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“My Superpower: The Answer to AI”

by Alan Jones

      In a recent conversation with my daughter, she attributed her success as a small business owner to what she termed her Superpower. I questioned her further on what she meant by her “Superpower.” She explained to me that while her experience in school, college, and the corporate sector looked good on a resume, in real job situations, she could find workarounds for tasks and problems that proved valuable.

      My next question, of course, was: “What is a workaround? Well, Dad, my Superpower is finding alternative paths when the obvious one is blocked—the ability to adjust, improvise, and still get the job done when your training, rules, and chains of command make a straightforward approach impossible. You know, Dad, to be blunt, in schools and corporate settings, workarounds are defined as cheating. I define workarounds as finding an individual, a system, a supplier, a source of information, a venue, or a skill set that is off the grid, so to speak. You know you are working off the grid when your boss and colleagues give you that look—I don’t know how you pulled this off…but it worked.

      I then asked her why others in the organization were not using this Superpower. Well, in her words, most of my bosses and colleagues have been taught and have been relatively successful at following the rules—they are very good at following scripts. She reminded me of her struggles in the academic world and several corporate structures, where following the rules was simply what was expected. In her case, early on in school and college, she developed workarounds—extra credit, tutors, smart boyfriends—to get by in her courses. In the corporate sector, her proclivity to work around standard operating procedures allowed her to solve problems and complete tasks that no one else in the organization could resolve.

      She then went on to explain how AI, for her, was becoming the ultimate workaround. I interrupted her by asking if she wasn’t concerned that AI could eliminate her business. Her response, “Dad, not at all.” To summarize her response: Dad, the service I am offering is something no AI can replicate. What AI does provide me with is the mechanics that surround the services, which frees up my time to further develop the service I am offering.

      As a lifelong educator—teacher, administrator, professor—I had worked my entire career designing curricular and school organizational structures that taught students how to follow the rules. As my daughter pointed out, the concept of workarounds, her Superpower, was considered cheating in the schools I worked in. What struck me in this conversation is that we may be entering an era where various technologies reward those who find workarounds and challenge traditional rules—while punishing those who simply follow them. To put it another way, schools should be rewarding Superpowers—unique talents and problem-solving abilities—rather than just super achievers who simply meet standard expectations.

“You can come and play too.”

by Alan Jones

            When I reflect on my years as a school administrator, an image that frequently recurs is the joyful expressions on the faces of a class of preschool children as they were introduced to a new playground at their school. I was representing the high school at the grand opening of the playground. Before the ceremonies began, the Director of the preschool program described to me the process staff went through to design a developmentally appropriate playground. What caught me off guard was her excitement over the curricular goals that would be accomplished while children played during their activity periods. Since graduate school, I had not heard an educator associate the interests of the child with the goals of a curriculum. The mere mention of “hooking kids” would be viewed with some suspicion amongst my high school colleagues.

            The assembled dignitaries could barely finish their remarks before the class of children raced past them in a scene resembling the Oklahoma Gold Rush. I was unprepared for how totally children could throw themselves into a learning experience. It was difficult to remain “adult” in an environment that was “hooking kids.” One child was so excited that she ran into my leg. As I bent down to speak to her, she looked at me and announced, “You can come and play too.” She then bolted into the play area.

            The only excitement at the high school that might be comparable to what I observed that day on the playground happens during extracurricular activities, passing periods, lunch time, and the last day of school. I certainly never experienced that level of excitement connected with the high school academic program. I could not even imagine being invited by a student to a class where “I could learn too.” The students I observed daily in my high school were either “doing school” (Pope, 2003) or trying to escape from school.

            Theoretically, I understood the source of the stark contrasts between the expressions on the faces of those preschool children and the expressions on the faces of students in my high school. An enduring theme in the literature on child development and recent research by neuroscientists is the downshifting in learning that occurs in environments that disconnect a child’s intellectual growth from how they feel about the world around them —the emotional—and how they relate to the world around them—the social. The perfect learning storm occurs in environments where intellectual growth is launched and sustained by experiences that capitalize on the varied talents that students bring into the classroom and promote relationships that help them negotiate the gap between abstract symbol systems and the world these systems were designed to describe and influence. How do schools, in a few short years, orchestrate this disconnect between the social, emotional, and cognitive? The origin of the separation of the child from the curriculum lies in the goals of schooling and the distortion of disciplined thought.

