting U.S. Education: Is Standardized Testing the Best the U.S. Has to Offer?
by Kay Ann Taylor
Kansas State University
As an educator and an individual, a major personal bias and belief is my non-belief in standardized testing (ST). With the onset and passing of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the festering in American education surrounding standardized testing has reached the status of some god-like or pagan entity that determines the futures of not only our children, but our teachers, schools, communities, country, and impacts our global efficacy. Those who are not educators (politicians) continue to direct and dictate policies and practices to those who are. How can and why does the American public at large and in general succumb to the edicts of this flawed, detrimental, and demeaning measure of human capacity? And, more to the point, why and how did exporting U.S. ST become so welcome, so revered, and, received so uncritically by our global community? Like cancer, the disease of U.S. standardized testing infects the global arena. I remain critical and skeptical regarding the gate-keeping effects of ST in terms of its impact and outcome on the lives, futures, education, thinking, and psyches of the human enterprise.
The polar views in the U.S. regarding ST are far from new. They are divergent in philosophical orientation, utility, purpose, interpretation, and implementation. There are scholars that support ST. Conversely, numerous scholars continue to challenge the oppressive nature of ST in that it lacks context and marginalizes English language learners, learners from low socioeconomic status, creates winners vs losers. Critics argue further that ST in no way represents learning, knowledge, understanding, much less real-life application. Additionally and importantly, some scholars contend that ST is racist and gender-biased. There is a distorted Darwinian element ingrained in ST, i.e., the survival of the fittest, which misrepresents Darwin for one, and rather, serves the interests of those seeking to maintain the status quo. Further, ST represents an outdated factory system of education that serves social efficiency, social control, social reproduction, and maintains the status quo for social mobility, thus begging the question, “Whose interests are served by standardized tests?” Believing that humans can be ranked, filed, and sorted on the basis of ST is one of the most destructive and dehumanizing practices education faces.
Standardized testing is big business. This hit me squarely during a session at the World Council of Comparative Education Societies this June (2010) in Istanbul, Turkey. I co-presented with my former M.S. student (now pursuing her Ph.D. in Russian Literature at another institution while teaching Russian Language at our university) based on her historical and qualitative thesis research in which she compared the first-ever national 2008 External Knowledge Testing in her Ukrainian country of origin to the historical onset of ST in the U.S. We went to our session location in advance to familiarize ourselves with the setting and to ensure the technology was in place. A Lebanese professor, who teaches in higher education in her country of origin, was there to attend the session and started a conversation with us. The title of our presentation, "Border Transmission and Reproduction Déjà Vu: Ukrainian External Independent Knowledge Testing—Reflections in the Mirror of U.S. Standardized Testing," captured her interest. Even before the session began, we discovered our topic was controversial because of our critical perspective.
As conference sessions go, ours was well attended by 25-30 people from almost as many different countries represented. There were two other countries and comparative topics in our session. Questions for all presenters were held until the end after everyone presented. Evidently, I have been naïve for quite some time because I was unprepared for the lively Q&A that followed regarding our research. Until our session, I remained blissfully unaware the extent to which ST from the U.S. has been exported globally. Plainly, we struck a nerve with most of our colleagues. From the discussion that followed directed at our research, it appeared to us that ST not only is well-received by our global counterparts, but that for many, it never was questioned critically regarding the numerous flaws and negative effects noted above.
After our session, I went outside to relax briefly. A young lady who attended our session stopped to visit with me. She is Brazilian by birth and informed me that Brazilian higher education institutions require the GRE. When I brought up my passion for Critical Race Theory (CRT), she smiled and informed me that she studied for three years with Kimberlé Crenshaw, Cheryl Harris, and Claude Steele—all prominent CRT scholars. She likely was the only individual attending our session who was familiar with, understood, much less agreed with, our position.
This experience provided considerable material for my reflection. After returning from the conference, I visited with a colleague and shared what happened. To my surprise, he challenged our critical assessment of ST and informed me that he knows personally an administrator for one of the major testing companies in the U.S. He explained that in his conversation with this person, he was informed that the company exercises care in test construction with the host country’s interested parties to ensure native language and culture are represented and not misinterpreted. After visiting the company’s web site to see for myself, I engaged in more reflection about this phenomenon. What struck me is that what is highly likely in this international ST-creating process is that the same flaws and biases inherent in the U.S. system also are reproduced in each country constructing “culturally sensitive” ST. For example, as stated above, ST represents an outdated factory model of schooling in the U.S., especially in terms of social efficiency, social control, and maintaining social mobility for the status quo. As I continued my conversation with my colleague, I continued to delineate the negative aspects of ST. One comment made by my colleague that struck yet another chord, was his statement that ST in many countries is used for placement in education. This, of course, also caused me consternation as I responded that placement represents tracking—from my perspective yet one more oppressive and outdated practice that remains deeply entrenched to the detriment of many in the U.S. In a final attempt to convince my colleague, I posed the question, “Do we want our students to be good test takers or to be able to understand, engage, embrace creativity, and be able to apply what they know?” It was this question that finally afforded success in relaying my concerns about ST to my colleague.
I continue to contemplate this conundrum of ST plaguing our schools and educational system in the U.S. With every semester since the passing of NCLB, my undergraduate foundations preservice students enter my class increasingly expecting me to tell them what to think and how to do “it”. Colleagues at other institutions indicate similar observations in their parallel classes. I anticipate that this will continue to worsen with each class of K-12 students in our public education environments who are subjected to the edicts of NCLB.
