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Find more Kappan articles in the Rethinking the Benefits of the College-Bound Curriculum: Escaping Academic Captivity We should rethink two sets of beliefs that support the current top-down model of education, Ms. Noddings suggests -- one, a set of faulty notions about equal opportunity, sameness, and the inherent worth of the college-bound curriculum; the other, an equally faulty set of beliefs about the dangers of specialization and the benefits of breadth. Deborah Meier and Susan Ohanian invite us to think about how secondary schools and colleges might approach education if they were modeled on the early elementary grades and the needs of students instead of on the images and demands of the elite colleges and universities. They claim that such education might be characterized by greater freedom, sustained activity, playfulness, sense of purpose, and a healthy skepticism born of genuine curiosity. The elite colleges and universities do in fact exercise more control than they should over a vast number of students who will never enter their doors. Can anything be done to change this? I will argue that we should rethink two sets of beliefs that support the current top-down model: one, a set of faulty notions about equal opportunity, sameness, and the inherent worth of the college-bound curriculum; the other, an equally faulty set of beliefs about the dangers of specialization and the benefits of breadth. Rethinking these matters may weaken the rationale for our current mode of operation. Faulty Notions About Equality and Sameness Advocates of the standard precollege curriculum usually offer one or both of two arguments for requiring students to take college-preparatory mathematics, science, English, history, and foreign language. One argument seeks to persuade us that all children should have the opportunity to qualify for an elite education. The second maintains that a curriculum designed as preparation for Harvard or Stanford is, inherently, the best education for everyone. It seems to me that both of these arguments are wrong and, in some forms, actually harmful. Let's consider the first argument -- that all children should be given an opportunity to qualify for the best colleges. The first thing to notice is that opportunities might be provided without coercion. Too often those who insist on equal opportunity want to force students into the curriculum that will "give" them the desired opportunity. They argue that high school students are simply not mature enough to make important curriculum choices; for their own good, then, the school must make these choices for them. Mortimer Adler, for example, has insisted that, left to their own choices, some students will "downgrade" their own education; therefore, adults should control these crucial choices so that such downgrading does not occur.1 But there are two powerful responses to Adler's concerns. First, it should not be possible for students to downgrade their education no matter what choices they make. Why should responsible educators allow schools to offer a set of "good" courses and a set of "bad" courses? As John Dewey pointed out years ago, a course in cooking, well planned and well executed, can induce critical thinking, increase cultural literacy, and provide valuable skills -- it can be a "good" course. In contrast, a course in algebra may discourage critical thinking, add nothing to cultural literacy, and lead students to despair of acquiring useful skills -- it can be a "bad" course. Thus, before we abandon the variety of courses typical of the "shopping mall" high school, we should ask genuine and penetrating questions about the value of these courses. I've already offered three criteria for judging courses good or bad. I'd also ask, Are they interesting? Are they challenging? Do the teachers treat the students with respect? Are the students likely to grow as whole persons -- in other words, is it reasonable to predict that the students will grow socially, morally, and intellectually? When I say that these questions should be asked genuinely, I mean that we should not decide a priori that the conventional academic subjects are superior to others. We should investigate. We should ask teachers to justify what they do in light of the criteria we establish, and we should continually ask penetrating questions about the criteria themselves. The second response to Adler's worry is equally important. When some of us object strongly to the coercion inherent in a standardized curriculum, defenders often suppose that we are recommending a permissive, "hands-off" freedom for students. In fact, what we are recommending is something much more demanding and realistic. We are recommending a system of teacher counseling and guidance that approximates parental interest in students. We reject the simple (and highly deceptive) notion that students can be given equal opportunity by force. The very notion is antithetical to democratic education. We need to live with our children, assess their gifts and interests both realistically and generously, talk with them, listen to them, and help them to make well-informed decisions. But, sincere advocates of standardization protest, despite commendable guidance (and it won't always be available), some students will land in the wrong slots. They will not be prepared if they change their minds and want college after all. This complaint underscores the criticisms raised by Meier and Ohanian. Why should the colleges be allowed to continue their stranglehold on the school curriculum? Why should rigorous alternative courses not be acceptable for college admission? And why shouldn't our education system be flexible enough to accommodate the changes of mind that increasingly characterize a postmodern society? The crucial educational point here is that students may learn better how to learn and may have greater confidence in their capacity to learn if they are encouraged to make well-informed decisions about their own education. Changing their minds should lead to new challenges, not to helpless despair. Before leaving the discussion of the "equal opportunity" argument, I want to say something about political aspects of the argument. Politicians often affirm that education is, or should be, the way out of poverty. Teachers are urged to have the same expectations for poor children as for rich children: all should meet the rigorous standards that are