News! Masters become Slaves...

It is known by everyone who was taught in a public school that there are really only two ways to make more money (three if you count going into administration): (1) years of creditable service or "time served" and (2) education. Time flows at a constantly velocity, so one can not accelerate the years, but moving up the pay scale is something one can do by taking graduate courses or by earning a Masters or Ph.D.

Here's something curious: full-time teachers in a full-time graduate program. Hmm, does anyone really think it is possible to have the cake and eat it too? The "system" would seem to believe it, for otherwise a provision outside of this insanity of working full-time and going to school full-time would not be encouraged.

Two cases:

Case #1: Jennifer J. (a social studies teacher at a Denver high school). Jennifer was in a media and technology class taught by David Hildebrand at the University of Colorado, Denver. It was a fascinating class. Texts included Albert Borgmann's Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and other works. One evening I was talking to Jennifer after class and she was really angry at the professor. Apparently he had said that in his opinion she was trying to do too much and that her academic work was suffering as a consequence. I asked her, "Well, what are you getting out of this course? How did your last paper go?" She said with work and the course, she was just having trouble concentrating, but she was sure if the professor would just give her more time, she could get it all done. In other words, Doctor Hildebrand was correct!

Case #2: Myself. While working at a charter high school in the Denver area I was working on my alternative teaching license. As I recall, we had classes every other Saturday with a lot of reading and analysis in between. It was a lot and it trivialized teacher education. Not necessarily by design (though it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that if one is doing full-time graduate work AND holding down a full-time job that one of these will suffer), but certainly by consequence. I tried to balance the demands of the job and of the program, but both suffered to some degree. Naturally, my family suffered, too as I became increasingly insufferable that year.

What did I really learn in an alternative teacher program? My biggest "lesson learned" was that public education is extremely superficial. For all the reams of data and analysis, education is seen to be about technique, not passion; manipulation, not wonder.

What is the meaning of this post's title -- Masters become Slaves? It is only this: by encouraging teachers to work and to study to the point of exhaustion, sheer frenetic activity is encouraged and thought is siphoned off. If education is a "communication of yourself" (Julian Carron), then teachers willy-nilly communicate their own busyness to their students.

In other words, stressed-out teachers keep their nose to the grindstone and encourage their students to do likewise. The message is "It's not who you are that matters, but what you do."

Rather than facing the riddle of existence, it's "busy, busy, busy" (as Kurt Vonnegut has it in Cat's Cradle). Or as those of a more theological mind have put it: Bad Infinity -- the multiplication of the finite (be it sex or shopping or booze) to make up for one's own nothingness, one's lack.

That's how slavery gets perpetuated.

The McNamara Effect

In his fascinating history of the United States Air Force, Walter Boyne discusses the priorities of Robert Strange McNamara that "created a climate of fear and [placed] a value on reporting rather than on doing."

Boyne continues:

Numbers -- whether it be of the bodies counted, sorties flown, bombs dropped, or Congressional delegation visits -- became the be-all and end-all of the military system McNamara shaped.

Report numbers were transformed from black dots on a page to truths that were quantified, defended, and extrapolated from.

Whole bureaucracies sprung up to create the numbers, challenge them, and mold them into new requirements for more numbers (Beyond the Wild Blue, 2nd ed., p. 160).

Any teachers out there who can relate to a climate of fear and an obsession with "measurable outcomes" and "growth"? I can sure relate to it. We know what the McNamara Effect was on that war in Indochina: hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead for no purpose.

What the end game is for public educators who embrace McNamara's approach is yet to be seen. I'm betting Ho Chi Minh wins.

"Honey, I shrunk the kids (and myself)!"

Teachers and parents (not to mention students) often deplore the increased use of standardized tests and assessments. That horse has been pulverized into subatomic particles, so I don't wish to dwell on stadardized tests, per se; rather, I'd like to briefly explore what existential or spiritual factors may lead to inordinate desire for "hard data" or "proof of learning."

In God at the Ritz, Lorenzo Albacete describes two elements of human work.

Human work has an "objective" and a "subjective" meaning. The objective meaning of work measures progress in terms of practical tasks accomplished. The subjective meaning of work measures preogress in terms of the fulfillment of the deepest needs of the human heart (140).

A moment's reflection will reveal that test-taking represents a desire to obtain an objective accounting of what a student knows and can be expected to accomplish in the future.

So far, so good: parents, employers, and indeed the student himself all have legitimate needs for this kind of knowledge. The danger is when the objective eclipses the subjective. In other words, when human desire and its fulfillment are marginalized or ignored, the result is alienation.