            The evolution of schooling in America has been the story of the transformation of the one-room schoolhouse into the comprehensive high school. The steady march towards more efficiency and greater capacity has gradually reduced the discussion of the goals of schooling from “what is an educated person” to the institutional functions of certification, preparation, and custodial care. In order to accomplish these institutional goals, schools configured themselves in a way to accurately account for daily attendance, to monitor the whereabouts of students on an hourly basis, and to efficiently process students through a prescribed number of credit hours. Today’s schools do these functions very well. The school’s schedule, the supervisory functions of teaching, the subject-centered curriculum, and the “assign and assess” (Tharp, 1993) delivery model of instruction are efficient means of accomplishing the institutional goals of schooling.

            The problem, of course, is that the goals of institutions are often in opposition to the goals of those who practice education and children who are subjected to “the daily grind” (Jackson, 1990) of schooling. Teachers find themselves in schools where the goals of schooling —jobs, high test scores, and admission to college—and the means of schooling—large classes, standardized curriculum, and large amounts of testing— are antithetical to a practice that requires creativity, flexibility, and sensitivity to uniqueness. Children find themselves in classrooms where the goals of schooling—promotion, good grades, and following rules —and the routines of schooling —sitting quietly, listening, waiting to be called on, completing worksheets —are hostile to the social need to be known, the emotional need to be interested, and the intellectual need to make sense out of their experiences.

            The separation of the child from the emotional, social, and intellectual sources of growth becomes total when they are required to master information contained in prescribed subjects that bear little resemblance to the methods of inquiry and levels of thought found in the disciplines of the arts and sciences. The goals of a school subject are to provide a vehicle for scheduling, assigning daily class work, reproducing information on a test, and certifying to institutions of higher learning that a student has completed a prescribed curriculum. Subject matter in such a curriculum consists of catalogues of names, dates, places, definitions, events, and procedures which have been removed from the social and historical context in which the discipline evolved and the problems they were designed to solve.

            Not only has the intellectual and aesthetic power of the disciplines been reduced to catalogues of information, but policymakers have deemed only the “core” subjects of English, social studies, mathematics, and science worthy of study. Other ways of knowing the world are considered “electives.” Only a minority of students in our schools possess the social, emotional, and intellectual profile to succeed within such a configuration of schooling.

            The daily challenge administrators and teachers confront in schools whose goals and functions are institutional is the minute-by-minute effort to reduce the tensions created by a configuration of schooling that is openly hostile to the diversity of talents, emotions, and cultures of the student bodies they serve. Administrators and teachers respond to this challenge by employing a combination of special events, routines, techniques, sanctions, and broad interpretations of academic achievement to entertain, manage, control, and move along their student bodies. The real tragedy of institutional schooling in America is not low test scores, but John Goodlad’s observation over twenty years ago that schools are places where students have become emotionally deadened by the routines of schooling and intellectually morbid by an institutional curriculum that prizes completion of work rather than understanding and reflection (Goodlad, 1984).

            Educators typically justify the “means” of controlling their populations by asserting that listening quietly, reading, reproducing information, and doing well on tests will serve as preparation for a remote future occupation or satisfying an institutional goal that is far removed from the social, emotional, and intellectual sources of learning. “Preparation, as Dewey observed, “is a treacherous idea” (Dewey, 1938, p.47). “Mis-education,” according to Dewey, will always occur when the means of schooling become disconnected from the interests, talents, and capacities of the student body served by an institution of learning. Dewey went on to assert that true educational “growth” in students occurs when teachers can use the immediate feelings and problems of a child as a springboard to walk the child back into disciplined ways of thinking about and acting upon the conditions of everyday life that disrupt our private quest for meaning and our public quest for a just society.

            Administrators and teachers intuitively know that the current configuration of schooling is not working. Things remain the same, however, because the assumptions of institutional schooling are never questioned. What would happen, however, if one were able to challenge the current institutional configuration of schooling in ways that would reconnect the essential relationship between intellectual growth, the social nature of learning, and the variety of ways of making sense out of the world?

