Carnivalicious!

The 169th edition of The Carnival of Education (hosted this week by What It's Like on the Inside.) has opened the midway!And don't forget to round out your educational experience by seeing what the homies are up to over at The Carnival of Homeschooling.

Apply to the US, says John

A letter to Malaysiakini by a friend of mine, John Lee Ming Keong, who's currently a freshman at Dartmouth, encouraging students to apply to study in the US. I'll reproduce it below. You can read more of his insights at his very well written blog.

Sponsored higher education - think America
John Lee | Apr 30, 08 4:08pm

I note with disappointment the recent controversy here regarding the disbursement of government scholarships and placement in university courses. I believe the policy solutions to these problems are clear enough - any discrimination in university admissions or scholarships ought to be on the basis of income and access to educational opportunities, not race.

The bumiputra may be severely disadvantaged - Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak claimed in 1997 that only 5% of public university students would be Malays if the quota system were to be completely repealed - but this only strengthens the case for discriminating on the basis of actual disadvantages, rather than race, when clearly many bumiputera are not wanting for any opportunities economically or educationally.

However, barring a sudden turnaround in government policy or a wholesale change in the composition of the federal government, it is crucial that individual students be aware of other opportunities available to them should the public purse be unable or unwilling to assist them in their education. Private scholarships are a common form of assistance which many rely on to study, either at local private colleges or in foreign universities.

In spite of this, not many know about private scholarships offered by universities in the United States. Eight American universities, including half of the Ivy League (Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth) will fund the education of any applicant who is admitted, inclusive of tuition, living expenses, etc. Although they require a separate financial aid application, they will not consider ability to pay when making admissions decisions, meaning applicants will be evaluated purely on scholastic merit. All admitted students who choose to attend receive financial aid, mostly scholarships, in proportion to their ability to pay the fees.

Furthermore, many other American universities also offer financial aid to students. However, because they generally do not have the large endowments of other institutions, financial need is a factor in admission, meaning poorer applicants must make up for their inability to pay in academic accomplishments. In spite of this, once the student is admitted, many of these institutions commit to funding their education as much as possible.

I write about this because I have noticed that most students do not even consider the US when deciding where to attend university. Although there are disadvantages with the US system - most universities only offer four-year programmess, and American law degrees are not recognised locally - there is no reason to automatically exclude it from contention. If anything, American universities offer much more affordable educations because of their extensive financial aid programmes for the needy.

There are two main barriers to a good education. The first is intellectual and academic - if you cannot make the cut, you will never get into Harvard or Cambridge. The second is financial - how on earth can you pay for Harvard or Cambridge? Many Malaysians are not wanting for brains, but desperately need financial assistance for their higher education. As someone currently benefiting from financial aid at an American university, I believe this is an opportunity which too many bright Malaysians are passing up. Even if you do not think you can get into Harvard, there is no point in not trying - most universities will even waive the application fees if you can demonstrate financial need - and there are so many other lesser-known but equally great institutions eager to help qualified and talented students obtain a higher education.

I strongly urge all parents, students and educational counselors to re-examine the US university system and the opportunities it offers for bright but economically disadvantaged students. Malaysia has no deficit of intellect, but it is squandering its most promising minds through unequal disbursement of scholarships and placement in university courses. Until we rectify this policy problem, individual Malaysians must find our own way, and one route which is often overlooked is that which lies across the Pacific in the US.

For the past three years, concerned students and alumni have helped organise an annual education fair meant to highlight the educational opportunities available in the US. This year, the fair - USA For Students - is being sponsored by the American Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, and will be held this June.

Even if you are unable to attend the fair, the Internet offers many more ways to gather information. Recom, an online forum set up by students, is devoted entirely to educational problems many Malaysians face, from scholarship interviews to applying for placement in local or foreign programmes. Individual university websites also provide a wealth of information on how to apply for financial assistance.

It is not enough for us to rely on the government to spoonfeed us, either in money or education - we must be proactive and learn to help ourselves, if the government is unable to. Malaysia needs all the talent it can get, and we owe it not just to ourselves as individuals, but to ourselves as a nation, to get the best education we can, and to make the most out of ourselves so we can serve our country.

Democracy is a learning theory.

This is cross-posted from my own blog, Technopaideia, because it seems relevant to Education Policy Blog as well. -Craig

If you ask most Americans about the meaning of democracy, you will likely hear the response: “Democracy is when everyone gets a vote.” You might also hear about representative government, “one man, one vote,” or something about elections of executive, legislative, or judicial authorities. The American public thinks that democracy is the political system that the American revolutionaries fought England for—replacing its monarchy with our constitutional “democracy,” and why the United States has been the “leader of the free” world since at least the beginning of the twentieth century. A more sophisticated American will tell you, following Abraham Lincoln, that democracy is government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” suggesting that there is more to democracy than a particular mode of conducting elections.

Etymologically, “democracy” in ancient Greek meant rule by the “demos,” or "people," implying the possibility of participation in “rule” by “regular people,” rather than by the elite, as in an aristocracy or oligarchy. It strongly implies that no particular social class (at least not free white men above a particular age who own property) has any greater right to participation than any other. If we acknowledge that “participation” means more than just voting for elected officials—activities such as actual service in community organizations and political campaigns, on school boards, and in public discussions through newspapers, talk radio, blogs, and other media—you begin to get a sense that democracy doesn’t refer simply to a form of government or a political system but to a type of society.

A democratic society is a society in which each person has an equal opportunity to reach his or her potential. The great American philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) explored this deeper meaning in much of his work, most notably Democracy and Education (1916). According to Dewey, democracy is “more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (Democracy and Education, 1916; MW 9:93). For Dewey, who believed that experience is, in a sense, everything, to communicate experience “conjointly,” or through mutual and dynamic participation by all, was to share in experience and thereby to share in growth, or an individual and society progression towards personal and social fulfillment, or the good life.

Democracy, then, is shared progression by all people—all people, not just free white men over a certain age with property—towards the good life, both as individuals and as a society. This progression happens because of conjoint communicated experience. To put it differently, society progresses through communication, which is—in essence—educative:

Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience....The experience has to be formulated in order to be communicated. To formulate requires getting outside of it, seeing it as another would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the life of another so that it may be got into such form that he can appreciate its meaning. Except in dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to tell him intelligently of one's own experience. All communication is like art. It may be fairly said, therefore, that any social arrangement that remains vitally social, or vitally shared, is educative to those who participate in it. Only when it becomes cast in a mold and runs in a routine way does it lose its educative power. (Democracy and Education, 1916; MW 9:8-9)

The implication of this line of thinking is that democracy is not only a form of government, or a mode of social living, but essentially a broad conception of education as the movement of individuals and societies forward, towards….well, towards something better. Dewey believes that the ultimate ends of such movement cannot be determined in advance—that goods, like other objects of experience, are continually reconstructed in the light of ever-changing experience. Since each new experience carries with it the possibility of new insights, knowledge, skills, or attitudes, each new experience contains within it the possibility of new conceptions of goods, new capacities for attainment, and new conceptions of how best to support such attainment by a greater number of persons within the society. Thus, experience for Dewey is inherently progressive…and an education that conduces to progressive experience is inherently democratic.

(By the way, this suggests a new way of looking at the particular role of democracy in the United States. Dewey writes: “An American democracy can serve the world only as it demonstrates in the conduct of its own life the efficacy of plural, partial, and experimental methods in securing and maintaining an ever-increasing release of the powers of human nature, in service of a freedom which is cooperative and a cooperation which is voluntary” Freedom and Culture, 1939; LW 13: 187.)

Further inquiry into the forms of education that are most conducive to “an ever-increasing release of the powers of human nature in service of … freedom” reveals that education can no longer be a simple matter of transmitting the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the older generation to the younger. Democratic education cannot be static—it cannot serve to limit the young or bind them unnecessarily to traditional ways of seeing and doing. Of course, it also cannot be completely disconnected from tradition…for tradition represents, in some form, the accumulated experience and wisdom of the society. So democratic education must both open access to stored knowledge and wisdom and—at the same time—develop the capacity among the young for critique of that tradition through inquiry, experimentation, and imagination of new ideals and the means for securing them.

It turns out that democratic education is considerably more difficult than a form of education that seeks primarily to induct the young into the ways of the old. Dewey spent considerable efforts during his career to try to outline the principles and methods of democratic education, and remained frustrated that many readers of his works seemed unable to escape the tired dualism of an education that is primarily grounded in tradition and one which is primarily aiming to free the myriad possibilities of each child. The best education, Dewey argued, would take account of both the curriculum—taken from the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of intellectual and social tradition—and the child, with his or her creativity, fresh perspective, and lively imagination.

