Author: Alan Jones

Dr. Alan C. Jones

Democracy and Education

by Alan Jones

 “The process and the goal of education are the same thing.”

(John Dewey)

“The core duty of tax-supported public schools in a democracy is to pass on to the next generation democratic attitudes, values, and behaviors.”

(Larry Cuban)

      At the turn of the century, there was a group of progressive educators who believed that our schools should bring democracy to life in the curriculum, in school governance, in community relations, and in the hearts and minds of young people. The various curriculum designs developed around this core belief would balance creative individuality with concern for the welfare of others and a desire for the common good. These designs would focus on personally and socially significant themes, collaboratively planned by teachers and students in democratic learning communities.

      As I have written about in previous blogs, today the talk of teaching and learning is mostly about something else entirely. The long list of facts and skills lodged in thick textbooks mistakenly calls this a curriculum, and the definition of curriculum planning itself is reduced to the managerial function of aligning standards, tests, lesson plans, and all the rest of institutional mechanisms needed to control young people and teachers. School administrators respond to the boredom of these institutionalized curriculum designs with fads and glitzy programs with no pedagogical or moral compass to guide us.

      What would that moral compass look like? The best description of a democratic compass can be found in John Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1916), where he envisions moral direction not in fixed institutional rules and standards, but as the ability to think reflectively, act cooperatively, and judge one’s actions in light of their consequences for the community. What follows are the major themes that organize Dewey’s argument.

      Education as Growth

      Dewey rejects the primary goal of schooling written into school missions’ statements: education as a preparation for future life. Instead, Dewey views growth as the primary goal of schooling, which he defines as A continuous process of developing capacities for intelligent action. Classrooms, in Dewey’s mind, should nurture adaptability and curiosity, not conformity.

      Democracy as a Mode of Associated Living

        Dewey defines democracy as not merely a description of political structures, duties of citizenship, and patriotic instruction, but as a way of life characterized by communication, participation, and shared experience. That way of life is best represented in school organizations, curricula, and activity structures that connect learners to the life of the community and engage them in genuine or simulated forms of political participation.

        Experience and Reflection

        Teaching and learning must be grounded in experience—in active engagement with real-world tasks and problems. Rather than classrooms ruled by teacher talk and the transmission of inert information, students would enter inquiry-based environments where meaning emerges through the interplay of doing and thinking.

        Role of the Teacher

        In classrooms where students are actively engaged in real-world tasks and problems, teachers relinquish the role of knowledge transmitters and assume the role of facilitators who design learning experiences that foster growth.

        The Unity of Theory and Practice

        Dewey’s pragmatism is grounded in processes where thought and action are inseparable. Knowledge is abstract contemplation or memorization of facts and processes, but the outcome of a problem-solving activity. Learning must connect theory and practice—ideas tested by consequences.

        Individuality and Social Responsibility

        While individual development of children and adolescents is a fundamental value expressed in school mission statements, Dewey insists that individuality flourishes only within a social context. Education, for Dewey, should cultivate both personal autonomy and social responsibility—to act intelligently for the good of the community.

        The Problem with Institutional Schooling

        A recurring theme in Dewey’s writings on education is the tendency of traditional schooling to be authoritarian, static, and subject-centered. Too much of institutional schooling treats students as passive recipients rather than active participants in their own learning. A Deweyan school would emphasize inquiry, cooperation, and the integration of subjects around meaningful problems.

        Redesign of Knowledge and Curriculum

        If school administrators are serious about teaching democratic values, they must commit to moving away from fixed subjects and fixed disciplinary boundaries toward a curriculum that employs academic tools to address real-world problems. Curriculum, then, must be dynamic and connected to students’ lived experiences.

        Education as the Foundation of Democracy

        Progressive educators at the turn of the century believed that the survival of democracy depended on educational renewal. A democratic society requires citizens who possess the following attitudes, values, and behaviors:

  • Open-mindedness to different opinions and a willingness to listen to such opinions.
  • Treating individuals decently and fairly, regardless of their backgrounds.
  • A commitment to talk through problems, reason deliberately, and struggle to openly arrive at a compromise.

“Hey, Dad it’s high school”

by Alan Jones

      Throughout my career as a high school principal, every dinner conversation was consumed with discussions about the problems I was encountering leading a large comprehensive high school. In the midst of one of these dinner conversations, my son made a comment that crystallized for me how students view schools in the United States. I cannot remember what I was saying about schools, but I do recall my son saying in exasperation, “Hey Dad, it’s high school.” If I could paraphrase my son’s succinct analysis of secondary education in America, it would go something like this:

Dad, relax. Stop getting so upset with student apathy towards learning, teacher indifference towards professional growth, the misplaced priorities of parents, the political moves of Superintendents and Boards of Education, and all the athletic events you have to attend. What high school is all about is what happens before and after school, during lunchtime, passing periods and on weekends. It has nothing to do with what happens in classrooms. Students understand this; teachers understand this; parents understand this. The only one that doesn’t seem to get it is you—so lighten up, it’s only high school.