            My attempt to resolve the conflict between the institutional goals of schooling and the needs of the whole child began ten years ago when a group of freshman students, who, in the words of the Director of Pupil Personnel Services, “refused to do school.” Students in this group were fourteen and fifteen years old. All members of the group had missed over thirty days of school by November and were failing every subject. The achievement profile of each member of the group did not qualify them for special education services. When these students did make a rare appearance in school, they wrought havoc in the classes they attended and even more havoc in areas where they would hide from classes. The teachers wanted them out of their rooms, the deans wanted them dropped or suspended from school, and the law was quite clear that it was my obligation to keep them in school. Students with this profile frustrate school administrators and teachers because they do not respond to normal institutional sanctions for “not doing school.” As one dean put it, “these kids love being suspended from school, they won’t serve the detentions, and they don’t care about getting a diploma.”

            My journey into school reconfiguration began with a brainstorming session with the Director of Pupil Personnel Services and a teacher whose position included responsibility for monitoring the truancy program in area schools. After I completed the description of the freshman group of students who were not doing school, the two veteran student service personnel responded with comments and body language that projected an attitude of “so what else is new.”

The teacher in the truancy program calmly looked at me and said, “I know what will work with these kids, but you won’t do it.”

            “No, I am willing to try anything to help these kids through school.”

            “Anything?” asked the teacher in the truancy program.

            The teacher in the truancy program then proceeded to describe a school configuration that would work for students who “refused to go to school.” Students would begin school at ten o’clock. The course of study would be designed by the students in consultation with the director of the program. The physical education program, which was a constant nemesis for these students, was rescheduled for the summer and would permit students to wear their street clothes while they participated in non-competitive activities. The maximum class size for the program was set at fifteen. The classroom for the program was to be located away from the normal distractions of the high school day. As I listened to the teacher tick off the parameters of the program, my response to the reconfiguration of the high school program alternated between resentment toward students who would not just go along with the program and a respect for the wisdom of a teacher and administrator who had worked with these students for many years. My institutional self was saying no to the program. My educational self said that my options resided outside the boundaries of institutional schooling. The traditional configuration of the high school was not working; more of the same was not an option.

            Project STARS (Success Through Accepting Responsibility) began that day in my office. I was able to secure money for materials and a salary for the teacher. I found a room in a remote part of the building. I worked with the physical education chairperson to modify the program for these students. I felt a bit more assured about the success of the program when the teacher in the truancy program volunteered to teach and direct the program.

            There were parameters for Project STARS. Students, along with their parents, had to sign a contract stipulating that they would attend school on a regular basis, would behave appropriately in class, and would complete assigned school work. Parents and students were also informed that they would not receive a diploma from the school unless they completed all required courses. Students who were unable to comply with these rules would immediately be dropped from the program.

            STARS became a huge success. By the end of the first semester, students who were virtual drop-outs were now attending school regularly, were arriving on time to the program, and were completing self-selected correspondence courses in academic and elective courses. A few students dropped out because of substance abuse. But the remainder stayed the entire year, passed all of their courses, and even participated in our special “Summer Physical Education Class.” Most of these students graduated from our school four years later. I should add that they all complied with the dress code for graduation (although I did have to lend one student an extra tie I had in my office closet).

            The design of the STARS program reconfigured the high school program in a way that accommodated a “person’s own deliberate, systematic, and sustained efforts to acquire knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, and sensibilities” (Cremin, 1976, p. 38). Our school, at least in respect to the STARS program, became an institution that educates (Cremin, 1976, p. 87).

             The years that I worked with staff and students in the STARS program taught me that traditional institutional approaches to improving achievement that do more of the same, only harder, or the endless search for pathologies in students, only alienated the student further from purposeful approaches to learning. Both strategies ignore the fundamental disconnect between the knowledge, interests, and capacities of young people and the institutional goals of schooling. The other lesson I learned in working with teachers and administrators on different configurations of schooling is the distinctive change in their attitudes and the ways they thought about students who were not doing well in school. Professional staff, who were freed from the “mechanics of school organization and administration” (Dewey, 1969, p. 22), stopped blaming the students and parents for “oppositional behaviors,” and instead focused on how to change rules, routines, curriculum, and instruction that would address the unique talents, abilities, life- styles, and interests of groups of students whose emotional, social, and intellectual profiles did not conform to institutional routines and expectations.