It is important to understand how Dewey’s concept of democracy connects with this nuanced and hard-to-achieve conception of education. Education cannot be considered apart from the conditions of associated living in the society, and such conditions cannot be considered separate from education. Life rooted in “conjoint communicated experience” is inherently educative; young people in a democracy inevitably grow to become participants in shared activities and shared governance; and schools—as institutions explicitly designed to further education—must necessarily be continuously redesigned to serve—and reflect—democracy.

This isn’t the time or place to inquire further into what schools that serve and reflect democracy look like—nor shall I get drawn too far into the criticisms this particular perspective offers educational policies such as No Child Left Behind (for such analysis, see the Education Policy Blog which I participate in separately from Technopaideia). Rather, this summary of the relationship between democracy and education is designed to provide some background for understanding a sentence I heard at the recent American Educational Research Association annual meeting in New York City (March 24-28). The occasion was a symposium sponsored by the John Dewey Society (JDS) called “Cloistered Scholars and Community-School Engagement.” JDS president Jim Garrison put the panel together to further his notion—shared by others including the JDS Commission on Social Issues, on which I serve—that if scholars paying attention to Dewey’s works wish to do more than talk amongst themselves about arcane issues in the history of philosophy, but wish to further Dewey’s democratic vision in the real world, then they need to find ways to engage publicly in their local schools and communities.

Speaking on the panel were several scholars with impressive credentials not only in scholarship but in public service. Each put their comments in the context of ways in which university scholars can engage in activities which support democratic schools and societies. Mary John O’Hair, associate provost at the University of Oklahoma, described the K-20 project, which aims to link the university closely with schools throughout the state to foster higher quality curriculum and instruction. Derrick P. Alridge, history professor at the University of Georgia, talked about some little-known activities of African-American philosopher and activist W.E.B. Dubois involving the formation of a “People’s College” at Clark University in Atlanta in the 1940s. Carl D. Glickman, professor of educational leadership at the University of Georgia, talked about his career working in various projects related to school improvement, emphasizing the role that generalists can play in bringing together experts from diverse disciplines to work on complex problems often not effectively addressed through the kinds of universal policy prescriptions that emerge from state and federal legislatures or departments of education. Glickman was the one who said, almost in passing, that “Democracy is a learning theory,” which has become the title of this post and on which I will have more to say in a moment.

Perhaps the most interesting speaker on the panel, for me, was Ira Harkavy, who is co-author of a book (wth John L. Puckett and Lee Benson) entitled Dewey's Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform. According to that book, Dewey’s dream of participatory democracy cannot be realized without the full and conscious participation of schools from preschool to university level, with a special need for universities—which both train the teachers at other levels and set the expectations and content for the curriculum at all levels—to take the lead. This vision, of energizing and transforming schools through the active participation of universities, was one that Dewey took from the first president of the University of Chicago, William Rainey Harper, after Dewey arrived in Chicago in 1894. Dewey took Harper’s idea and gave it a philosophical depth, and also connected it to Jane Addams' idea of schools as community centers. However, when Dewey left Chicago in 1905 and joined the faculty of Columbia University, he abandoned this vision, and turned away from using schools to foster democracy. Harkavy believes that this was a major mistake, and not only contributed to Dewey’s slide into irrelevance in terms of American educational practice, but also to the deterioration of American democracy as well.

Harkavy issued a call to arms for all American scholars to focus at least some of their efforts on promoting democracy in American society. His call is a compelling one. According to Harkavy, the problem of fostering participatory democracy in the United States and in the world at large is the “most singularly urgent” problem of our times, and is related to war and peace, terrorism, violence, and poverty, among other issues. It is also one of the most difficult to solve. Since it is so difficult to solve, working towards a solution will inevitably require new ways of thinking and working that will require new approaches to academic disciplines such as political science, sociology, psychology, public health, and education. And, as most academics know, the most difficult problems to solve are also likely to be the most rewarding to solve: not only in terms of solving a big problem but in terms of the collateral learning that results.

Indeed, according to Harakvy and Dewey, working to solve real and urgent problems is also the best way to learn about the world at large. This is one of the major ideas behind the expansion of the service learning approach to education, and is also at the root of problem-based and inquiry-based learning.

Harkavy described some of the efforts of the University of Pennsylvania to foster participatory democracy by helping the local community schools build curriculum focused on local community problems. By focusing on local problems instead of a seemingly irrelevant or generic curriculum, schools encourage students to become knowledge creators and problem solvers rather than passive recipients of knowledge and, what’s more, they become truly schools of the community, providing both the means and the motivation for parents and other members of the local community to become involved in the schools. Universities, Harkavy said, are the one institution most positioned to support these efforts in schools, since universities tend to endure through changing political times and despite funding variations, and universities have the expertise to help solve problems of all sorts. And, since universities have students—and students learn best by working to solve problems—universities have a natural workforce for helping local schools.

The biggest challenge both for schools and for universities is finding ways to connect the core academic mission of these institutions to the local problems. More effort needs to be devoted to this task. It doesn’t do merely to have students at all levels talk about local problems. Academic expertise, disciplinary skills, and scholarly dispositions must be fostered and leveraged through the changed curriculum. But through engagement in the processes of participatory democracy, students become immersed in participatory learning. In this way, democracy itself becomes an approach to learning.

Carl Glickman had one very specific suggestion for how university instructors can become more democratic in the way they teach, and foster more and better democratic participation. After three classes in each course he teaches, he takes time out to ask the students to discuss among themselves how the course is helping them, and what he, as the instructor, can do to make the course more relevant to their needs and concerns. Most students are surprised that an instructor is taking time to listen to what they feel they need, but it definitely helps his courses improve. The idea, according to Glickman, is to become better at listening to those whose lives are different from our own. By doing so, we move beyond seeing people in terms of single categories and come to see that each person’s perspective is unique, and complex, and that there are many different ways to come to terms with one’s own experience….but that coming to understand the experiences of others helps broaden our own understanding and helps us to learn from each other. Through paying closer attention to fostering better communication with the people around us, we can better participate in their lives, and in the solutions of their problems, thus strengthening local democratic practice at the same time. The main idea is that learning is a matter of making connections between various ideas, and that such connections are more likely with heightened communication among different perspectives, and that as such learning occurs, democracy is strengthened at the same time.

In this way, Glickman tells us, democracy is a learning theory. Learning theories are “attempts to describe how people learn, thereby helping us understand the inherently complex process of learning.” According to this theory, learning is inherently social, participatory, based on the communication of different perspectives, and active. Understood in this way, learning and democracy are simply two sides of the same coin, both leading towards, as I wrote above, the good life.

To the extent that universities can overcome their traditional isolation from daily life…and their traditional “ivory tower” mentality towards their local communities and the concerns of local people…they may find their own missions as centers of learning to be re-energized, and, at the same time, do some good for their own students, faculty, and staff, and for the world at large.

Democracy is a learning theory.

This is cross-posted from my own blog, Technopaideia, because it seems relevant to Education Policy Blog as well. -Craig

If you ask most Americans about the meaning of democracy, you will likely hear the response: “Democracy is when everyone gets a vote.” You might also hear about representative government, “one man, one vote,” or something about elections of executive, legislative, or judicial authorities. The American public thinks that democracy is the political system that the American revolutionaries fought England for—replacing its monarchy with our constitutional “democracy,” and why the United States has been the “leader of the free” world since at least the beginning of the twentieth century. A more sophisticated American will tell you, following Abraham Lincoln, that democracy is government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” suggesting that there is more to democracy than a particular mode of conducting elections.

Etymologically, “democracy” in ancient Greek meant rule by the “demos,” or "people," implying the possibility of participation in “rule” by “regular people,” rather than by the elite, as in an aristocracy or oligarchy. It strongly implies that no particular social class (at least not free white men above a particular age who own property) has any greater right to participation than any other. If we acknowledge that “participation” means more than just voting for elected officials—activities such as actual service in community organizations and political campaigns, on school boards, and in public discussions through newspapers, talk radio, blogs, and other media—you begin to get a sense that democracy doesn’t refer simply to a form of government or a political system but to a type of society.

A democratic society is a society in which each person has an equal opportunity to reach his or her potential. The great American philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) explored this deeper meaning in much of his work, most notably Democracy and Education (1916). According to Dewey, democracy is “more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (Democracy and Education, 1916; MW 9:93). For Dewey, who believed that experience is, in a sense, everything, to communicate experience “conjointly,” or through mutual and dynamic participation by all, was to share in experience and thereby to share in growth, or an individual and society progression towards personal and social fulfillment, or the good life.

