You know them.
The coach who “teaches” the history class fourth hour. The wild-haired and constantly-stressed English teacher who spends his or her time speaking about random unconnected topics. The heady and intellectual math teacher poring over his or her formulas, ready to confuse you to no end. And then there are the cool teachers, the ones who really understand you. They respect your opinion. They’re relevant. They’re tolerant.
They want the world to be a better place. But what is their role in the schooling/educating process?
Buzzwords are everywhere in the realm of public education. Under the guise of “relevance,” “tolerance” and “social justice,” teachers impart their views consistent with the norms of a semi-postmodern American society.
John Dewey’s vision of education as personal experience with the world is trumpeted, promoting ideas of learning as coming from within the person rather than externally.
I know this well because I study it.
The assumption is rampant in the educational system that external change and improvement will only come from an increased education and betterment of the system.
Horace Mann, educational theorist and championed pioneer, once advocated to “Let [education] be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is [able], and nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete…property, life, and character [would be] held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened.” Bright and hopeful words indeed.
But those words were written in 1837, just as educational utopianism and the beginnings of German philosophical thought on the nature of humans were gaining ground in Europe.
As the two merged, as educational “capabilities” expanded, the socialist thought of Karl Marx began to affect the political and educational turmoil of the turn of the 20th century.
Discussing the effects in detail is beyond my scope, but educationally, the lofty ideals of human achievement and creativity slowly gave way to the oppression of Marxist socialists such as V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin in Russia and Fascist Benito Mussolini in Italy.
Idealism and creativity in education became swamped under a mass of death.
With the historical difficulties of assuming the inherent positive creativity of humans, particularly expressed through the innovative weaponry pervasive in the century, one might expect some of this optimism to have slowed.
And it has.
There has been no realization of Dewey’s or Mann’s bright outlook on the future. And it certainly isn’t from a lack of trying. My classes are filled with intelligent and articulate students expressing along with the professors our collective frustration with the system.
These students become the concerned teachers mentioned above. They listen, think and discuss world problems and moral issues. They are deeply concerned for the welfare of their students. I appreciate and applaud their efforts. But it’s not addressing the problem of human behavior.
Expecting students to behave properly in a general environment that is, sadly, often not conducive to learning is not good.
I share the frustrations of my fellow students who must teach to a middle level, often leaving the struggling behind and the advanced dragging. I share the sentiment that reform and accountability must take place in the districts. But I don’t think the end result of education is perfecting society.
If there is no basis for assertions of social justice, I’m not sure it should be dogmatized in the classroom.
Without any kind of moral authority outside the individual, I’m not sure the school has the ability to dictate what is right or appropriate. I am certain as to where that authority lies for me as a Christian. But in a pluralistic classroom culture, I don’t know if we as teachers can say what is justice or rightness.
We’ve made the bed of humanism in education. Can we live with it? Is the role of teachers one of rigid instruction in arbitrary rules for social welfare?
The questions are begging to be asked, and I think as teachers we need to address and discuss them.
-Jon Malone is an English education graduate student.
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jfreezy 3 years ago
Hard to follow your point here man, but you sort of excluded the modern humanist education systems in Europe that seem to work much better than those in America. As an outsider, there seems to me to be one fundamental tenet lacking from our educational system, that is the basis of knowledge, philosophy. When you were in High School did you study Plato or Kant? Any courses on logic? No... at least not for me or any one else I know. In my humble opinion, education without philosophy is really no education at all, rather just a large scale skill set for future employment. Philosophy is the cornerstone of wisdom and education, and without it, people do not assess the meaning of life and the ideas we take for granted. Moreover, when you study philosophy, it is much easier to see through tainted arguments and illogical ideas, many of which are pervasive in our country. All in all, nothing can just make society perfect, but philosophy is a better educational tool than the current regurgitation of facts curriculum of American public schools.
LauraGibbs 3 years ago
As a card-carrying educator of Dewey/Freire persuasion, I have been really encouraged by the possibilities for student-centered education in an online environment. These technological innovations make possible educational approaches which were simply not practical in a traditional classroom environment.
In my online courses for OU, I am able to remove myself from the center of attention, so that the courses are instead more focused on student-student interactions, with the students publishing their work online. This way, they can share their work with each other, and with broader audiences far beyond the classroom itself, thanks to the unbounded openness of the Internet. In these online environments, students can make many individual choices, with room for a wide variety of learning paths, something that could not be accommodated in the lockstep synchronous classroom.
Such student-centered project-based learning is really feasible online in ways that I could never manage in the traditional classroom. As a teacher, I feel very lucky to be working at this time when technology seems able to finally bring about many of the educational reforms anticipated a century ago by visionaries like Mr. Dewey and others.