IMHO you have both hit on the root problems from slightly different
angles. The problem is not that teachers as individuals or even as a
group lack the ability to sustain change. The major problem is that any
teacher who wants to institute any sort of flexible or dialog based best
practice is operating inside a bureaucratic system which is first of all
looking after its own best interests.
Education in this country is not seen by most people-in-power as coaxing
the individual child to blossom out. The greatest concern is for
control - control of the individual child in the classroom, control of
the student body, and in the long run control of the social groups from
which "low-track" children come. I don't know what's happening now
elsewhere, but New Yorkers are terrified of children, particularly
adolescent children. (As a first-time teacher my first terrified thought
when facing a class of 20 undergrads very much concerned control! I can
imagine a fledgling teacher faced with 30 teenagers from a group she/he
has been taught by the media to fear.)
And then of course the administrators fear the teachers - the police have
to be policed, too! I can still remember when getting branded as a
"Communist" was grounds for being fired from a public school system, and
any non-conformity at all created "concern" in the administration. The
boundaries may be a bit wider nowadays, but the mental habits are still
there.
The second problem with keeping best practices going is exactly what
Eugene targets - "they" want workers. Those who are already middle class
want to stay that way, and preserve it for their own children. The
debates I've heard about open admissions at City University of New York
have been amazing for their lack of forthrightness. It is painfully
obvious that in our society there are only so many good jobs to go
around, so why train competitors? (If I hear one more time that "white
males are an endangered species" I think I'll rejoin the Trotskyists.)
The bottom line is that the groups who are running our society as a whole
doesn't *want* myriads of creative people running around. If we want to
*create* myriads of creative people then we can't try to create
"sustainable" groups under the guidance of current institutions. Like
the civil-rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, what is
needed is long-term grass-roots activism and a quasi-political activist
stance which talks to the parents and the kids, who are the ones with the
most at stake. I could add some personal anecdotes regarding my
experiences teaching at CUNY and elsewhere, but discretion forbids.
The trick is to get the process established without challenging the
system so openly that a back-lash is created. (Most teachers aren't able
or willing to risk getting fired for the sake of changing a class-room
practice.) I don't think the average administrator gets up in the
morning thinking, "Today I'm going to quash all creative teaching in my
system!" Even administrators are usually just going with the flow.
Rachel
> A key difference between whole language
>and
>antecedent movements is that it is a teacher led movement- highly
>professional teachers selecting for themselves the "best practices"
>consistent with their own professional knowledge and beliefs. Too
>often
>.those seeking to influence teachers to adopt their views of best
>practices
>have attempted to impose them from outside or above.
>
>So why the attack on the best teachers using the best practice? A
>simple
>answer is that there are many groups aligned around the proposition
>that
>teachers should not determine best practice: they must be made to
>strictly
>use only the prescribed best practice. The California legislature has
>passed
>12 laws to accomplish that and a federal law has passed the House and
>is in
>the Senate. A panel is being formed in NICHD is being formed to
>determine
>what best practices in reading instruction are according to "reliable,
>replicable research" Their report will become the national curriculum
>and
>methodology in reading through the reading excellence act.
>
>These are strange times with insurance companies determining "best
>practices"
>in medicine and laws determining "best practices" in reading, math,
>and
>bilingual education.
>Ken Goodman
>
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