Gordon wrote,
>The problem, in my
>view, is not so much the teachers' lack of vision as the constraints
>imposed on them by the wider social context, in which the dominant values
>are efficiency, productivity and profit and in which many of the reforms
>prescribed for public education are based on a totally inappropriate
>application of the business principles of late 20th century capitalism.
I agree with that wholeheartedly. I think that the main struggle is not
about vision or even what is appropriate but using Diane's famous question
what is schooling for. In my view, mainstream schooling is mainly the
pipeline for the late 20th century capitalist economy. Everyone who write
"big" educational research grants knows well what I'm talking about. This
(power) discourse often overrules all other discourses about purposes of
schooling.
What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gordon Wells [mailto:gwells@oise.utoronto.ca]
> Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 10:21 AM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: the calculus wars and students' real lives
>
>
> Louise wrote:
>
> >I think teachers need to justify why learning anything they teach is
> >critical to students' real lives. This task requires a certain type of
> >discourse that I suspect is rarely used in classrooms.
>
> What we tend to forget is that school is a major part of young people's
> "real lives". In principle, there is no reason why projects undertaken
> during the hours at school cannot be both meaningful and educative. I'm
> thinking, for example, of some of the projects collaboratively carried out
> in classes where TERC researchers have been working; drama created,
> scripted and performed by students; creating multi-modal representations
> of local history, based on interviews with local people, etc.
>
> I agree that the discourse that occurs in carrying out these projects is
> very different from the recitation script that is the staple in so many
> classrooms. But in my experience, the change in discourse style occurs as
> a corollary of a changing relationship between the participants in the
> situation and the goals to which they orient, rather than vice versa.
>
> I believe that many teachers intuitively understand that working in this
> way is more worthwhile and more satisfying than delivering and testing a
> predetermined package of basic skills and information. The problem, in my
> view, is not so much the teachers' lack of vision as the constraints
> imposed on them by the wider social context, in which the dominant values
> are efficiency, productivity and profit and in which many of the reforms
> prescribed for public education are based on a totally inappropriate
> application of the business principles of late 20th century capitalism.
> This is certainly the case in Ontario, where it seems that the electorate
> is about to give a second term to a conservative government that
> explicitly espouses and imposes these principles on our school system.
>
> Gordon Wells
> OISE/University of Toronto
>