|
||
Education and Democracy: Advancing the Agenda By John I. Goodlad
The well-educated individual easily acquires the skills of a specific workplace when these become necessary, Mr. Goodlad points out. To make the dozen or more years of schooling instrumental to the future needs of the workplace, however carefully predicted, is immoral and dangerous. |
 |
THE PAST 15 years have witnessed the emergence of several educational improvement initiatives of national scope that have taken shape largely with the support of private philanthropy. Most have focused on schools; several, on teacher education. Since its inception, ours has assumed the close relationship of the two and has addressed their simultaneous renewal. Our initiative is driven by a research-based agenda referred to by the thousands of school and university people involved in the effort as the Agenda for Education in a Democracy.
Context
Three agencies have been and are engaged with the Agenda for Education in a Democracy: the Center for Educational Renewal (CER) at the University of Washington, founded in 1985; the National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER), assembled in 1986 and reconstructed in 1990-91; and the nonprofit Institute for Educational Inquiry (IEI), created in 1992. The major function of the CER has been research, that of the NNER has been implementation, and IEI has focused on leadership training. The Agenda emerged out of two decades of inquiry on educational change, schooling, and teacher education, conducted first by teams in the research division of the Institute for Development of Educational Activities, located in Los Angeles, and then at the CER in Seattle.1
The Agenda is comprehensive in its inclusion of a four-part mission; some five dozen conditions necessary for advancing this mission, which are embedded in 20 propositions referred to as postulates; and a strategy of individual and institutional renewal. (The 20th postulate was added to the original 19 in 2000 and pertains to supporting and sustaining the teaching career.) The whole is grounded in a concept of education as a moral endeavor serving both the individual and the common good through the development of those civil and civic dispositions espoused by the great religions and by lay thinkers in their pursuit of the ideal human condition. In the rhetoric of the Agenda, these attitudes and behaviors are referred to as indicators of "democratic character," both individual and collective, whether social or political.
The Agenda's strategy has focused on the simultaneous renewal of schooling and teacher education for the well-being of children and young people. The mission for schools addresses this end in two parts: 1) the enculturation of the young into the freedoms and responsibilities of a democratic society and 2) their deep and broad introduction into and preparation for participation in the human conversation. For those who teach the young in schools, the mission includes education in and commitment to this conception of what our schools are for and adds two other responsibilities: 1) employing a caring pedagogy and 2) providing moral stewardship of schools.
Whereas successive eras of school improvement have emphasized reform and accountability, the Agenda emphasizes renewal and responsibility. "Reform" and "accountability" connote compliance, a response that ranks low in its appeal to the human spirit. "Renewal" and "responsibility" connote limitless possibilities and disciplined commitment to moral principles. It should come as no surprise that most people who choose to work in education are motivated and challenged by an agenda of renewal but are scarcely moved by still another round of reform. We might well be surprised, however, to discover that renewal has scarcely been tried.
Introspection
As with those other educational improvement ventures of recent years that have challenged educators to take the high ground of responsibility for renewing themselves and their institutions, the Agenda for Education in a Democracy has been funded almost entirely by private philanthropy, supplemented by institutional budgets. Several of the foundations have signed on for the long haul. The goal put forward in the early 1990s to be reached by the end of the decade was to have each major component of the Agenda at an advanced level of implementation somewhere in the settings of the NNER so that a person visiting all sites in the network would see in composite all these components.
Three years prior to the end of the decade, we began a process of comprehensively assessing progress toward this goal and the lessons learned. Four books published in 1999 describe the Agenda and recent engagements of NNER settings with it; our conception of partner "teaching" schools and the progress of settings with them; the emergence of the much-discussed innovation, the center of pedagogy; and an ongoing institutional renewal effort designed to make teacher preparation coherent from admission to completion.2 These books were a rich resource for the 1,500 educators, journalists, lay citizens, and representatives of 20 other educational improvement initiatives who joined delegates from the NNER settings in demonstrating their accomplishments and discussing issues at a conference titled "In Praise of Education," which was hosted by the IEI in June 1999.3
While these books were being written, we began a more formal assessment of the implementation effort, drawing on an array of data gathered over a 10-year period: the field notes of our staff members' visits to NNER settings, participants' evaluations of the leadership program conducted by the IEI each year since 1992, various self-assessments of the settings in response to specific questions, interviews with individuals in positions to observe changes in local teacher education programs over a period of years, the assessments of our senior staff members, and more.
