>Glen-- Your views on the "bashing issue" would be of great value
>to me. I KNOW I could not do a better job than the vast majority
>of teachers I have observed/worked with. So I work on the margins
>and at my university (where I teach across the curriculum vertically
>and horizontally) to see when/where/how alternatives might be
>brought to life and sustained.
I think your note is better addressed to my wife who used my e-mail account
to reply to Angel's question about teacher workloads . . . which is clearly
interesting to you in light of Martin's recent comments . . .
>I find myself very uncomfortable with statements I've been reading here the
>past couple of weeks that sound to me to be blanket condemnations of
>schooling. I'm struggling to sort out the basis of my feelings...
>The comments seem only a slight variant on the teacher-bashing that much
>educational research far too easily falls into.
However, let me offer a comment on the topic for my wife and myself, anyhow.
I should mention that I am an experienced teacher in secondary education in
Canada (29 long years' worth) and a doctoral student trying to squeeze my
thesis (so far, 8 long years' worth) into the cracks of time available in my
main job. From that context, I should mention that, as far as I am
concerned, Martin's concerns -- if he doesn't control them -- could turn
into a fully-blown sense of guilt that could ruin his day.
That's not a personal criticism, Martin. It's just a reflection of the
level of concern that these recent topical threads on xmca actually inspire
in my wife and myself. Specifically, my wife is not terribly concerned
about these kinds of potential criticisms -- because she is currently buried
under a load of marking brought on by the exams currently going on in her
school, which is in turn exacerbated by a shortened marking time period
brought on by the cutbacks of a conservative government more partial to
business concerns than people (that's my diatribe for the evening, clearly
shared by many on xmca recently). In other words, these criticisms that
disturb Martin have no impact whatsoever on my wife (as an ordinary
teacher), because she really has no time to pay attention to them.
In my own case (teacher qua graduate student), such comments on xmca don't
bother me since I am used to the views of many of the writers/speakers on
xmca. I know, for example, that Jay can sound incredibly critical if taken
the wrong way because he is interested in what I loosely call "critical
theory" -- and sometime waxes poetic in his enthusiasm. But I know from
personal back-channel exchanges with him that he means no harm. (I can
feel Jay wincing at this comment as a possible example of "damning through
faint praise" -- but I also mean no harm.). I also know for a fact that
many of the participants on xmca work in universities where they are driven
to engage in reflective conversations which have an apparently critical tone
since they are rewarded through status, position, and money for their
researches and writings. And such a style of life inevitably leads to such
discussions in forums such as xmca. In other words, I see such discourse as
a mere reflection of the participants' own agendas, needs, and
(occasionally) demons.
I find it paradoxically interesting that university workers who wish to help
teachers increase their abilities and effectiveness currently do so under
the aegis of such recent trends as the teacher-researcher movement, which
ultimately leads to views such as those of Wilfred Carr and Stephen Kemmis
who go so far as to suggest that teachers themselves should rightfully have
the primary role of creating the (teacher-research) work of creating
improvements in teachers' abilities. In addition to suspecting that these
guys are going to argue themselves right out of a job if they are not
careful, I have no fear that teachers will actually adopt wholesale the
tenets and procedures of such an approach as the teacher-researcher movement
since there is no current political or economic support for such an enhanced
professional role as Stenhouse originally conceived of it.
In such a climate, most teachers rightly realize that adopting such a role
will simply amount to their increasing their own work loads (in spite of
what self-concerned officials in the newly formed Ontario College of
Teachers might say to the contrary). Even those of us in the profession,
such as myself, who are passingly sympathetic to such an enhanced role and
would take it on without the rewards of money and position if it offers
intellectual stimulation and promises to relieve the tedium and routine of
the job. But we know better than to alienate others from us in the current
c(C)onservative political climate. The time is not right, so I choose to
stay out of such public debates and try to (selfishly?) devote my spare time
to finishing my thesis instead.
Interestingly enough, the school into which I have recently transferred
recently saw a half dozen of its senior staff receive a rather prestigious
Readers Digest award for innovative practice in developing an integrated
curriculum called "The Great Lakes Basin Project". I should note that these
people have not had anything to do whatsoever with universities, education
faculties, current debate about the teacher-researcher role and ideology --
and wouldn't even know what you were talking about if you popped these terms
out in front of them.
This last should be vastly reassuring to folks like Martin, and Jay, and
Mike. But probably for slightly different reasons than I offer here.
--glenn
Glenn D. Humphreys
P.O. Box 11
Echo Bay, Ontario
Canada, P0S 1C0
Telephone: (705) 248-1226
Internet: glenhump who-is-at soonet.ca
Fax (Phone/Email to arrange fax transmission): (705) 248-1226