      My son’s glib analysis of schooling in America masks a deep divide between the realities of contemporary classroom learning and the kinds of schools students would like to attend. In the eyes of students, they learn best within a classroom where teachers allow them to work in groups and openly discuss their feelings and perceptions; students express dissatisfaction with a classroom where they sit all day and simply read textbooks. Students look for teachers who are patient and willing to provide additional explanations and help for the rough patches in class. Most importantly, students want adults throughout the school to respect and empower their individual talents, abilities, personalities, and cultural backgrounds.

      The list of qualities students would like to see in the schools they attend can be reduced to one recommendation: We learn best when our emotions and affiliations are considered to be as important as intellectual development. There were moments in the history of the U.S. schooling when educators made valiant efforts to formulate curricula and school configurations accommodating the social and emotional as well as the intellectual development of the child. These educators, however, were unable to stand up to the vocational and social mobility goals of schooling.

Not only were these brief interludes into educating the whole child quickly discarded by efficiency-minded administrators, but the theories and practices associated with progressive approaches to schooling received the unshakable label of being too soft to produce graduates who could compete in a global economy. Instead of John Dewey’s hope for democracy in education, policymakers and school administrators opted for a configuration of schooling more suited to producing a compliant workforce and obedient consumers rather than the realization of the democratic and humanistic ideals proclaimed in school mission statements.

“What are the Goals of Schooling?”

by Alan Jones

     In my last blog, I surveyed the different approaches to the question: “What does it mean to be educated?” When asked that question in strategic planning sessions, the responses below involve the cultivation of judgment, imagination, and moral awareness:

  • Critical thinking
  • Being stretched beyond the limits of backgrounds, prejudices, and opinions
  • Cultivating humanity
  • The art of reason
  • Analysis, argument, and interpretation
  • Current fashions and practices in the academic disciplines

      Although school administrators at these meetings will nod their heads in agreement with these responses, upon returning to their offices, they think and act upon the goals of schooling. Administrators distinguish between the two competing goals of schooling: being educated and being schooled. Being schooled refers to the formal structures through which their communities transmit knowledge, skills, and norms, aiming to produce measurable outcomes such as literacy, competency, and social conformity. The schools they lead are organized around standards, assessments, and credentials that document the progress of an institution.

      While schooling prepares individuals to participate in society—the socialization goal—education equips them to understand and, when necessary, to challenge it—the individuation function. Dewey ascribed the goals of schooling to primary and secondary schooling as formalizing the young with what their elders take to be true, whether it is true or not. College and universities, on the other hand, should be about helping students realize they can reshape themselves—the educational function of schooling. Higher education is not a matter of inculcating the truth. It is a matter of inciting doubt and stimulating imagination.

      The distinction between the goals of schooling and what it means to be educated was played out every time I returned home from college. My parents expected that college was augmenting the goals of schooling—transmitting knowledge, occupational skills, and societal norms. In the college classrooms I was sitting, however, they were inculcating in me the intellectual tools to question, in the words of Richard Rorty, my parents’ final vocabularies. Becoming educated in my college classrooms was a continual process of questioning conventional wisdom.

      Unfortunately, in today’s educational environment, the goals of schooling have all but erased the goal of becoming educated—courses devoted to the development of judgment, curiosity, and the capacity to think critically and independently. Instead, higher education is increasingly organized around occupational goals that prize credentialing and the monetization of degrees.

What does it mean to be EDUCATED?

by Alan Jones

      An age-old question that inevitably arises when Boards of Education and community stakeholders gather to craft a school’s mission statement is: What does it mean to be educated? Typically, what is on the minds of those sitting in conference rooms is the intrinsic value of education. Although it may be articulated in different ways, the intrinsic nature of being educated is usually associated with cultivating critical thinking, inspiring curiosity, and developing a well-cultured individual.

      In that same room, others may lean towards a more instrumental view of the meaning of education. In their view, schools serve four “uses,” best articulated by Harry Broudy:

  • Replicative use: to reproduce facts, methods, etc.
  • Applicative use: to apply what has been learning in new contexts
  • Associative use: to help students make connections across domains
  • Interpretative use: to involve deeper understandings.

      Still others in that same room frame the question in terms of the goals of schooling. For these participants, they will use different vocabularies to describe five goals of schooling:

  • To educate: What is the meaning of life?
  • To emancipate: Who am I?
  • To join: How do I effectively participate in a democratic community?
  • To prepare: What do I want to become?
  • To socialize: How should I behave?

      For the academics sitting in the room, the question is understood in disciplinary terms: learning the vocabularies and methods of various fields that enable students to solve particular problems and make informed predictions. These academics reduce the question to disciplinary goals:

  • Historians: The transmission of the human heritage
  • Anthropologists: The humanization of the young that occurs in the dialogue between generations.
  • Sociologists: The socialization of the young into the societal roles and values
  • Political Scientists: The preparation of the young for citizenship
  • Economists: The acquisition of knowledge, skills, and values necessary for gainful employment
  • Philosophers: The development of a morally and socially responsible person

          There is nothing wrong with any of the answers to the question of what it means to be educated. The real problem for those sitting in that room—the people who manage and teach in our schools— is deciding which answer to pursue, since each one implies a different set of pedagogical methods. How schools solve this muddle of educational goals is to reduce the substance of schooling to subjects and the methods of schooling to their uses. In doing so, the question of what it means to be educated becomes a matter of institutional outcomes—standardization and documentation. What gets left out, however, is the original intent of the question: to cultivate critical thinking, inspire curiosity, and develop a well-cultured individual.

