Spring reveals the fact that most times, educational policy is determined by interest groups, and not all interest groups are operating from any kind of informed educational background. Instead, the values and agenda of the interest groups tend to sway the politicians making the policy from the President of the United States down to the school board member in a small community. Unfortunately, politicians are most often concerned with votes, not kids, so they make decisions to please their constituents and shore up votes rather than decisions that will truly benefit schools or children.
So if we know interest groups will force action, the question doesn’t become whether or not to include them or consider them. The question becomes which focus groups do we want at the table. If we support local control of schools, citizens can enjoy a greater degree of participation. Local interest groups are easier to access, so one can appeal to them, understand them, and work with them. Also, at the local level, elections are not as much of a motivating factor. At a national level, where a president has to re-run for office and only has a total of eight years to enact change in a variety of sectors of society, he/she does not have enough time to work through education, global economic issues, military decisions, etc. Rather, as Reagan and Bush have demonstrated, most of the educational change to occur is delegated to a secretary or other appointee the public hasn’t voted into office, or the interest group with whom they align. The actual political leader just uses the educational platform developed by others to campaign as the “Education President.” With the number of “Education Presidents” we have had in the past fifty years, it is amazing we are not the world expert on education.
If schools could force more local control, communities could feel more empowered in structuring their schools, its curricula, and its policies. They would be able to practice more effective representative democracy because the people making the policy decisions are actually the people they elected. This, in turn, would model democracy for their children and help advance the goal of creating an educated citizenry through education. The Boards of Education, hopefully, would have more access to specific, district-based educational needs and challenges and design more targeted reform to improve conditions and performance. These changes could occur faster and be more tailored and monitored.
One challenge to local control is that elite citizens would control the decision-making, and the underdogs may not have adequate representation. Delaware City Schools has seen this phenomenon. I held a focus group there to discuss community relations, and found that the Board as well as the Superintendent tends to rely on the same voices, the “Old Guard,” when making choices. They recognized the economically disadvantaged were not having the same experience in their schools and they realized that situation would cause them problems on the state report card and other performance analyses. That pressure to perform motivated them to at least look at how they could close the achievement gap, but even then, the participants in my focus group indicated that the “disadvantaged voice” was not invited to the table to actually be part of the solution. They said the “Old Guard” didn’t even consider that their voice would be relevant.
So although local control of schools is attractive from a democratic point of view, and attractive if one is truly looking to build social capital in its individual citizens, local control can prevent a more global view of education, reduce willingness to embrace multiculturalism, and actually promote anti-American values in some communities. Local control can actually stifle change and prevent access to information that does not fit into the commonly held views of the community. We saw this a bit when we did our focus group in Kettering, where the consensus of the group was that Kettering Schools produces Ketteringites, indoctrinated into the values and practices of the community. Perhaps that helps students see a more realistic view of their communities and prepares them to actively participate because they know the politics and the pressures faced by public officials.
Faced with the possibility of education narrowing the minds of students instead of expanding their minds, many would say nationalization is the way to go because more voices will be heard. However, politicians, who need votes to even enter into office, can prevent true collaborative problem solving by caving in to the demands of the loudest interest group that holds the greatest number of votes. They can also succumb to their frequently inflated egos and employ the attitude that they have the best plan to save the disadvantaged from themselves. Either way, the policy ends up reflecting the values and culture of America’s upper middle class. Most often, the interest groups pushing the concerns of the disadvantaged are made up of middle class voices working furiously to raise the disadvantaged up far enough to enter the middle class rat race.
Finally, a third option, and the one that is used today is state control. However, in our current educational power structure, the states are held hostage by the federal initiatives. States may understand their particular educational needs, but they are not given the real power to carry out their policies because the federal government threatens to yank funding if states do not adhere to their policies. So our current system is perhaps the worst because the players can blame each other for education’s problems.
The state can complain that the federal government mandates impossible programs and then doesn’t fund them. They cannot possibly do well because they have to redirect their finances so they are compliant. The local schools may know what is best for their students, but they point to the state standards and testing procedures as their reasons for making poor choices or unpopular ones. The federal leaders complain that the family is to blame (which adds fuel to the Conservative Christian interest groups’ agendas) and the teachers and the local district bureaucracies. The different levels of leadership spend so much time pointing fingers at each other, they spend little time actually problem solving collaboratively.
So what is the solution? If I knew that, I would be a very rich woman. What I am learning, however, is education is much too complicated to point at one leader as good and one leader as bad. The bottom line is we all care about education, even if some of us are more focused on its ability to provide credentials, or its ability to sustain democracy, or its ability to generate a workforce. The educational problems will not be solved as long as education is part of the public good, because it will be a victim to the constant tension between the market and democracy, the Republicans and the Democrats, the religious and the secular.
I don’t think, however, a solution is possible because education is a process and its purpose and practice ebbs and flows with the tide of our own changing culture. In a perfect world, I would like to see some realistic, well informed national standards about what makes a person literate. I would like to see what processes are considered necessary by all interest groups for a democratic citizen. I would also like to see a national policy somehow enforcing the right for all children to attend school and learn the basic skills needed to be an American. The states can determine how to make their students good workers. They are the ones that know what industry their state has and what its workforce needs are. If the state is the one investing in its educational system, it should be able to prepare a workforce that will benefit its own industry so it keeps the students in the state. I also think the federal government should not punish states and their schools by taking away their funding. Perhaps they should punish the businesses in the state when a state fails to produce students.
Forcing businesses to pay for the failures of the school could help them stop simply criticizing, and start actually problem-solving. Currently, they discuss what needs to be done, but do not feel any kind of responsibility to be an active part of the solutions they propose. If people want a voice at the table, that voice should be granted only if they accept the responsibility to take an active role in carrying out their suggestions. Imagine what a collaborative system we could set up if it was designed to force meaningful and long term collaboration between business and school and government.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
some thoughts on education and policy
I am beginning to see a true irony in the discussions of education, reform, politics and finance. From the beginning of formalized schooling, the cited purpose for education was to perpetuate the democracy through knowledgeable students. Horace Mann fought for publicly supported schooling because a well educated populace keeps property values high, and because personal wealth is often dependent on the wealth of the community. The more recent argument that schools should “produce” workers is attractive to employers, but has not held up in our courts as a primary purpose. As recently as 2001, New York’s Justice DeGrasse wrote that a good education “consists of the foundational skills that students need to become productive citizens capable of civic engagement and sustaining competitive employment.” The irony is that most venture capitalists would love to invest in something that is sure to yield returns. We know that schooling yields returns, but the modern idea of humans as capital worth an investment or future workers waiting to be produced hasn’t attracted companies to pony up the investment.
I am also saddened to note that not many educational theorists concerned with policy so far have directly focused on what is good for our children or the value of our children as an end in itself. Other countries value their children and offer policies that illustrate their commitment to their future generations. For example, Scandinavian countries offer a mother a full year off with her current pay when she gives birth because they believe positive early nutritional and psychological development in children is a good investment. They also respect teachers and the jobs they do. Teachers there spend about 60% of their day with students. The other 40% is spent collaborating, designing action research, and reading on current pedagogical theory so they can stay sharp. Is it any surprise that Finland’s educational system continues to rank at the top worldwide? You get what you pay for. Our companies spend millions of dollars yearly to train their employees. They could reduce that line item in the budget if they invested more in the early training of employees by investing in schools.
The focus of education seems to be on measuring the accountability of the system rather than being intuitive about what kinds of services kids need. Standardized tests that measure specific facts and figures, or ask students to regurgitate a single set of facts merely test whether the school introduced those facts and concepts. The tests are not centered on the child’s ability to be a good citizen or a productive worker; they are measuring the actions of the system.
Furthermore, the reliance on those tests to define the quality of a school means schools spend their resources jamming the set of facts that will appear on the test into the brains of their students. Every child is an individual with separate talents, dreams, and abilities, but the United States offers only one definition of success, which is education in a typical college prep high school and achieving on standardized exams. We miss the opportunity to help shape truly brilliant thinkers and future politically active citizens with the ability to problem-solve and think creatively. Other countries offer nationalized tests, but they offer alternatives to students who don’t make the grade. They also have curricula focused on much less content and many more processes.
The United States is so worried about the notion of equality, but they have focused on the wrong type of equality. Vouchers and grants and other types of funding meant to help close the gap between wealthy and poor districts miss the mark. A part of me believes we all have a responsibility to our children because they are Americans and our country’s future depends on their success. On the other hand, I understand the individualistic view that I have my own children to care for and pay for, and I can’t afford to take care of other people’s children as well. I also understand the capitalistic undercurrent that informs Americans; namely, hard work yields success and wealth. Capitalistic thinkers have historically considered unsuccessful or poor people as lazy or even morally deficient. Paying for their children to attend school might be seen as excusing them. The disappearance of community schools has exaggerated the gap between these two views and pushed many people who may have initially been more willing to help pay for education to the other side of the fence. Without community schools, the districts are asking citizens to think very large. They are not paying for the children of a family they have known and they live near. They are paying for kids they have never met and to whom they have no sense of obligation.