The student begins to reduce his conception of himself to what is needed to please others or to do "what's important" according to measure of those who hold power. Good grades are not nothing but they don't answer the question, "What, in the end, makes life worth living?"

The teacher too is put into an awkward position: When promotion and tenure are linked to student performance according to what is measurable (and only to what is measureable), a "reasonable" (if amoral) teacher will focus on teaching those knowledge, skills and abilities that are testable -- to the detriment of the immeasurable.

Each of us knows from real life that the immeasurable, is, well, immeasureable. The most important things in life are non-quantifiable: affection, self-giving, generosity, etc.

Question: Where are those places where human flourishing is encouraged?

"School vouchers on hold" reads the headline

in today's Denver Post.

Mark Silverstein of the ACLU exhibits an audacious amount of metaphysical naivete when he applauds the (for the present) ban on funding for "a child's religious education." Perhaps he has been out of school for so long that he's forgotten that all approaches to education necessarily posit a "point of view" or "hypothesis of meaning." These are fancy terms for religious and philosophical commitments that an individual educator (and education systems) lives by.

After ten years in public education I became convinced that the dominant creed (or religion if you prefer) was Successism. Successism is quite simple: it is the belief that public schools exist to ensure that children succeed. To what end or purpose? Well, that's the question we dare not ask nor answer because it would unveil our nihilism, or sheer utilitarianism at best.

All education, especially public education because of its denial of philosophical moorings, promotes a creed and is thus necessarily "religious."

How TFA is gutting public education

Some of the best teachers I've met came through the Teach for America pipeline. Young, zealous, and super-smart. Very decent folks.

So why the provocative title to this post?

Perhaps I should have said, "How TFA might gut public education." That may be more accurate. Karl Marx was famous for running all problems through an economic filter, and there may be something worthwhile in asking, "What's the cost/benefit of a TFA teacher versus other teachers?"

This might be too vague. Let's take it from another angle: in this time of scarcer resources, are administrators "better off" hiring inexperienced but enthusiastic teachers or "seasoned" (i.e., old) teachers with years of experience and advanced degrees?

In the current education climate, "better off" is often defined as appearing to always do more with less; maximizing resources, in other words. Since public education tends to mimic corporate structures, the goal is to have interchangeable teachers who can do whatever needs to be done. Since individuality is really a matter of indifference, then Cheapest is Best.

So, yes, administrative careerists will naturally use "raw material" that is cheap in order to keep within budget. That's to be expected.

Teach for America is having some unintended consequences. Ultimately bringing down wages and exchanging experience and competence for enthusiasm may be just two.

Bad Poetry

Bad poetry has a cathartic affect in the writing.
Like a bad wrapper, words spill out like lightning.
There is not much of substance to be found,
But an interesting stream of consciousness doth abound.
I never studied seriously those who went before.
A simple layman and a bore.

In College

In college an English teacher said I had some skill
With words and such but I didn't believe her much.
Then a historian said, "Great historical sense!,"
To which I replied, hoarsely, "But I never get off the fence."

Lastly a philosopher said, "You're among the best,"
But I was shy and too self-aware;
I was fearful of the implications and
tossed it away as a jest.

To Thomas

Eliot wrote poems
That I'll never beat;
He saw more deeply,
Looked more lovingly,
Cared more intelligently,
Listened with an attentiveness
Not found today on our lonely streets.

Still, I'd like to find a way to somehow compete.
Perhaps invent a genre at which all will gasp.
Or show talent that is above reproach.
Nevertheless, imitation ain't so bad.
In that sun-drenched heaven,
I hope this faint effort
makes him glad.

Useless

To be useless

In the tupperware state.

Nothing to be done

Save refrigerate.

Blood boiling,

Stomach churning,

Ever-willing to

Exaggerate.

The soft contours

Of life

Can lead one

To believe

That nothing

Is at stake;

That the noblest

Emotion is hate.

Step back from the abyss

Which yawns so great;

Step into a void

That nullifies Fate.

Here's to the Misfits

No, not the band, but those who have a bond or kinship with Flannery O'Connor's antagonist in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Yeah, that Misfit. I love his self-description:

“Nome, I ain't a good man,” The Misfit said, “but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's some that can live their whole life without asking about it, and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!'”

After some recent events I've thought about the "it" that seems like an obstacle for me professionally. I think what gets me in trouble every time is that I'm not a partisan or true believer or company man -- whatever moniker one would place on those who line up and salute the dominant position or point of view.

