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| Sunday, January 31, 1999 - 11:30 pm Subject: School Reform & bored students Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 12:55:31 -0500 From: Jim L Piat <piat@JUNO.COM> To: DEWEY-L@GANGES.CSD.SC.EDU Subject: Analysis & School Reform Dear Brent and list, In high school and college I was often a lot like the students you described below: > > the bored students in the back of your class who can't seem to get involved in >the class discussion. We want to be involved, we have something to say, >we are ready to work on the project--but something in the teacher-centered >presentation gets in the way. > As you say, the teacher had the right to dismiss of us as dumb, disabled, angry and disrespectful (all of which I was)--but we, the huddled masses, as always have remained ... yearning to breathe free. Comes now the "modern liberal democratic "public" classroom" where student's subjective beliefs about what the teachers are doing matters! Great! I'd like to know more about how this is working especially from the standpoint of the teacher. Seems that this approach might put the teacher in a bit of a bind between the expectations of the students verses the expectations of administrators and much of the public. I wonder too about the perennial debate over how to solve the problem of education in a democratic society. Or perhaps I should say the endless numbing debate over whether we are going to have democratic education (always a work in progress and constant struggle) or if we would rather spend our energy complaining about the failure of the students, the teachers or the system and demanding some externally imposed solution. For me the debate often boils down to whether we should we get tough with the students in order to make them into more loveable replicas of some idealized version of ourselves, or whether we should first try to love who they are and then get tough with them in order to make them into more successful versions of themselves. The first approach, in my opinion, offers a one time "solution" that satisfies the moment at the expense of the future. The second approach is always an uncertain work in progress but I think offers a more hopeful future for us all. So, teacher ...what do you think of that? Cheers, Jim Piat
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| Sunday, January 31, 1999 - 11:35 pm Re: School Reform Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 13:25:02 -0500 From: Brent Duckor <Brent_Duckor@EMAIL.MSN.COM> To: DEWEY-L@GANGES.CSD.SC.EDU Subject: Re: Analysis & School Reform Dear Jim (and list), Now I am in trouble. You are asking questions I'd like to answer but I have to take an e-mail break for a while. In the meantime, please check out the Website at http//www.cce.org. or do a web search on "The Coalition of Essential Schools," or "Ted Sizer" (Horace's Compromise) or "Debbie Meier" (The Power of Their Ideas). There are lots of books that discuss the issues you've raised here within the context of school reform movements of which Central Park East Secondary School is but one example. What is a student-centered education? I am still struggling with that one. I do know that I have 50 student evaluations ( each of them one page, single spaced) to write for my "Economic Theory: From Smith to Keynes" and "Entrepreneurship" fall semester classes by the end of this week. In these pieces, I am expected to reflect on the students' learning from a holistic point of view. I am also supposed to assess what we call the students' "Habits of Mind, Work and (yes, it sounds corny) Heart." I will probably focus more on the work-product (essays, research papers, policy memos, etc.) and talk about how this work-product meets the "graduation-by-portfolio" requirements of the school. There are 14 portfolios (among them Math, Science, History, Literature, Media, Autobiography) at CPESS and each must be defended before a 4 person graduation committee by the end of the 12th grade. (We are currently exempted from NY State Regents, although this year we, too, must make our 11th graders take the English exams). My student evaluations will also lay out strategies for future academic subject-success that can be discussed--between myself and the student, with her advisor, parents, even our school administration. I think the written evaluation (which by the way I personally experienced at UC Santa Cruz as an undergrad since we received a pass/fail plus a narrative evaluation for every course) is by far the most student-friendly assessment tool I know of. Besides forcing me to articulate what went right/wrong for the students in my class, these evaluations also allow others to join the conversation about what we can all do to support this/that student. Yes, I have to give a grade (Unsatisfactory, Minimally Satisfactory, Satisfactory, Satisfactory Plus, Distinguished) to meet the expectations of society (Colleges can calculate a G.P.A. by converting our designations into an A-F scale). But I also have to write a reflective evaluation to meet the expectations of my school. In a sense, I have to take responsibility for each students learning style, and try to coach them to take the work-product from my individual class and put it towards their individual portfolios which of course will be judged by a graduation committee at some point. The sense of collective accountability among teachers for student success is tremendous here at CPESS; the sense of students learning through a model of "work-in-progress" which includes subject teachers, advisors, community support staff, even parents is equally compelling. We, like the UFT and current Administration, see part of our success in smaller class