Our society is also very different today. We do not have a front porch culture anymore where neighbors know each other. Instead, we have many more transient homeowners who never venture off their private backyard decks. The sense of community is declining and with that, the sense of an obligation to society as a whole declines. The recent Wall Street scandals underscores this sense of “me as most important” that many Americans feel. The stock market supports the entire country; the economies of the entire world depend on it, but American executives cheated and lied and pocketed billions of dollars of profit without a conscience. And these are the winners, the Americans with good educational pedigrees and lots of wealth. That kind of national sense of morality does not bode well for a public system of education or health for that matter.
Amy Gutman’s idea of a democratic threshold seems more realistic in these times because we could probably make an argument no one could refute for basic education for an enlightened citizenship. The issue is determining the amount of money needed to educate all children to be democratic citizens. In some communities, that task is much more difficult and expensive than in others. Gutman’s idea, unfortunately, points to a bleak future for schools where the curriculum only includes reading, writing, basic math, and citizenship. Any extra activities schools want will have to be paid for by parents, property taxes, or by school fundraisers.
I fear that the future is going to look more like Southwestern City Schools. Schools are not going to be able to continue to the level of services they currently do if the funding issue isn’t settled and the funding issue will not be settled because of the power struggles. Spring notes the power struggles between employees within a district as well as the struggles between the state and districts, the community and the state and so on. Spring points out educational bureaucracies have been the scapegoats for school finance arguments since the 1950s conservative movement. Instead of saying I don’t care about kids or the next generation so I am not supporting this levy, residents can say they are not supporting the levy because the system is wasteful.
The teachers and administrators do not help the cause. They are often adversarial and distrustful. That distrust seeps into the community. If a community doesn’t trust its local school system’s officials, it will not support the school through levies or volunteerism. In order to settle the problem of school funding, school districts need to act as a unified system. Districts need to collaborate to get word out about what they are doing. Districts need to form a common mission and vision. I am somewhat perplexed by the idea that each school within a district has its own mission and vision and then the district has a mission and vision. The state offers a mission and vision as well. Shouldn’t the mission of schools be the same throughout the state? I understand differing visions because each school might approach the mission uniquely depending on their population, but shouldn’t they all be working to the same aim?
Centralization and standardization is the easy solution many people who have forgotten about the kids employ. They call for it to make sure the system offers equality to all, but they forget that each student has unique needs. A student living below the poverty level has greater needs than a student whose parents provide for him/her. Some poorer communities do not communicate the value of education to their youth. Without a buy-in that education is important, why would one want care about school? Some districts need money to help teach the positive habits and attitudes necessary for academic achievement to parents and other community members.
Spring concludes Chapter 4 with the question, “Who should control U.S. schools?” I think the answer to that question is directly related to the purpose one assigns to schools. If creating an enlightened citizen is the purpose, then the national government should share responsibility with the state government to teach children the laws and rules of democracy in the nation and the state. If the purpose of education is to produce a worker, then the local business community should have a voice in creating curriculum and assessing results. If the purpose of schools is to try to make each individual American the most enlightened person he/she can be and to help identify and nurture each individual’s gifts and talents, then the parents and the teachers should have the most say.
I am also saddened to note that not many educational theorists concerned with policy so far have directly focused on what is good for our children or the value of our children as an end in itself. Other countries value their children and offer policies that illustrate their commitment to their future generations. For example, Scandinavian countries offer a mother a full year off with her current pay when she gives birth because they believe positive early nutritional and psychological development in children is a good investment. They also respect teachers and the jobs they do. Teachers there spend about 60% of their day with students. The other 40% is spent collaborating, designing action research, and reading on current pedagogical theory so they can stay sharp. Is it any surprise that Finland’s educational system continues to rank at the top worldwide? You get what you pay for. Our companies spend millions of dollars yearly to train their employees. They could reduce that line item in the budget if they invested more in the early training of employees by investing in schools.
The focus of education seems to be on measuring the accountability of the system rather than being intuitive about what kinds of services kids need. Standardized tests that measure specific facts and figures, or ask students to regurgitate a single set of facts merely test whether the school introduced those facts and concepts. The tests are not centered on the child’s ability to be a good citizen or a productive worker; they are measuring the actions of the system.
Furthermore, the reliance on those tests to define the quality of a school means schools spend their resources jamming the set of facts that will appear on the test into the brains of their students. Every child is an individual with separate talents, dreams, and abilities, but the United States offers only one definition of success, which is education in a typical college prep high school and achieving on standardized exams. We miss the opportunity to help shape truly brilliant thinkers and future politically active citizens with the ability to problem-solve and think creatively. Other countries offer nationalized tests, but they offer alternatives to students who don’t make the grade. They also have curricula focused on much less content and many more processes.
The United States is so worried about the notion of equality, but they have focused on the wrong type of equality. Vouchers and grants and other types of funding meant to help close the gap between wealthy and poor districts miss the mark. A part of me believes we all have a responsibility to our children because they are Americans and our country’s future depends on their success. On the other hand, I understand the individualistic view that I have my own children to care for and pay for, and I can’t afford to take care of other people’s children as well. I also understand the capitalistic undercurrent that informs Americans; namely, hard work yields success and wealth. Capitalistic thinkers have historically considered unsuccessful or poor people as lazy or even morally deficient. Paying for their children to attend school might be seen as excusing them. The disappearance of community schools has exaggerated the gap between these two views and pushed many people who may have initially been more willing to help pay for education to the other side of the fence. Without community schools, the districts are asking citizens to think very large. They are not paying for the children of a family they have known and they live near. They are paying for kids they have never met and to whom they have no sense of obligation.
Our society is also very different today. We do not have a front porch culture anymore where neighbors know each other. Instead, we have many more transient homeowners who never venture off their private backyard decks. The sense of community is declining and with that, the sense of an obligation to society as a whole declines. The recent Wall Street scandals underscores this sense of “me as most important” that many Americans feel. The stock market supports the entire country; the economies of the entire world depend on it, but American executives cheated and lied and pocketed billions of dollars of profit without a conscience. And these are the winners, the Americans with good educational pedigrees and lots of wealth. That kind of national sense of morality does not bode well for a public system of education or health for that matter.
Amy Gutman’s idea of a democratic threshold seems more realistic in these times because we could probably make an argument no one could refute for basic education for an enlightened citizenship. The issue is determining the amount of money needed to educate all children to be democratic citizens. In some communities, that task is much more difficult and expensive than in others. Gutman’s idea, unfortunately, points to a bleak future for schools where the curriculum only includes reading, writing, basic math, and citizenship. Any extra activities schools want will have to be paid for by parents, property taxes, or by school fundraisers.
I fear that the future is going to look more like Southwestern City Schools. Schools are not going to be able to continue to the level of services they currently do if the funding issue isn’t settled and the funding issue will not be settled because of the power struggles. Spring notes the power struggles between employees within a district as well as the struggles between the state and districts, the community and the state and so on. Spring points out educational bureaucracies have been the scapegoats for school finance arguments since the 1950s conservative movement. Instead of saying I don’t care about kids or the next generation so I am not supporting this levy, residents can say they are not supporting the levy because the system is wasteful.
The teachers and administrators do not help the cause. They are often adversarial and distrustful. That distrust seeps into the community. If a community doesn’t trust its local school system’s officials, it will not support the school through levies or volunteerism. In order to settle the problem of school funding, school districts need to act as a unified system. Districts need to collaborate to get word out about what they are doing. Districts need to form a common mission and vision. I am somewhat perplexed by the idea that each school within a district has its own mission and vision and then the district has a mission and vision. The state offers a mission and vision as well. Shouldn’t the mission of schools be the same throughout the state? I understand differing visions because each school might approach the mission uniquely depending on their population, but shouldn’t they all be working to the same aim?
Centralization and standardization is the easy solution many people who have forgotten about the kids employ. They call for it to make sure the system offers equality to all, but they forget that each student has unique needs. A student living below the poverty level has greater needs than a student whose parents provide for him/her. Some poorer communities do not communicate the value of education to their youth. Without a buy-in that education is important, why would one want care about school? Some districts need money to help teach the positive habits and attitudes necessary for academic achievement to parents and other community members.