A draft of the report on all these data sets, pulled together by Kenneth Sirotnik of our staff, became a primary resource document for meetings with four groups of thoughtful individuals during the academic year 1999-2000. Each group joined us in Seattle for a couple of days of intense conversation. The whole constituted a kind of Janus-like look into the past and future of the entire educational improvement initiative embraced by the Agenda for Education in a Democracy.
The discussions in these sessions ranged by deliberate design over virtually the entire array of programmatic alternatives and activities from which to select and order priorities designed to advance the Agenda. But one major theme seemed to envelop them all and was judged of paramount significance. Indeed, it stimulated from time to time moods of idealistic passion, which were quickly tempered by moods of deep concern. The central issue can be described as the gulf between a prevailing narrative or world view that perceives economic advancement as the nation's educational imperative and the virtually marginalized alternative represented by our Agenda. The national political debate over schooling is so focused on the former that it is commonly viewed as the debate. Not to be part of it -- or at least not to voice support for it -- leads to accusations not just of opposition but of irrelevance or of being anti-improvement. For the education of the young to be channeled in this fashion endangers the future of the work in progress referred to as democracy.
The discussions frequently probed deeper than just the conceptual differences between these two views of what our schools are for. The deeper stratum we explored has to do with what childhood is for: whether valued for its own sake, like the rest of the life span, or for its instrumental worth in service to some other end. The latter view has prevailed for centuries. Indeed, in the Western world there was no recognition of childhood until relatively recently; one was a young adult learning by observation and participation how to be a mature adult. The positive moralization of society that took place in Europe in the 17th century aroused in some parents a sense of their role as spiritual guardians charged with ensuring the training of their children as preparation for later life. This special training would be provided by a school -- "an instrument of strict discipline, protected by the law-courts and the police-courts."4 In a sense, school created childhood, not as a period of maximum cultivation of the self but as preparation for responsible adulthood. This concept of a formal system of "civilizing" the young carried over into the New World, where it has prevailed and narrowed into the idea of ensuring workers for sustaining the nation's economy -- what Neil Postman refers to as the narrative of economic utility.5
An alternative narrative that values no phase of the life cycle above another and values education as a civic right for the enhancement of each phase has made on-stage cameo appearances throughout the 20th century. But it has often been given short shrift and dismissed as soft and tender, not suited for the tough rigors of adulthood. Although childhood has achieved an identity as a market of consumers and an investment in future economic productivity, it has not yet been accorded existential human value equal to that of adulthood. So long as schooling continues to be perceived primarily as instrumental to the future economy, the scope of the education provided will continue to narrow, to the detriment of childhood.
The Agenda for Education in a Democracy is not an alternative in the sense of replacing or rejecting the prevailing economic agenda. Rather, it encompasses much more and rearranges educational priorities. The well-educated individual is not a certified product, but a self engaged in acquiring wisdom, with each step along the journey important in its own right. The desired habits of the workplace are also the habits of civil and civic associational living in the family, on the playground, in the classroom, and at the shopping mall. The well-educated individual easily acquires the skills of a specific workplace when these become necessary. But to make the dozen or more years of schooling instrumental to the future needs of the workplace, however carefully predicted, is immoral and dangerous.
To educate for the future is to educate for the long view of many possible scenarios, no one of which is predictable or all-encompassing. Hence, to educate for the future is to educate broadly and deeply in the here and now and not let ourselves be blindsided by confidence in 20-year forecasts. "What happens fast is illusion, what happens slow is reality. The job of the long view is to penetrate illusion."6 Penetrating the illusion, oft-repeated in school reform, that "it's all for the children" constitutes a long-term undertaking.
The introspection we have engaged in for the past two or three years has strengthened our belief in the Agenda. It has not been challenged. Rather, part of the Agenda has been described as challenging the teacher education community to fill teacher education's "empty suit" through teaching a core of ethical values.7 David Imig, arguably our best-informed analyst of trends in teacher education, sees the Agenda as increasingly filling a very large void in the field.8
Our initial ambition for the Agenda was that it would guide teacher-preparing institutions and collaborating schools in a process of jointly renewing their respective institutions and programs. We were hopeful but cautiously optimistic that the dependence of teacher education on the arts and sciences would serve to draw the general education components into the renewing process. This is occurring, but slowly, as expected. One gratifying development is the degree to which raising questions about the adequacy of general education for teachers is raising corresponding questions about the adequacy of general education for all students.
