Monthly Archives: January 2010

Jan 30 2010

Budget Cuts?

Our daughter is lucky enough to go to a relatively well-funded school with solid PTA support. She’s had 19-21 kids in both her kindergarten and first grade classes. The district is talking about increasing class size from 23 to 30. If they really do put that many children into kindergarten or even first grade, the math is devastating. 

Right now, for stations, the children are separated into four groups of five children. They do two station rotations a day, 20-25 minutes a station. There’s one adult (teacher, TA plus parent) in each of three stations plus a free play station. One full set of stations takes roughly 80 minutes.

Thirty children is five groups of six kids. So there’s 50% more kids in each group and one more station. One more station is an extra 20-25 minutes twice a day (40-50 minutes total) plus the adult’s attention is spread over 50% more students. It’s hard to see where the extra 80 minutes will come from so we’ll need to either double the number of kids in each group (four sets of eight kids) or do only one set of stations per day or drop something else from the day’s schedule. Whichever, the students lose a lot. 

In addition to the grim math above, there is the challenge of children of different abilities and/or starting points. In the groups I run, there’s typically one child who’s breezing through the activity, several who are struggling with the task and/or perhaps one or two who are tuned out or disruptive. Just getting through the activity with everybody getting the core lesson is no picnic with five students. It is hard to imagine reaching the same progress levels with eight or even six children.

The studies we’ve read say that class size is one of the major determinants of learning success. I can see why. And my guess is that the situation I describe above is relatively luxurious compared to districts with more challenging financial situations. Those districts may already start with these larger class sizes before the budget cuts. It’s hard to imagine where major cuts would leave them…

These same threats we made prior to this school year and the district somehow found a way to avoid substantial cuts in Amelia’s education. I hope they find a way again, because what’s being discussed would be a substantial blow to the educational output of these schools.

Jan 30 2010

When Are We Going to Use This?

That’s a darned good question your student asked: “When are we going to use this?”

There is a conceit implicit in philosophical progressivism that a “well rounded education” is a foundation of a ‘full’ or ‘rich’ life. Like most philosophical progressive beliefs, this one seems buried quite deep in our structures and our educational goals. Isaac Asimov wrote a short story many years ago the name of which I can’t remember which has as its premise that all of a future society’s educational efforts were directed at discovering the ideal job for each individual and training them for that profession. There is something in our national belief system which is intensely uncomfortable with such a process. Perhaps it’s the “All men are created equal” thing. But ‘all people are equal’ means in this usage that no one is ‘better’ or more ‘worthwhile’ than another, not that we are all the same. There is an belief in our society, implicit or sometimes explicit, that life has a starting line and what we are entitled to is an ‘equal start’. But the ‘race’ described seems to be towards a particular, narrow definition of success, the “American Dream”: to become wealthy and successful. These three, usually unspoken, assumptions keep us stuck in our educational philosophy, a philosophy that is leaving quite a few kids behind.

Sorry for being long winded, I’m thinking as I’m writing to some extent. The point that I’m working towards is that it is possible to imagine an entirely different school system, one built on Asimov’s vision of finding the truth of each child and preparing them individually to be successful in their livelihood and their life. This cuts against several strong cultural biases, but those biases are ones that could stand some scrutiny. In Japan, for example, it is believe that every employee from the janitor to the CEO is equally valuable, they just have different jobs. There are some cultures that place spiritual ‘success’ as the highest goal and view material success as in impediment to spiritual achievement. It’s really not such a long journey, but as a culture we’d have to become ok with the idea that fulfillment is a higher and more realistic goal that preparation for a race that, by definition, only a few can win.

Back to your student’s question, I agree with you, needing to know it to graduate is a weak and alienating answer. Our students deserve a better answer. I think it’s assumed in the elite circles where these things are decided that ‘in the long run’ the value of such education will be clear. But two things are true. One, it does no good to hold this as a pedagogical goal if by having it as a goal we drive many children from the system before they get to ‘the long run’. Two, it is far from clear that many of the things we teach will be useful to many of the students. It may be that the ‘long run’ assumption is wrong.

I have a vision of thousands of kids standing in front of the Board of Education holding signs saying “Teach us something useful!” That’d get the conversation started!

Jan 30 2010

Oops, Evolution!

Ok, having just commented on religious holidays, it’s time to move on to creationism. Apparently it is my day to live dangerously. 🙂 All the caveats of my prior post apply, especially that I mean no offence and that my motives are purely academic. 😉

To leave creationism and evolutionism completely out of school discussions is a powerful null curriculum.

