This morning I was working myself through *The Struggle for the American
Curriculum* by Herbert Kliebard which related to your posting and what I
was trying to get at. An excellent artifact of the struggle from 1983-1958
which seems to have so much pertinence in today's reform climate.
Kliebard looks at various aspects of progressivism including
developmentalists, social efficiency, and social meliorist perspectives.
What he argued, correctly in my opinion, that in interpreting progressive
education we have to abandon the notion of progressivism as having stable
attributes, and instead recognize that it be defined through somewhat
consistent ideological positions and social language, and the success of a
particular reform lies around a "boundary object" that unites the various
"interest groups". This of course is a summary not a quote and he never
used the word boundry object.
What he does do is move beyond progressivism as reified through specific
interest groups such as Dewey or the more scientific compoments of social
efficiency or developmentalism. Progessivism being a movement with a
shared "boundry object" via language and ideological positions united
through a particular theme. For example the progressives;
developmentalists, social efficiency, social meliorists were united against
the humanitarians (conservatives preserving western culture). A particular
language was used and one of those related to Dewey was "occupational
learning".
I have not read McDermott or Heath, so I will leave them out. But if we
take Delpit, or Billings a message surfaces of high expectations for "other
people's children". We also have the progressive element of new standards
who, besides the conservatives, have been motivated by SOE who think they
will raise the image of the profession. Then we have individual diciplines
and other groups fighting for a spot on the stage. For example, despite
how their being used by the conservatives the TIMSS took a negative stance
toward "traditional" approaches in education. Linda Darling-Hammond (very
much a Dewyian) has been a big proponent of standards along with Carl Grant
and others on the Multicultural front.
What we have is an alliance concerned with the failing of our schools, and
of course the mother of all unifiers the failing of our teachers, with
standards and tests as a "boundary object" that appears it will be able to
address at least some of the needs of the various actors. Will teachers be
seen as more professional? Probably not, and most likely as now the trend
seems to be their wages with decrease along with their time. Will the
standards make education more progressive as the various discipline
stakeholders desire? Probably not, even with the evidence from TIMSS that
point do they defects of the transmission model, that model will survive.
Will the standards and tests increase equity in education? History shows
that will not be the likely outcome.
The reformers do seem to have different goals, but they also seem to unite
around a certain way of talking about schools and a particular reform.
While McDermott or Heath are not proponents of standards they, using the
language of failure, imply something needing to be fixed. Reinforcing a
general sense that there is something deeply wrong with our schools and
they are in need of reform. Standards and testing being the reform that
get most if not all of the various interest groups on board. I do think
even Heath and McDermott has provided a degree of capital to the general
sense of failure that standards and tests are responding to.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Eugene Matusov <ematusov who-is-at udel.edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 1999 3:46 PM
Subject: RE: social promotion, several unrelated comments
> Hi everybody--
>
> I think that Nate's keen observation reveals differences in goals among
> school reformers who argue for educational equity. Some people (e.g.,
> Delpit) see the problem of current educational inequity in
> overrepresentation of minority kids and kids from poor families among
school
> underachievers. They would seem to be happy if all social groups would
fail
> equally frequent (or equally rare). This group of reformers does not want
to
> fundamentally change the institution of school as a competitive place for
> students but rather wants to provide "equal opportunities" for the
> competition.
>
> The other group of reformers (e.g., McDermott, Heath) is concerned with
any
> student being failed and what to eliminate failure from the
> institutionalized education. They want to make fundamental
> reforms/transformations of school institution to eliminate the
competition
> among the students when academic success of one student is failure of
> another, when educational goal implies and constructs failure (like in
the
> case of standards). There may be other groups of reformers (some of which
> even would deny the notion of "reform" all together).
>
> What do you think?
>
> Eugene
>