Spring concludes Chapter 4 with the question, “Who should control U.S. schools?” I think the answer to that question is directly related to the purpose one assigns to schools. If creating an enlightened citizen is the purpose, then the national government should share responsibility with the state government to teach children the laws and rules of democracy in the nation and the state. If the purpose of education is to produce a worker, then the local business community should have a voice in creating curriculum and assessing results. If the purpose of schools is to try to make each individual American the most enlightened person he/she can be and to help identify and nurture each individual’s gifts and talents, then the parents and the teachers should have the most say.
Some thoughts on democracy
On Democracy by Dahl
Dahl explains the construct of democracy in familiar terms one would find in a government class in high school in his text On Democracy. However, his assessment of why and how democracy works or fails globally offers really interesting conditions for consideration by Americans, especially with the backdrop of America’s pursuit to democratize Iraq and other countries around the world.
The United States of America has spent trillions of dollars at this point trying to democratize Iraq. Using Dahl’s lens of favorable and essential conditions for democracy, I am not surprised the war has taken so long and been so difficult. Dahl identifies the following five conditions that favor democracy, labeling the first three as essential: 1. Control of the military and police by elected officials. 2. Democratic beliefs and political culture. 3. No strong foreign control hostile to democracy. 4. A modern market economy and society. 5. Weak subcultural pluralism. An examination of these conditions in regard to what we knew about Iraq’s government and culture prior to the war, clearly reveals that the United States used faulty processes to try to help Iraq escape a tyranny and establish a democracy. Iraq does not have the conditions necessary to sustain a democracy, even if the United States can force it into creating a system that resembles democracy.
Control of the military and police by elected officials. Iraq’s version of the secret police, the Mukhabarat, took direct orders from a dictator, so the country’s chance of instituting democratic practices was slim as long as Saddam Hussein was in power. Hussein was not an elected official held accountable by his people; he was a tyrant and a dictator who silenced opposition and discussion by controlling his military. Our ousting of Hussein and plan to replace his dictatorship with a democratic government was the right step to creating the conditions necessary according to Dahl. However, Dahl does not argue the five conditions need to be established in any order, and the United States had not taken steps to establish the other five conditions necessary for a democracy. Furthermore, one has to look at the essential conditions for democracy (numbers 1-3 above) as a set rather than separate items.
Democratic beliefs and political culture. This essential condition for democracy directly relates to the first in the fact that the political culture in Iraq ran on fear, not ideals. Government officials did what they were told to avoid death, not because they believed they had a voice. This condition reminds me of the social capital one can study in schools. If a school wants to involve its community, it first needs to build trust with the community. The people in the community, if they have not had the opportunity to speak freely, or if they have been like the Iraqis where their lives depend on compliance, will not automatically welcome the chance to make their voices heard. Often schools complain about parental involvement being low, but their systems are set up to intimidate parents and are often just the type of system the parent of an at-risk students struggled to navigate in his/her own education. Similarly, the Iraqis, faced with a new freedom of expression and opinion, will not embrace it without a lot of groundwork first. The United States did not lay that groundwork. When we overthrew Saddam, we had not built the necessary trust with the Iraqi people. They didn’t believe we would help them learn to use their voices without fear. The Iraqi people only knew propaganda. They have never experienced a system with true freedom of expression, speech and press, so they cannot possibly trust that their thoughts will not get them into trouble. Dahl points out that a value in democratic ideals grows slowly, through generations, to become part of a culture. Iraq’s political culture not only lacked democratic ideals, it favored authoritarian rule carried out with fear and coercion. Democracy relies on people being able and willing to stand up and articulate ideas that are then debated. Iraqis never had the opportunity to debate. They either agreed with Saddam, or they were shot.
Not only did the Iraqis distrust our intentions, the world distrusted Iraq because of its clear marriage of church and state. Many countries throughout the world separate the church and the political institutions. They do not look favorably on the Middle-eastern countries that incorporate Islamic principles into their social and political policy, and Dahl’s third essential condition for democracy is: No strong foreign control hostile to democracy. The Middle-eastern countries have long been lumped together by many citizens of the world because they are all from the oil-producing nations. Even though the countries and even regions within the oil producing countries vary quite a bit, most of the world tends to still stereotype countries that are predominantly Islam as countries that not only dislike western ideals, but are breeding grounds for terrorists who want to destroy democratic countries. We also consider that region hostile to democratic ideals because they do not treat all their citizens equally. Within their religious and political policy, gender inequities exist that rub Americans and other democratic peoples the wrong way. Iraq had not indicated it planned to change its Islamic, Middle-eastern lifestyle or government if we helped remove Saddam.
The most dramatic problem Iraq faces is its lack of one of Dahl’s favorable conditions: Weak subcultural pluralism. Iraqis are clearly divided between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The Sunni and the Shiites, although both Islamic, have been sharply divided since 680 when they argued about a question of leadership of the faith. Even though the Sunni are the minority population in Iraq, they are much more powerful than the Shiite. The elite Sunni, also discriminate against the Kurds, which in reality are also Sunni. These cultures are not only divided ideologically; they are divided regionally. These strong cultural divides make democracy difficult, especially representative democracy. The Sunni leaders are not going to want to give up control to make the country representative. So while the United States had good intentions, it did not consider the depth of hatred and bias these cultures feel toward each other. They should have examined the fact that no matter how many times we try to bring similarly estranged cultures to a compromise, it often does not last. Just look at the Israelis and Palestinians.
Finally, Dahl says a modern market economy and society is a condition that favors democracy. This condition is a bit perplexing because one would think a modern market system would be in direct opposition to democracy. Dahl says, “a market-capitalist economy seriously impairs political equality: citizens who are economically unequal are unlikely to be politically equal,” (158). However, he says democracy and market-capitalism are in an antagonistic symbiosis. He notes that polyarchal democracy has only lasted in countries with a market system. He also notes that economic growth is favorable to democracy because it helps a country reduce poverty and provide better living standards, in effect reducing economic and political conflicts. He also points out the way market-capitalism can harm democracy because each limits the other from reaching its ideal. Iraq’s powerful role as one of the world’s oil producing nations makes one consider it a market economy. But in reality, there is no equivalent to the American Dream in Iraq because the cultural barriers and corruption at the highest levels prohibit a truly free market.
The United States had good intentions. Dahl cites several times we have tried to force democracy on countries when they were not ready. Unfortunately, the United States is not setting the groundwork to make conditions favorable for democratic reform in many countries around the world. In order to really help countries become democratic, we must be patient and help their people set up the conditions necessary for true reform.
Dahl explains the construct of democracy in familiar terms one would find in a government class in high school in his text On Democracy. However, his assessment of why and how democracy works or fails globally offers really interesting conditions for consideration by Americans, especially with the backdrop of America’s pursuit to democratize Iraq and other countries around the world.
The United States of America has spent trillions of dollars at this point trying to democratize Iraq. Using Dahl’s lens of favorable and essential conditions for democracy, I am not surprised the war has taken so long and been so difficult. Dahl identifies the following five conditions that favor democracy, labeling the first three as essential: 1. Control of the military and police by elected officials. 2. Democratic beliefs and political culture. 3. No strong foreign control hostile to democracy. 4. A modern market economy and society. 5. Weak subcultural pluralism. An examination of these conditions in regard to what we knew about Iraq’s government and culture prior to the war, clearly reveals that the United States used faulty processes to try to help Iraq escape a tyranny and establish a democracy. Iraq does not have the conditions necessary to sustain a democracy, even if the United States can force it into creating a system that resembles democracy.
Control of the military and police by elected officials. Iraq’s version of the secret police, the Mukhabarat, took direct orders from a dictator, so the country’s chance of instituting democratic practices was slim as long as Saddam Hussein was in power. Hussein was not an elected official held accountable by his people; he was a tyrant and a dictator who silenced opposition and discussion by controlling his military. Our ousting of Hussein and plan to replace his dictatorship with a democratic government was the right step to creating the conditions necessary according to Dahl. However, Dahl does not argue the five conditions need to be established in any order, and the United States had not taken steps to establish the other five conditions necessary for a democracy. Furthermore, one has to look at the essential conditions for democracy (numbers 1-3 above) as a set rather than separate items.