Thus, I now am acutely and painfully aware of the global infestation of ST. The oppressive biases and stultifying effects of ST now appear to be accepted uncritically in numerous countries. Moreover, ST reinforces competition and isolation rather than cooperation, collaboration, and understanding—the latter qualities needed to serve all humans productively in our global setting. U.S. education is revered deeply by many international communities. Will this, in turn, affect the success of international professionals seeking to live and work in the U.S.? Will ST ensure for them that they are no longer required to start their education over in the U.S. in order to pursue a profession they were educated for and practiced, perhaps for decades, in their country of origin but their “foreign” education and experience is inadequate by U.S. standards? I doubt it.
Ultimately, my question remains: Is exporting standardized testing the best practice U.S. education has to offer?
Kay Ann Taylor is Associate Professor of the Foundations of Education, American Ethnic Studies at Kansas State University. Her article, the Poverty's Multiple Perspectives, appeared in our winter 2009 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy on the theme, The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education.
Exporting U.S. Education: Is Standardized Testing the Best the U.S. Has to Offer?
by Kay Ann Taylor
Kansas State University
As an educator and an individual, a major personal bias and belief is my non-belief in standardized testing (ST). With the onset and passing of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the festering in American education surrounding standardized testing has reached the status of some god-like or pagan entity that determines the futures of not only our children, but our teachers, schools, communities, country, and impacts our global efficacy. Those who are not educators (politicians) continue to direct and dictate policies and practices to those who are. How can and why does the American public at large and in general succumb to the edicts of this flawed, detrimental, and demeaning measure of human capacity? And, more to the point, why and how did exporting U.S. ST become so welcome, so revered, and, received so uncritically by our global community? Like cancer, the disease of U.S. standardized testing infects the global arena. I remain critical and skeptical regarding the gate-keeping effects of ST in terms of its impact and outcome on the lives, futures, education, thinking, and psyches of the human enterprise.
The polar views in the U.S. regarding ST are far from new. They are divergent in philosophical orientation, utility, purpose, interpretation, and implementation. There are scholars that support ST. Conversely, numerous scholars continue to challenge the oppressive nature of ST in that it lacks context and marginalizes English language learners, learners from low socioeconomic status, creates winners vs losers. Critics argue further that ST in no way represents learning, knowledge, understanding, much less real-life application. Additionally and importantly, some scholars contend that ST is racist and gender-biased. There is a distorted Darwinian element ingrained in ST, i.e., the survival of the fittest, which misrepresents Darwin for one, and rather, serves the interests of those seeking to maintain the status quo. Further, ST represents an outdated factory system of education that serves social efficiency, social control, social reproduction, and maintains the status quo for social mobility, thus begging the question, “Whose interests are served by standardized tests?” Believing that humans can be ranked, filed, and sorted on the basis of ST is one of the most destructive and dehumanizing practices education faces.
Standardized testing is big business. This hit me squarely during a session at the World Council of Comparative Education Societies this June (2010) in Istanbul, Turkey. I co-presented with my former M.S. student (now pursuing her Ph.D. in Russian Literature at another institution while teaching Russian Language at our university) based on her historical and qualitative thesis research in which she compared the first-ever national 2008 External Knowledge Testing in her Ukrainian country of origin to the historical onset of ST in the U.S. We went to our session location in advance to familiarize ourselves with the setting and to ensure the technology was in place. A Lebanese professor, who teaches in higher education in her country of origin, was there to attend the session and started a conversation with us. The title of our presentation, "Border Transmission and Reproduction Déjà Vu: Ukrainian External Independent Knowledge Testing—Reflections in the Mirror of U.S. Standardized Testing," captured her interest. Even before the session began, we discovered our topic was controversial because of our critical perspective.
As conference sessions go, ours was well attended by 25-30 people from almost as many different countries represented. There were two other countries and comparative topics in our session. Questions for all presenters were held until the end after everyone presented. Evidently, I have been naïve for quite some time because I was unprepared for the lively Q&A that followed regarding our research. Until our session, I remained blissfully unaware the extent to which ST from the U.S. has been exported globally. Plainly, we struck a nerve with most of our colleagues. From the discussion that followed directed at our research, it appeared to us that ST not only is well-received by our global counterparts, but that for many, it never was questioned critically regarding the numerous flaws and negative effects noted above.
After our session, I went outside to relax briefly. A young lady who attended our session stopped to visit with me. She is Brazilian by birth and informed me that Brazilian higher education institutions require the GRE. When I brought up my passion for Critical Race Theory (CRT), she smiled and informed me that she studied for three years with Kimberlé Crenshaw, Cheryl Harris, and Claude Steele—all prominent CRT scholars. She likely was the only individual attending our session who was familiar with, understood, much less agreed with, our position.
This experience provided considerable material for my reflection. After returning from the conference, I visited with a colleague and shared what happened. To my surprise, he challenged our critical assessment of ST and informed me that he knows personally an administrator for one of the major testing companies in the U.S. He explained that in his conversation with this person, he was informed that the company exercises care in test construction with the host country’s interested parties to ensure native language and culture are represented and not misinterpreted. After visiting the company’s web site to see for myself, I engaged in more reflection about this phenomenon. What struck me is that what is highly likely in this international ST-creating process is that the same flaws and biases inherent in the U.S. system also are reproduced in each country constructing “culturally sensitive” ST. For example, as stated above, ST represents an outdated factory model of schooling in the U.S., especially in terms of social efficiency, social control, and maintaining social mobility for the status quo. As I continued my conversation with my colleague, I continued to delineate the negative aspects of ST. One comment made by my colleague that struck yet another chord, was his statement that ST in many countries is used for placement in education. This, of course, also caused me consternation as I responded that placement represents tracking—from my perspective yet one more oppressive and outdated practice that remains deeply entrenched to the detriment of many in the U.S. In a final attempt to convince my colleague, I posed the question, “Do we want our students to be good test takers or to be able to understand, engage, embrace creativity, and be able to apply what they know?” It was this question that finally afforded success in relaying my concerns about ST to my colleague.