sizes. President Clinton and Sandra Feldman have made this school-reform agenda clear. (What is less clear is how the NY state and city authorities see the issue of class-size and whether the White House and union can do anything about these skeptical bodies). The good news is that at CPESS we only teach three classes per semester ("Less is More"); and each class ranges from 18-22 students. So I can write 50 evaluations as opposed to 150. We are a "small school" with about 500 students enrolled. Clearly, you can personalize secondary school education when the numbers are mind-numbing. A student-centered education probably doesn't make much sense in a comprehensive HS with a population well above 2000 students. As Sizer and others have written, you can't make change really until you change the numbers. We are now in a struggle to keep things personal and small. But class size is not sufficient to build a community of learners or a student-centered education. When I say student centered--I am talking about a learning environment that makes us all accountable for tangible educational outcomes. This goes to your point about the politics of teacher and student bashing. Rather than reform the failed factory-school approach, some see it as their moral duty to fail the reformers entrepreneurial approach. As a student of economics and globalization of world markets, I find these local and state trends odd, not to mention anachronistic. Companies, like schools, should be getting smaller, more flexible, able to deploy services to a wider-base of students and consumers. Attacking the school reformer as entrepreneur seems quite reactionary i.e. looking to return to a command and control factory-based school-economy where one centralized managerial-bureaucratic body determines who exits and who proceeds "To Go." The culture of modern (post-industrial?) capitalism is not served very well by a monolithic state regulatory body that presumes it knows how best to graduate students. I think our graduation-by-portfolio culture (one that is closer to the working of a Saturn corporation, or Silicon Valley) gives our kids tremendous opportunities to succeed within the context of classrooms, advisories, after-school programs, internships, even collaborations they might undertake with family members. Being student-centered in my experience really means empowering students to utilize a larger network of teachers, community-based resources, etc. both within and without the school walls. It does not mean giving in to the arbitrary or capricious will of either a Governor appointed body or a cranky, childish student who believes only he knows what best for the class. Well, there is lots more to say but time is scarce and I have to get back to working for the kids. Best, Brent
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| Tuesday, February 02, 1999 - 08:08 pm Re: School Reform Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 01:49:38 +0100 From: Douglas Browning <Browning@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU> To: DEWEY-L@GANGES.CSD.SC.EDU Subject: Re: Chapter 12 Analysis & School Reform How interesting. Four comments: 1. I recently gave a series of talks to 15 local high school teachers (spread over a month) on Dewey's philosophy of education. My main text was HOW WE THINK, 2nd ed., and I found it worked very well indeed. The first edition of the book was, as you know, a set of talks addressed to actual, down-to- earth, in-the-trenches public school teachers. The second edition is better, more careful, wiser, but the intended audience is the same. 2. What such an audience wants is a presentation of Dewey's method of inquiry and its application to the school context. If one wants to go further with this, then the 1938 Logic is there, available. But for a first approach, nothing works better, I think, than HOW WE THINK. 3. One of the keys to reading Dewey is, I think, getting straight about the audience to which the work is addressed. For that reason I believe that the 1938 book EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION is not the book to take into the classroom. Its audience is clearly that of educators, i.e., those at the college level who are concerned with theories of education. It's a good book, read with profit, but not one which is addressed to the day-to-day problems of teaching kids. (Of course, the earlier DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION is something else. It's one of Dewey's best written and most comprehensive books, but, again, it is not as down-to-earth practical as HOW WE THINK.) 4. Finally, my wife taught Philosophy for Children for many many years at the elementary school level (5th grade mostly), using Lipmann's HARRY STOTLEMEYER'S DISCOVERY. This is a Dewey-inspired approach to introducing reflective thinking and philosophical ideas to children without any mention of Aristotle, Descartes, or the history of philosophy. Believe me, she did remarkably productive work; her students quickly raised their reading and math comprehension scores on the standardized tests. That was not her aim of course. A good teacher, her aim was education. Doug Browning >Jayne Tristan wrote: > I've >> designed and employ workbook exercises to try to engage students in >> cooperative problem-solving. Dewey's _Theory of Inquiry_ is my primary >> resource. >************************ >I've just gone over a copy of the workbook that Jayne mentions here and it >is a terrific teaching tool! It's the sort of workbook that could easily be >adapted for teaching reasoning skills to high school as well as college >students. The format is adaptable to almost any subject matter. > >Phyllis
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