Democratic beliefs and political culture. This essential condition for democracy directly relates to the first in the fact that the political culture in Iraq ran on fear, not ideals. Government officials did what they were told to avoid death, not because they believed they had a voice. This condition reminds me of the social capital one can study in schools. If a school wants to involve its community, it first needs to build trust with the community. The people in the community, if they have not had the opportunity to speak freely, or if they have been like the Iraqis where their lives depend on compliance, will not automatically welcome the chance to make their voices heard. Often schools complain about parental involvement being low, but their systems are set up to intimidate parents and are often just the type of system the parent of an at-risk students struggled to navigate in his/her own education. Similarly, the Iraqis, faced with a new freedom of expression and opinion, will not embrace it without a lot of groundwork first. The United States did not lay that groundwork. When we overthrew Saddam, we had not built the necessary trust with the Iraqi people. They didn’t believe we would help them learn to use their voices without fear. The Iraqi people only knew propaganda. They have never experienced a system with true freedom of expression, speech and press, so they cannot possibly trust that their thoughts will not get them into trouble. Dahl points out that a value in democratic ideals grows slowly, through generations, to become part of a culture. Iraq’s political culture not only lacked democratic ideals, it favored authoritarian rule carried out with fear and coercion. Democracy relies on people being able and willing to stand up and articulate ideas that are then debated. Iraqis never had the opportunity to debate. They either agreed with Saddam, or they were shot.
Not only did the Iraqis distrust our intentions, the world distrusted Iraq because of its clear marriage of church and state. Many countries throughout the world separate the church and the political institutions. They do not look favorably on the Middle-eastern countries that incorporate Islamic principles into their social and political policy, and Dahl’s third essential condition for democracy is: No strong foreign control hostile to democracy. The Middle-eastern countries have long been lumped together by many citizens of the world because they are all from the oil-producing nations. Even though the countries and even regions within the oil producing countries vary quite a bit, most of the world tends to still stereotype countries that are predominantly Islam as countries that not only dislike western ideals, but are breeding grounds for terrorists who want to destroy democratic countries. We also consider that region hostile to democratic ideals because they do not treat all their citizens equally. Within their religious and political policy, gender inequities exist that rub Americans and other democratic peoples the wrong way. Iraq had not indicated it planned to change its Islamic, Middle-eastern lifestyle or government if we helped remove Saddam.
The most dramatic problem Iraq faces is its lack of one of Dahl’s favorable conditions: Weak subcultural pluralism. Iraqis are clearly divided between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The Sunni and the Shiites, although both Islamic, have been sharply divided since 680 when they argued about a question of leadership of the faith. Even though the Sunni are the minority population in Iraq, they are much more powerful than the Shiite. The elite Sunni, also discriminate against the Kurds, which in reality are also Sunni. These cultures are not only divided ideologically; they are divided regionally. These strong cultural divides make democracy difficult, especially representative democracy. The Sunni leaders are not going to want to give up control to make the country representative. So while the United States had good intentions, it did not consider the depth of hatred and bias these cultures feel toward each other. They should have examined the fact that no matter how many times we try to bring similarly estranged cultures to a compromise, it often does not last. Just look at the Israelis and Palestinians.
Finally, Dahl says a modern market economy and society is a condition that favors democracy. This condition is a bit perplexing because one would think a modern market system would be in direct opposition to democracy. Dahl says, “a market-capitalist economy seriously impairs political equality: citizens who are economically unequal are unlikely to be politically equal,” (158). However, he says democracy and market-capitalism are in an antagonistic symbiosis. He notes that polyarchal democracy has only lasted in countries with a market system. He also notes that economic growth is favorable to democracy because it helps a country reduce poverty and provide better living standards, in effect reducing economic and political conflicts. He also points out the way market-capitalism can harm democracy because each limits the other from reaching its ideal. Iraq’s powerful role as one of the world’s oil producing nations makes one consider it a market economy. But in reality, there is no equivalent to the American Dream in Iraq because the cultural barriers and corruption at the highest levels prohibit a truly free market.
The United States had good intentions. Dahl cites several times we have tried to force democracy on countries when they were not ready. Unfortunately, the United States is not setting the groundwork to make conditions favorable for democratic reform in many countries around the world. In order to really help countries become democratic, we must be patient and help their people set up the conditions necessary for true reform.
The Policy Paradox by Stone - my thoughts
Policy Paradox
Stone (2002) defines the market in her first chapter as, “a social system in which individuals pursue their own welfare by exchanging things with others whenever trades are mutually beneficial” (17). She also says that markets compete for scarce resources. This definition illuminates the many reasons schools struggle when they try to adopt a market model. First, schools offer education to all, but many graduates give back to the school. The trade is not mutually beneficial for the school. Many people with high school diplomas refuse to support the schools through levies or volunteerism. If the schools, as agents of the government, benefit from the more educated populace they produce, then the government should fund the entire school system. Only then are all parties of the market mutually benefiting from the partnership. Schools have the resources they need to educated students, and government has the educated citizens needed to sustain democracy.
If a tax payer is expected to be a paying party in the market of schools, a mutually beneficial outcome is no longer just an educated populace but a competitive worker who can add to the community’s wealth. If one argues the outcome should still be an educated populace, then schools are failing to keep up their end of the bargain because voting numbers are low even among educated people, and Putnam (1995) notes that civic engagement has been declining since the 1960s. Furthermore, policy contradicts that belief with its ever increasing standards that are unrelated to citizenship. If government foots the entire bill for schools, then the curricula would have to change drastically to allow schools to fulfill that mission. Schools would have to be measured by civic engagement and voting numbers rather than by SAT scores and standards.
The second point Stone makes in her definition of the market relates to the idea that competition is held for scarce resources. This part of the market system has affected schools tremendously, because this approach to education started the choice movement of charter schools, magnet schools, and school choice. However, the underlying assumption of the school choice movement, if one applies a market model, is that education is a scarce resource, or at least “good” schools are. This idea seriously undermines public schooling. If we raise the bar for all schools, teachers, students, and administrators in an effort to leave no child behind and level the playing field, then we are no longer a market system because our scarce resources are now abundant. As a market model would predict, would schools then be worth less? Would education be worth less since the supply would easily accommodate the demand? We have already seen this happen with regards to high school diplomas. A generation ago, people without a high school diploma could find jobs and be active community members. Today, one cannot even find employment at the most base jobs without one. The high school diploma is no longer an end, but a means to reach the next level. As soon as high school no longer acted as an “end” for some, it became a commodity for all and the fierce competition for that commodity heated up because its value determined one’s ability to attain the next phase.
By definition, a market system cannot allow equality and uniformity to happen: Thus, defining education as a market-driven commodity has grave results. Stone discusses the community, and how “the most highly contested and passionate political fights are about membership,” (19). If school is now a commodity in a market system, a commodity with scarce resources, then people will fight to be part of the school communities that yield the most. Currently, we do that by moving into a neighborhood where citizens pay a premium for their schools via property taxes, but if we eliminate the need to live in a district one attends, then the definition of community is at stake. The United States already offers education to all, even the illegal immigrants and homeless children, so the only competition for a market system within education is to find the best school.
Our society is way too competitive and enmeshed in the market system to allow equal schooling to all. The market system’s purpose is to weed out the bad and make the good push themselves to excellence. By definition, there must be winners and losers. Even as school systems and the government try to enact policy that helps every child succeed, the reality is that we know that cannot happen. It is the elephant in the room: No one wants to openly support limiting opportunities and resources, but if we support market driven education systems, that is exactly what we are doing. We may be able to give everyone a high school diploma, but can we really expect the people who have defined themselves as capitalists to forego that philosophy in relation to the schools? Of course not, because we have tied school to the workforce. If school was meant to create an educated and participative citizenry, then all citizens might be willing to allow schools to offer equal access, resources and opportunity to all. After all, a good voting public is a public good. But when we start tying schooling to workforce development and competition, we recognize that everyone cannot get the trophy. Someone has to be the CEO and someone has to mop the floors. Real life isn’t about equality for all, and although we have made great strides in helping minorities and disadvantaged people rise above poverty and racism via a good education and compete, this country is still very enmeshed in the old boy network.
Our country has tried to raise the bar in our market driven schools through regulation. That regulation aims to make schools equal and more transparent about how they use their resources. Stone recognizes the limits of the market, and she realizes that regulation yields deliberate concealment. In a society where secrecy is strategy, one cannot expect schools to maintain total transparency if they are in the market system. Therefore, a market philosophy for schools will yield secrecy and concealment. The haves will find ways to make the school experience better for their children despite the “transparent” reporting of equality among schools. Perhaps the haves will move to private education all together. Perhaps they will hire extra tutors or supply extra internships and experiences for their children that no matter how good they are, all schools simply cannot provide.
My argument may sound fatalistic, but, as Stone notes, “to ignore side effects, or to pretend externalities are a defect in a minuscule area of human affairs, is to undermine the ability of public policy to achieve efficiency in any important sense” (79). Efficiency occurs when the collective moves together toward a goal. Stone notes that “communities” fight for their own survival, for the “security and pride that come from membership in that community, social trust, camaraderie and the enrichment and dignity of participating in collective decisions” (79). If we allow all schools to become equal, then we will break down the communities they are intended to serve. Communities will no longer be able to rally around the school as the defining element of their identities. Instead, they will have to look elsewhere for commonalities. What would those be? Could they begin to align based on race, socio-economic status, religion, or ethnicity? If communities had to start reframing how they are defined, then we could end up in a very segregated society, for simply using American as the main component of one’s identity is too vague.