I continue to contemplate this conundrum of ST plaguing our schools and educational system in the U.S. With every semester since the passing of NCLB, my undergraduate foundations preservice students enter my class increasingly expecting me to tell them what to think and how to do “it”. Colleagues at other institutions indicate similar observations in their parallel classes. I anticipate that this will continue to worsen with each class of K-12 students in our public education environments who are subjected to the edicts of NCLB.
Thus, I now am acutely and painfully aware of the global infestation of ST. The oppressive biases and stultifying effects of ST now appear to be accepted uncritically in numerous countries. Moreover, ST reinforces competition and isolation rather than cooperation, collaboration, and understanding—the latter qualities needed to serve all humans productively in our global setting. U.S. education is revered deeply by many international communities. Will this, in turn, affect the success of international professionals seeking to live and work in the U.S.? Will ST ensure for them that they are no longer required to start their education over in the U.S. in order to pursue a profession they were educated for and practiced, perhaps for decades, in their country of origin but their “foreign” education and experience is inadequate by U.S. standards? I doubt it.
Ultimately, my question remains: Is exporting standardized testing the best practice U.S. education has to offer?
Kay Ann Taylor is Associate Professor of the Foundations of Education, American Ethnic Studies at Kansas State University. Her article, the Poverty's Multiple Perspectives, appeared in our winter 2009 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy on the theme, The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education.
Monday, July 12, 2010
An Impassioned Defense of Public Education: Diane Ravitch's Speech before the NEA
Below is a transcript of the speech by Diane Ravitch that was delivered before the 2010 Representative Assembly of the National Education Association. We reproduce it with her permission in its entirety to inform our readership.
Ravitch's new book,The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, questions many of her earlier commitments as the Assistant Secretary of Education under the President George H. W. Bush. In her impassioned speech before the National Education Association, where she received its Friend of Education award, Ravitch takes a critical look at the state of today's educational reform movement, the consequences that have followed its implementation, and the betrayal of public education as the "backbone of this democracy."
Speech Delivered at the 2010 NEA Representative Assembly
by Diane Ravitch
Thank you, John Wilson. [Ed.: Dr. Ravitch points out that the transcript on the NEA website omitted her acknowledgement of Dennis Van Roekel as well as John Wilson.] Thank you, all my friends in the NEA. Thanks to all my new friends in Colorado and Massachusetts and California. Thank you so much, California. The first time I spoke about my book was before the NEA scholars group in October. But the first time I went public was in San Jose, California. Thank you.
Let me first thank you so sincerely for this honor. I accept it with humility, with gratitude, and with respect for the more than three million educators that it represents.
Next, I would especially like to thank Camille Zombro of San Diego. Without Camille and without her help and the help of teachers in San Diego, I could not have written chapter 4 of the book. Read it and you will see why.
Well, it’s kind of amazing that this convention is being held in New Orleans. I was, just a few minutes ago, interviewed by documentary filmmakers who said to me, “Well, don’t you know that New Orleans is proving a new model?” The new model consists of wiping out public education and firing the unions, and it’s spreading across the country. And I said, “God forbid.” I pointed out to them what we all used to know, which is that public education is the backbone of this democracy, and we cannot turn it over to privateers.
Since my book appeared in early March, I have started out on what I thought would be a conventional book tour, but it really has turned into a whistle-stop campaign. I have been to 40 different cities and districts. I have another 40 planned starting in September. I talked to union members, to school board members, to administrators, to left-wing think tanks, to right-wing think tanks. I have met with high-level White House staff. I have met with about 40 members of Congress. I would say that I have met so far about 20,000 teachers, and after today I think I am going to increase it to 30,000.
And in all of this time, aside from the right-wing think tanks, I haven’t seen met a single teacher who likes what’s happening? I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that No Child Left Behind has been a success. I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that Race to the Top is a good idea.
Wherever I went, I met teachers who understood that there is a rising tide of hostility to teachers, to the teaching profession, and to teachers’ unions. You see it almost daily in the national media, in Newsweek magazine with its dreadful cover story about firing teachers, and Time magazine with awful columns, and in the New York Times and the Washington Post and all of the major media.
And as I talk to teachers, by the end of my talk, I hear the same questions again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and on the teaching profession? Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools? And why does it lionize charter schools? Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama Administration built its education agenda on the punitive failed strategies of No Child Left Behind?
And teachers want to know, as you want to know, who will stand up for public schools and their teachers? At every appearance that I’ve made, teachers would come up to me afterward and they would say to me, “Stand up for us. Speak for us. Be our voice wherever you go.” And I promised that I would, and I have.
I promised to speak out against No Child Left Behind. It’s a disaster. It has turned our schools into testing factories. Its requirement that 100 percent of students will be proficient by the year 2014 is totally unrealistic. Any teacher could have told them that. Thousands and thousands of schools have been stigmatized as failing schools because they could not reach a goal that no state, no nation, and no district has ever reached. By setting an impossible goal, No Child Left Behind has delegitimized public education and created a rhetoric of failure and paved the way for privatization.