Personally, I think elements of our society have taken both sides of this controversy to untenable extremes. Science is about hypotheses and the constantly evolving understanding of the universe. The exploration and discovery of nature (of which evolution is a part) is an unending process. Discussing the evolution of evolutionary theory is a fascinating and wonderful exploration of sciences at its best (and most dramatic). Yet, some of the evolutionists make Evolution into its own kind of religion, a dogma. On the other hand, religion is about faith. Faith is believing things that can’t be proven. That’s fine. But things that can’t be proven can’t be taught as fact in a secular curriculum. Having said that, creationism does have its place in the discussion of nature. It is a powerful social meme and we have a rich social history of the tension between the two poles. In fact, it is a brilliant teaching opportunity, ripe with nuance and knowledge.

My very favorite part of the story is that the science text John Scopes used to teach evolution (Hunter, 1914) contained a number of ‘scientific’ conclusions about the relative inferiority of various ‘races’, which it also defined, and the ‘benefits’ of eugenics. Really, it’s breathtaking the number of wonderful lessons this controversy contains. By teaching this story, we can teach the distinction between faith and knowledge. We can teach the nature of ‘knowing’. We can teach the evolution of science. We can teach how culture interacts with science. We can teach knowledge and the nature of living a faith-based life. It is an enormous loss to society that we mostly choose to include this in the null curriculum. Doing so is a kind of de facto censorship and it serves and honors no one.

As with religious holidays, in a school environment I would tread lightly. But, unlike religion as a whole or religious holidays as extension of religion, this controversy has its roots in tangibles that can be examined and discussed. As in all things, there is room for like minded individuals to disagree at the end of the discussion. But those from either extreme who seek to close the conversation are violating one of the core principals of liberal, democratic society dating back 2,500 years.

To me the discussion should not be if it is taught but how it is taught.

Reference

Hunter, G. (1914). A civic biology: presented in problems. New York, NY: American Book Co.

Jan 30 2010

Oops, Religion

I wouldn’t normally stick my nose into a discussion of religion but we do have a participation requirement and this topic is interesting to me. Please understand I mean no offence and that I am commenting purely out of academic motives (pardon the pun).

I certainly agree that religious instruction has no place in public education. On a very basic level, the separation of church and state in the constitution means that there is no ‘public’ religion to be instructed and therefore any religious instruction is an intrusion.

Having said that, my personal belief is that respecting differences (which I agree with very much) is more about allowing each to have their own. In a public environment, it seems unfortunate to me to allow what is permissible to be defined by what no religion prohibits. This is an odd definition of tolerance, tolerating being imposed upon by another’s beliefs. As a parent, I would prefer if schools simply let families opt out of events and occasions they find religiously (or otherwise, for that matter) problematic. On the other hand, I am eager to have my daughter learn the traditions of other cultures and religions in school. This makes her more worldly and more tolerant. After her Presbyterian pre-school burned down in the 2008 fires, they were housed in the local Jewish center for a year. There they could only have kosher lunches and they joined in the Shabbat celebrations on Fridays. It was great!

One of the side effects of this aspect of the first amendment is that the government is mostly not even allowed to make judgements about what is a religion. This being the case, the circle of who can outlaw what in a classroom becomes very wide indeed. Pretty much anybody who wants to call themselves a religion has the right to an equal legal voice. Typically, religious celebrations are about the nature of life, its joy and its sadness. To move through the weeks as a school community without them (with all of them) would be very dull and oppressive. It also becomes a null curriculum of a kind – teaching the students that some things can’t or shouldn’t be discussed.

Anyway, I trust I haven’t given offense. And as a teacher I would step MUCH more carefully, including considering the option of avoiding certain concepts, events or activities if necessary.

Jan 30 2010

Ratey’s Spark

I am always interested when schools cut programs to place resources into ‘core’ curriculum. The research I have read pretty uniformly suggests that time spent on arts, music and PE improves core learning results versus just spending more hours on the core subjects themselves.

With regard to PE specifically, there is a fantastic book from a couple of years ago (Ratey, 2008). It makes an extremely strong and results based claim that aerobic exercise improves learning. Such exercise is obviously generally good for student health. But fascinatingly, it appears to balance brain chemistry as well, promoting psychological and emotional health. That’s something we could all use a little more of I’m sure. 🙂

Anyway, it has certainly made me a strong advocate of aerobic PE in my daughter’s school. Her PE teacher read it too and now he’s implementing some of the modifications to standard PE class to make it more aerobic and individually targeted.

Jan 30 2010

Educational Philosophy

Which philosophy of education do you think is most prevalent now?