Democracy, then, is shared progression by all people—all people, not just free white men over a certain age with property—towards the good life, both as individuals and as a society. This progression happens because of conjoint communicated experience. To put it differently, society progresses through communication, which is—in essence—educative:

Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience....The experience has to be formulated in order to be communicated. To formulate requires getting outside of it, seeing it as another would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the life of another so that it may be got into such form that he can appreciate its meaning. Except in dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to tell him intelligently of one's own experience. All communication is like art. It may be fairly said, therefore, that any social arrangement that remains vitally social, or vitally shared, is educative to those who participate in it. Only when it becomes cast in a mold and runs in a routine way does it lose its educative power. (Democracy and Education, 1916; MW 9:8-9)

The implication of this line of thinking is that democracy is not only a form of government, or a mode of social living, but essentially a broad conception of education as the movement of individuals and societies forward, towards….well, towards something better. Dewey believes that the ultimate ends of such movement cannot be determined in advance—that goods, like other objects of experience, are continually reconstructed in the light of ever-changing experience. Since each new experience carries with it the possibility of new insights, knowledge, skills, or attitudes, each new experience contains within it the possibility of new conceptions of goods, new capacities for attainment, and new conceptions of how best to support such attainment by a greater number of persons within the society. Thus, experience for Dewey is inherently progressive…and an education that conduces to progressive experience is inherently democratic.

(By the way, this suggests a new way of looking at the particular role of democracy in the United States. Dewey writes: “An American democracy can serve the world only as it demonstrates in the conduct of its own life the efficacy of plural, partial, and experimental methods in securing and maintaining an ever-increasing release of the powers of human nature, in service of a freedom which is cooperative and a cooperation which is voluntary” Freedom and Culture, 1939; LW 13: 187.)

Further inquiry into the forms of education that are most conducive to “an ever-increasing release of the powers of human nature in service of … freedom” reveals that education can no longer be a simple matter of transmitting the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the older generation to the younger. Democratic education cannot be static—it cannot serve to limit the young or bind them unnecessarily to traditional ways of seeing and doing. Of course, it also cannot be completely disconnected from tradition…for tradition represents, in some form, the accumulated experience and wisdom of the society. So democratic education must both open access to stored knowledge and wisdom and—at the same time—develop the capacity among the young for critique of that tradition through inquiry, experimentation, and imagination of new ideals and the means for securing them.

It turns out that democratic education is considerably more difficult than a form of education that seeks primarily to induct the young into the ways of the old. Dewey spent considerable efforts during his career to try to outline the principles and methods of democratic education, and remained frustrated that many readers of his works seemed unable to escape the tired dualism of an education that is primarily grounded in tradition and one which is primarily aiming to free the myriad possibilities of each child. The best education, Dewey argued, would take account of both the curriculum—taken from the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of intellectual and social tradition—and the child, with his or her creativity, fresh perspective, and lively imagination.

It is important to understand how Dewey’s concept of democracy connects with this nuanced and hard-to-achieve conception of education. Education cannot be considered apart from the conditions of associated living in the society, and such conditions cannot be considered separate from education. Life rooted in “conjoint communicated experience” is inherently educative; young people in a democracy inevitably grow to become participants in shared activities and shared governance; and schools—as institutions explicitly designed to further education—must necessarily be continuously redesigned to serve—and reflect—democracy.

This isn’t the time or place to inquire further into what schools that serve and reflect democracy look like—nor shall I get drawn too far into the criticisms this particular perspective offers educational policies such as No Child Left Behind (for such analysis, see the Education Policy Blog which I participate in separately from Technopaideia). Rather, this summary of the relationship between democracy and education is designed to provide some background for understanding a sentence I heard at the recent American Educational Research Association annual meeting in New York City (March 24-28). The occasion was a symposium sponsored by the John Dewey Society (JDS) called “Cloistered Scholars and Community-School Engagement.” JDS president Jim Garrison put the panel together to further his notion—shared by others including the JDS Commission on Social Issues, on which I serve—that if scholars paying attention to Dewey’s works wish to do more than talk amongst themselves about arcane issues in the history of philosophy, but wish to further Dewey’s democratic vision in the real world, then they need to find ways to engage publicly in their local schools and communities.

Speaking on the panel were several scholars with impressive credentials not only in scholarship but in public service. Each put their comments in the context of ways in which university scholars can engage in activities which support democratic schools and societies. Mary John O’Hair, associate provost at the University of Oklahoma, described the K-20 project, which aims to link the university closely with schools throughout the state to foster higher quality curriculum and instruction. Derrick P. Alridge, history professor at the University of Georgia, talked about some little-known activities of African-American philosopher and activist W.E.B. Dubois involving the formation of a “People’s College” at Clark University in Atlanta in the 1940s. Carl D. Glickman, professor of educational leadership at the University of Georgia, talked about his career working in various projects related to school improvement, emphasizing the role that generalists can play in bringing together experts from diverse disciplines to work on complex problems often not effectively addressed through the kinds of universal policy prescriptions that emerge from state and federal legislatures or departments of education. Glickman was the one who said, almost in passing, that “Democracy is a learning theory,” which has become the title of this post and on which I will have more to say in a moment.

Perhaps the most interesting speaker on the panel, for me, was Ira Harkavy, who is co-author of a book (wth John L. Puckett and Lee Benson) entitled Dewey's Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform. According to that book, Dewey’s dream of participatory democracy cannot be realized without the full and conscious participation of schools from preschool to university level, with a special need for universities—which both train the teachers at other levels and set the expectations and content for the curriculum at all levels—to take the lead. This vision, of energizing and transforming schools through the active participation of universities, was one that Dewey took from the first president of the University of Chicago, William Rainey Harper, after Dewey arrived in Chicago in 1894. Dewey took Harper’s idea and gave it a philosophical depth, and also connected it to Jane Addams' idea of schools as community centers. However, when Dewey left Chicago in 1905 and joined the faculty of Columbia University, he abandoned this vision, and turned away from using schools to foster democracy. Harkavy believes that this was a major mistake, and not only contributed to Dewey’s slide into irrelevance in terms of American educational practice, but also to the deterioration of American democracy as well.

Harkavy issued a call to arms for all American scholars to focus at least some of their efforts on promoting democracy in American society. His call is a compelling one. According to Harkavy, the problem of fostering participatory democracy in the United States and in the world at large is the “most singularly urgent” problem of our times, and is related to war and peace, terrorism, violence, and poverty, among other issues. It is also one of the most difficult to solve. Since it is so difficult to solve, working towards a solution will inevitably require new ways of thinking and working that will require new approaches to academic disciplines such as political science, sociology, psychology, public health, and education. And, as most academics know, the most difficult problems to solve are also likely to be the most rewarding to solve: not only in terms of solving a big problem but in terms of the collateral learning that results.

Indeed, according to Harakvy and Dewey, working to solve real and urgent problems is also the best way to learn about the world at large. This is one of the major ideas behind the expansion of the service learning approach to education, and is also at the root of problem-based and inquiry-based learning.

Harkavy described some of the efforts of the University of Pennsylvania to foster participatory democracy by helping the local community schools build curriculum focused on local community problems. By focusing on local problems instead of a seemingly irrelevant or generic curriculum, schools encourage students to become knowledge creators and problem solvers rather than passive recipients of knowledge and, what’s more, they become truly schools of the community, providing both the means and the motivation for parents and other members of the local community to become involved in the schools. Universities, Harkavy said, are the one institution most positioned to support these efforts in schools, since universities tend to endure through changing political times and despite funding variations, and universities have the expertise to help solve problems of all sorts. And, since universities have students—and students learn best by working to solve problems—universities have a natural workforce for helping local schools.

The biggest challenge both for schools and for universities is finding ways to connect the core academic mission of these institutions to the local problems. More effort needs to be devoted to this task. It doesn’t do merely to have students at all levels talk about local problems. Academic expertise, disciplinary skills, and scholarly dispositions must be fostered and leveraged through the changed curriculum. But through engagement in the processes of participatory democracy, students become immersed in participatory learning. In this way, democracy itself becomes an approach to learning.

Carl Glickman had one very specific suggestion for how university instructors can become more democratic in the way they teach, and foster more and better democratic participation. After three classes in each course he teaches, he takes time out to ask the students to discuss among themselves how the course is helping them, and what he, as the instructor, can do to make the course more relevant to their needs and concerns. Most students are surprised that an instructor is taking time to listen to what they feel they need, but it definitely helps his courses improve. The idea, according to Glickman, is to become better at listening to those whose lives are different from our own. By doing so, we move beyond seeing people in terms of single categories and come to see that each person’s perspective is unique, and complex, and that there are many different ways to come to terms with one’s own experience….but that coming to understand the experiences of others helps broaden our own understanding and helps us to learn from each other. Through paying closer attention to fostering better communication with the people around us, we can better participate in their lives, and in the solutions of their problems, thus strengthening local democratic practice at the same time. The main idea is that learning is a matter of making connections between various ideas, and that such connections are more likely with heightened communication among different perspectives, and that as such learning occurs, democracy is strengthened at the same time.

In this way, Glickman tells us, democracy is a learning theory. Learning theories are “attempts to describe how people learn, thereby helping us understand the inherently complex process of learning.” According to this theory, learning is inherently social, participatory, based on the communication of different perspectives, and active. Understood in this way, learning and democracy are simply two sides of the same coin, both leading towards, as I wrote above, the good life.