I will continue to speak out against high-stakes testing. It undermines education. High-stakes testing promotes cheating, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing means less time for the arts, less time for history or geography or civics or foreign languages or science.
We see schools across America dropping physical education. We see them dropping music. We see them dropping their arts programs, their science programs, all in pursuit of higher test scores. This is not good education.
I have been told by some people in the Obama Administration that the way to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything. In fact, the chancellor in Washington, D.C., the other day announced she plans to do exactly that. That means less time for instruction, more time for testing, and a worse education for everyone.
In speaking out, I have consistently warned about the riskiness of school choice. Its benefits are vastly overstated. It undercuts public education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor communities. As our society pursues these policies, we will develop a bifurcated system, one for the haves, another for the have-nots, and politicians have the nerve to boast about such an outcome.
Public schools, as I said before, are a cornerstone of our democratic society. If we chip away at support for them, we erode communal responsibility for a vital public institution.
Teachers are rightly worried about the Race to the Top. I pledged to keep asking again and again why a Race to the Top replaced equal educational opportunity. Equal educational opportunity is the American way. The race will have a few winners and a lot of losers. That’s what a race means.
Race to the Top encourages states to increase the number of privately managed charters, to pass laws to evaluate teachers by test scores, to promote merit pay, and to agree to close or privatize schools with low scores or to fire all or part of their staff. All of this is wrong.
And thank you for passing a resolution expressing no confidence in Race to the Top. Why expand the number of charters when research shows that on average they don’t get better results than regular public schools? Last year, a major evaluation showed that one out of every six charters will get better results, five out of six charters will get no different results or worse results than the regular public schools. A report released just a couple of weeks ago by Mathematica Policy Research once again shows charter middle schools do not get better results than regular public middle schools.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, on whose board I served for seven years, has tested charter schools since 2003. In 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, charter schools were compared to regular public schools and have never shown an advantage over regular public schools. Charter schools, contrary to Bill Gates, are not more innovative than regular public schools. The business model and methods of charter schools is this — longer school days, longer hours, longer weeks, and about 95 percent of charter schools are non-union.
Teachers are hired and fired at will. Teachers work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They are expected to burn out after two or three years when they can be replaced. No pension worries, no high salaries. This is not a template for American education.
If we pursue the path of privatization and deregulation, we better keep in mind what happened with the stock market in 2008. And to those who tout the benefits of vouchers and charters, I want you to point out this example to them, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee has had charters and vouchers now for almost 20 years. Twenty years with vouchers, almost 20 years with charters.
They have seen a steadily declining enrollment in the public schools, and meanwhile research now shows that African-American students in Milwaukee, the supposed beneficiary of all of this choice, have test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, test scores that are below those of their African-American peers in Mississippi and Louisiana.
There was no rising tide. Choice promoted no rising tide, and no boats were lifted. While all of this money was invested in choice, there were no benefits to the students.
The Race to the Top plan to use test scores to evaluate teachers is a very bad idea, badly implemented. Legislatures should not decide how to evaluate teachers.
SB6 was wrong in Florida. Thank you to the Florida Education Association and to all the parents and friends who stood with you who defeated that pernicious piece of legislation. And thanks to you for persuading Governor Charlie Crist to do the right thing by vetoing it. Now you have got to make sure that whoever is the next governor will veto it again if it dares to come back again.
191 is wrong in Colorado. Sorry to say that it was passed. It was signed into law, and the teachers may stand to be fired because the test scores didn’t go up consistently. And these are matters that are, in many cases, beyond their control. Teachers should be judged by professional standards and not by a political process. Research does not support evaluating teachers by test scores.
Students are not randomly assigned to classes. Teachers’ so-called effectiveness fluctuates depending on which students happen to be in a teacher’s class. The single most reliable predictor of test scores is poverty, and poverty, in turn, is correlated to student attendance, to family support, and to the school’s resources.
And perhaps we should begin demanding that school districts be held accountable for providing the resources that schools need. Just like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top requires and pressures districts to close low-performing schools. The overwhelming majority of low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don’t speak English and students who are homeless and transient. Very often, these schools have heroic staffs who are working with society’s neediest children. These teachers deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools weakens communities. It’s not a good idea to weaken communities. No school was ever improved by closing it.
You know, a lot of teachers don’t pay attention to the national scene. They are busy teaching kids. They don’t pay attention to what’s happening in Washington. But when the Central Falls staff, the entire staff, was fired without a single teacher having an evaluation, the message went out that there is a new game of punishing teachers. And the message also went out when this was endorsed by Secretary Duncan and then reaffirmed by President Obama. This is not a good message.
We should thank our teachers, not fire them, not threaten them, and not close their schools.
Merit pay is another of the useless fads of our time. Merit pay has nothing to do with education. It destroys teamwork. It incentivizes teachers to compete with each other for money instead of collaborating for each other for the benefit of children.
Teachers need to share what they know and work towards one common goal — helping children and young people grow and develop. Merit pay will promote teaching to not very good tests. It may or may not improve scores, but it definitely will not improve education.
I have spoken out repeatedly to defend the right of teachers to join unions for their protection and the protection of the teaching profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political process. It’s the American way. I don’t see the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school lobby. I don’t see them complaining about the investment bankers lobby, or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers’ unions are demonized these days.
Currently, there is a campaign underway to eliminate tenure and seniority. To remove job protections from senior teachers would destroy the profession. Supervisors will save money by firing the most expensive teachers. Imagine a hospital staffed by residents and interns with no doctors. Bad idea.