Here's an obvious truth you'll never hear in a school of education or from a school district official or teacher's union rep: When someone says, "This is good for kids, so we should do it," he or she really means: This is good for kids based upon what I/we think is good for kids, so you better get in line with me/us -- or else!

Education, Institutions and Accountability (Part I)

Earlier this week there was a horrid article by Susan Greene in the Denver Post entitled "Who would Jesus fire?" that lamented the firing of a Director of Religious Education at a Catholic parish because of her sexual immorality - oops, I mean her "preference." Ms. Greene was mortified that a church and pastor would actually expect a staff member to practice what she (allegedly) teaches, namely, such things as the sacrament of marriage and lacking that, sexual continence.

This article did get me thinking about what it is that secular institutions such as public schools and universities do stand for. Is there anything beyond competence in subject matter? I think there is very little that would get one censured or remove from a post unless the activity were illegal. That's a fascinating thing, really: secular has come to mean all is permitted unless it is illegal. Thus, in theory, if bigamy were legalized (and with the push for gay marriage, it is difficult to find grounds to argue against bigamy), the bigamist would have as much job security tenure as anyone else.

Beyond these moral questions, the deeper question is, "What do institutions of learning stand for?" Hmm.

Ian McEwan's Saturday

Surely McEwan is an artist. But an artist at the service of what, exactly? If absurdity rests in answering a question that hasn't been asked, then near absurdity would seem to also consist of mundane answers or simply skirting deep and provocative questions. The latter is my take on Saturday.

The story begins with Henry Perowne waking early and seeing a burning aircraft fly across the sky of early morning London. This sets him on all kinds of metaphysical musings:

If Perowne were inclined to religious feeling, to supernatural explanations, he could play with the idea that he's been summoned; that having woken in an unusual state of mind, and gone to the window for no reason, he should acknowledge a hidden order, an external intelligence which wants to show or tell him something of significance (16).

But for Theo's [Henry's son] sincerely godless generation, the question [of theodicy] hasn't come up. No one in his bright, plate-glass, forward-looking school ever asked him to pray, or sing an impenetrable cheery hymn. There's no entity for him to doubt (32).

But these musing don't extend into or penetrate far into Henry's world. His agnosticism or practical atheism seems to be summed up here:

Perowne regards this [religiously motivated behavior] as a matter for wonder, human complication beyond the reach of morals. From it there spring, alongside unreason and slaughter, decent people and good deeds, beautiful cathedrals, mosques, cantatas, poetry. Even the denial of God, he was once amazed and indignant to hear a priest argue, is a spiritual exercise, a form of prayer: it's not easy to escape from the clutches of the believers (17).

God, religion, faith - these are superstitions at best, violent perversions at worst. Not realities at the very heart of human experience. So what is the driving force behind Henry's life? Work, it would seem. He and wife Rosalind are typically modern here:

Well, in ambitious middle life it sometimes seems there is only work. He can be at the hospital until ten, then it can pull him from his bed at 3 a.m., and he can be back there again at eight. Rosalind's work proceeds by a series of slow crescendos and abrupt terminations as she tries to steer her newspaper away from the courts. For certain days, even weeks on end, work can shape every hour; it's the tide, the lunar cycle they set their lives by, and without it, it can seem, there's nothing. Henry and Rosalind are nothing (23).

Yes, nothing. This is profoundly insightful about the nature of modernity: without something constantly pecking at us, we disappear. I don't say it isn't in some sense true, but I do insist that it is outrageous. That McEwan doesn't discern the outrageousness of it furthers my outrage.

I don't want to give away the ending, but it seems to me that the questions set forth above are answered by a certain flattening of these questions. It is enough to do one's duty as an Englishmen and a surgeon. Human questions? These must stay within the realm of the pragmatic; if it is mysterious, it can't exist.

Newspeak, Eduspeak (Part I)

The latest buzzword: effective. Colorado children need effective teachers; every student deserves an effective teacher; teachers will be evaluated on their effectiveness.

Hmm, let's define effective: "producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect" (Merriam-Webster).

Once again slogans and jargon are taking the place of thought. Left out of the discussion is what constitutes or is the defining characteristic of "effective teaching." I'll take my cue from Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos here and see if I can shed light on the question by posing several possibilities of what the effective teacher is or does.

(a) The effective teacher is one who connects with all of his students and helps each one of them to explore the mystery of the universe in unique and unexpected ways. This teacher is like Socrates, Jesus and Buddha all rolled into one, except he does not alienate anyone. He is able to impart wisdom simply by his presence. All of his students are above average and getting better and better, every day and in every way.