We are less than satisfied with our attention to the school side of simultaneous renewal. Substantial immersion of groups of future teachers in partner schools is becoming commonplace. But this immersion is taking place less than we would wish in schools that are busily renewing their practices in line with the Agenda's mission. There are teachers in the partner schools who are every bit as knowledgeable about and committed to the Agenda as are their university colleagues. But they often see the focus of our work as more on renewing teacher education than on renewing schools -- even though the two are companion pieces in the change process. Clearly, we have much yet to do toward making the Agenda more compelling and relevant to principals and teachers in elementary and secondary schools.
It became increasingly clear in the discussions of this past year that the success of any agenda addressed to schooling and teacher education on the inside must have considerable understanding and support on the outside. Our seminar program conducted for journalists on the West Coast was strongly endorsed by discussants. But clearly we must do more: with journalists nationwide and, perhaps, with school board members, policy makers, business leaders, and others. Since we cannot reach all groups directly, a promising alternative is to develop a print and electronic media program for selected segments of the general public as a supplement to, not a substitute for, the materials we produce for professional educators.
The challenge, it appears, is to operationalize an agenda now rather widely perceived by teacher educators as relevant and useful so as to make it more widely appealing to both school-based educators and the general public. The centerpiece is the place called school. Teacher education is in the service of the school's mission.
Could it be, then, that the renewal of teacher education as a moral imperative has catalytic power for motivating educational renewal beyond? We think so, and the process of ordering priorities for our future work reflects this assumption.
There is a period of at least a dozen years (from age 4 through age 16) when children and young people play no significant role in the work force and when we must provide them with responsible custodial care. This is a top priority for the majority of parents, most of whom -- because of the demands of their employment or other reasons -- trust others with this care. Reformers commonly forget this traditional function of our schools, which a technological future for education will not soon, if ever, replace.
The legal protection of the young from the marketplace and, in turn, the prolonging of adolescence to protect adults' participation in the work force gave "going to school" an occupational identity but no clear and highly valued social identity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Neither schools nor their teacher custodians counted for much in the marketplace; indeed, they became a financial burden on communities.
Our recent research into schooling and teacher education revealed a near vacuum with respect to mission, with much of the once-robust debate among educators languishing. It should come as no surprise that the entrepreneurial eyes of the marketplace were opened to schooling when the 1983 report A Nation at Risk charged the schools with responsibility for fueling the nation's leadership in the global economy. Our schools and the fifth of the human life span they encompass have acquired, in part by default, a pervasive economic mission.
For want of a clearly articulated alternative that includes attention to the workplace and to both individual and collective well-being, we are on the verge of losing a unique opportunity to create out of a period of necessary custodial care a richly educative phase of life that is geared to a mission not addressed anywhere else: developing the essence of each individual self in the context of justice, fairness, responsibility, and mutual caring to which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution speak so eloquently.
But the cause is far from lost. Scholarly books and papers on the need for such learning abound, and the message is entering the more popular press. The Agenda for Education in a Democracy is an ongoing response with an encouraging track record that cries out for expansion.
Future Priorities
This intensive period of introspection did not produce a map of new terrain to be explored. Rather, the message emerging was repetitive and clear: the Agenda for Education in a Democracy must be unpeeled like an onion to reveal its wide-ranging implications for schooling, teacher education, the educative environment, and the human conversation. The challenge is to spell out and implement the role of education, particularly during what we call schooling, in developing civil, civic, and ecological democratic character as our guiding narrative. We envision a long-term, five-part schedule of inquiry and implementation.
First, whereas the past decade of advancing the Agenda that emerged from the preceding two decades of inquiry on educational change, schooling, and teacher education focused somewhat more heavily on teacher education, that imbalance will be corrected by bringing more attention to schools in our efforts to renew both institutions. Before, the appeal was for the universities to reach out to the schools by attending to the education of educators; now, we will endeavor to help the schools reach out to the universities to seek their involvement in school renewal. There are tough questions to be answered and acted upon. Two come quickly to mind: What are the necessary characteristics of a democratic school? What educational conditions are conducive to the development of democratic character in groups of elementary and secondary school students?
