The Purpose of Schools, Democracy

Is the point of school to prepare children to participate in democracy?  Perhaps, but first we have to disabuse ourselves the idea that America is a democracy.  We are a republic.  I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get o vote on the health care overhaul.  I did get to select some representatives who got a piece of the decision-making power.  If we think in terms of a democracy, traditional schools certainly do not prepare children to participate in it.  On the contrary, we are opposed to it.  Instead,  we like to prepare our children to accept authority and the rule of law.  Democracy is messy and we prefer order.  We teach them that there is a different class of people who get to make the decisions and rules.  How often have you heard a teacher abdicate the responsible of discussing the purpose or reasoning behind a rule and allow for polite debate among children.  More often we hear, “It’s the rule” or “The principal (or school board or state) made the rule, I have to enforce it.”?

What happens to children who want to debate the purpose of a rule?  What happens to a child to wants to exercise her right to free speech too often, or too loudly?

We do eventually teach them about the structure and processes of our system of government.  We teach them about many of the hot-topics of political debate raging in their time.  We teach them to look at multiple sides of these issues, and then look for leaders who most closely match their views.  We encourage them to support these leaders and help them become representatives.  In the end, we reinforce our beliefs in respect for authority and rule of law.  If you don’t like the law, find an authority figure who feels similarly and support him/her.  We typically do not teach children how to organize and become leaders themselves.  Again, our belief is that there is a different class of people who are destined to walk the halls of power and they are not us.

The Purpose of Schools, Caring Adults

Is the point of schooling to create competent, caring loving and loveable people?  Perhaps it once was, and perhaps the pendulum will swing back toward seeing relationship or inter-personal intelligence as valuable again.  Certainly the world of professional work has recognize this need.  Professional employers have time and again said that they want workers who can perform in teams, think creatively, and solve problems.

Turing to Sir Robinson again, “Throughout the history of state education” he writes in Out of Our Minds, “there has been a contest between the mainstream vie that ‘reason’ and ‘objective’ knowledge should dominate education, and those who have argued for forms of education based on feelings.”  During the Romantic period, education thinkers like John Dewey argued that education should start with the child rather than with the canon.  The purpose of education, said the Romantics, was to awaken the curiosity and talent of the child and provide a nurturing place for those talents to bloom.  Some vestiges of this viewpoint are still with us today.  Teachers are still encouraged to get to know their students and their students’ families.   However, Teaching 2030 makes an important point when they quote Ellen Condliffe Lagemann in chapter 2, “One cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the 20^th century unless one realizes that Edward Thorndike won and John Dewey lost.”  Thorndike personified the Classical school of educational philosophy that promoted a teacher-centric curriculum-centric ideology in opposition to Dewey’s Romantic philosophy of education.

While teachers are told to get to know their students individual needs, their families, and their interests; while we are told to differentiate instruction and to customize intervention and planning to suit the needs of each student, we are to do so in order to achieve ever-higher scores on the standardized high-stakes tests.  What is measured by these tests, what matters in the world where the scores on these tests are conflated with “learning” is the canon.  It is the Classical body of knowledge intended for student memorization.  It is the logico-deductive reasoning championed by Thorndike.  It is as if we are now being asked to use the methods of the Romantic school of education to serve the interests and achieve the objectives of the Classical school of education.  Thorndike didn’t just beat Dewey, he made Dewey his whipping boy.

Student-run School-based businesses are Awesome!

So… what would you do if you were at school and needed twenty dollars?

If you were at McMinnville, you would go to the Bank of the Bear.

The Bank of the Bear is a legitimate branch of Wells Fargo located in the student commons.  The bank is open before school, after school and during lunch and, like the student store and snack bar, is run by the Business Management career pathway. 

Wells Fargo audited and approved the training class that the McMinnville students take for this pathway.  As a part of their class, the kids run the bank, take care of the accounting and are accountable for the books and the cash. 