          When the meaning of education is reduced to what can be standardized and documented, both teachers and students lose sight of schooling as a humanistic enterprise—one grounded in inquiry, imagination, and moral development. Personally, I adopted Richard Rorty’s purpose of education, which is to equip students with the vocabularies and intellectual tools to challenge and rethink the “final vocabularies” they inherit—that is, the set of words, beliefs, and moral assumptions through which their parents and communities make sense of the world. I did not reject my parent’s vocabularies outright but in my course work and readings I developed a self-awareness and intellectual autonomy—the ability, in Rorty’s words, to redescribe oneself and one’s world in new term terms.

          So much of the goals and methods of schooling at the secondary and post-secondary level focus on the transmission of inherited knowledge—what Whitehead called, “inert ideas.” In college, however, I discovered venues—mostly outside the classroom—where fellow students and professors offered me the intellectual means, the new vocabularies, to question the “final vocabularies” of my parents and the communities in which I was raised.

    “The Lost Art of Implementation”

    by Alan Jones

         Over the last decade, schools have been inundated with reform initiatives, each introduced as a solution to the challenges revealed by national and international assessments. These scores consistently show stagnant or declining student achievement, prompting wave after wave of new programs and policies. Schools typically comply with these yearly initiatives through a managerial version of “implementation,” which usually consists of the following moves:

          Move #1:    Assign the initiative to a subordinate

          Move #2:    Distribute the required materials

          Move #3:    Schedule orientation workshops

          Move #4:    Establish timelines for turning in required accountability documents

          Move #5:    Compile data from accountability documents

          Move #6:    Prepare report on initiative outcomes

          While this managerial version of “implementation” checks the boxes of compliance, it has little to no impact on classroom practice or the deeper culture of the school. Regardless of the initiative’s merits, lasting change in classroom practice and school culture demands systemic—not compliance-driven—implementation. Systemically driven implementation consists of the following moves:

          Move #1: VISION

          Administrators bring teachers together in various meeting formats to present a clear image of success. That image may reference key data points, but it also entails what teachers and students should be doing in the classroom. This vision can be reinforced through different forms of media that model the classroom practices promoted by the initiative. Most importantly, these gatherings allow administrators and teachers to surface diverse perspectives and work toward consensus on the initiative.

          Move #2: STRATEGY

          Too often, school change initiatives lapse into fragmentation, superficiality, and burnout. To prevent “reform fatigue” administrators develop a strategy consisting of four parts: a)  a plan that takes into account the uniqueness of the schools and clear understanding of the dimensions of the change; b) the ability on the part of administrators to act adaptively both in overcoming obstacles and in staying the course on reform goals; c) the willingness on the part of administrators to negotiate changes in approach in light of new understandings of conflicting points of view; d) the skill on the part of administrators to take advantage of unexpected recourse and assistance; and e) the experience on the part of administrators to make formative adjustments, based on assessing whether the overall system is progressing, stalling, or degenerating.

          Move #3: STRUCTURE

          Most reform initiatives falter because schools fail to align their organizational system to fully operationalize the reform’s vision and strategy. Every reform initiative demands adjustments to core instructional systems—curriculum, professional development, technology, and scheduling—to absorb unfamiliar ideas and practices.

         Move #4: RESOURCES

          What is often overlooked in adopting a reform initiative is the assumption that schools already have the material and personnel resources needed to carry it out. More often than not, midway through the adoption process, a critical resource is missing, leading to modifications that David Cohen terms “lethal mutations” of reform theories, concepts, and practices.

          I am certain that administrators reading this blog would nod in recognition at the implementation moves described above. Yet the question remains: remains: Why do most schools fail to fully implement mandated initiatives? Entire libraries could be filled with explanations for reform failure. I would reduce them to a single cause: most school administrators approach systemic reform with a managerial rather than an educational mindset.

          I have devoted numerous blogs to the distinction between a managerial and educational mindset. Suffice to say in this blog, that a managerial mindset views the adoption of a reform initiative as a problem of mechanics—the what and how of implementation. An educational mindset views the adoption of a reform initiative as a problem of culture—the why of implementation. The systemic-driven reform moves described above design a process—vision–>strategy–>structure–>resources—that draws a teacher into activity structures that embed the “why” of the initiative into what and how of implementation. Although reform initiatives may initiate some changes in teaching practice, comprehensive adoption of new theories and methods necessitates substantial guidance and support, particularly through an emphasis on the underlying rationale for implementation.

    REFERENCES

    Cohen, D. K. (1990). A Revolution in One Classroom: The Case of Mrs. Oublier. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 12(3), 327–345.

    Confrey, J., Castro-Filho, J., & Wilhelm, J. (2000). Implementation Research as a Means to Link Systemic Reform and Applied Psychology in Mathematics Education. Educational Psychologist, 35(3), 179–191.