Second, the scope of our work will continue to embrace the education of educators. We will be particularly interested in joining with settings that include among their partner schools ones that are working with us on questions such as those above. Of course, many of the schools in the NNER have already been introduced to the Agenda and such questions, but we are looking to some that will focus on them as a top priority. The critical questions for the focus on teacher and administrator preparation pertain to the pedagogical and curricular conditions likely to enhance educators' ability to foster democratic character in the young.
Third, the school mission of educating the young for satisfying, responsible participation in a social and political democracy is endangered if that society is democratic in name but not in understanding and functioning. Over the past decade, we have brought scholars together for intensive conversations about democracy, we have written papers and books on the relationship between education and democracy, and we have included this theme in the curriculum of a leadership program for key NNER personnel. We intend to continue and, indeed, to intensify this crucial part of our work. We have learned that the presence of a corps of people who understand and are committed to the Agenda significantly lessens the impact of the inevitable turnover of designated leaders.
Fourth, we must endeavor to stay in close touch with the major domains of inquiry that daily render obsolete most of the content of the high-stakes tests spawned by the accountability movement, which has pushed aside the profound issues of schooling we should be addressing. I find painful the realization that policy makers are expecting the consistently disappointing model of school reform once more in place to achieve what it has never achieved before. I find even more painful the realization that the myopic concentration on this model holds at bay any serious consideration of the misdirection and ineffectiveness of our entire educational infrastructure -- a matter that teachers, parents, and individual schools are virtually powerless to address. Some awareness of our current knowledge about cognition would tell us that little of what even a successful test-taker has acquired will transfer to domains other than academe -- and that includes the domain of virtuous behavior.
I find excruciatingly painful the evident censuring of those serious students of education and schooling who endeavor to broaden and deepen the debate. This suggests a democratic infrastructure that is in trouble and highlights the need for our Agenda.
In a recent telephone conversation with my good friend Seymour Sarason, I asked how he is handling what I know is very painful for him. As usual, he has taken the course of wisdom: "I have just quit reading the stuff that passes for schooling news and commentary." Although we do make our contrary views known in various ways and places, we are following a somewhat similar course in not wasting our limited time and energy in seeking to counter what we hope will soon run its course. This time, there could be some useful residue of fallout since the concept of standards has so much more to offer than most of its predecessors in the domain of outcomes. Meanwhile, I will probably continue to play with the thought that discontent with our schools appears to have grown since the genesis of the current reform era in 1983. This is in part due, of course, to the fact that polls create public opinion just as they measure it. But the intriguing question is whether such real dissatisfaction as exists is a product of malaise in schools or of what "reformers" have been doing to them.
A chunk of our attention, then, will turn to what the conditions of the human enterprise and our planet portend for education and schooling. We will endeavor to keep in touch with thoughtful appraisals of what Kenneth Boulding referred to as the total world system: communicative and expressive; social, political, and economic; physical and biological; evaluative and belief -- how we are with one another and our habitat.9 We will endeavor to identify, communicate with, and occasionally convene a small group of individuals whose work embraces these major domains. We will endeavor on a continuing basis to interpret and validate the implications of what we learn for schooling, for teacher education, for the educative community, and for the purposes of renewing the curricula of our leadership programs.
The fifth segment of the work we anticipate undertaking is the pursuit of increased participation in the conversation stimulated by the Agenda. We have reached out primarily to educators and particularly to those already involved. We will expand the initiative that has joined journalists and educators in addressing educational issues. We will add to our present publications some directed to a broader audience than we have cultivated to date. To repeat, schools fail in their mission if their surrounding context is not safe for and supportive of education.
During this period of introspective planning, the issue has been raised as to whether the Agenda and the priorities we have set are ahead of the wave -- at least to the degree that we will not succeed in attracting the support of funding agencies. This would, indeed, be a painful outcome. I cannot bring myself to believe anything other than that the time for an alternative educational narrative -- such as our Agenda for Education in a Democracy -- has arrived.
PDK Home | Site Map
Kappan Professional
Journal
Last updated 12 September 2000
URL: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kgoo0009.htm
Copyright 2000 Phi
Delta Kappa International