This argument has big implications for educational policy. If we agree that market driven schools cannot work to achieve a public good, then we must also redesign the purpose of schools by revisiting the reason they exist. We must work to develop the collective sentiment, Ferdinand Tönnies’s (1887) concept of Gemeinschaft in education. Jones (1990) explains:
People interact together on the basis of reciprocal and `whole person' relationships which are to their mutual advantage. ... Members of Gemeinschaft bodies follow collective sentiment.... But with the onset of industrialism, the mutualism to be found in Gemeinschaft gives way to the competitiveness of Gesellschaft society in which relationships are fragmented, self-motivated and egocentric. ... If a future society based on the Gaian principles of interdependence, mutuality and interrelatedness is to be achieved, a reemergence of some form of Gemeinschaft is essential (108-113).
If public schooling wants to achieve clearly paradoxical aims, then it needs to redefine how we educate people. The early years need to follow a Gemeinschaft model where we teach student cooperation, citizenship, and a common set of American values that ties them to their larger community. This would be the portion the government could fund in its entirety. However, once students have achieved the knowledge they need to participate in their communities, the next phase of schooling could focus on the Gesellschaft’s more individualistic and egocentric aims. At this point students could learn the market system and the skills needed in the workforce. Communities and businesses could fund this portion of education. Community identity could be preserved, all students could attain an education necessary for participation in our society, and all students would have an equal playing field from which to begin their competitive workforce development.
Bibliography
Jones, Alwyn K. 1990. Social Symbiosis: A Gaian Critique of Contemporary Social
Theory. The Ecologist 20 (3): 108-113, p. 108
Putnam, Robert D. (1995). Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital. Journal
of Democracy, 6(1): 65-78.
Stone (2002) defines the market in her first chapter as, “a social system in which individuals pursue their own welfare by exchanging things with others whenever trades are mutually beneficial” (17). She also says that markets compete for scarce resources. This definition illuminates the many reasons schools struggle when they try to adopt a market model. First, schools offer education to all, but many graduates give back to the school. The trade is not mutually beneficial for the school. Many people with high school diplomas refuse to support the schools through levies or volunteerism. If the schools, as agents of the government, benefit from the more educated populace they produce, then the government should fund the entire school system. Only then are all parties of the market mutually benefiting from the partnership. Schools have the resources they need to educated students, and government has the educated citizens needed to sustain democracy.
If a tax payer is expected to be a paying party in the market of schools, a mutually beneficial outcome is no longer just an educated populace but a competitive worker who can add to the community’s wealth. If one argues the outcome should still be an educated populace, then schools are failing to keep up their end of the bargain because voting numbers are low even among educated people, and Putnam (1995) notes that civic engagement has been declining since the 1960s. Furthermore, policy contradicts that belief with its ever increasing standards that are unrelated to citizenship. If government foots the entire bill for schools, then the curricula would have to change drastically to allow schools to fulfill that mission. Schools would have to be measured by civic engagement and voting numbers rather than by SAT scores and standards.
The second point Stone makes in her definition of the market relates to the idea that competition is held for scarce resources. This part of the market system has affected schools tremendously, because this approach to education started the choice movement of charter schools, magnet schools, and school choice. However, the underlying assumption of the school choice movement, if one applies a market model, is that education is a scarce resource, or at least “good” schools are. This idea seriously undermines public schooling. If we raise the bar for all schools, teachers, students, and administrators in an effort to leave no child behind and level the playing field, then we are no longer a market system because our scarce resources are now abundant. As a market model would predict, would schools then be worth less? Would education be worth less since the supply would easily accommodate the demand? We have already seen this happen with regards to high school diplomas. A generation ago, people without a high school diploma could find jobs and be active community members. Today, one cannot even find employment at the most base jobs without one. The high school diploma is no longer an end, but a means to reach the next level. As soon as high school no longer acted as an “end” for some, it became a commodity for all and the fierce competition for that commodity heated up because its value determined one’s ability to attain the next phase.
By definition, a market system cannot allow equality and uniformity to happen: Thus, defining education as a market-driven commodity has grave results. Stone discusses the community, and how “the most highly contested and passionate political fights are about membership,” (19). If school is now a commodity in a market system, a commodity with scarce resources, then people will fight to be part of the school communities that yield the most. Currently, we do that by moving into a neighborhood where citizens pay a premium for their schools via property taxes, but if we eliminate the need to live in a district one attends, then the definition of community is at stake. The United States already offers education to all, even the illegal immigrants and homeless children, so the only competition for a market system within education is to find the best school.
Our society is way too competitive and enmeshed in the market system to allow equal schooling to all. The market system’s purpose is to weed out the bad and make the good push themselves to excellence. By definition, there must be winners and losers. Even as school systems and the government try to enact policy that helps every child succeed, the reality is that we know that cannot happen. It is the elephant in the room: No one wants to openly support limiting opportunities and resources, but if we support market driven education systems, that is exactly what we are doing. We may be able to give everyone a high school diploma, but can we really expect the people who have defined themselves as capitalists to forego that philosophy in relation to the schools? Of course not, because we have tied school to the workforce. If school was meant to create an educated and participative citizenry, then all citizens might be willing to allow schools to offer equal access, resources and opportunity to all. After all, a good voting public is a public good. But when we start tying schooling to workforce development and competition, we recognize that everyone cannot get the trophy. Someone has to be the CEO and someone has to mop the floors. Real life isn’t about equality for all, and although we have made great strides in helping minorities and disadvantaged people rise above poverty and racism via a good education and compete, this country is still very enmeshed in the old boy network.
Our country has tried to raise the bar in our market driven schools through regulation. That regulation aims to make schools equal and more transparent about how they use their resources. Stone recognizes the limits of the market, and she realizes that regulation yields deliberate concealment. In a society where secrecy is strategy, one cannot expect schools to maintain total transparency if they are in the market system. Therefore, a market philosophy for schools will yield secrecy and concealment. The haves will find ways to make the school experience better for their children despite the “transparent” reporting of equality among schools. Perhaps the haves will move to private education all together. Perhaps they will hire extra tutors or supply extra internships and experiences for their children that no matter how good they are, all schools simply cannot provide.
My argument may sound fatalistic, but, as Stone notes, “to ignore side effects, or to pretend externalities are a defect in a minuscule area of human affairs, is to undermine the ability of public policy to achieve efficiency in any important sense” (79). Efficiency occurs when the collective moves together toward a goal. Stone notes that “communities” fight for their own survival, for the “security and pride that come from membership in that community, social trust, camaraderie and the enrichment and dignity of participating in collective decisions” (79). If we allow all schools to become equal, then we will break down the communities they are intended to serve. Communities will no longer be able to rally around the school as the defining element of their identities. Instead, they will have to look elsewhere for commonalities. What would those be? Could they begin to align based on race, socio-economic status, religion, or ethnicity? If communities had to start reframing how they are defined, then we could end up in a very segregated society, for simply using American as the main component of one’s identity is too vague.
This argument has big implications for educational policy. If we agree that market driven schools cannot work to achieve a public good, then we must also redesign the purpose of schools by revisiting the reason they exist. We must work to develop the collective sentiment, Ferdinand Tönnies’s (1887) concept of Gemeinschaft in education. Jones (1990) explains:
People interact together on the basis of reciprocal and `whole person' relationships which are to their mutual advantage. ... Members of Gemeinschaft bodies follow collective sentiment.... But with the onset of industrialism, the mutualism to be found in Gemeinschaft gives way to the competitiveness of Gesellschaft society in which relationships are fragmented, self-motivated and egocentric. ... If a future society based on the Gaian principles of interdependence, mutuality and interrelatedness is to be achieved, a reemergence of some form of Gemeinschaft is essential (108-113).
If public schooling wants to achieve clearly paradoxical aims, then it needs to redefine how we educate people. The early years need to follow a Gemeinschaft model where we teach student cooperation, citizenship, and a common set of American values that ties them to their larger community. This would be the portion the government could fund in its entirety. However, once students have achieved the knowledge they need to participate in their communities, the next phase of schooling could focus on the Gesellschaft’s more individualistic and egocentric aims. At this point students could learn the market system and the skills needed in the workforce. Communities and businesses could fund this portion of education. Community identity could be preserved, all students could attain an education necessary for participation in our society, and all students would have an equal playing field from which to begin their competitive workforce development.
Bibliography
Jones, Alwyn K. 1990. Social Symbiosis: A Gaian Critique of Contemporary Social
Theory. The Ecologist 20 (3): 108-113, p. 108
Putnam, Robert D. (1995). Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital. Journal
of Democracy, 6(1): 65-78.
