the ideal adult

Peter Smagorinsky (psmagorinsky who-is-at ou.edu)
Fri, 17 Oct 1997 08:17:03

Hello, new topic: I'm working on a paper that assumes that a teacher's
conception of an ideal adult suggests a teaching philosophy and consequent
instructional approach, classroom structure, etc. Not an original
proposition, of course, but a premise to work from. To help launch the
paper I'm trying to review different conceptions of the ideal adult, as
advocated in various publications. The following paragraph is from a
working draft of the paper I'm writing. In it I identify a series of
different traits of an ideal adult that theorists (mostly from education)
have advocated. What I'm wondering is, can you think of others? To be
more specific: I'm looking for ideal notions that are *advocated* rather
than *critiqued*. And so, while many have criticized schools for valuing
conformity and thus adopting production-line methods, I'm less familiar
with publications in which someone argues in favor of such a system.
Suggestions are welcome on- or off-net. For my purposes, I'd appreciate
complete bibliographic references.

Thanks, Peter

Stated more simply, a Vygotskian perspective would hold that the social
and physical organization of schooling implies and encourages an ideal
student and, eventually, adult and citizen. Educators thus need to be
attentive to the ways in which cultural tools and signs mediate learning
and deliberately structure the school environment so as to promote
development toward the notion of the ideal adult. The notion of what
constitutes an ideal adult, however, is under dispute, viewed variously as
one who is caring (Noddings, 1993), subversive (Postman, 19xx), thoughtful
(Brown, 1993), culturally literate (Hirsch, 1987), civic-minded (Stotsky,
1991), imaginative (Bogdan, 1992), joyous (Newman, 1996), virtuous
(Bennett, 1993), politically liberated (Freire, 1970), scientific (Piaget,
1952), skeptical (Foucault, 1972), reflective (Schon, 1991), free (Greene,
1988), domestic (Martin, 1995), inquiring (Dewey, 1960), and so on. While
not necessarily incompatible, these different visions can suggest the need
to promote different frameworks for thinking and conceptions of human
purpose and thus engagement in different social and intellectual practices.