now being recommended. This advice may be well intentioned, but its logic is muddled. We know that, by and large, children from stable, economically secure homes do fairly well with standard schooling (I am not arguing that they are, therefore, well educated -- just that they do well on standard measures). In contrast, children from poor homes often have a difficult time with the usual pattern of schooling. How will this be changed by simply declaring that poor children now will do as well as richer ones? It would be more logical to launch a massive social program against poverty on the assumption that the formerly poor would now do better in schools. Many of us worry that the current emphasis on high achievement for all is a monumental distraction from the social problems that should command our attention. Consider what would happen if we succeeded in bringing all students to whatever standards we establish. Our society would still need people to grow and harvest our food, to pack and deliver it, to sell it in supermarkets; we would still need waiters, cooks, and people to clean up; we would still need people to drive our trucks, buses, and taxis; we would still need hotel maids, street cleaners, repair persons, retail clerks, and servers of fast food. What excuse would we then have for letting many of these people live in poverty? Would we argue that, although they met the standard, they did less well than others? What excuse do we have now? It is clear that poverty is a social problem -- a moral problem -- not an educational one. No person who works at a legitimate job should live in poverty. As we wake up and acknowledge our interdependence and the obvious worth of so many jobs that are now devalued, we should begin to look at our students with greater appreciation. What a wonderful range of talents and interests they bring to their first years in school! Howard Gardner has identified seven intelligences, only two of which are recognized and developed in schools.2 Whether or not further research confirms seven (or 49!) intelligences, anyone who has taught knows that children have different gifts. To expect all children to do well in a course of study designed for a few seems very unfair. Moreover, such a system is wasteful; it demands higher degrees and harsher methods of coercion, loses more students through discouragement, and wears teachers out. Ultimately, it is disrespectful, denying the very talents and interests on which the society depends. When we face the fact that the schoolchildren of today will do all kinds of work as adults, we have to ask why they should all have the same education. I have already argued that the equal opportunity rationale is faulty; to suppose that a child who is interested and talented in a subject has the same opportunity as one whose interests and talents lie elsewhere is heartless. But there remains the possibility that the standard curriculum is inherently valuable, that it is important for all children no matter what occupations they enter. This is an argument made popular early in this century by Robert Maynard Hutchins. Hutchins reasoned that "education implies teaching. Teaching implies knowledge. Knowledge is truth. The truth is everywhere the same. Hence, education should be everywhere the same."3 In today's atmosphere of recognized pluralism, Hutchins' syllogism sounds both arrogant and ludicrous, but the standard curriculum reflects an underlying acceptance of similar notions. Many believe that the truth is somehow discoverable (or has already been discovered) and that it should somehow be made into a standard curriculum. I am not suggesting, of course, that our curricula should be liberally sprinkled with falsehoods. I am simply pointing out that notions of universal truth are, in reality, too parochial and too limited to serve as the foundation of education. Further, much education is properly aimed at skills, attitudes, and forms of thinking that cannot be characterized as "truths," although they may serve in the continuing inquiry that leads in the direction of a form of truth. However, there is an important point to consider in Hutchins' argument. To the degree that people are alike and share a common human condition, they need some common education. Deborah Meier emphasizes citizenship, and surely each new generation of citizens needs some knowledge and skills associated with that status. But it is unlikely that students need the chronological history demanded by some policy makers or that they need a great deal of specific information about the holders of various offices, the number of congressional representatives, or the dates on which various laws were enacted. Much that is regarded as necessary for citizenship is probably not essential, and what is essential is usually overlooked. Too often we concentrate on cramming students' heads with easily testable facts and ignore the discourse of responsibility, interdependent sociality, community, and commitment. Further, we often fail to provide our students with the practice they need to participate effectively in democratic citizenship. Moreover, as human beings, we have more in common than citizenship. The emphasis on citizenship as contrasted with private life is, at least in part, a product of masculine domination of the curriculum. Where are all the matters traditionally assigned to women? Our children need to know something about the commitment required for intimate relationships, what it means to be a parent, what it means to make a home. They should become good neighbors, responsible pet owners, concerned guardians of the natural world, and honest colleagues in whatever activities they pursue. They should know something about the stages of life, the various approaches to spirituality, suffering and compassion, violence and peace. These are the common learnings teachers should include in their courses; these are the topics that arise in common human experience. It is perhaps understandable that successful people educated in the traditional way might mourn the demise of the curriculum they studied. To some it is deplorable that English teachers no longer find Shakespeare essential. But many English teachers are working with young people who carry weapons to school, who may be assaulted or killed, or who will produce babies while they are themselves still children. To insist on the traditional curriculum in such circumstances is irresponsible. Advocates of the