            The STARS program certainly did not reflect current trends in schooling that mandate a strict alignment between standard achievement instruments and a standard curriculum. The justification offered by policymakers for the standardization of schooling in America is embodied in the educational motto “No Child Left Behind.” What this motto means to educators and what this motto means to policymakers captures the underlying conflict between the institutional goals of schooling– what Dewey called the “machinery of schooling” (Dewey, 1969, p. 22)– and the social, emotional, and intellectual needs of young people. No Child Left Behind in an institutional setting means that all children will be required to attain the same level of achievement on a common curriculum. No Child Left Behind for educators means that all children will have access to quality curricular experiences that recognize multiple talents, abilities, and interests. Most importantly, for educators, all children will be involved in learning experiences that honor multiple levels of excellence and are flexible enough to permit a child to pursue the level of excellence appropriate for achieving private goals of meaning and public ways of doing.

            The differences between the two interpretations of No Child Left Behind are fundamental to the discussion of the future of schooling in America. Policymakers and school administrators who continue to ignore the whole child and instead choose to intensify the “machinery of administration” will get the schools they currently have —soulless institutions where all the participants in the process go through the motions of institutional schooling but show little joy, little emotion, and little learning. The other alternative to schooling is to return to the drawing boards and reconfigure our institutions of learning in ways that honor the multiple pathways for amplifying the diversity of talents, abilities, and interests that wander the hallways of our schools today.

            There are no blueprints for reconfiguring schools. As I learned with the STARS program, opportunities for accommodating the whole child arise out of the particular needs and circumstances of particular school communities. The challenge, however, that awaits school leaders who decide to embark on modifying the “machinery of administration” is the development of a coherent understanding of how modifications to programs, to routines, and to systems agree with the educational aims of the institution– what kinds of persons should education be trying to develop. The reconnection of a child’s search for meaning and worth in our society with their social, emotional, and intellectual self requires that schools reconnect the aims of schooling with the methods of schooling. What makes the agreement between means and ends so challenging in a school that values the development of the whole child is that there is not just one aim, or one method, or one routine, or one schedule that will work for all students. Instead, administrators will be required to consider multiple aims, multiple methods, multiple routines, and multiple schedules in their reconfigurations.

Amidst this swirl of reconfigured methods, routines, schedules, and subject matter, I learned that leadership in this environment must confront the daily challenge of establishing a “unity of experience” (Dewey, 1969, p. 18) that accompanies the uncertainties of reconnecting a child’s need to be known, to pursue a valued goal, and to find personal meaning in their daily experiences.  The search for a “unity of experience” in such environments is not to be found in the certainties of the “machinery of administration”—standardization, prescription, and measurement. Rather, the school leader must integrate conflicting ideas about teaching, learning, and the nature of knowledge with the sense of wonder I encountered that day on the preschool playground.

REFEERENCES

Cremin, L.A. (1976). Public education. The John Dewey Society lecture; no. 15. New York: Basic Books.

Dewey, J. (1998). Experience and education. 60th anniversary ed. West Lafayette, Ind.: Kappa Delta Pi.

Dewey, J. (1969). The educational situation. American education: its men, ideas, and institutions. New York: Arno Press.

Goodlad, J.I. (1984). A place called school: prospects for the future. A Study of Schooling in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.

Jackson, P.W. (1990). Life in classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press.

Pope, D.C. (2003). “Doing school”: how we are creating a generation of stressed-out, materialistic, and miseducated students. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Tharp, R. (1993). Institutional and social context of educational practice and reform. In E.A. Forman, N. Minick, & C.A. Stone (Eds.), Contexts for learning: Sociocultural dynamics in children’s development (pp. 269 – 282). Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

“The WHY of Schooling”

by Alan Jones

Students are demoralized, bored, and distracted in school, not because of a lack of interesting methods, but both teachers and students lack, a narrative to provide profound meaning to their lessons.

(Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of Schooling)

      Over forty years in public school administration, I spent innumerable hours in offices talking about policies, mandates, systems, budgets, legal opinions, staffing, and whatever crisis happened to be at hand. I cannot remember ever discussing the educational goals and values embedded in school mission statements—the very why of schooling.

      My prior books on the subject list the following reasons why the occupants of main offices never discuss what kind of public should their school be creating.