Instead of the current wave of so-called reforms, we should ask ourselves how to deliver on our belief that every student in this nation should learn not only basic skills, but should have a curriculum that includes the arts, history, geography, civics, foreign languages, mathematics, science, physical education, and health. But instead of this kind of rich curriculum, all they are getting is a heavy dose of high-stakes testing and endless test preparation. And as the stakes increase for teachers and schools, there will be more emphasis on test prep and not what children need.
Policymakers have been far too silent about the role of the family. Teachers know that education begins at home, and that when families take responsibility, students are likely to arrive in school ready to learn. We need, not a Race to the Top, but a commitment to provide greater resources for those children who are in the greatest need. Schools and school districts continue to vary dramatically in their access to resources. The role of the federal government in education is to level the playing field, not to set off a competition for money. Nor do we expect the federal government to tell states and districts how to reform themselves based on the Chicago experience.
Around the world, those nations that are successful recognize that the best way to improve school is to improve the education profession. We need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices.
We need experienced principals who are themselves master teachers. We do not need a wave of newcomers who took a course called “How to be a principal.” We need superintendents who are wise and experienced educators, not lawyers and businessmen.
The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas. No high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority, to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers’ unions, to privatize large sectors of public education. Don’t let it happen!
So here’s a thought for NEA. Print up four million bumper stickers that say, “I am a public schoolteacher, and I vote — and so does my family.”
Do not support any political figure who opposes public education. Stand up to the attacks on public education. Don’t give them half a loaf, because they will be back the next day for another slice, and the day after that for another slice.
Don’t compromise. Stand up for teachers. Stand up public education, and say “No mas, no mas." Thank you.
Ravitch's new book,The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, questions many of her earlier commitments as the Assistant Secretary of Education under the President George H. W. Bush. In her impassioned speech before the National Education Association, where she received its Friend of Education award, Ravitch takes a critical look at the state of today's educational reform movement, the consequences that have followed its implementation, and the betrayal of public education as the "backbone of this democracy."
Speech Delivered at the 2010 NEA Representative Assembly
by Diane Ravitch
Thank you, John Wilson. [Ed.: Dr. Ravitch points out that the transcript on the NEA website omitted her acknowledgement of Dennis Van Roekel as well as John Wilson.] Thank you, all my friends in the NEA. Thanks to all my new friends in Colorado and Massachusetts and California. Thank you so much, California. The first time I spoke about my book was before the NEA scholars group in October. But the first time I went public was in San Jose, California. Thank you.
Let me first thank you so sincerely for this honor. I accept it with humility, with gratitude, and with respect for the more than three million educators that it represents.
Next, I would especially like to thank Camille Zombro of San Diego. Without Camille and without her help and the help of teachers in San Diego, I could not have written chapter 4 of the book. Read it and you will see why.
Well, it’s kind of amazing that this convention is being held in New Orleans. I was, just a few minutes ago, interviewed by documentary filmmakers who said to me, “Well, don’t you know that New Orleans is proving a new model?” The new model consists of wiping out public education and firing the unions, and it’s spreading across the country. And I said, “God forbid.” I pointed out to them what we all used to know, which is that public education is the backbone of this democracy, and we cannot turn it over to privateers.
Since my book appeared in early March, I have started out on what I thought would be a conventional book tour, but it really has turned into a whistle-stop campaign. I have been to 40 different cities and districts. I have another 40 planned starting in September. I talked to union members, to school board members, to administrators, to left-wing think tanks, to right-wing think tanks. I have met with high-level White House staff. I have met with about 40 members of Congress. I would say that I have met so far about 20,000 teachers, and after today I think I am going to increase it to 30,000.
And in all of this time, aside from the right-wing think tanks, I haven’t seen met a single teacher who likes what’s happening? I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that No Child Left Behind has been a success. I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that Race to the Top is a good idea.
Wherever I went, I met teachers who understood that there is a rising tide of hostility to teachers, to the teaching profession, and to teachers’ unions. You see it almost daily in the national media, in Newsweek magazine with its dreadful cover story about firing teachers, and Time magazine with awful columns, and in the New York Times and the Washington Post and all of the major media.
And as I talk to teachers, by the end of my talk, I hear the same questions again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and on the teaching profession? Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools? And why does it lionize charter schools? Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama Administration built its education agenda on the punitive failed strategies of No Child Left Behind?
And teachers want to know, as you want to know, who will stand up for public schools and their teachers? At every appearance that I’ve made, teachers would come up to me afterward and they would say to me, “Stand up for us. Speak for us. Be our voice wherever you go.” And I promised that I would, and I have.
I promised to speak out against No Child Left Behind. It’s a disaster. It has turned our schools into testing factories. Its requirement that 100 percent of students will be proficient by the year 2014 is totally unrealistic. Any teacher could have told them that. Thousands and thousands of schools have been stigmatized as failing schools because they could not reach a goal that no state, no nation, and no district has ever reached. By setting an impossible goal, No Child Left Behind has delegitimized public education and created a rhetoric of failure and paved the way for privatization.
I will continue to speak out against high-stakes testing. It undermines education. High-stakes testing promotes cheating, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing means less time for the arts, less time for history or geography or civics or foreign languages or science.
We see schools across America dropping physical education. We see them dropping music. We see them dropping their arts programs, their science programs, all in pursuit of higher test scores. This is not good education.
I have been told by some people in the Obama Administration that the way to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything. In fact, the chancellor in Washington, D.C., the other day announced she plans to do exactly that. That means less time for instruction, more time for testing, and a worse education for everyone.
