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.

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.