To the extent that universities can overcome their traditional isolation from daily life…and their traditional “ivory tower” mentality towards their local communities and the concerns of local people…they may find their own missions as centers of learning to be re-energized, and, at the same time, do some good for their own students, faculty, and staff, and for the world at large.

A mac mini for the OpenOffice Education projet

I have just received a Mac-mini, a little computer from Macintosh company. With this new machine I can start to work to improve the scanner use under OpenOffice.org MacPort.

But I never used MacOs before, so the first step now is to set-up a complete developement environement under MacOS X Tiger. (Yes I don't have Leopard ...). I'm starting to have a look about Xcode, some tips for the dev with Mac Os and so. Don't hesitate to give me some feedback about that.

I really would like thanks obr who gave it to the OpenOffice Education Project ! I really hope that I will make a good use of it.

And naturally I will try to give some news about my progression in this task. Stay stuned !

A mac mini for the OpenOffice Education projet

I have just received a Mac-mini, a little computer from Macintosh company. With this new machine I can start to work to improve the scanner use under OpenOffice.org MacPort.

But I never used MacOs before, so the first step now is to set-up a complete developement environement under MacOS X Tiger. (Yes I don't have Leopard ...). I'm starting to have a look about Xcode, some tips for the dev with Mac Os and so. Don't hesitate to give me some feedback about that.

I really would like thanks obr who gave it to the OpenOffice Education Project ! I really hope that I will make a good use of it.

And naturally I will try to give some news about my progression in this task. Stay stuned !

A mac mini for the OpenOffice Education projet

I have just received a Mac-mini, a little computer from Macintosh company. With this new machine I can start to work to improve the scanner use under OpenOffice.org MacPort.

But I never used MacOs before, so the first step now is to set-up a complete developement environement under MacOS X Tiger. (Yes I don't have Leopard ...). I'm starting to have a look about Xcode, some tips for the dev with Mac Os and so. Don't hesitate to give me some feedback about that.

I really would like thanks obr who gave it to the OpenOffice Education Project ! I really hope that I will make a good use of it.

And naturally I will try to give some news about my progression in this task. Stay stuned !

Series on Community Organizing at OpenLeft.com

For those who are interested, I have been writing a weekly series on "Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing" at the blog Open Left, which they have kindly been promoting to the front page. Some of these are rewrites and expansions of posts that appeared here earlier, and others are and will be new. I'll cross-post them when they seem most relevant to educators, but I think the Open Left audience is more likely to be open to broader discussions of organizing in general.

Series on Community Organizing at OpenLeft.com

For those who are interested, I have been writing a weekly series on "Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing" at the blog Open Left, which they have kindly been promoting to the front page. Some of these are rewrites and expansions of posts that appeared here earlier, and others are and will be new. I'll cross-post them when they seem most relevant to educators, but I think the Open Left audience is more likely to be open to broader discussions of organizing in general.

Get Your Carnival On!

Entries for the 169th edition of The Carnival Of Education (Hosted this week by The Science Goddess over at What It's Like on the Inside.) are due. Please email them to: the_science_goddess [at] yahoo [dot] com . (Or, easier yet, use this handy submission form.) Submissions should be received no later than 9:00 PM (Eastern) 6:00 PM (Pacific) Today. Contributions should include your site's name,

Taking on Teacher Education III

I didn't want to cut off the lively discussion about NCLB -- whose ox is getting gored and who is complicit in its consequences, both intended and unintended. But that conversation is slowing some and I want to talk one last time during April about teacher education in particular. I'll focus on the third of the questions that I raised early on: Are the people responsible for teacher education doing the job?

There are numerous individuals (e.g. the Washington Post's Jay Mathews) and blue ribbon panels (e.g. the one headed by former Teachers College President Art Levine) who are inclined to say that "Ed Schools" are presently responsible and they are simply not doing the job. Art Levine goes so far as to call teacher education "unruly and chaotic." This will not be a defense of ed schools. Criticisms of teacher education are too often warranted. Still I want to think a bit about the question of who is currently responsible for teacher education.

Responsibility in its richest sense implies the prospective ability to respond to challenges. Accountability, on the other hand, is linked to the kind of retrospective judgment that assigns blame. In the case of teacher education, I think ed schools carry accountability without responsibility. Let me explain.

As I suggested in my last post, teacher knowing is dynamic and contextual. It involves different kinds of claims (logical, cultural, pedagogical and professional) on different bodies of knowledge (their subject field, the liberal arts generally, popular culture, the social science of teaching, learning and interaction) in the context of practice. And they make those claims out of their own understanding of (or way of being) social self and teacher. This means that the education of teachers cannot possibly occur solely in ed schools. Nor can it occur solely in colleges and universities. Some phases of teacher education (more now that we have easy access to web video and other technologies that make case study possible at a distance from P-12 schools) can well occur in ed schools. Some phases must (and do currently) occur in liberal arts colleges. But significant portions of the education of teachers can only occur in practice contexts, in practice contexts where the value commitments of all are transparent and open to discussion.

This means that responsibility for teacher education is already located in P-12 schools (with responsibility shared by teachers and their unions and administration) and in liberal arts colleges and in ed schools. It seems curious to me that we would only hold ed schools accountable.

So why are ed schools nominally in charge? There's a long history there, the story of normal schools and their development into/absorption into universities, a story that's still being told at my normal school turned university where the glee that we have risen above our teacher education roots to become a liberal arts school is palpable. Teacher education is low status, partly because there's still a tinge of "women's work" associated with it. Accountability has been dumped on ed schools without the economic resources and the authority to marshal intellectual resources and the resources of practice. Teacher unions and school administrators and liberal arts deans all say "not my job."

So folks in schools of ed fool themselves into thinking that 18 year old university students can become 22 year old mature teachers by sitting in classrooms first listening to us talk about Piaget or No Child Left Behind or reading in the content area and then going into the schools to "apply" what we've told them. Do we really think that can work?

There's been lots of talk about teacher "career ladders" over the past two decades, but that talk comes and goes without changing a reality – that a teacher's responsibility is as great the day he or she enters a classroom (at 22!) as it is the day he or she retires (post-55). The idea that we have truly "educated" a teacher by 22 seems ludicrous. Holding ed schools accountable for what's not happening also seems ludicrous.

There have been significant efforts to bring the domain of practice, the liberal arts and the ed researchers together with respect to teacher education. The move to create professional development schools is significant. The Project 30 initiative, funded and sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation in the late 80s was another. But these efforts – because they are limited to certain institutions, often research institutions with small, "boutique" teacher ed programs -- don't begin to address the deep and growing need for teachers. And rarely are teacher unions significant players in the effort.

Some have argued for a 4+1 approach to teacher education. That is, let future teachers earn a liberal arts bachelor degree before diving into professional study. I have never been a fan of this proposal because of the way I think about the knowledge of teachers. I will gain more from my academic study if I have a pedagogical intention – and at least minimal opportunity to ply the pedagogical trade – while I'm trying to make sense out of that subject matter. I can learn it – and learn it more effectively – if I'm thinking about how to teach this subject matter to some group of students. So I think it does make sense to integrate professional ideas and sensibilities with intellectual study.

I'm also not a big fan of five year undergraduate programs. Those programs insure that teachers will be 23 instead of 22 when they accept accountability in the classroom, but it's not enough. And we need people in classrooms now. And those novices need real formation in practice on site, formation guided by master teacher/mentors.

So "teacher education" isn't a four-year effort and it isn't an ed school responsibility.

Here's what I'd do if I were the Queen of the education universe: Those who want to be teachers – at any level – earn a bachelors degree in a discipline (about 1/3 of their study) with a strong general education component (about ¼ of their study), and take "pre-ed" studies (ed psych, social foundations and philosophy, assessment and inquiry, developmental psych, learning theory and student difference, pedagogy seminars linked to liberal arts courses that help them students of teaching and learning, linked to time in schools). They graduate with the option to go into or away from "ed school".

But "ed school" cannot be a university place though it can and should involve partnership with a university. Ed school has to be an institution unto itself, akin to a teaching hospital – run by teachers unions in collaboration with university-affiliated educator/researchers and permeated with reflection on teaching as intrinsically relational, as a moral craft. (I'm thinking about what happened to med schools after the Flexner Report when the AMA stepped up to take control – and exert quality control.) In my imagination, ed school is a three year program with increasing levels of responsibility and compensation. First years eke out a "Peace Corps" type existence as they learn practice through integrated work and case-based study. Second and third years earn a modest salary (say $20-25K) as they work under the direction of a master teacher who is responsible for collaborative planning. Only then are they ready to be sent out with primary responsibility for a classroom of students.

