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Re: [xmca] Obama's Learn Act

Let me sound a slightly skeptical note, though with the greatest  
admiration for the efforts of Kris and other sophisticated educators  
to influence policy in Washington. Maybe some of these points may also  
be informative for the non-US xmca-ers.

I don't really think that US educational policy is about learning. It  
is a branch of SOCIAL policy. It is, for politicians and many voters,  
about equity, justice, moral values, quality of the labor force.  
Conservatives by and large won the battle from the 1970s-90s over the  
definition of educational quality: it means knowledge and skills, as  
assessed by simple, mass-administered tests. They succeeded because  
what they proposed was very close to common folk-wisdom about  
schooling. They proposed what they did to prevent education from  
becoming about learning how to critique and change the status quo.

Within the framework they established, the liberal left looked to see  
how they (we?) could still use education as an tool for social  
justice. The answer basically, from Head Start to NCLB (the Bush-era  
policy) was to try to insure that children from poor families got  
enough extra programs to help them compete with middle-class kids in  
the world of testable knowledge/skills. I think that is the course  
that Obama is still on. It seems likely to me that his personal  
experience would be telling him that kids in under-resourced  
communities go to school relatively unprepared for its demands, and so  
pre-school programs should be targeted to diagnostically specific  
needs relative to predictable school demands. That how the language of  
the proposed bill sounds to me.

Politicians, senators, and even higher level staff people probably  
don't know much about learning theory and don't have the time to  
learn. If it is theory or models that use unfamiliar ideas, all the  
less likely to be able to persuade or communicate. Neuroscience  
evidence for early social learning or artifact-hybridity in  
development may as well be discourse from Mars in their world.  
National political policy I think cannot be realistically expected to  
embody advanced learning theories. That discourse should have its  
practical effects far more locally, in terms of what teachers get  
taught about good practice in schools, and maybe what others who are  
trying to innovate new approaches to education that go beyond the  
classroom-only paradigm take into account.

Apart from trying to avoid overly narrow language (and more  
importantly, administrative interpretation of language) about what  
kinds of programs can get federal funding, I think the core issues at  
the national policy level ought to be more about goals. Equal learning  
opportunity in practice is a widely shared goal; the means to it are  
much debated. What is less addressed, I think, is whether knowledge  
and skills acquisition should be in itself the primary educational  
goal. So long as that conservative principle is maintained, social  
equity goals will lead to bad educational practice for all, and  
especially for those most in need.

Reading, for example, is NOT "fundamental". It is a diversion from  
serious educational thinking. (R.I.F. was a slogan long supported by  
the right, though not only by them.) Reading is a tool, to be learned  
and used as part of larger inquiries and activities with goals that  
mean something to the learners. Those could be play goals, or self- 
empowerment goals, or altruistic goals. So long as what schools will  
demand of kids on arrival is that they be prepared to learn  
decontextualized de-coding skills (i.e. "reading"), and do well on  
tests of these that are even more isolated from anything with larger  
meaning, then all pre-school preparation programs will be targeted at  
preparing students for mindlessness. And social equity and social  
justice agendas in social policy will support this.

It's not about the means. It's about the goals.

JAY.


Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke

Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093






On Dec 13, 2009, at 11:12 PM, mike cole wrote:


Ok.
So Catherine thinks we should turn our attention to national education
policies and knows what is wrong. Michael agrees.
Peg has a different interpretation. Others have different views.
What we agree on is that we are not happy with what is transpiring.


In lieu of discussing what it means if biology and culture are  
intertwined

in ways that make humans hybrids, and implications of such ideas for
understanding the process of development in highly
industrialized countries, never mind the majority of human kind, it is

suggested we address this problem and stop discussion of all other  
issues.

How would you who want to shift the discussion have us, in our  
professional
capacities, change direction so that we are not just purveying  
academic

drivel for self advancement? With what authority and to what effect?


This is a fine place to discuss such matters. Pick a header and lead  
the

discussion so that it is effective. Happy to engage.


But at the same time, i *will *complete reading seriously the final  
papers
of my students, i *will* seek as soon as possible to bring us back  
to the
issues of cognitive style and education that the paper under  
discussion is
supposed to be addressing, I *will* continue working with my grad  
students
over vacation to support the people without food to eat or shoes for  
their
kids in the housing project which is the center of LCHC efforts for  
the past
two years, and I *will *continue to try to understand the  
implications of

our knowledge of

early infant development and its interweaving of cultural and  
biological

wellsprings of development. In addition to, not in lieu,
of anything.


Kris has asked for concrete suggestions and she is in a position to  
carry
them into the White house. My suggestions focus on collaborations  
between
universities and their communities to address simultaneously the  
problems of

higher education which break my

heart when I am on the UCSD campus and the problems of elementary  
education
which break my heart when i work with my students in the community.  
Kris

knows this line of thinking well.

Apart from lamentations, who is suggesting we do what on what grounds?

Back to work.
mike



On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 9:04 PM, Michael Glassman <MGlassman@ehe.osu.edu 
>wrote:

I really think that this legislation is, among other things,  
historically
insensitive.  Do people really think, given our society's history  
with
assessment tests, that these tests are not going to be geared  
towards middle
class values?  Do people really think that these tests are not  
going to be
used to label and differentiate groups?  Do people really think  
that these
assessments are not going to be used to in some way reinforce a  
deficit
model for children who don't do well on the tests?  The fact that  
these
tests are being conducted at such a young age makes these ideas  
even more

painful.


These senators Brown and Franken and Murray have their hearts in  
the right
place, but our discourse on education in the United States has  
become so

convoluted and narrow and so dominated by a faux realist perspective
(actually an unholy combination of realist and idealist) that even

legislators who mean well are I think making thoughtless mistakes.   
It still
pains me that Ted Kennedy and George Miller were major forces  
behind NCLB.
There are many reasons for this I think, not the least of which is  
control
of public discourse by a relatively small group of educators - but  
just
because you are giving money towards education initiatives does not  
mean

that you are helping the cause of universal education.

Michael

________________________________

From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of cconnery@ithaca.edu
Sent: Sun 12/13/2009 10:10 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: RE: [xmca] Obama's Learn Act



Hi Peg and others:


Here is the specific language under section 9, e,1,c of the LEARN  
Act:

SEC. 9. SUBGRANTS TO ELIGIBLE ENTITIES IN SUPPORT OF BIRTH THROUGH
KINDERGARTEN ENTRY LITERACY.

(e) LOCAL USES OF FUNDS.-

(1) IN GENERAL.-An eligible entity that receives a subgrant under  
this
section shall use the subgrant funds consistent with the plan  
proposed in

subsection (c) to carry out the following activities:

(C) SCREENING ASSESSMENTS AND MEASURES.-Acquiring, providing  
training for,
and implementing screening assessments or other appropriate  
measures to

determine whether children from birth through kindergarten entry are
developing appropriate early language and literacy skills.


The question is, "WHO will determine what is appropriate and HOW  
will they

assess it?" This goes to the heart of Vygotsky's work.

Cathrene



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