I think it’s clear that American educational philosophy is dominantly and increasingly essentialist.  Essentialists believe that “learning should focus on essential basic skills, such as reading, writing, mathematics and, to a certain extent, science and geography” (Kauchak & Eggen, 2005, page 217). It is also characterized by a belief that “there is a critical core of information that all people should possess” (Kauchak & Eggen, 2005, page 218). This aligns completely to the current focus on standards (“the critical core of information”) and standardized testing (“that all people should possess”).

As I’ve said elsewhere in this forum, post-modernism in my experience does have influence on curriculum content but seems to have little power as a consensus philosophy and less over the overall structure or goals of educators at the elementary school level. Likewise, perennialism seems to have little or no influence over curriculum and educational philosophy today. Contemporary educational philosophy has little room for ‘great works’ (other than a very few exceptions like Shakespeare) and less for the concept of eternal ideas and values.

Progressivism is interesting. Labaree’s analysis makes complete sense to me. Progressivism is really two separate philosophies. The romantic, philosophical wing of progressivism derives from Dewey and represents the child-centric, artistic (for want of a better concise description) meme that pervades our society’s discussions of education. While this philosophy remains pervasive and powerful in discussion, it has little and lessening power over actual policy. The ‘administrative’ progressives (centered by Labaree on Edward Thorndike) focus instead on efficiency and social engineering. We still see their influence in IQ testing, tracking and vocational education but even this seems to be losing out to the essentialists. Perhaps the societal economic structures these administrative progressives intended to support are themselves fading away. Certainly, fear over the lack of seemingly fundamental skills in so much of our youth seems to have claimed priority over ‘higher’ concepts like social engineering.

As I reflected elsewhere, I am far from convinced that this essentialist move towards ‘core’ standards and testing can actually accomplish its stated objectives. Like so much of the reductionist modern impulse, it may be that too much is lost in the cold reduction of life to ‘essentials’. Twain is said to have quipped that analyzing comedy is like dissecting a frog, both seem to suffer in the process. Perhaps I am a philosophical progressive at heart (or have sympathies in that direction) but it seems to me that students and their education are similarly at risk from the ‘dissection’ of the body of learning and experience included in their education. 

References
 
Labaree, D. F. (2005, February). Progressivism, schools and schools of education: An American romance. Paedagogica Historica, 41(1/2), 275. 

Kauchak, P. & Eggen, P. (2005). Introduction to teaching: Becoming a professional (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Jan 30 2010

Dewey Lost! No Not That Dewey…

Like you, I imagine some elite boarding school out there where they teach Virgil and the Greek philosophers and maybe even Latin. Having said that, I’ve got to believe it’s pretty darned rare. Maybe there are more perennialist schools in the UK, but not so many in the US.

I went to a progressive private school. I laughed when I read in one of our Electronic Reserve Readings that “Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost” (Labaree, 2005, pages 279-280). This was certainly true in my school. There were progressivist quotes all over the place but, in the end, it was certainly essentialist in its focus on ‘core’ subjects, grades, testing and results. In reality, my school was a college prep school with enough art, music, PE and cooperative learning to make all the political constituencies feel good about their ‘progressive’ school.

That was a very long time ago and I wonder if it has gotten closer to its roots in the intervening 30 years, but I doubt it. As a rule, our society is very essentialist and the school’s constituency is urban yuppie, which is to say ‘success’ focused. I don’t recall seeing any mention of this in our various readings but I wonder if the modern heirs of Dewey are the alternatives schools like Waldorf and Montessori? It seems that this may not be the conventional view but I see many similarities. I look forward to learning more about these kinds of schools as this program unfolds.

Jan 30 2010

Demographics

How do demographics, culture, and politics influence the educational philosophies of school systems?

Each of demographics, culture and politics have major influences on the educational philosophies of school systems. This happens in at least two major ways, the demands they create and the input they have.

Demographics in particular create unique and powerful demands on the school system. SES and its correlated factors strongly influence the situation among students. According to Kauchak & Eggen (2005), low SES students generally score lower on intelligence and achievement tests, get lower grades, and have more attendance and disciplinary problems. These issues would appear to have a significant influence on the philosophical choices of the school district. It is easy to see how low SES school districts might tend towards essentialist philosophy: “Let’s just get the kids the basics at least!”

This may be an incorrect instinct. Perhaps these districts as much or more than middle or high SES districts cannot afford the drudgery inherent in a more standards based, results oriented philosophy. Perhaps there, more than anywhere else, a school philosophy which allows the students to discover themselves (progressivism) or a philosophy which teaches that there are “time honored absolutes” (perennialism) (Kauchak & Eggen, 2005, page 229) or even a system which teaches against the dominant social paradigm (post-modernism) might inspire, influence and serve them better. In some cases, each of these arguments have been made and even tried. But it is too easy to see how the grinding fear of failure drives the districts to try to at least “get the basics right” through essentialism.