traditional curriculum might grant my point but insist that something must be done to prepare students for the standard curriculum. They might argue that resources should be made available so that young people will be ready for a "real" education. In a sense, these advocates want the curriculum to be made safe for Shakespeare. In opposition, I would argue that all children need a new sort of common studies, as outlined above, and that Shakespeare, like so many other staples of the traditional curriculum, should become a treasured option, not a requirement. Today, we cannot think in terms of one ideal model of the educated person. There are obviously many such models living and working all around us. Some well-educated and successful people cannot recognize the music of Beethoven, some cannot tell a Monet from a Manet, many have no concept of mathematical functions, most cannot name the parts of an insect or any of the great geologic ages. Unavoidably, as knowledge continues to expand, we will become more ignorant as well as more knowledgeable. What is truly deplorable, however, and what must be avoided is raising generations of violent, irresponsible, uncaring, and unhealthy adults. Faulty Notions About Specialization This part of my argument is tied very closely to the first part. On the one hand, many Americans fear early specialization and argue for a breadth in precollege (and sometimes even college) education that will "keep the doors open" and not commit their children to any specific form of work or field of study. On the other hand, many of the same people have accepted an array of narrow specializations as an adequate representation of breadth. This is the kind of anomaly that arises when we fail to think deeply enough about an issue. One wonders whether the parents and educators who argue against early specialization really want something called "breadth" or whether what we are hearing is just another variant of the "change of mind" argument. If it is the latter, we can reiterate and deepen our earlier response. The system must be transformed to make such changes of mind easier and to keep the pursuit of learning vital and meaningful. But suppose people really want breadth; suppose, that is, that the argument is for broad cultural knowledge -- knowledge that spans the array of human disciplines. I have already argued that advocates of the standard curriculum cannot have in mind the full range of human concerns, or they would not leave out of the curriculum most of the matters traditionally assigned to women and associated with private life. Hence our focus must be on the recognized disciplines -- history, literature, philosophy, mathematics, and so on. Is the aim of breadth accomplished by requiring students to take a wide variety of courses in these disciplines? Here I will argue that the present system accomplishes nothing of the kind. Consider one powerful piece of evidence. In high school, students aiming for college must take such a variety of courses. They study four, five, or six disciplines, but their teachers know only one. Their teachers have, for the most part, been subjected to the same required breadth and over several more years, and yet the end result is an "educated" adult who knows only one discipline and rarely has any breadth even in that. How often can a student get help on an algebra problem from her English teacher? And try asking the math teacher for help in interpreting Heart of Darkness or Moby Dick. As the disciplines are taught now, the breadth argument is a sham. The true objective has little to do with knowledge; its focus is credentialing. We are not so concerned that students know some mathematics, for example; we are far more instrumentally concerned that their records should show that they have taken mathematics. Then, if they decide to apply to college, they are "prepared." I am not condemning this argument. Indeed, it is the most powerful and convincing one that can be given for going along with the required curriculum. But we ought not to deceive ourselves and suppose that there is a sound educational rationale for the present structure. If we really wanted breadth in the disciplines, we would begin to broaden each discipline from within. We would reconsider our views on specialization. As it is now, we reject specialization when it means that a child will be allowed to concentrate on an area of his own special interest. But we accept presentations of the disciplines that are overly narrow and often specialized to the point where few generalists can find anything to whet their interest. The development of narrower and narrower specialties is, of course, one of the manifestations of the Weberian bureaucratic system in which we now live. Its signs are all around us. We regularly ask exactly who should do what, scarcely questioning the supposition that every agency and role should have well-stated functions and that these functions should not overlap. Thus we ask, "Who should provide moral guidance for our children?" and argue over whether it should be the parents or the school. It rarely occurs to us that in some matters -- surely in education -- the organization should be more holistic. In holistic enterprises, the answer to questions about who should perform certain tasks is "everyone concerned." In such domains we refuse to chop everything into small pieces, each one handled by a particular expert, technician, or assembly-line worker. "Prescriptive technologies" have their place, of course. They are enormously powerful in fields of material production. The physicist Ursula Franklin remarks, "Today, the temptation to design more or less everything according to prescriptive and broken-up technologies is so strong that it is even applied to those tasks that should be conducted in a holistic way. Any tasks that require caring, whether for people or nature, any tasks that require immediate feedback and adjustment, are best done holistically."4 Franklin explicitly names education as a quintessential holistic enterprise. By dividing the disciplines in a narrow and exclusive way, we have in fact fragmented the mental life of schooling. Perhaps even worse, we have made it impossible for students to catch a glimpse of their teachers as whole persons -- as models of educated persons.5 It is possible to teach the individual disciplines in a way that does not sacrifice the special quality that attracts a few to each and yet connects each