The Bank of the Bear finances itself with a three-dollar transaction fee on any non-Well Fargo customer.  The bank allows Wells Fargo members to withdraw or deposit funds, and any customer can cash a check.  No ATM’s at this stage of the banks development, but the Bank of the Bear was impressive nonetheless. 

It really works!  Skyline math teacher Ian Garrovillas deposited a check into his account.  “I actually needed to deposit this check and I was wonder when I was going to be able to do that before we flew home, but then I was like, ‘Wow, I could take care of that right here!”

Dave Orphal also tested the services of the Business Management Pathway by withdrawing twenty bucks and buying a McMinnville hat from their student store.  “I was floored,” Orphal gushed.  “I’m a sucker for a good souvenir when I travel, plus, the Grizzly’s colors are black and red like ours.  It was a no brainer.  I think I was most impressed when my transaction didn’t go smoothly at the bank.  The kid did freak out of call for a teacher to solve the problem.  He trouble-shot the situation and got it fixed in minutes; just like a pro would.”

The Purpose of Schools, Intellectual Development

If we say that schools are meant to provide intellectual development, then we only mean a narrow band of intellectual development.  Schooling is dominated by what Sir Ken Robinson calls logico-deductive reasoning and memorization of an agreed-to body of knowledge.  These two skills he calls “academic intelligence.”  They are the skills that dominate our schools and are the ones which monopolize our standardized ways of testing if children are learning.  While we may agree with Sir Robinson, that academic intelligence is a very important part of intelligence, we should also agree with him that it is not the end-all and be-all of intelligence.

There are lots of other types of intelligence.  Unfortunately, these alternate forms of intelligence are given short shift by schools and valued far less than academic intelligence.  Ponder for a moment what happens in school to kids who are really good at inter-personal intelligence.  These are the ones who can talk to anybody and engage then in deep dialogue.  We punish those children for disrupting class.  The children with high levels of intra-personal intelligence (our deep ponders) most often quietly slip through the cracks and fail.

Physical intelligence may get celebrated at Friday night’s game, and this kind of intelligence may be highly honored in the social pecking systems of students, but if the athlete isn’t maintaining a “C” average in academic intelligence, then she is ineligible for the team.  Frankly, we teachers will say, “What’s the purpose of school anyway?  Athletics are extra-curricular.”  “Extra-curricular” is a great word for the way physical, musical, and artistic intelligence are both honored by schools and relegated to second-class status.  Sure, we think these talents are great, but we don’t think kids should focus on them to the detriment of academic or “real” skills that will help them get a job one day.  Art, music, sports; these are extras.

The Purpose of Schools, Prologue

In Jonathan Kozol’s essay “What does it mean to be well-educated?” he spends some time writing about the point or purpose of schooling.  What is the point of school?  In his essay, Kozol gave four suggestions:

·      Intellectual development

·      Creating competent, caring loving and loveable people

·      Preparing citizens for democracy

·      Preparing for work

Over the next week, I'll throw some ideas up on each of these suggestions.

Meanwhile...  What do YOU think is the purpose of schooling?

More Sir Ken Robinson

This fantastically entertaining RSA Animate video is the best summary of Ken Robinson's seminal thesis.

He lays his ideas about creativity; how the current "Raising Standards" movement is taking us in exactly the wrong direction; and what schools can do to prepare children for the next epoch in human experience.

Read his book, Out of our Minds.

We need a Revolution in Education, not more reform

In this TED talk from last year, Ken Robinson talks about the need to radically change the way we educate children.

We have built education on a fast-food model, he claims.  Everything is standardized.  If educational reformers such as Michael Bloomberg and Michelle Rhee have their way, even more standardization is to come.  He recommends an alternative.  Just like Zagat and Michelin Guide restaurants are not standardized, but creative and customized, so too education should forgo the old standardized paradigm and move to a creative and customized model.

Our education system is designed like a factory.  It's linear, where batches of children start at the beginning of the system and moved through each successive stage until they wind up at the end.  "Defective" children, like defective factory products, are discarded along the way.  As an alternative, he suggests modeling education more agrarianly, creating the environment and best conditions for childrne to grow and supporting them as the flourish.