Eugene Matusov wrote:
>
> Hi everybody--
>
> I was thinking that trying to create some "common ground" in our
discussion
> on public education can be helpful. By "common ground," I mean a semantic
> space of common/shared engagement into the issues rather than agreement
> among us. Here is my mindstroming a list of some points of such "common
> ground." I know that I'm biased in developing this list so feel free to
add
> more items or change/dispute listed ones. Also, I may forget some points
> coming from my own bias as well. The order of the points here means
nothing
> but chronology of my thinking :-)
>
> 1. I don't think it is overgeneralization to say the high majority of
public
> and private schools in US suck.
Sorry but as an informed agent of school change you just lost me- I
hope a lot of us on your first point. And it's a bad base to build on
because it follows then that anything is better than nothing which is
both untrue and dangerous.
While often coming to schools very active,
> motivated, and enthusiastic about learning, activities, and themselves, in
> schools, kids systematically learn what they dislike and can't do. These
> schools harm almost all students, although in different ways and degree:
> high and low achievers, kids from high-, middle-, and working- class
> families, majority and minority kids, citizens and immigrants.
>
> 2. These schools (this is the use of an unidentified antecedent: which
schools "the vast majority"?especially harmful for marginalized minorities
(e.g.,
> Native Americans, racial minorities, homosexuals).
>
> 3. Students, parents, and teachers are often among those who are excluded
> from a legitimate negotiation (that involves power and resources) about
what
> education is for (Diane's question). Now its being done by law in the name
of school reform.
>
> 4. Compulsory public/mass education is a pinnacle of the modernist
> enlightenment approach with its believe in the universal rationality,
> transmission of knowledge, Taylorism, suppression of home and peer
cultures
> different from the official school institutional culture, homogenization,
> teachers as conduits of state-defined curriculum, autonomy of teaching
> methods from curricula, one-on-one leash-like guidance, age segregation,
and
> so on.
Now you've lost me again. That's what we're fighting in our schools now
as we have for 100 years: what are schools for, who shall control them,
how can education be opened- It is no coincidence that public education
is the focal point of right wing agendas because schools have been
changing- because teachers have been becoming enlightened professionals.
>
> 5. Political record of compulsory mass/public education movement is mixed.
> On the one hand, this movement highly contributed to eliminating child
labor
> exploitation and destroying racial institutional segregation. It was
> instrumental in breaking feudal barriers among classes. This movement also
> helped and helps to highlight discrimination and inequalities and
supported
> and supports discourses on equity and justice. It has been a vehicle for
> redistribution of material and intellectual recourse in our society.
>
> On the other hand, this movement contributed to destroying traditional
> cultures and communities (remember forced boarding schools for Native
> American children?), blocking children's participation in productive
labor,
> destroying children's participation in productive labor,
institutionalizing
> the process of handicap construction in individual students and
> non-mainstream/marginal communities. These schools highly contribute to
both
> political and economic reproduction of the society. They also block
> possibilities for diversification of institutional education and pathways
to
> adult communities of practice. These schools {which ones? the BIA
boarding schools? or the vast majority) are vehicles of colonization
> of mainstream upper- and middle- class ideologues to working class and
> marginalized communities (it is interesting that in the US history public
> schools were instrumental in Protestant church struggle against the
> influence of Catholic church on coming immigrants). We only had court
cases on separation of church and state when German Catholics in Cinnatti
protested protestant prayer in the schools.
>
> 6. There seem to be two emerging approaches to addressing problems with
> traditional mainstream schools.( having spent my life studying education
and schools I could not identify what would be considered a mainstream
tradtional school. It's been both a strength and a weakness of American
education that control and authority has been so decentralized that achools
differ immensely from place to place and time to time. First is
experimentation and promoting
> non-school educational institutions (e.g., Shirley Brice Heath's Youth
Based
> Organizations or Mike Cole's 5th Dimension). Second is grass-root or
> top-down efforts on diversification of school institutions (e.g., Ann
> Brown's FCL, Roland Tharp and Ron Gallimore's KEEP, Barbara Rogoff's and
> Eugene Matusov's OC, Luis Holzman's revolutionary schools).
Sorry- you've missed for more fruitful and significant movements for
educational change- within public education. Whole language for example
become so important that it the major visible target of those who want
to seize control of education.
>
> 7. Politically people who comfortably put themselves in a family of
> approaches such as activity theory, sociocultural approach, situated
> cognition, feminism, social constructionism, and so on are split. Some
feel
> very ambivalent about support for existing compulsory public education.
> Good (i.e., extreme :-) examples, I think, are Jean Lave and Shirley Brice
> Heath who are very negative about schools (both private and public) (but,
in
> my impression, they may have some reservations about some innovative
> schools). On the other specter, people are afraid that conservatives can
> hijack critique of public schools for their own goals of reducing the
> societal commitment to equity, social mobility, public access to
education,
> and redistribution of resources.
Here we agree- and here is where disinformation campaigns can exploit
divisions among us.
>
> 8. I think and hope we are at the edge of developing alternative
approaches
> to public education that emphasize notions of negation, participation,
> diversity, mutuality, power, respect, critical discourse and acting,
> inclusion, community, practice, and freedom.
>
> What do you think?
>
And a few other more integrated kinds of things: problem solving,
self-evaluation, ownership, choice, empowerment, function, authenticity-
All the things that are under attack right now.
Ken
> Eugene
>
> PS Talking with John St. Julien over BQ this Saturday made me aware that
my
> point about the deep relation between mass education and totalitarism
(with
> a reference to the Soviet Union) can be misunderstood due to a difference
in
> political and cultural backgrounds among many of us. What I meant is that
> traditional mass schools (i.e., an educational regime) and totalitarism
> (i.e., a political regime) are products of modernism. In my view, that is
> why totalitarian regimes everywhere (without any exception I know)
actively
> support mass education at almost any cost and sacrifice. On contrary,
> autocratism, another political regime, has its roots in pre-modernism
> (feudalism) and seems not to have such stake and support in mass
education.
> Any exceptions?
>
> ----------------------
> Eugene Matusov
> School of Education
> University of Delaware
> Newark, DE 19716
> Office (302) 831-1266
> Fax (302) 831-4445
> email ematusov who-is-at udel.edu
> Website http://ematusov.eds.udel.edu/
> -------------------------
--
Kenneth S. Goodman, Professor, Language, Reading & Culture
504 College of Education, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
fax 520 7456895 phone 520 6217868
These are mean times- and in the mean time
We need to Learn to Live Under Water