Writing 2 Labaree
Labaree
Labaree crystallizes the underlying theoretical purposes of schooling that serve as the foundations for common frustrations educators feel. I have begun feeling very troubled by the number of responsibilities placed on schools that often oppose each other. Labaree explains those responsibilities, or perceived purposes, in a way that explains a number of issues educators face daily. By reducing all the specific goals and purposes of school into three categories and providing a historical framework, Labaree shows how tension will exist forever in public education in this country.
I have experienced the growing dominance of the social mobility goal for education when I taught at Worthington Kilbourne. The environment there is one of intense competitiveness, excessive credentialing, and extreme parental involvement for the high achieving students. When I first entered education, I thought I would enjoy teaching the gifted students in this type of atmosphere because I felt their increased academic ability would act as a springboard, so we could really examine issues at a deeper level. I found that was not the case. Labaree’s explanation of the effects of the dominating social mobility view toward education offered a number of concerns I faced including the advanced students often bargaining for points, fighting with the teacher over grades (even A-), and complaining if asked to go above and beyond or stretch beyond what would be on the test.
(OK, Ann, I know what you are thinking…I have continually complained about my A- in School Law…Goes to show how much this focus in education can affect one’s self concept as intelligent and how paranoid a student can get about how each credential will affect his/her future!)
Another side effect of the social mobility goal is grade inflation. As learning becomes more about credentialing, the motivation becomes increasingly extrinsic. The traditional English classes I taught such as freshman and sophomore English often became tedious to plan because I had to build in enough points to make sure that students would not fail if they did not do well on a unit test or project. Parents were more concerned about the grades their children had than what they had mastered or contemplated through the process of learning material. Parents also felt welcome to challenge the teacher’s grading, the point values in assignments and other assessment procedures that might affect their child’s credentials. Although the college level tends to evaluate students on fewer assessments that count for large chunks of their final grades, high school classes are expected to reward students for practicing concepts in homework assignments, labs and other activities meant to prepare them for the assessments.
Although I am drawn to the social mobility goal in some ways because I am a product of it myself, I am saddened to see its dominance has actually dumbed down education. Parents who believe in this individualistic view of education push their children hard and do teach the value of having an education, but they teach that the value is being able to be competitive at the next level. They often become so future focused they forget to let their children learn and enjoy the moment of learning. Once I started teaching, I realized the subjective nature of grades, the irrelevance of grades to learning, and the frustration of constantly dealing with them. I tried to make my classroom one where students enjoyed the process and learned to find the intrinsic value of education.
My journalism classes provided the kind of structure that fulfilled the social efficiency and democratic equality goals, to which I think that subject lends itself anyhow. Everyone could achieve and climb the ladder of the “company.” Anyone could work hard and become an editor. Everyone had a voice, and everyone had the chance to explore issues of interest in a variety of styles, such as editorials, hard news, or feature stories. Because students were interested in their topics, knew their work could educate the other students, and had the power to change actions, they worked hard and produced great work. Many of the advanced students pushed themselves a little harder as well, and many students who never considered journalism found themselves drawn to the power having a voice can give.
On the flip side, when I taught etymology, a course advertised as a great way to improve SAT scores, students memorized roots and affixes like little robots so they could score well on the language part of the test, and I am sure they promptly forgot most of it after the test. I forgot a lot of it after teaching it because the format of the class did not allow for much discussion, processing, or thought. Drill and practice. The many proponents of education that are pushing for standardized testing and curriculum that is a mile wide and an inch deep are going to find the same result. Cram for the test and forget it. I was a straight A student most of my life and I cannot remember much of what I learned.
Credentialing, however, is not all bad, and what I do like about Labaree’s analysis is his repeated claim that one goal of education is not better than another. He doesn’t vilify any of the perspectives, but rather, he claims they need to exist in a balance, which is a paradox in itself because what will satisfy one goal can actually negatively affect another. I found myself thinking a lot of the at risk students while reading this piece. As educational theorists discuss the functions of education, they often forget to acknowledge that the middle class values and cultures most public schooling teaches either directly or via the hidden curriculum are not the values and cultures the other classes and cultures may want or value.
Our country has become so keyed into the idea of success as a good paying job that yields money and things, we have forgotten that some people do not need these things to be happy, and don’t we have the inalienable right to pursue happiness. Not everyone is driven to have a 60 hour a week job or a high stress, high responsibility career that has high costs for family life and sometimes mental and physical health. I remember feeling very depressed after college. I was a product of the social mobility school of thought and I believed that if you do well in school, you will reap rewards. I remember being very depressed for career waitresses and factory workers and other blue collar people. I couldn’t understand how they could be happy when they had so clearly failed in the rat race of credentialing. Despite my good grades, I couldn’t do much with my English degree other than sales, so I sold a variety of tech products including the technology that is today OnStar and automatic greasing systems for off-road construction equipment and trucks. I made a lot of money. My friends were jealous of the items I could buy. But I wasn’t happy; I felt like a total failure. I had credentials and I wasn’t happy, so what was wrong with me?
Labaree mentions that the social mobility model of education leads students to a point where they have to face the reality that our market does not contain an unlimited number of jobs for graduates of prized degrees. Often times I think we do a disservice to people who would be just as happy in life working a blue collar job, because we set them up to think that education is the way out of that type of work, as if there is something wrong with getting one’s hands dirty or working physically demanding jobs. In essence, we demonstrate through our schools that blue collar jobs are for failures. Because our schools are competitive and about high stakes testing, credentialing, and bell curves on norm referenced tests, we send a message that only those who can get those credentials are winners.
As this perspective of education dominates over the others, school actually becomes a very socially and emotionally destructive place for many students. When schools keep a balance and also teach democracy and cooperation, they can show students their voices count and they can build social capital, a main ingredient of a participative democracy. If people feel their voices are irrelevant, or if they feel like they are failures who do not deserve a seat at the table, they will not participate in politics, even at the most local level where they may know quite a bit about what they want from their representatives. Ultimately their voice gets lost and is replaced with a middle class suburbanite who crowns him/herself guardian, and who determines what “those people” need to get out of their poor, miserable lives. “Those people” can refer to minorities, immigrants, poor people, or any other oppressed group. “Those people” need a vehicle to teach them to have a voice because the self-appointed voices often times have no clue what “those people” want because they have never been part of their culture and traditions.
The domination of the social mobility model of education is going to reach its limit, hopefully soon. If it is allowed to swallow the other aims of education, we will find ourselves in a totally privatized educational system that will be rigidly stratified along financial lines. I am optimistic, however, that Americans will not let this happen. No matter how much we may be moving in the wrong direction at the moment, our democracy is strong enough that it will right itself. Reformers will fight for the other goals of education. They will find ways to enlist business and interest groups and other politically powerful entities to fight for the social efficiency and democratic equality models. They will fight to restore balance because there is no winner or loser in regard to the three main goals of education. We are all losers if we don’t find a way to make the goals coexist in some type of impossible harmony.
Labaree crystallizes the underlying theoretical purposes of schooling that serve as the foundations for common frustrations educators feel. I have begun feeling very troubled by the number of responsibilities placed on schools that often oppose each other. Labaree explains those responsibilities, or perceived purposes, in a way that explains a number of issues educators face daily. By reducing all the specific goals and purposes of school into three categories and providing a historical framework, Labaree shows how tension will exist forever in public education in this country.
I have experienced the growing dominance of the social mobility goal for education when I taught at Worthington Kilbourne. The environment there is one of intense competitiveness, excessive credentialing, and extreme parental involvement for the high achieving students. When I first entered education, I thought I would enjoy teaching the gifted students in this type of atmosphere because I felt their increased academic ability would act as a springboard, so we could really examine issues at a deeper level. I found that was not the case. Labaree’s explanation of the effects of the dominating social mobility view toward education offered a number of concerns I faced including the advanced students often bargaining for points, fighting with the teacher over grades (even A-), and complaining if asked to go above and beyond or stretch beyond what would be on the test.
(OK, Ann, I know what you are thinking…I have continually complained about my A- in School Law…Goes to show how much this focus in education can affect one’s self concept as intelligent and how paranoid a student can get about how each credential will affect his/her future!)
Another side effect of the social mobility goal is grade inflation. As learning becomes more about credentialing, the motivation becomes increasingly extrinsic. The traditional English classes I taught such as freshman and sophomore English often became tedious to plan because I had to build in enough points to make sure that students would not fail if they did not do well on a unit test or project. Parents were more concerned about the grades their children had than what they had mastered or contemplated through the process of learning material. Parents also felt welcome to challenge the teacher’s grading, the point values in assignments and other assessment procedures that might affect their child’s credentials. Although the college level tends to evaluate students on fewer assessments that count for large chunks of their final grades, high school classes are expected to reward students for practicing concepts in homework assignments, labs and other activities meant to prepare them for the assessments.