In speaking out, I have consistently warned about the riskiness of school choice. Its benefits are vastly overstated. It undercuts public education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor communities. As our society pursues these policies, we will develop a bifurcated system, one for the haves, another for the have-nots, and politicians have the nerve to boast about such an outcome.
Public schools, as I said before, are a cornerstone of our democratic society. If we chip away at support for them, we erode communal responsibility for a vital public institution.
Teachers are rightly worried about the Race to the Top. I pledged to keep asking again and again why a Race to the Top replaced equal educational opportunity. Equal educational opportunity is the American way. The race will have a few winners and a lot of losers. That’s what a race means.
Race to the Top encourages states to increase the number of privately managed charters, to pass laws to evaluate teachers by test scores, to promote merit pay, and to agree to close or privatize schools with low scores or to fire all or part of their staff. All of this is wrong.
And thank you for passing a resolution expressing no confidence in Race to the Top. Why expand the number of charters when research shows that on average they don’t get better results than regular public schools? Last year, a major evaluation showed that one out of every six charters will get better results, five out of six charters will get no different results or worse results than the regular public schools. A report released just a couple of weeks ago by Mathematica Policy Research once again shows charter middle schools do not get better results than regular public middle schools.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, on whose board I served for seven years, has tested charter schools since 2003. In 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, charter schools were compared to regular public schools and have never shown an advantage over regular public schools. Charter schools, contrary to Bill Gates, are not more innovative than regular public schools. The business model and methods of charter schools is this — longer school days, longer hours, longer weeks, and about 95 percent of charter schools are non-union.
Teachers are hired and fired at will. Teachers work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They are expected to burn out after two or three years when they can be replaced. No pension worries, no high salaries. This is not a template for American education.
If we pursue the path of privatization and deregulation, we better keep in mind what happened with the stock market in 2008. And to those who tout the benefits of vouchers and charters, I want you to point out this example to them, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee has had charters and vouchers now for almost 20 years. Twenty years with vouchers, almost 20 years with charters.
They have seen a steadily declining enrollment in the public schools, and meanwhile research now shows that African-American students in Milwaukee, the supposed beneficiary of all of this choice, have test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, test scores that are below those of their African-American peers in Mississippi and Louisiana.
There was no rising tide. Choice promoted no rising tide, and no boats were lifted. While all of this money was invested in choice, there were no benefits to the students.
The Race to the Top plan to use test scores to evaluate teachers is a very bad idea, badly implemented. Legislatures should not decide how to evaluate teachers.
SB6 was wrong in Florida. Thank you to the Florida Education Association and to all the parents and friends who stood with you who defeated that pernicious piece of legislation. And thanks to you for persuading Governor Charlie Crist to do the right thing by vetoing it. Now you have got to make sure that whoever is the next governor will veto it again if it dares to come back again.
191 is wrong in Colorado. Sorry to say that it was passed. It was signed into law, and the teachers may stand to be fired because the test scores didn’t go up consistently. And these are matters that are, in many cases, beyond their control. Teachers should be judged by professional standards and not by a political process. Research does not support evaluating teachers by test scores.
Students are not randomly assigned to classes. Teachers’ so-called effectiveness fluctuates depending on which students happen to be in a teacher’s class. The single most reliable predictor of test scores is poverty, and poverty, in turn, is correlated to student attendance, to family support, and to the school’s resources.
And perhaps we should begin demanding that school districts be held accountable for providing the resources that schools need. Just like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top requires and pressures districts to close low-performing schools. The overwhelming majority of low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don’t speak English and students who are homeless and transient. Very often, these schools have heroic staffs who are working with society’s neediest children. These teachers deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools weakens communities. It’s not a good idea to weaken communities. No school was ever improved by closing it.
You know, a lot of teachers don’t pay attention to the national scene. They are busy teaching kids. They don’t pay attention to what’s happening in Washington. But when the Central Falls staff, the entire staff, was fired without a single teacher having an evaluation, the message went out that there is a new game of punishing teachers. And the message also went out when this was endorsed by Secretary Duncan and then reaffirmed by President Obama. This is not a good message.
We should thank our teachers, not fire them, not threaten them, and not close their schools.
Merit pay is another of the useless fads of our time. Merit pay has nothing to do with education. It destroys teamwork. It incentivizes teachers to compete with each other for money instead of collaborating for each other for the benefit of children.
Teachers need to share what they know and work towards one common goal — helping children and young people grow and develop. Merit pay will promote teaching to not very good tests. It may or may not improve scores, but it definitely will not improve education.
I have spoken out repeatedly to defend the right of teachers to join unions for their protection and the protection of the teaching profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political process. It’s the American way. I don’t see the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school lobby. I don’t see them complaining about the investment bankers lobby, or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers’ unions are demonized these days.
Currently, there is a campaign underway to eliminate tenure and seniority. To remove job protections from senior teachers would destroy the profession. Supervisors will save money by firing the most expensive teachers. Imagine a hospital staffed by residents and interns with no doctors. Bad idea.
Instead of the current wave of so-called reforms, we should ask ourselves how to deliver on our belief that every student in this nation should learn not only basic skills, but should have a curriculum that includes the arts, history, geography, civics, foreign languages, mathematics, science, physical education, and health. But instead of this kind of rich curriculum, all they are getting is a heavy dose of high-stakes testing and endless test preparation. And as the stakes increase for teachers and schools, there will be more emphasis on test prep and not what children need.