  • The occupants of the main offices are consumed with the managerial details of running a school.
  • The occupants of main offices assume that the why of schooling has already been answered by state legislators, school boards, or central offices.
  • The occupants of the main offices see little value in spending time on ivory tower discussions of the way of schooling.
  • The occupants of the main offices lack the academic training to engage in thoughtful discussions over the why of schooling.

      Without a compelling narrative to inspire a reason for schooling the occupants of main offices are unable to develop a meaningful response to the following problems of schooling:

      Problem #1: Coherent Response to the SIX Fundamental Questions of Schooling

      The force behind creating an engaging learning environment is a coherent response to the following six fundamental questions of learning:

  1. What are the goals of schooling?
  2. How do children learn?
  3. What knowledge is of most worth?
  4. How should knowledge be organized?
  5. How should we assess what students understand?
  6. HOW SHOULD WE TEACH?

      All of these answers to these fundamental questions depend upon what goals of schooling main offices and classrooms are pursuing. Over the year’s schools have pursued the following goals:

  1. To educate (what is the meaning of life?)
  2. To emancipate (who am I?)
  3. To join (How do I effectively participate in a democratic community?)
  4. To prepare (What do I want to become?)
  5. To socialize (How should I behave?)

      While school mission statements tend to emphasize goals 1, 2, and 3 — critical thinking —most school curricula and school organizations are designed to train and follow orders — goals 4 and 5. A school curriculum and school organization dominated by credits, seat time, grades, and subjects respond to the fundamental questions of schooling far differently than a school curriculum and school organization designed to develop agency, a sense of belongingness, an interest, and a critical thinker.

      Problem #2: The Problem of Mandates

      Every school year occupants of main offices enter their offices with their in-boxes filled with new policies, directives, or mandates that governmental or administrative bodies expect their administrative teams to implement. Most of these mandates involve routine changes to school curricula or school organizations. Some, however, are controversial and draw occupants of main offices into philosophical questions. Take, for example, recent trends in curricular mandates asking schools to emphasize and implement materials specifically designed to advance the concept of multiculturalism.

      On the face of it, curricular materials designed to foster the acceptance of different cultures in society and the active support of these cultures by both majority and minority groups would appear to be a value worth embracing. On the other hand, public schools from their inception have favored the goal of cultural pluralism in which multiple ethnic groups can coexist and maintain their unique cultural identities while participating fully in the dominant society.

      The problem with such a mandate is which curriculum should a school pursue:

A multicultural curriculum designed to focus on recognizing and celebrating diverse cultures within a society or should a school pursue a cultural pluralistic curriculum emphasizing the coexistence and interaction of different cultures. This distinction may appear to be splitting hairs, but, at a board meeting, parents may question either approach, and, in the process, raise philosophical questions over assimilation versus integration, loss of identity, educational disparities, and social integration. With such issues, the managerial what’s and how’s of board meetings quickly turn to the whys of schooling.

      Problem #3: The Problem of Contradictions

      Although rarely articulated in school meeting venues—faculty meetings, parent open houses, board meetings—there are contradictions between what schools profess in their mission statements and the realities of school policies and classroom practices. The most glaring example is the educational value most frequently mentioned in school mission statements—critical thinking. While this value is most often announced from auditorium stages, the goals they list—agency, interests, questioning—disappear in main offices and classrooms pursuing institutional goals and values—standardization, accounting, compliance.

      Problem #4: The Problem of Relevance: Connecting the Dots

      W. Edwards Deming, the father of TQM, emphasized the distinction between information and knowledge. In Deming’s view, information is not knowledge. Knowledge, according to Deming, is the ability to predict future outcomes and understand the past, requiring a theory or framework for analysis. Information, on the other hand, is simple data without the context or theory to make it meaningful.

      In school classrooms, the pedagogical methods teachers employ treat information as if it were knowledge. In the words of Thomas Gradgrind, the teacher in Dickens’s novel Hard Times: “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”

      When students question the relevance of the facts they are required to memorize, the common teacher response to these questions is to assure students that they will need these facts later in the course or some distant future—a future which never seems to materialize. The large amounts of information that are transmitted in daily lesson plans and in textbooks align well with classroom-based testing instruments. However, facts alone align poorly with real-world applications that require, in Deming’s words, a theory or framework for analysis or simply put, are shaped by the relationships we have and the situations we are in.