Although I am drawn to the social mobility goal in some ways because I am a product of it myself, I am saddened to see its dominance has actually dumbed down education. Parents who believe in this individualistic view of education push their children hard and do teach the value of having an education, but they teach that the value is being able to be competitive at the next level. They often become so future focused they forget to let their children learn and enjoy the moment of learning. Once I started teaching, I realized the subjective nature of grades, the irrelevance of grades to learning, and the frustration of constantly dealing with them. I tried to make my classroom one where students enjoyed the process and learned to find the intrinsic value of education.
My journalism classes provided the kind of structure that fulfilled the social efficiency and democratic equality goals, to which I think that subject lends itself anyhow. Everyone could achieve and climb the ladder of the “company.” Anyone could work hard and become an editor. Everyone had a voice, and everyone had the chance to explore issues of interest in a variety of styles, such as editorials, hard news, or feature stories. Because students were interested in their topics, knew their work could educate the other students, and had the power to change actions, they worked hard and produced great work. Many of the advanced students pushed themselves a little harder as well, and many students who never considered journalism found themselves drawn to the power having a voice can give.
On the flip side, when I taught etymology, a course advertised as a great way to improve SAT scores, students memorized roots and affixes like little robots so they could score well on the language part of the test, and I am sure they promptly forgot most of it after the test. I forgot a lot of it after teaching it because the format of the class did not allow for much discussion, processing, or thought. Drill and practice. The many proponents of education that are pushing for standardized testing and curriculum that is a mile wide and an inch deep are going to find the same result. Cram for the test and forget it. I was a straight A student most of my life and I cannot remember much of what I learned.
Credentialing, however, is not all bad, and what I do like about Labaree’s analysis is his repeated claim that one goal of education is not better than another. He doesn’t vilify any of the perspectives, but rather, he claims they need to exist in a balance, which is a paradox in itself because what will satisfy one goal can actually negatively affect another. I found myself thinking a lot of the at risk students while reading this piece. As educational theorists discuss the functions of education, they often forget to acknowledge that the middle class values and cultures most public schooling teaches either directly or via the hidden curriculum are not the values and cultures the other classes and cultures may want or value.
Our country has become so keyed into the idea of success as a good paying job that yields money and things, we have forgotten that some people do not need these things to be happy, and don’t we have the inalienable right to pursue happiness. Not everyone is driven to have a 60 hour a week job or a high stress, high responsibility career that has high costs for family life and sometimes mental and physical health. I remember feeling very depressed after college. I was a product of the social mobility school of thought and I believed that if you do well in school, you will reap rewards. I remember being very depressed for career waitresses and factory workers and other blue collar people. I couldn’t understand how they could be happy when they had so clearly failed in the rat race of credentialing. Despite my good grades, I couldn’t do much with my English degree other than sales, so I sold a variety of tech products including the technology that is today OnStar and automatic greasing systems for off-road construction equipment and trucks. I made a lot of money. My friends were jealous of the items I could buy. But I wasn’t happy; I felt like a total failure. I had credentials and I wasn’t happy, so what was wrong with me?
Labaree mentions that the social mobility model of education leads students to a point where they have to face the reality that our market does not contain an unlimited number of jobs for graduates of prized degrees. Often times I think we do a disservice to people who would be just as happy in life working a blue collar job, because we set them up to think that education is the way out of that type of work, as if there is something wrong with getting one’s hands dirty or working physically demanding jobs. In essence, we demonstrate through our schools that blue collar jobs are for failures. Because our schools are competitive and about high stakes testing, credentialing, and bell curves on norm referenced tests, we send a message that only those who can get those credentials are winners.
As this perspective of education dominates over the others, school actually becomes a very socially and emotionally destructive place for many students. When schools keep a balance and also teach democracy and cooperation, they can show students their voices count and they can build social capital, a main ingredient of a participative democracy. If people feel their voices are irrelevant, or if they feel like they are failures who do not deserve a seat at the table, they will not participate in politics, even at the most local level where they may know quite a bit about what they want from their representatives. Ultimately their voice gets lost and is replaced with a middle class suburbanite who crowns him/herself guardian, and who determines what “those people” need to get out of their poor, miserable lives. “Those people” can refer to minorities, immigrants, poor people, or any other oppressed group. “Those people” need a vehicle to teach them to have a voice because the self-appointed voices often times have no clue what “those people” want because they have never been part of their culture and traditions.
The domination of the social mobility model of education is going to reach its limit, hopefully soon. If it is allowed to swallow the other aims of education, we will find ourselves in a totally privatized educational system that will be rigidly stratified along financial lines. I am optimistic, however, that Americans will not let this happen. No matter how much we may be moving in the wrong direction at the moment, our democracy is strong enough that it will right itself. Reformers will fight for the other goals of education. They will find ways to enlist business and interest groups and other politically powerful entities to fight for the social efficiency and democratic equality models. They will fight to restore balance because there is no winner or loser in regard to the three main goals of education. We are all losers if we don’t find a way to make the goals coexist in some type of impossible harmony.
Writing 1 two voices on choice
Tyack and Friedman
In Tyack’s introduction, he says he wants to “explore how Americans attempted to create civic cohesion through education in a socially diverse and contentious democracy.” (3) Friedman, on the other hand, attempts to show how now, a time when we are currently straying away from collectivism, is the perfect time to re-examine how education should perform in our society and to whose end. He embarks on an extensive cost analysis and report on the return on investment for the government. Although his argument for vouchers and for subsidized vocational education makes some interesting points, Tyack’s discussion of education is much more interesting because he looks deeper than just the financial issues and examines the social and cultural expectations of education.
Tyack discusses how the purpose of education has dictated how it is delivered to the public. The original goal of American education was to impart values necessary for a democracy, to strengthen character. Most people think of our educational system as one that was focused on preparing educated voters, but the other curriculum, and arguably the more contentious one for many Americans, sought to create a homogenous republic where people shared the same values. Because of the power elite at that time, the values were modeled after Protestant values. Today’s schools “character education” is hardly more than a week of honesty here and a moment of compassion there. Our society today has become a group of very self-centered individuals, and I believe that has occurred in part because schools have become very competitive markets and have shied away from demonstrating any type of value or moral education for fear of litigation or community outrage.
I wonder how Friedman would feel about the level of competition in the schools today between students. He advocated for competition as a means to achieve excellence in the way a market economy generates wealth to the most successful and deserving companies. I think he would argue that all students within a school have the same opportunities, and just as our society is based in a market economy, the best way to train the students to succeed is to allow them to experience the market economy in school as well, especially in the higher grades. I also think, however, he would agree that we have not invested in the individual enough. He would think that school is a place where we need to offer training individuals need in order to get them prepared to compete in the market economy, but a byproduct of that vision is the identification of winners and losers at a much earlier age.
Tyack, however, would probably argue that looking at schools as a place to create workers is a very narrow view. He discusses the many reasons schools exist including their hope to create an educated citizenry with common values, but then he shows how social and cultural diversity made that hope very difficult. The idealism and ignorance involved in thinking one can set up a system of schools in a democracy that assimilates people seems absurd. The entire premise of democracy relies on people debating and looking at issues from multiple perspectives. Perhaps the reason education is such as easy target for social critics is because we are trying to educate students in a manner completely opposite to the political system in which they will be expected to participate. We may be preparing students for a college classroom, but we are not preparing them for their adult life as a citizen of the United States.
Tyack mentions that he, too, is shocked that public schooling has prevailed because, “This ascendance of public schooling is puzzling, for Americans at that time tended to like markets and distrust governments.” (165). Unfortunately, we appear to be in a time now where people are more concerned with their own lives and shy away from political participation. Our democracy has grown so large that most people don’t even know their representatives’ names, let alone their agendas. Our citizens are disengaged in the entire process and schools are not places where students can acquire social capital by seeing their voices count toward change and decision-making. Schools are top-down and focused on producing the same from all. Each student will be created from a standard cookie cutter because we do not want to offend anyone.
I was also shocked to hear that Jefferson initially believed in “literacy as a prerequisite for citizenship, but not in English only: a citizen, he wrote, must be able to ‘read readily in some tongue, native or acquired.” (15) I have often thought it strange that the USA is one of the only places in the world where all students are not bilingual. We have just recently started working more closely with English language learners. I suppose one good outcome from standards is that the schools could no longer ignore their ELL populations and their at-risk students.