discipline to the wider intellectual and social world. Wayne Booth has described the influence on his own life of a high school chemistry teacher who taught the liberal arts in his chemistry classes.6 Booth does not mean by this that his chemistry teacher literally taught bits of disjointed mathematics, literature, or history. Rather, he means that the teacher shared with his students great ideas and how they arose, something of the aesthetics and epistemology of his subject, pieces of biographical and historical information when those were relevant or potentially interesting -- that he could move about freely in the various domains we declare to be important and draw out stories and concepts that enriched both his chemistry instruction and the cultural literacy of his students. I have myself argued in several places that mathematics teachers should be prepared to teach in this way.7 Of course, mathematics as a school subject -- just as art, music, and all other subjects -- should retain the special identity and encourage the special talent that draws students to it, but it should also broaden students' moral and aesthetic sensibilities, increase their cultural literacy, and reveal the teacher as an educated person. Mathematics teachers should have a wide repertoire of stories connecting mathematics (or mathematicians) to theology, logic, and science but also to classism, sexism, mysticism, militarism, and a host of other topics of general interest. They should be prepared to discuss what it means to live in a mathematicized world and how to cope with that world. The mathematics teacher, like every other teacher, should feel an obligation to discuss the great existential questions: What is the meaning of life? What are its origins? Its destination? How should I live? Why is there suffering and what is my obligation in relieving it? Have mathematicians thought about these questions? Of course! But one would never guess it from what occurs in most high school classes. We would not have to worry seriously about early specialization if everything taught in schools were approached in this way. Students could pursue their own interests with the enthusiasm of children and experts and still expand their horizons. They would gain specialized skills and, at the same time, get a sense of how their subject, talent, or special interest fits within the larger culture. Can Higher Education Change? By way of concluding remarks, I want to explore the feasibility of changes in higher education. Susan Ohanian says that she has "no quarrel with the entrance requirements of Harvard," but that she refuses to accept a system of precollege education designed to prepare all students for Harvard. The problem here, of course, is that some parents want their children prepared for Harvard. They are quite right in assuming that, even if their children are not accepted at Harvard, some other "good enough'' school will be impressed by the preparation. It will take courage and imagination for other colleges to break away and establish their own criteria. A very few have done so already. Many people in higher education admit that the traditional admissions criteria are faulty. But the criteria are well established and widely accepted by a huge public. Even though several features of the system have been attacked as unfair, it is thought to be more fair than a system that might be more responsive to individual talents and more specialized preparation. Any change in a system so widespread and so deeply entrenched would have to be gradual. Two separate standards of preparation -- for scientific and nonscientific fields -- might be a start. I think it is more feasible to work toward broadening the disciplines from within and toward the establishment of a solid variety of precollege courses of study. The latter must grow out of a genuine commitment on the part of parents and educators to provide an excellent education for the work-bound as well as the college-bound. It is a project in which industry could be a valuable partner. However, higher education could take the lead in broadening the disciplines from within, in restoring the liberality to liberal education. The most obviously pressing need in this project is to educate teachers adequately. To do what I suggest, however, requires the courage to insist that teachers need a highly specialized form of education -- that is, one designed especially for teachers. When they are undergraduates preparing to teach, their majors should reflect the breadth described earlier. Excellent teachers possess more than narrow subject-matter knowledge plus some tricks of the trade. They have both broad general knowledge and an impressive range of knowledge in their own discipline. The course of study I've outlined for teachers could in no way be considered "watered down." Indeed, its richness and rigor might well be the envy of those majoring in the nonteaching versions of the same subjects. Oddly enough, even here we encounter the "change of mind" argument. People have actually said to me, "But what if a student majors in math-for-teaching and then decides to do something else?" My first answer is that he or she will probably have a better mathematics education than most other mathematics majors -- one characterized by deeper understanding of basic concepts and a fuller appreciation of mathematics in the wider culture. But my second answer is "Would you ask a question like this of preparation for, say, engineering?" If people decide to be social workers or ministers after preparing for engineering, then they must acquire the requisite preparation for their newly chosen field. Why should we suppose that preparation for nothing-in-particular is sound preparation for teaching? Ohanian and Meier are basically right. Education modeled from the bottom up would be characterized by greater freedom, a more energetic pursuit of continuing interests, and a greater sense of purpose. But to bring off such a change will require that greater trust be placed in both students and teachers. Will students make wise choices? Will teachers guide them well? And will teachers prepare themselves so well that every course they offer is rich with the details of a wide range of human concerns? 1. Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal (New York: Macmillan, 1982). NEL NODDINGS is Lee Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. |
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