I am a CPR instructor and one of the very first things I was taught was that if I am doing CPR, the person is already dead. I can’t hurt them. This is a very freeing idea, allowing CPR practitioners to focus away from their natural fear of a dire situation and onto the putting their best efforts into their craft. Likewise, I wonder if this essentialist instinct as applied to the hardest hit demographic communities isn’t missing the fact that conventional, fear-based approaches have already failed these communities. Perhaps love-based, aspirational philosophies might work better or, anyway, as well but in a more empowering, humanistic fashion. 

Culture and politics also create demands for particular philosophical approaches. Cultural norms may well effect what is acceptable in terms of educational philosophy. As an example, a district supporting an avant garde university community might find itself under pressure to reflect post-modern values and philosophy in its curriculum. Cultural norms certainly effect what is acceptable in terms of educational outcomes, which in turn demands philosophies supporting or expected to support those desired outcomes.

Finally, demographics, culture and politics all influence educational philosophy at the macro, philosophical level as well. As mentioned above, a university community might well demand a post-modern template. Religious conservatives might advocate a perennialist focus on religious values and absolutes. High SES communities might look past test scores to imagine their children in the workplace, demanding a more problem solving, flexible philosophy and curriculum, a la progressivism. Locked in failure and fear of failure, it is natural that low SES communities might simply demand that their kids be “taught to read and write”. Cultural norms might well even influence the degree to which communities feel empowered to advocate for their children.

Looked at this way, it is clear that there is much more to the choice of educational philosophy than simple intellectual appeal. Powerful political constituencies will gravitate to philosophies that address their cultural, political or demographic experiences and concerns. 

Reference

Kauchak, P. & Eggen, P. (2005). Introduction to teaching: Becoming a professional (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Jan 30 2010

Curriculum Designers

Of all the various groups involved in curriculum design, teachers seem to be the least involved and least powerful. While there is a certain wonderful, twisted post-modern logic to that, by any other measure it seems sad and ironic. There is a discussion early in our textbook as to whether teachers are technicians or professionals. While I certainly agree that teachers should be treated and viewed as professionals, their lack of involvement in curriculum design gives question as to their actual status. Particularly in an essentialist, NCLB world, it would seem that their role is increasingly narrow and pre-defined. Thanks goodness that relative autonomy still exists when the classroom door is closed or all the joy would have been sucked from the job, at least for me.
 
It is easy to imagine a world where teachers set the curriculum and teachers teach. A good comparison would be the military, especially the USMC. There, every marine is first and foremost a rifleman (rifleperson?). The people who design the warfighting philosophy are marines in doctrine roles who might well be marines leading troops in combat a year later (see General David Petraeus, not a marine but a writer of doctrine and a warfighter). The ‘administrators’ are field grade and flag rank marines who’ve come through the ranks, holding fighting jobs along the way. To be sure, the government sets the objectives, but the professional soldiers create the doctrine, training and execution. There is no ‘administrator’ class or ‘doctrine writer’ class separate from those who do the fighting. While there are flaws in that model as well, it does illustrate a very different path that education might have taken in the US.

Jan 30 2010

Controversies

 

What kinds of controversies exist in curriculum?

At the macro-level, curriculum is a highly political discussion.

For people motivated by gender, race or class identities, how often these groups are portrayed and how they are represented is a major focus of attention.

Of course, there is major social controversy over creationism versus evolutionism in school curriculums.

More subtly, the portrayal of American history and patriotism is a subject of conflict between traditionalists and post-modernists.
 
More conventionally, there is constant conflict over educational philosophies. Many philosophical battles have been lost. Perennialism is largely dead in American public schools. Post-modernism is largely in contention as a teaching philosophy (as opposed to a filter on what is acceptably included in curriculum) at the collegiate level and above. But a robust battle exists between essentialists and progressivists. The NCLB movement and other sources of pull towards ‘basics’ and tight compliance to standards represent the essentialist argument. Those forces calling for a diversified curriculum including arts, music, PE and a more general, student centered curriculum are the modern heirs of progressivism.

Unfortunately, controversy exists at a very basic level in curriculum as well. It would seem any academic area are with more than one representative group has competing ‘official’ views on what the standards should be and thus what curriculum should contain.

Last, but hardly least, is the 200-plus year old fight about which political entity should control curriculum. Ceeded in the 10th Amendment, the power to regulate education rests constitutionally with the states. But the federal government (see NCLB), the states and the local governments all are in continual strife over who controls education, especially curriculum.
Reference

Kauchak, P. & Eggen, P. (2005). Introduction to teaching: Becoming a professional (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.