Policymakers have been far too silent about the role of the family. Teachers know that education begins at home, and that when families take responsibility, students are likely to arrive in school ready to learn. We need, not a Race to the Top, but a commitment to provide greater resources for those children who are in the greatest need. Schools and school districts continue to vary dramatically in their access to resources. The role of the federal government in education is to level the playing field, not to set off a competition for money. Nor do we expect the federal government to tell states and districts how to reform themselves based on the Chicago experience.
Around the world, those nations that are successful recognize that the best way to improve school is to improve the education profession. We need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices.
We need experienced principals who are themselves master teachers. We do not need a wave of newcomers who took a course called “How to be a principal.” We need superintendents who are wise and experienced educators, not lawyers and businessmen.
The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas. No high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority, to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers’ unions, to privatize large sectors of public education. Don’t let it happen!
So here’s a thought for NEA. Print up four million bumper stickers that say, “I am a public schoolteacher, and I vote — and so does my family.”
Do not support any political figure who opposes public education. Stand up to the attacks on public education. Don’t give them half a loaf, because they will be back the next day for another slice, and the day after that for another slice.
Don’t compromise. Stand up for teachers. Stand up public education, and say “No mas, no mas." Thank you.
For an interesting interview with Diane Ravitch, see http://blog.ceaohio.org/wordpress/?p=997
Friday, May 28, 2010
More on the League of Democratic Schools
In a post below, we described a visit to the Westside Village Magnet School in Bend, Oregon, one of the schools in the League of Democratic Schools. In the League's May newsletter, readers can read updates on the other schools. See page 6 for the highlights from LODS schools.
John Goodlad, the founder of the League of Democratic Schools, has recently published three articles in the Washington Post where readers can gain a deeper understanding of the motivations behind his life's work.
See:
Goodlad on school reform: Are we ignoring lessons of last 50 years? Part 1
Goodlad: Straight Talk About Schools, Part 2
Goodlad: How to help our schools -- Part 3
Common Characteristics of LODS Schools
Democratic Purpose: LODS schools believe the primary
purpose of schooling is to develop in young people the
knowledge, skills, and attitudes students require for
successful participation in our nation’s social and political
democracy.
Student Achievement: Students in such schools are
successful academically and socially.
Ongoing Professional Development: All members of the
school community engage in continuous learning.
Approaches to Learning: These are schools that use a wide
variety of approaches to learning, including engaging students
with parents and other adults within the community.
Personalization: These schools deliberately personalize the
relationships among students, teachers, parents, and
administrators by faculty members’ gathering as a group for
dialogue and by making other arrangements to facilitate
communications among the members of the school community.
2010 goals for the League schools focus on developing "ongoing, sustainable mechanisms for deepening our community’s understanding and engagement around the public purpose of schools in our democracy."
John Goodlad, the founder of the League of Democratic Schools, has recently published three articles in the Washington Post where readers can gain a deeper understanding of the motivations behind his life's work.
See:
Goodlad on school reform: Are we ignoring lessons of last 50 years? Part 1
Goodlad: Straight Talk About Schools, Part 2
Goodlad: How to help our schools -- Part 3
Common Characteristics of LODS Schools
Democratic Purpose: LODS schools believe the primary
purpose of schooling is to develop in young people the
knowledge, skills, and attitudes students require for
successful participation in our nation’s social and political
democracy.
Student Achievement: Students in such schools are
successful academically and socially.
Ongoing Professional Development: All members of the
school community engage in continuous learning.
Approaches to Learning: These are schools that use a wide
variety of approaches to learning, including engaging students
with parents and other adults within the community.
Personalization: These schools deliberately personalize the
relationships among students, teachers, parents, and
administrators by faculty members’ gathering as a group for
dialogue and by making other arrangements to facilitate
communications among the members of the school community.
2010 goals for the League schools focus on developing "ongoing, sustainable mechanisms for deepening our community’s understanding and engagement around the public purpose of schools in our democracy."
Friday, April 30, 2010
Schools that Make a Difference: A Look at the League of Democratic Schools
Several years ago, the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University partnered with a local school, the Whatcom Day Academy, to be part of the League of Democratic Schools started by John Goodlad. Our partner school is now featured on the website of the Educational Institute for Democratic Renewal at Woodring, the institute that also houses the Journal of Educational Controversy. While the journal provides a format for a national and international exchange of ideas on important and controversial issues in education, our partnership allows us to put some of these ideas in practice and share them with others across the globe.
Recently, at a regional meeting of the League in Bend, Oregon, I was able to experience another school in the League, the Westside Village Magnet School. It is a wonderful example of a democratic progressive school and provides a model of what our schools can achieve. The first thing you notice when you first arrive at the school is the sense of activity all around you. The children are everywhere, and there is a sense of joy that permeates the building. Without the usual bells and teacher talk, the children just seem to know where they should be, something that they have internalized though the culture that the school has created.
A young boy walks up to me and introduces himself as Paul and shakes my hand as he welcomes me to the school. There is a sign in the library of the rights and responsibilities of the students, but it isn’t just the usual mission statements that one finds in schools. It is internalized in the students. We had arrived around noon and students were walking all around cleaning the school. We learned later that the multi-age school is broken into families that represent every level. For ten minutes each day, each family has an assigned set of chores that each student is responsible for. Other times groups are organized around interests.
CHILDREN DOING CHORES
We arrived too late to see the morning community meetings, but we were told that each day starts with different community meetings that are conducted by the children. Each age group has a chance to conduct the meeting and the students raise the issues that concern them.