My proposal is "unrealistic," of course. I get that. It would require a restructuring of schools and their financing, a refocusing by teachers unions, the creation of a range of roles in some schools, the ones that devote themselves to being "teaching and learning schools." But isn't there something appealing about the idea? Until educators at all levels make common cause around the education of their peers, teacher education will remain "chaotic and unruly."

And by the way, that might be the answer to the fourth question that I posed originally but won't have time to answer this April: In what kinds of schools can talented, well-educated teachers be most successful? In schools where they and their students (including future teachers) are teaching and learning all the time.

Taking on Teacher Education III

I didn't want to cut off the lively discussion about NCLB -- whose ox is getting gored and who is complicit in its consequences, both intended and unintended. But that conversation is slowing some and I want to talk one last time during April about teacher education in particular. I'll focus on the third of the questions that I raised early on: Are the people responsible for teacher education doing the job?

There are numerous individuals (e.g. the Washington Post's Jay Mathews) and blue ribbon panels (e.g. the one headed by former Teachers College President Art Levine) who are inclined to say that "Ed Schools" are presently responsible and they are simply not doing the job. Art Levine goes so far as to call teacher education "unruly and chaotic." This will not be a defense of ed schools. Criticisms of teacher education are too often warranted. Still I want to think a bit about the question of who is currently responsible for teacher education.

Responsibility in its richest sense implies the prospective ability to respond to challenges. Accountability, on the other hand, is linked to the kind of retrospective judgment that assigns blame. In the case of teacher education, I think ed schools carry accountability without responsibility. Let me explain.

As I suggested in my last post, teacher knowing is dynamic and contextual. It involves different kinds of claims (logical, cultural, pedagogical and professional) on different bodies of knowledge (their subject field, the liberal arts generally, popular culture, the social science of teaching, learning and interaction) in the context of practice. And they make those claims out of their own understanding of (or way of being) social self and teacher. This means that the education of teachers cannot possibly occur solely in ed schools. Nor can it occur solely in colleges and universities. Some phases of teacher education (more now that we have easy access to web video and other technologies that make case study possible at a distance from P-12 schools) can well occur in ed schools. Some phases must (and do currently) occur in liberal arts colleges. But significant portions of the education of teachers can only occur in practice contexts, in practice contexts where the value commitments of all are transparent and open to discussion.

This means that responsibility for teacher education is already located in P-12 schools (with responsibility shared by teachers and their unions and administration) and in liberal arts colleges and in ed schools. It seems curious to me that we would only hold ed schools accountable.

So why are ed schools nominally in charge? There's a long history there, the story of normal schools and their development into/absorption into universities, a story that's still being told at my normal school turned university where the glee that we have risen above our teacher education roots to become a liberal arts school is palpable. Teacher education is low status, partly because there's still a tinge of "women's work" associated with it. Accountability has been dumped on ed schools without the economic resources and the authority to marshal intellectual resources and the resources of practice. Teacher unions and school administrators and liberal arts deans all say "not my job."

So folks in schools of ed fool themselves into thinking that 18 year old university students can become 22 year old mature teachers by sitting in classrooms first listening to us talk about Piaget or No Child Left Behind or reading in the content area and then going into the schools to "apply" what we've told them. Do we really think that can work?

There's been lots of talk about teacher "career ladders" over the past two decades, but that talk comes and goes without changing a reality – that a teacher's responsibility is as great the day he or she enters a classroom (at 22!) as it is the day he or she retires (post-55). The idea that we have truly "educated" a teacher by 22 seems ludicrous. Holding ed schools accountable for what's not happening also seems ludicrous.

There have been significant efforts to bring the domain of practice, the liberal arts and the ed researchers together with respect to teacher education. The move to create professional development schools is significant. The Project 30 initiative, funded and sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation in the late 80s was another. But these efforts – because they are limited to certain institutions, often research institutions with small, "boutique" teacher ed programs -- don't begin to address the deep and growing need for teachers. And rarely are teacher unions significant players in the effort.

Some have argued for a 4+1 approach to teacher education. That is, let future teachers earn a liberal arts bachelor degree before diving into professional study. I have never been a fan of this proposal because of the way I think about the knowledge of teachers. I will gain more from my academic study if I have a pedagogical intention – and at least minimal opportunity to ply the pedagogical trade – while I'm trying to make sense out of that subject matter. I can learn it – and learn it more effectively – if I'm thinking about how to teach this subject matter to some group of students. So I think it does make sense to integrate professional ideas and sensibilities with intellectual study.

I'm also not a big fan of five year undergraduate programs. Those programs insure that teachers will be 23 instead of 22 when they accept accountability in the classroom, but it's not enough. And we need people in classrooms now. And those novices need real formation in practice on site, formation guided by master teacher/mentors.

So "teacher education" isn't a four-year effort and it isn't an ed school responsibility.

Here's what I'd do if I were the Queen of the education universe: Those who want to be teachers – at any level – earn a bachelors degree in a discipline (about 1/3 of their study) with a strong general education component (about ¼ of their study), and take "pre-ed" studies (ed psych, social foundations and philosophy, assessment and inquiry, developmental psych, learning theory and student difference, pedagogy seminars linked to liberal arts courses that help them students of teaching and learning, linked to time in schools). They graduate with the option to go into or away from "ed school".

But "ed school" cannot be a university place though it can and should involve partnership with a university. Ed school has to be an institution unto itself, akin to a teaching hospital – run by teachers unions in collaboration with university-affiliated educator/researchers and permeated with reflection on teaching as intrinsically relational, as a moral craft. (I'm thinking about what happened to med schools after the Flexner Report when the AMA stepped up to take control – and exert quality control.) In my imagination, ed school is a three year program with increasing levels of responsibility and compensation. First years eke out a "Peace Corps" type existence as they learn practice through integrated work and case-based study. Second and third years earn a modest salary (say $20-25K) as they work under the direction of a master teacher who is responsible for collaborative planning. Only then are they ready to be sent out with primary responsibility for a classroom of students.

My proposal is "unrealistic," of course. I get that. It would require a restructuring of schools and their financing, a refocusing by teachers unions, the creation of a range of roles in some schools, the ones that devote themselves to being "teaching and learning schools." But isn't there something appealing about the idea? Until educators at all levels make common cause around the education of their peers, teacher education will remain "chaotic and unruly."

And by the way, that might be the answer to the fourth question that I posed originally but won't have time to answer this April: In what kinds of schools can talented, well-educated teachers be most successful? In schools where they and their students (including future teachers) are teaching and learning all the time.

First classroom on 7th of May

Hi,

After some regular discussions with Vikram Vincent and Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay on IRC,I think we can start the ClassRoom program we scheduled some times ago.

Objective: help beginners willing to contribute, to discover the
development side of OpenOffice.org project, and try to solve, or at
least provide some light to : " What, Where, Who, How , Whom ask ..."
questions any newcomer asks.

The logs will be put on the wiki, thus all the community will be able
to access the knowledge, and I expect to see the developers I
contacted to confirm they will contribute.


Because this is the first one, we'll start with the beginning, and
I'll (exceptionaly) start myself the ClassRoom.

Proposed Date: Wednesday 7th of May 2008,
Hour : 11:00 ( Paris hour ) ~ 14:30 India hour ( i.e; Vincent
hour ;-) )
Mode: as IRC meeting. Server : irc.freenode.net Channel :
#education.openoffice.org


Content :

Part 1:

1) Discover the OpenOffice.org project

Other points, suggested by Vincent Vikram :

2) where is the code
3) I got the code ... now where do I start in the code ?
4) What do I need to know in advance
5) How good is the documentation documentation


Part 2:
Questions from the attendees

Part 3:

Round table with students, and developers, + define the agenda for
the next ClassRooms, including other questions to be prepared in advance



Suggestions ? Opinions ?

Last but not least, please note carefully:

- we have choosen the IRC way, because unfortunaly, not everybody has
a nice Internet connexion, with good bandwidth, and so on.
- if you have a proposal for a better way of communication, please
propose, and organize it !!
- Everything about the content (the log), and _after_ the
presentation (comments, additional links ..etc) will be on the wiki
- ALL contributions are WELCOME : means such thing will work if and
only if _several_ people join the effort and contribute, because we
have to do everything from scratch.


Best regards,
Eric Bachard

First classroom on 7th of May

Hi,

After some regular discussions with Vikram Vincent and Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay on IRC,I think we can start the ClassRoom program we scheduled some times ago.

Objective: help beginners willing to contribute, to discover the
development side of OpenOffice.org project, and try to solve, or at
least provide some light to : " What, Where, Who, How , Whom ask ..."
questions any newcomer asks.

The logs will be put on the wiki, thus all the community will be able
to access the knowledge, and I expect to see the developers I
contacted to confirm they will contribute.


Because this is the first one, we'll start with the beginning, and
I'll (exceptionaly) start myself the ClassRoom.