The standardization movement we are in currently would probably please Friedman because it would make the mathematical formula for paying for schools and calculating the return on investment much easier. I am saddened by our citizens’ willingness to concede control of the schools to the national and state governments. Schools offered a place where students could see democracy in action because citizens could come and argue issues and advocate their wishes to the school. Franklin wanted schools to use the town hall model, and they did for many generations. I am saddened to see that students do not see voting as something relevant or useful. They often feel very powerless on issues of taxation and other civic issues, and I do believe the centralization of schools and the abandonment of the community based school has a role in that apathy.
I also think students today feel very apathetic because much of what they learn in schools is so white-washed. Despite the fact that whites will be a minority soon, our textbooks still offer very little multicultural perspectives. Our textbook industry has not yet caught up to the idea of pluralism, and many textbooks still offer a very narrow view of history. Many of our students do not see themselves or their families and neighborhoods as contributing members. Most early Americans shared the idea that education served to help people become more homogenous so they would share principles, opinions and manners. This led to a very prolific text book market that continues today. Although some competition exists, millions of children read identical renditions of history, science, math, and other core subjects.
Educational professionals like Horace Mann, often immortalized in statues and namesakes, changed the current thought about education because he realized that immigrants had to be included in our school systems. He turned to his religion for guidance and worked hard to make the common school a place where anyone from any background could come and learn a “common denominator of political and moral truths that were nonpartisan and nonsectarian” (20). His idea that the schoolroom is not a forum for political banter made sense, but he lacked the understanding that all people bring their own experiences, values, and morals to the schoolhouse. I wonder how he would have responded to the Ecological Systems Theory. The early Americans, although originally immigrants themselves, appear to have forgetten that they brought with them a very Western European culture and belief system from which they formed American culture.
Some early Americans fought the idea that every citizen can just walk into a school house an immigrant and walk out an American. Tyack discusses the struggle for power many groups have engaged in throughout history including the Germans, the Irish, the Catholics, the Protestants, etc. Not only has determining one right religion made democracy difficult, determining a set of values we can all agree on seems impossible because using certain words automatically associates the concept with a particular group, therefore offending other groups.
Tyack’s debate over school choice is very thoughtful because he goes beyond the idea of just choosing a school and looks at what school choice means. He asks choice of what, choice of whom, and choice for what purpose. He notes that choice in education is much more complex and difficult than Friedman asserts. Friedman’s argument that educational issues can be solved through school choice because is provides competition is very narrow. Tyack view of education has a much more human element. He not only looks through a historical lens, he also looks through a cultural lens and a democratic lens to examine what schools do, could, or should look like. Friedman only employs a market lens and misses many points. Part of what makes consensus in education reform so difficult is that we all view education from a variety of competing lenses and we have not agreed on how to prioritize them.
In Tyack’s introduction, he says he wants to “explore how Americans attempted to create civic cohesion through education in a socially diverse and contentious democracy.” (3) Friedman, on the other hand, attempts to show how now, a time when we are currently straying away from collectivism, is the perfect time to re-examine how education should perform in our society and to whose end. He embarks on an extensive cost analysis and report on the return on investment for the government. Although his argument for vouchers and for subsidized vocational education makes some interesting points, Tyack’s discussion of education is much more interesting because he looks deeper than just the financial issues and examines the social and cultural expectations of education.
Tyack discusses how the purpose of education has dictated how it is delivered to the public. The original goal of American education was to impart values necessary for a democracy, to strengthen character. Most people think of our educational system as one that was focused on preparing educated voters, but the other curriculum, and arguably the more contentious one for many Americans, sought to create a homogenous republic where people shared the same values. Because of the power elite at that time, the values were modeled after Protestant values. Today’s schools “character education” is hardly more than a week of honesty here and a moment of compassion there. Our society today has become a group of very self-centered individuals, and I believe that has occurred in part because schools have become very competitive markets and have shied away from demonstrating any type of value or moral education for fear of litigation or community outrage.
I wonder how Friedman would feel about the level of competition in the schools today between students. He advocated for competition as a means to achieve excellence in the way a market economy generates wealth to the most successful and deserving companies. I think he would argue that all students within a school have the same opportunities, and just as our society is based in a market economy, the best way to train the students to succeed is to allow them to experience the market economy in school as well, especially in the higher grades. I also think, however, he would agree that we have not invested in the individual enough. He would think that school is a place where we need to offer training individuals need in order to get them prepared to compete in the market economy, but a byproduct of that vision is the identification of winners and losers at a much earlier age.
Tyack, however, would probably argue that looking at schools as a place to create workers is a very narrow view. He discusses the many reasons schools exist including their hope to create an educated citizenry with common values, but then he shows how social and cultural diversity made that hope very difficult. The idealism and ignorance involved in thinking one can set up a system of schools in a democracy that assimilates people seems absurd. The entire premise of democracy relies on people debating and looking at issues from multiple perspectives. Perhaps the reason education is such as easy target for social critics is because we are trying to educate students in a manner completely opposite to the political system in which they will be expected to participate. We may be preparing students for a college classroom, but we are not preparing them for their adult life as a citizen of the United States.
Tyack mentions that he, too, is shocked that public schooling has prevailed because, “This ascendance of public schooling is puzzling, for Americans at that time tended to like markets and distrust governments.” (165). Unfortunately, we appear to be in a time now where people are more concerned with their own lives and shy away from political participation. Our democracy has grown so large that most people don’t even know their representatives’ names, let alone their agendas. Our citizens are disengaged in the entire process and schools are not places where students can acquire social capital by seeing their voices count toward change and decision-making. Schools are top-down and focused on producing the same from all. Each student will be created from a standard cookie cutter because we do not want to offend anyone.
I was also shocked to hear that Jefferson initially believed in “literacy as a prerequisite for citizenship, but not in English only: a citizen, he wrote, must be able to ‘read readily in some tongue, native or acquired.” (15) I have often thought it strange that the USA is one of the only places in the world where all students are not bilingual. We have just recently started working more closely with English language learners. I suppose one good outcome from standards is that the schools could no longer ignore their ELL populations and their at-risk students.
The standardization movement we are in currently would probably please Friedman because it would make the mathematical formula for paying for schools and calculating the return on investment much easier. I am saddened by our citizens’ willingness to concede control of the schools to the national and state governments. Schools offered a place where students could see democracy in action because citizens could come and argue issues and advocate their wishes to the school. Franklin wanted schools to use the town hall model, and they did for many generations. I am saddened to see that students do not see voting as something relevant or useful. They often feel very powerless on issues of taxation and other civic issues, and I do believe the centralization of schools and the abandonment of the community based school has a role in that apathy.
I also think students today feel very apathetic because much of what they learn in schools is so white-washed. Despite the fact that whites will be a minority soon, our textbooks still offer very little multicultural perspectives. Our textbook industry has not yet caught up to the idea of pluralism, and many textbooks still offer a very narrow view of history. Many of our students do not see themselves or their families and neighborhoods as contributing members. Most early Americans shared the idea that education served to help people become more homogenous so they would share principles, opinions and manners. This led to a very prolific text book market that continues today. Although some competition exists, millions of children read identical renditions of history, science, math, and other core subjects.
Educational professionals like Horace Mann, often immortalized in statues and namesakes, changed the current thought about education because he realized that immigrants had to be included in our school systems. He turned to his religion for guidance and worked hard to make the common school a place where anyone from any background could come and learn a “common denominator of political and moral truths that were nonpartisan and nonsectarian” (20). His idea that the schoolroom is not a forum for political banter made sense, but he lacked the understanding that all people bring their own experiences, values, and morals to the schoolhouse. I wonder how he would have responded to the Ecological Systems Theory. The early Americans, although originally immigrants themselves, appear to have forgetten that they brought with them a very Western European culture and belief system from which they formed American culture.
Some early Americans fought the idea that every citizen can just walk into a school house an immigrant and walk out an American. Tyack discusses the struggle for power many groups have engaged in throughout history including the Germans, the Irish, the Catholics, the Protestants, etc. Not only has determining one right religion made democracy difficult, determining a set of values we can all agree on seems impossible because using certain words automatically associates the concept with a particular group, therefore offending other groups.
Tyack’s debate over school choice is very thoughtful because he goes beyond the idea of just choosing a school and looks at what school choice means. He asks choice of what, choice of whom, and choice for what purpose. He notes that choice in education is much more complex and difficult than Friedman asserts. Friedman’s argument that educational issues can be solved through school choice because is provides competition is very narrow. Tyack view of education has a much more human element. He not only looks through a historical lens, he also looks through a cultural lens and a democratic lens to examine what schools do, could, or should look like. Friedman only employs a market lens and misses many points. Part of what makes consensus in education reform so difficult is that we all view education from a variety of competing lenses and we have not agreed on how to prioritize them.
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