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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. 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 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).
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.
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 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).
6. There seem to be two emerging approaches to addressing problems with
traditional mainstream schools. 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).
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.
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?
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?
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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/
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