Proposed Date: Wednesday 7th of May 2008,
Hour : 11:00 ( Paris hour ) ~ 14:30 India hour ( i.e; Vincent
hour ;-) )
Mode: as IRC meeting. Server : irc.freenode.net Channel :
#education.openoffice.org


Content :

Part 1:

1) Discover the OpenOffice.org project

Other points, suggested by Vincent Vikram :

2) where is the code
3) I got the code ... now where do I start in the code ?
4) What do I need to know in advance
5) How good is the documentation documentation


Part 2:
Questions from the attendees

Part 3:

Round table with students, and developers, + define the agenda for
the next ClassRooms, including other questions to be prepared in advance



Suggestions ? Opinions ?

Last but not least, please note carefully:

- we have choosen the IRC way, because unfortunaly, not everybody has
a nice Internet connexion, with good bandwidth, and so on.
- if you have a proposal for a better way of communication, please
propose, and organize it !!
- Everything about the content (the log), and _after_ the
presentation (comments, additional links ..etc) will be on the wiki
- ALL contributions are WELCOME : means such thing will work if and
only if _several_ people join the effort and contribute, because we
have to do everything from scratch.


Best regards,
Eric Bachard

First classroom on 7th of May

Hi,

After some regular discussions with Vikram Vincent and Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay on IRC,I think we can start the ClassRoom program we scheduled some times ago.

Objective: help beginners willing to contribute, to discover the
development side of OpenOffice.org project, and try to solve, or at
least provide some light to : " What, Where, Who, How , Whom ask ..."
questions any newcomer asks.

The logs will be put on the wiki, thus all the community will be able
to access the knowledge, and I expect to see the developers I
contacted to confirm they will contribute.


Because this is the first one, we'll start with the beginning, and
I'll (exceptionaly) start myself the ClassRoom.

Proposed Date: Wednesday 7th of May 2008,
Hour : 11:00 ( Paris hour ) ~ 14:30 India hour ( i.e; Vincent
hour ;-) )
Mode: as IRC meeting. Server : irc.freenode.net Channel :
#education.openoffice.org


Content :

Part 1:

1) Discover the OpenOffice.org project

Other points, suggested by Vincent Vikram :

2) where is the code
3) I got the code ... now where do I start in the code ?
4) What do I need to know in advance
5) How good is the documentation documentation


Part 2:
Questions from the attendees

Part 3:

Round table with students, and developers, + define the agenda for
the next ClassRooms, including other questions to be prepared in advance



Suggestions ? Opinions ?

Last but not least, please note carefully:

- we have choosen the IRC way, because unfortunaly, not everybody has
a nice Internet connexion, with good bandwidth, and so on.
- if you have a proposal for a better way of communication, please
propose, and organize it !!
- Everything about the content (the log), and _after_ the
presentation (comments, additional links ..etc) will be on the wiki
- ALL contributions are WELCOME : means such thing will work if and
only if _several_ people join the effort and contribute, because we
have to do everything from scratch.


Best regards,
Eric Bachard

Farewell, Rustam Sani

This is a little belated but we recently lost Rustam Sani, aged 64, academic, poet, activist, politician and blogger. I did not know him personally but from what I've heard other people say, he was someone who was respected by people of all races and religions. You can read about him here, here and here. Farewell Rustam. Just like Adlan Benan, you left us too soon.

The Carnival Of Education: Week 168

Welcome to the midway of the 168th edition of The Carnival of Education!Here's the very latest roundup of entries from around the EduSphere. Unless clearly labeled otherwise, all entries this week were submitted by the writers themselves.Folks interested in hosting a future edition of the C.O.E. should please let us know via this email address: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net.Thanks to everyone

New Report on "Democracy at Risk"

Today the Forum for Education and Democracy released an important new report on the 25th anniversary of the release of "A Nation at Risk." Entitled "Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Role in Education," the report--written by Linda Darling-Hammond, George Wood, Beth Glenn, Carl Glickman, Wendy D. Puriefoy, Sharon Robinson, Judith Browne-Dianis, John Goodlad, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Deborah Meier, Larry Myatt, Pedro Noguera, Nancy Sizer, Ted Sizer, and Angela Valenzuela--argues strenuously for a new approach to education at the Federal level.

The authors write:

"We do not provide equal access to a high-quality education to every child in this nation. And even though we have made strides in this direction, we have miles to go before this task is complete. There is a pressing need to redesign our schools to meet the demands of a global 21st century society in which knowledge and technology are changing at a breath-taking pace, and new forms of education are essential for individual and societal survival. Yet, our current policy strategies are constraining rather than enabling the educational innovation our school system needs. Indeed, the path we are pursuing promises to leave our schools, as well as our children, behind."

While the report notes that some innovations have been fostered "on the margins," such as the New Technology High School in Sacramento, California, the overall approach has been to maintain "a compliance-andcontrol regulatory approach that holds the bulk of the system in place, trapping most schools within the constraints of a factory model designed a century ago for another purpose."

The report specifically attacks the No Child Left Behind approach that uses "compliance checklists" instead of true reform initiatives. "Rather than providing access to new programs, technologies, and supports that could dramatically change schools and communities, the law has been managed in ways that push schools back to out-of-date notions of learning and stifle the use of new technologies."

[One example of the ways that NCLB stifles the use of new technologies is the ways in which it forces many schools--particularly those with high numbers of poor and minority children--to focus the curriculum exclusively on "drill" in so-called "basic skills," rather than the type of higher-order thinking tasks and inquiry-based problem solving that new technologies foster.]

The report cites statistics showing that reading improvement under NCLB has been slower than before the law was enacted, that high school graduation rates have started to decline again, that pverty rates among children in the US are the highest in the industrialized world, that the US ranking on international tests has plummeted, that "trust" and "community involvement" among people in the US is in rapid decline, and that increased expenditures on the prison system have far out-paced increases in spending on education.

The report draws a link between the poor quality of education in the US and the poor quality of democracy:

"The challenge is clear: Improving education and improving democracy go hand in hand. We need to build upon the natural curiosity of children to help them make sense of the world. We need to arm them with the knowledge and skills, as well as the resourcefulness and inventiveness, that will be required to invent solutions to tomorrow’s problems. We need to give them the tools to live their lives respectfully and collaboratively with others, building communities that can tackle the challenges that lie ahead. We must think of education as more than a collection of standardized tests if we are to reverse the decline of democracy and create a stronger fabric for “We, the people” among the next generation of citizens."

The report lays out four major priorities that a new Federal policy on education should include:

Federal Priority #1: Pay Off the Educational Debt

• Link federal education support to state progress toward opportunity to learn
• Meet the federal obligation for funding programs for students with special needs
• Invest in high-quality pre-school and health care that enable students to come to school ready to learn.

Federal Priority #2: Develop a World-Class Cadre of Skilled Educators

• Create incentives for recruiting teachers to high-need fields and locations.
• Strengthen teachers’ preparation by focusing on how to teach diverse
• learners, evaluating teacher performance, and creating professional development schools.
• Launch teaching residency programs in high-need communities.
• Support mentoring for all beginning teachers.
• Create sustained, practice-based, collegial learning opportunities for teachers.
• Develop teaching careers that reward, develop, and share expertise.
• Mount a major initiative to prepare and support expert school leaders.

Federal Priority #3: Support Educational Research, Development, and Innovation

• Document and disseminate promising practices.
• Invest in the development of higher quality standards and assessments for genuine accountability.
• Develop data bases, shared measures, and tools to advance educational practice.

Federal Priority #4:Engaging Local Communities

• Foster family engagement in school life and school improvement.
• Provide for genuine community involvement in school improvement processes.
• Place schools at the center of community education.

You can obtain a copy of the full report here.

New Report on "Democracy at Risk"

Today the Forum for Education and Democracy released an important new report on the 25th anniversary of the release of "A Nation at Risk." Entitled "Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Role in Education," the report--written by Linda Darling-Hammond, George Wood, Beth Glenn, Carl Glickman, Wendy D. Puriefoy, Sharon Robinson, Judith Browne-Dianis, John Goodlad, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Deborah Meier, Larry Myatt, Pedro Noguera, Nancy Sizer, Ted Sizer, and Angela Valenzuela--argues strenuously for a new approach to education at the Federal level.

The authors write:

"We do not provide equal access to a high-quality education to every child in this nation. And even though we have made strides in this direction, we have miles to go before this task is complete. There is a pressing need to redesign our schools to meet the demands of a global 21st century society in which knowledge and technology are changing at a breath-taking pace, and new forms of education are essential for individual and societal survival. Yet, our current policy strategies are constraining rather than enabling the educational innovation our school system needs. Indeed, the path we are pursuing promises to leave our schools, as well as our children, behind."

While the report notes that some innovations have been fostered "on the margins," such as the New Technology High School in Sacramento, California, the overall approach has been to maintain "a compliance-andcontrol regulatory approach that holds the bulk of the system in place, trapping most schools within the constraints of a factory model designed a century ago for another purpose."