There is also a peer mediation council made up of students where conflicts can be worked out. On this particular day, a video crew of volunteers from the community was videotaping the mediation process to show to other schools in the community who had requested more information about it. The children would role play a conflict (they played out an incident in the girl’s restroom today) and then take the conflict to the peer mediation council. The student mediators learn to use active listening, search for feelings as well as facts, paraphrase responses, and ask clarifying questions. The mediators then frame the situation, write up the issues and begin to discuss solutions. All discuss win/win solutions and continue to brainstorm until the conflicting students find a solution that they can both agree on. Both the role playing conflict and the mediation process were videotaped to show other schools how it works.
The school is organized around themes. The theme this year was on global issues. Each hub of multi-age student groups – broken into k-1, 2-3, 4-6, 7-8 or something like this – approach the themes at their own developmental level and in an interdisciplinary way. I visited a room where children were making masks. The criteria for the technical making of masks were posted on the wall along with two other sets of criteria – a Research Mask Criteria and a Mask Museum Display Card Criteria.
The artwork was easily connected with their research projects (the school is very inquiry-based) and the following criteria were used to guide the students with the creation of their masks on two dimensions other than just the technical criteria.
Research Mask Criteria:
1. Create a mask that represents the culture, living beings or environment impacted or affected by the issue.
2. Focus on a critical component /issue/solution from your research.
3. Personify your mask.
4. Exaggerate at least one feature.
5. Create Balance and unity.
6. Sketch your design first.
7. Follow Deb’s mask-making technique.
8. Adorn mask to enhance the message.
The third set of criteria that was posted on the wall dealt with a museum display of their work. Notice that many of their state standards that as a public school the school has to incorporate in its curriculum are easily integrated into this interdisciplinary approach.
Mask Museum Display Card Criteria:
1. Create a museum display card
2. Use a thought-provoking quote to inspire
3. Write a complete paragraph using a topic sentence that explains specific information from your research to support your opinions and conclusions.
4. Capture the reader’s interest.
5. Use descriptive language that includes adjectives, vivid verbs and adverbs.
6. Include a title.
7. Follow the writing process.
Many of the children had been studying the artwork of the Oregon artist, Betty LaDuke. The school places great emphasis on the arts and the creative process. As I wandered around the room watching the children draw and paint, I couldn’t resist asking them some questions. They very competently described their use of colors and patterns that they found in LaDuke’s paintings. The task was to create a painting that incorporated Betty LaDuke’s painting criteria. The assignment asked them to capture the essence of their research topic. They were also asked to share the people the topic mostly impacts, show how a change we might make would make a difference for our earth, capture the essence of the culture, include a theme, include a focal point, use vibrant, strong colors and repeated patterns, line and color (all reminiscent of LaDuke’s paintings), include people in the painting, and use Betty LaDuke’s folk art style. They were later to title it and mount it.
Drawings and paintings were all over the school and classroom walls -- most with a cultural and social theme. In fact, the social consciousness that the students exhibited was seamlessly intertwined with the academics and extracurricular activities.
We had arrived on a Friday which was a day for exploration. There were any number of classes going on from baking bread, repairing bikes, making mosaics, working in and exploring the garden and the streams, creating ceramics, engaging in drama, videotaping, and the Rise up for Nicaragua –sewing quilt. Again the social component was connected with the academic explorations in which the children were engaged. When a child read on the internet about “The Great American Bake Sale” to end childhood hunger in America, she brought the idea to her community meeting. As a result, one of the exploration activities was to learn to bake bread. The school has a huge oven in the garden where some thirty loaves could be made at one time. (It was tasty) The loaves were then donated to the poor and homeless in the community. The school also has its own greenhouse where the children are raising vegetables to give to the poor.
THE SCHOOL GARDEN
THE GREENHOUSE
THE OVEN
THE STREAM
One of the parents was working at the oven in the garden and I had a chance to chat with her. Of course, I asked why she sent her child to this school. At first, she mentioned the focus on individuality, creativity and community and then thought about the freedom from so much trivia she had seen in the two earlier schools that her child had attended – the obsession with gum chewing, wearing tank shirts, etc. Then after a few moments, she said, I guess it really comes down to the fact that this school respects children.
That mutual respect perhaps characterizes the school the best. There was so much more that I witnessed that I might share in a later blog posting. The school has a video on YouTube where you can see more. You can find it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNS3GlHvVYM
Of course, the question that many of you probably want to ask is the question about children’s achievement and test scores in this kind of environment. Well, the school is high achieving. It reminds me of something that John Dewey always said – that one does not necessarily hit the goal by directly aiming at it. One of the sad consequences of the current reform and its obsession with a standardized test score is the elimination of everything that makes learning and life worthwhile – the arts, music, dance, drama, physical development, etc. It is one of those unintended consequences of the policies we construct. But as Dewey always reminded us, when our curriculum is embedded in meaningful activities, when it has a function other than achieving a test score, children not only ironically achieve but also learn to love to learn. After all, as Dewey would say, education is life not just a preparation for life.
The next issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy will focus on the theme, “The Education and Schools our Children Deserve,” and we will be featuring articles, ideas, and video from other League schools. Susan Donnelly, the head of the Whatcom Day Academy, the school we partner with in the League, will co-edit the issue. Our hope is to provide a vision of what our schools can be.
The next issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy will focus on the theme, “The Education and Schools our Children Deserve,” and we will be featuring articles, ideas, and video from other League schools. Susan Donnelly, the head of the Whatcom Day Academy, the school we partner with in the League, will co-edit the issue. Our hope is to provide a vision of what our schools can be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)