      THE FINAL PROBLEM: Student Discipline

      The problem that dogs school organizations is how to work with students who do not conform to the norms of institutional schooling. School administrators address this ongoing problem with institutional responses: discipline codes; parent conferences; suspensions; detentions; time-out rooms; and demerits. In the last decade, schools have moved from looking upon student discipline as a matter of poor parenting or biological proclivities of different age groups to a variety of explanations for student misbehavior: attention-seeking, learning difficulties, unmet emotional needs, lack of social skills, power struggles, problems at home, medical issues.

      While all of these explanations are reasonable as far as they go. What they all ignore is the inconvenient truth of institutional schooling: schools are boring. In John Goodlad’s seminal study of classroom practices in thirteen high schools throughout the country, he describes what a boring classroom looks like in practice:

 [I saw] the teacher explaining or lecturing to the total class or a single student, occasionally asking questions requiring factual answers; the teacher, when not lecturing, observing or monitoring students working individually at their desks; students listening or appearing to listen to the teacher and occasionally responding to the teacher’s questions; students working individually at their desks on reading or writing assignments; and all with little emotion, from interpersonal warmth to expressions of hostility.

(Goodlad, A Place Called School)

      If students are not engaged in what is occurring in the classroom they become disruptive. Changing the inconvenient truth of schooling asks school administrators to “self-author” a narrative composed of three parts:

      PART I: Schools are boring

      Openly admitting to the reality that the design of the school organization and the organization of curriculum align well with institutional goals, but, fall short of creating a learning environment that would fully engage children and adolescence. Included in Part I of the narrative is specific organizational and instructional strategies administrators and teachers will pursue to address one or more the problems of schooling listed above.

      Part II:  What does an engaging learning environment look like?

      Throughout this narrative school administrators must describe what teachers and students are doing in a learning environment where students are socially, emotionally, and intellectually engaged. There are many descriptors for engaging learning environments. The answers to Elliot Eisner’s list of questions listed below could serve as a template for designing a school organization that places the goal of creating engaging learning environments ahead of the enforcement of institutional goals.

      Part III: The HOW of creating engaging learning environments:

      Once the why and what of engaging learning environments has been established, the final paragraph in the narrative would describe specific changes to the school organization and curricular design that would develop engaging learning environments. Listed below are the four areas in a school organization that would signal a change what goals and values classrooms would be pursuing:

  • The budget
  • The curriculum
  • The master schedule
  • The training regime—professional development

WHAT IS A GOOD SCHOOL: EISNER

(Eisner, E. W. (January 01, 2001). FEATURES – What Does It Mean to Say a School Is Doing Well?.

 Phi Delta Kappan, 82, 5, 367)

1.            WHAT KINDS OF PROLEMS AND ACTIVITIES DO STUDENTS ENGAGE IN?

2.            WHAT IS THE INTELLECTUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IDEAS THAT THEY ENCOUNTER?

3.            ARE STUDENTS INTRODUCED TO MULTIPLE PERPSECTIVES?

4.            WHAT CONNECTIONS ARE STUDENTS HELPED TO MAKE BETWEEN WHAT THEY STUDY IN CLASS AND THE WORLD OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL?

5.            WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DO YOUNGSTERS HAVE TO BECOME LITERATE IN THE USE OF DIFFERENT REPRESENTATIONS FORMS (i.e. various symbol systems which give humans meaning)?

6.            WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DO STUDENTS HAVE TO FORMULATE THEIR OWN PURPOSES AND TO DESIGN WAYS TO ACHIEVE THEM?

7.            WHAT OPPORTUNITIES TO STUDENTS HAVE TO WORK COOPERATIVELY TO ADDRESS PROBLEMS THAT THEY BELIEVE TO BE IMPORTANT?

8.            DO STUDENTS HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE THE COMMUNITY IN WAYS THAT ARE NOT LIMITED TO THEIR OWN PERSONAL INTERESTS?

9.            TO WHAT EXTENT ARE STUDENTS GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK IN DEPTH IN DOMAINS THAT RELATED TO THEIR APTITUDES?

10.          DO STUDENTS PARTICIPATE IN THE ASSESSMENT OF THEIR OWN WORK?

11.          DO WHAT EXTENT ARE STUDENTS GENUINELY ENGAGED IN WHAT THEY DO IN SCHOOL?

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.