The report specifically attacks the No Child Left Behind approach that uses "compliance checklists" instead of true reform initiatives. "Rather than providing access to new programs, technologies, and supports that could dramatically change schools and communities, the law has been managed in ways that push schools back to out-of-date notions of learning and stifle the use of new technologies."

[One example of the ways that NCLB stifles the use of new technologies is the ways in which it forces many schools--particularly those with high numbers of poor and minority children--to focus the curriculum exclusively on "drill" in so-called "basic skills," rather than the type of higher-order thinking tasks and inquiry-based problem solving that new technologies foster.]

The report cites statistics showing that reading improvement under NCLB has been slower than before the law was enacted, that high school graduation rates have started to decline again, that pverty rates among children in the US are the highest in the industrialized world, that the US ranking on international tests has plummeted, that "trust" and "community involvement" among people in the US is in rapid decline, and that increased expenditures on the prison system have far out-paced increases in spending on education.

The report draws a link between the poor quality of education in the US and the poor quality of democracy:

"The challenge is clear: Improving education and improving democracy go hand in hand. We need to build upon the natural curiosity of children to help them make sense of the world. We need to arm them with the knowledge and skills, as well as the resourcefulness and inventiveness, that will be required to invent solutions to tomorrow’s problems. We need to give them the tools to live their lives respectfully and collaboratively with others, building communities that can tackle the challenges that lie ahead. We must think of education as more than a collection of standardized tests if we are to reverse the decline of democracy and create a stronger fabric for “We, the people” among the next generation of citizens."

The report lays out four major priorities that a new Federal policy on education should include:

Federal Priority #1: Pay Off the Educational Debt

• Link federal education support to state progress toward opportunity to learn
• Meet the federal obligation for funding programs for students with special needs
• Invest in high-quality pre-school and health care that enable students to come to school ready to learn.

Federal Priority #2: Develop a World-Class Cadre of Skilled Educators

• Create incentives for recruiting teachers to high-need fields and locations.
• Strengthen teachers’ preparation by focusing on how to teach diverse
• learners, evaluating teacher performance, and creating professional development schools.
• Launch teaching residency programs in high-need communities.
• Support mentoring for all beginning teachers.
• Create sustained, practice-based, collegial learning opportunities for teachers.
• Develop teaching careers that reward, develop, and share expertise.
• Mount a major initiative to prepare and support expert school leaders.

Federal Priority #3: Support Educational Research, Development, and Innovation

• Document and disseminate promising practices.
• Invest in the development of higher quality standards and assessments for genuine accountability.
• Develop data bases, shared measures, and tools to advance educational practice.

Federal Priority #4:Engaging Local Communities

• Foster family engagement in school life and school improvement.
• Provide for genuine community involvement in school improvement processes.
• Place schools at the center of community education.

You can obtain a copy of the full report here.

Life Expectancy Down For Some American Women

Saw this article in the Washington Post. It troubles me: For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women.In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation's women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study published today.The downward trend is

Carnival Entries Are Due!

Entries for the 168th edition of The Carnival Of Education (Hosted this week by us here at 'The Wonks.) are due. Please email them to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net . (Or, easier yet, use this handy submission form.) Submissions should be received no later than 9:00 PM (Eastern) 6:00 PM (Pacific) Today. Contributions should include your site's name, the title of the post, and the post's URL

The Watcher's Council Has Spoken!

Each and every week, Watcher of Weasels sponsors a contest among posts from the Conservative side of the 'Sphere. The winning entries are determined by a jury of 12 writers (and The Watcher) known as "The Watchers Council."The Council has met and cast their ballots for last week's submitted posts. Council Member Entries: For the second week in a row, Wolf Howling received the most Council votes

GET OUT YOUR POM-POMS: PREP ASSEMBLY

As a retired NEA member, I get their monthly Works4Me e-newsletter, a cheery little number usually dedicated to small, homey tips and tricks for making a classroom run more smoothly—items on the order of inexpensive (but cute!) bulletins boards and what to do when those darned kids forget their pencils.

I skim W4M because I want to know what’s important to teachers, what they care deeply about—enough to share with a million of their colleagues. The well-established gap between practice and policy is usually on full display, but I hold out hope, every month, that Works4Me will feature a hard-hitting column on six ways to retain promising novice colleagues, or a creative lesson on inspiring civic awareness and responsibility in high school juniors. But no.

This month’s Works4Me left me slack-jawed, however. The lead article was titled “Peppy Test Prep.” Quoting:

"We have a pep assembly for the third and fourth graders a couple of days before standardized testing starts. Two teachers pretend they are cheerleaders and shake pompoms as they give a ‘pep’ talk about doing a good job on the tests, getting a good night's rest, etc. We have three teachers sit in desks and pretend to be examples of how not to take the test. One keeps turning around and bothering his neighbor, one cries, and one is not paying attention to directions.”

If I had any doubt about the piece being legitimate, the use of the phrase “bothering his neighbor” was pure teacher-speak. This was the real deal, sent from a teacher in South Dakota, who felt that a good dose of, unh, pep was the ticket to raising student achievement, and was generously sharing some bright ideas on effective ways to boost those all-important scores:

“Another teacher is showing the ‘right’ way to take the test. Breakfast is provided for the students and the teachers/helpers on testing mornings. We also borrow an archway from the local hardware store and put Christmas lights on it with a sign that says, ‘Entering Testing Zone’. We set it up in the hallway that leads to the third and fourth grade rooms. The lights are on whenever we are testing."

There’s a disclaimer from the NEA printed on the page—they’re just providing space for their members to “share” (and soliciting advertisers to pay for that space). Still—showcasing a member who feels that putting up the third grade equivalent of prom decorations and offering a special full breakfast on testing days is the right way to prepare kids for the rigors of standardized testing seems more than a little schizophrenic to me.

I live in union country. And I know that many—maybe most—of my teaching colleagues are marginally interested in the state and federal policies that shape their work. I understand--they’re busy. But blanket testing of kids beginning in the third grade has a major impact on the instructional cycle, curriculum development and resource distribution. We need a more thoughtful response than a pep assembly.

How about organizing members to demand that tests mandated by NCLB be spaced throughout the school year to minimize disruption to the instructional flow and actually assess progress? Why not lobby for teams of third grade teachers to write the tests, to ensure their alignment to reasonable but challenging third-grade skills and knowledge? And if a good breakfast makes such a difference in academic success, why isn’t the NEA sending out articles on rallying the community to feed kids every morning?

GET OUT YOUR POM-POMS: PREP ASSEMBLY

As a retired NEA member, I get their monthly Works4Me e-newsletter, a cheery little number usually dedicated to small, homey tips and tricks for making a classroom run more smoothly—items on the order of inexpensive (but cute!) bulletins boards and what to do when those darned kids forget their pencils.

I skim W4M because I want to know what’s important to teachers, what they care deeply about—enough to share with a million of their colleagues. The well-established gap between practice and policy is usually on full display, but I hold out hope, every month, that Works4Me will feature a hard-hitting column on six ways to retain promising novice colleagues, or a creative lesson on inspiring civic awareness and responsibility in high school juniors. But no.

This month’s Works4Me left me slack-jawed, however. The lead article was titled “Peppy Test Prep.” Quoting:

"We have a pep assembly for the third and fourth graders a couple of days before standardized testing starts. Two teachers pretend they are cheerleaders and shake pompoms as they give a ‘pep’ talk about doing a good job on the tests, getting a good night's rest, etc. We have three teachers sit in desks and pretend to be examples of how not to take the test. One keeps turning around and bothering his neighbor, one cries, and one is not paying attention to directions.”

If I had any doubt about the piece being legitimate, the use of the phrase “bothering his neighbor” was pure teacher-speak. This was the real deal, sent from a teacher in South Dakota, who felt that a good dose of, unh, pep was the ticket to raising student achievement, and was generously sharing some bright ideas on effective ways to boost those all-important scores:

“Another teacher is showing the ‘right’ way to take the test. Breakfast is provided for the students and the teachers/helpers on testing mornings. We also borrow an archway from the local hardware store and put Christmas lights on it with a sign that says, ‘Entering Testing Zone’. We set it up in the hallway that leads to the third and fourth grade rooms. The lights are on whenever we are testing."

There’s a disclaimer from the NEA printed on the page—they’re just providing space for their members to “share” (and soliciting advertisers to pay for that space). Still—showcasing a member who feels that putting up the third grade equivalent of prom decorations and offering a special full breakfast on testing days is the right way to prepare kids for the rigors of standardized testing seems more than a little schizophrenic to me.

I live in union country. And I know that many—maybe most—of my teaching colleagues are marginally interested in the state and federal policies that shape their work. I understand--they’re busy. But blanket testing of kids beginning in the third grade has a major impact on the instructional cycle, curriculum development and resource distribution. We need a more thoughtful response than a pep assembly.

How about organizing members to demand that tests mandated by NCLB be spaced throughout the school year to minimize disruption to the instructional flow and actually assess progress? Why not lobby for teams of third grade teachers to write the tests, to ensure their alignment to reasonable but challenging third-grade skills and knowledge? And if a good breakfast makes such a difference in academic success, why isn’t the NEA sending out articles on rallying the community to feed kids every morning?

Monthly Forum: What should teachers know and be able to do?

She had imagined that she knew the material on Thoreau and Emerson almost by heart, that preparations for these first lectures would be easy, but she soon discovered that knowing something and teaching it are as different as dreaming and waking.
May Sarton
The Small Room

This is the second in my April series of musings about teacher education. Thanks to all who commented after the first post about whether one can be taught to teach well. Today's question: what must teachers know and be able to do?

This is the usual way of phrasing the curriculum question. The usual answer to the knowledge part of the question is some listing that includes subject matter content, teaching methods, knowledge about students (their development, motivations/interests and cultural backgrounds, and understanding of the contexts of teaching. The usual answer to the skills part of the question might list planning instructional units and lessons, managing classrooms, connecting with kids, differentiating instruction for students with special needs, selecting/creating instructional materials, etc. NCATE has added "dispositions" – the tendency to act in ways that might be characterized as professional -- to the mix.

Let's think for a minute about the epistemic assumptions that underlay this answer. How do we have to imagine knowledge for this answer to make sense?

The simple response is that knowledge comes in the form of items that can be stored and listed in columns. Planning for teaching involves choosing one from Column A (some piece of content), one from Column B (a "method"), and one (or more) from Column C (representing student profiles), and one from Column D (based on the resources of my location). The act of instruction requires that I paste this all together and make sense of it, somehow both managing students and motivating them to want to learn while being sure to meet the needs of each and every individual.

This may be the way that beginning teachers – whose knowledge is often "thin" -- operate but it clearly is not the way that experts proceed. As I suggested before, expert teachers engage in an ongoing cycle of interpretation and response, trying to make sense out of the experience of students in light of the goals (academic standards) society sets out for them. Think with me about a concrete example.

It is the second week in September and I plan to mark "Constitution Day" with my seventh grade social studies students next week. I don't know them well yet but I know a little something about them. I know, for example that seventh graders are no longer the youngest students in my middle school and will test me more that six graders would. I'm not confident that they "get" our classroom routines yet. I know that each of my four classes has a particular character, one chattier than another, one more willing to engage with ideas than the others. I know that Constitution Day can be a "snooze" But that my students have a fierce sense of what is fair and not fair. I know that fewer than half of them have any real sense of what the Constitution is but that most of them read well. I know that I know and care the most about the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment. I remember watching the HBO special "John Adams," admiring Charles Willson Peale's portrait of George Washington, reading The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, and loving the thoughtfulness of The Federalist Papers. Would those sources help me? Our social studies text is a World Cultures book that barely makes it to the Renaissance. Given what I know, what shall I do?

Before imagining the process of answering this question, ponder for a minute how we might categorize the "knowledge" above. Which column and box does each bit occupy? Is it easily categorizable? I would argue no. Most of teachers' viable knowledge emerges in lived experience, in what we later label the "intersections" of categories content and method or child and curriculum. In other words, knowledge arises and is warranted as a function of action and only later is classified in a way that wrenches it away from the terms of experience that give it meaning. It is the categories of knowledge that are the later reconstructions; the act of knowing is primary.

If this is accurate, how can we ask and answer the epistemic questions related to teaching?

I really loved the John Adams special and would like to use it somehow. I love the series' focus on the culture of the time and the fact that gender perspectives are spotlighted. But wait, these kids aren't there; it would take me too long to get them into Adams. And anyway, the Constitution isn't the focus of that series. What do I really want them to get out of this? Is there any way I can tie it into what I'm really supposed to be teaching? I know! I'll compile the "constitutions" of several ancient cultures – perhaps the Code of Hammurabi and the Hebrew Covenant along with a "fragmentary" version of the US Constitution, give them to the students without identifying them, and ask them to red them and figure out the differences in the cultures that ordained them – and which culture they would want to live in. We'll see how many of them figure out that one of the documents is their own Constitution. That should open up some discussion about why the Constitution we have is the one we want.

Oh, I can't forget to find a state standard I can cite in my lesson plan … .

Knowledge is a mode of participation, valuable in the degree in which it is effective.
John Dewey

What kind of education would enable a teacher to do the sort of thinking described above? The answer is not a simple function of coverage and courses. Rather, it's a complex constellation of encounters with texts and ideas and students over time. Those encounters involve ways of knowing, of wrestling with text and ideas and students (well, not literally wrestling ☺), that have different purposes. And if we can articulate those purposes, we may generate a conceptual apparatus constructing a teacher education – not teacher training – curriculum.

Teachers make claims on developed bodies of knowledge for logical, pedagogical, cultural, and professional purposes. They make logical claims on their academic disciplines, i.e. they must know the basic outlines of the discipline – its facts and its forms of inquiry -- as an expert; this logical understanding provides credibility within the field though only slight pedagogical power in that students are generally not prepared to "hear" the logically-formulated claims of any discipline. For purposes of teaching real students who don't yet "get" the field, teachers make pedagogical claims on the body of knowledge that they are responsible to teach; i.e. teachers know their subject matter in terms that students can grasp and manipulate. This is what John Dewey called "the pedagogical formulation of subject matter" and what we are now calling "subject matter knowledge for teaching" or "pedagogical content knowledge."

It is often overlooked that teachers have to know more than a single discipline in order to teach that field of study to students; they must know quite a lot about many different domains of formal study and popular culture in order to construct the metaphors and similes (the "It's like … 's) that are the stock-in-trade of good teachers. Thus teachers lay cultural claims to what we call in universities "general education" as well as the everyday education limited only by the constraints of our concept of communication and community.

Finally, teachers make professional claims on the theoretical bodies of knowledge that inform their pedagogical interactions with other persons and with public demands within an educational intention. These include what we call psychology -- especially educational psychology, the social sciences – as formulated among educators as the social foundations of education, curriculum theory, and, recently, assessment theory.

[Caveat: When I use the locution "bodies of knowledge," I mean discourses formed and framed in human interaction; I do not understand bodies of knowledge as sets of true facts that match the world and somehow pre-exist the actual lives of real persons.]

The point of talking about a person's claims on "bodies of knowledge" that are the discursive residue of past personal experience is to keep the focus on action, to understand knowledge-in-use (ideas/skills embedded in action) as the premier focus in framing teacher education.

If we think about teacher knowledge in this way, how might it reshape our attempts to educate teachers?

First, I think it explains why an academic major does matter but is not enough to ground effective teaching. I need to "know my stuff" if my students (and their parents) are to take me seriously, but knowing my stuff in a way that impresses and knowing my stuff in a way that connects unknowing others to that stuff are not the same claim. We need to find ways for future teachers to think through what they know with both logical and pedagogical intentions in mind.

Second, it explains why general education – not just the kind that universities provide but also the kind that media and culture and human interaction provide -- is not a luxury but an integral piece in the puzzle of teacher education. This may also explain why older persons often seem better prepared for teaching. They simply have greater experience to which they can lay cultural claim as an entrée to stimulating students' motivation.

Third, it makes clear that the theoretical studies that are often part of certification requirements are not included for theoretical purposes. They are included for professional purposes. Whatever experiences are made available and/or required, those experiences must include grist for the mill of professional reflection on practice.

Fourth, note that these claims sidestep what is normally considered an integral part of learning to teach: methods courses. Teaching is, as Alan Tom and others have argued, a craft, one that incorporates intelligence and habit. Teaching methods are habitual ways of responding, grown from what Dewey calls "the method of intelligence." The schema for understanding teacher knowledge I outline above calls into question the centrality of methods courses as they currently exist.

A teacher's claims (logical, pedagogical, cultural and professional) on bodies of knowledge aren't purely instrumental. They are constrained by one's way of being a teacher and one's way of being in the world. Both ways of being are moral stances and it is here that the moral shapes the educational intention, shapes the academic. Every teacher, whether he or she knows it or not, lives a way of being – partly chosen, partly socialized – as teacher, as human. The claim he or she brings to various knowledges are a function of how the role of teacher is understood relative to the student and social educational imperatives. This is what people often refer to as a teacher's "philosophy of education" but it involves far more than a statement of belief. It involves one's self. Attention to this is a critical facet of "what teachers know and can do."

There is nothing in what I outline here that requires that teacher education continue in its present guise, set in the university with P-12 push-in (what we call field experience.) I raise this question in this way to leave open the possibility that the university is the wrong, or partly inadequate, setting for teacher education – while leaving open the value of a college education generally for those who would be teachers. The question of who should do teacher education and how is the topic of my next installment.