(b) The effective teacher improves all students' performance on standardized tests and clearly the students learn other great things as well. He's loved by all.

Question: Did you notice the farcical quality of options A & B? If not, you are probably a political commentator, politician, or a member of a non-profit organization that concerns itself with education reform. It is unlikely you have children of your own or that you are a teacher or spend much time on this planet.

(c) The effective teacher figures out how he will be evaluated and maximizes his efforts in these areas. If effectiveness is measured by standardized tests, the teacher focuses on techniques and imparting knowledge of these things. If, on the other hand, his evaluation depends on something else, something else is what the teacher delivers. This teacher is like a mirror for what is asked of him by the dominant power. He is truly self-less.

(d) The effective teacher cares not a whit about the latest fad in education or his own fate because of his disinterest in said fad. This teacher is really good at communicating some very important things to some students, helping many students some of the time, confusing a few students not so often. In short, this teacher is very human.

(e) The effective teacher is a combination of C & D.

(f) The effective teacher is undefinable and unclassifiable. First because we don't know (or agree) on what we want concerning outcomes with students. Second, we don't know why some techniques "work" (have an effect on a group of students) while those same techniques in the hands of another teacher teaching another group of students fail miserably. In other words, teaching is more art than science, but, living as we do, in the age where technology seems capable of solving all of our problems, we're unwilling to admit that science and technology can't help us much here. We're back to Plato in the Meno where Socrates asks, "Can virtue be taught?" Like Meno, we want to reduce the question. Thus we spend enormous amounts of time, energy and money attempting to do what cannot be done: making education a purely rational (abstract) activity.

(CHECK ONE)

Colorado Education "Reform" Part I

Part of the subtext of the debate around SB 191 seems to be the idea that teachers should be held accountable for the one factor that is fundamentally beyond their control: the interior freedom of the student. Yes, a good teacher can help a student to have academic growth. So too might an inert teacher witness a student grow academically. Furthermore, a brilliant teacher may have a student who flat-lines or even declines in the course of a year. The teacher is one factor among many - sometimes central, other times peripheral.

Any teacher who has the courage to be honest amid all this smoke and fury will tell you that he has witnessed numerous intellectually capable student tank tests for frankly mysterious reasons. Apathy, indifference, nay, even hostility - these and countless other factors can and do reside in the souls of our students. Unless and until we embrace the Spartan ideal of putting our youth in barracks so that we so-called experts can have total control, please don't expect teachers to take sole responsibility for the academic shenanigans of students. If you do that, I will refrain from boasting that I am the reason for my students' enlightenment and growth.

Ahistoricism and education

Jeez, the abuse scandal stuff and the luridness of the media is getting tedious. At the risk adding sound and fury, here's my contribution:

The secular consensus seems to be that a good thing would be married clergy, gay marriage, condoms for all, a “zero tolerance policy” for sex crimes, and extravagant payouts for victims. This litany is trotted out as “the answer.”

I guess I don't have enough hubris to claim to know “the answer” (dear reader, please recall T.S. Eliot's injunction against “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”).

Those who possess worldly wisdom have what they think is the answer, but I seriously wonder how many of them have even asked the question, “Why not pedophilia?” I'm not being glib; this is a serious question.

Yes, my secular friends, in a certain sense, the Church has “brought this on herself.” It was Christianity who told the pagans (my beloved Socrates died before he got the memo) to give up pederasty. Without Christianity, without Christians, in short, without the Church, there is no guarantee that the nauseating “boy love” we find in Plato's “Symposium,” for example, would not be normative today. It was wrong then; it is wrong now, yet without the Church you wouldn't know that.

NAEP 2009 - A Personal Reflection

The March 25 edition of The Denver Post tells us that "Students' reading scores show little progress" (3A). I couldn't help but think, "No surprise, that." It seems that often overlooked by the media of the dominant mentality are the roles of parents and culture in education.

Here is a typical quotation from one invested in the status quo:

"I really think that there are tremendous implications for the quality of teaching and the development of school leadership to make sure we have high performing schools across the country," said Steven Paine, superindendent of West Virginia schools and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the tests" (Ibid.).

God bless him, but, really? I'm grasping for a metaphor here that might convey my exasperation with the assumption that pathetic test results can be changed by tweaking the current system or that it is the exclusive domain of teachers and schools to "fix" these students. Here's a possible metaphor:

Suppose you're the captain of The Titanic and you realize there's this huge gash in your ship. Instead of dealing with that problem, you decide to retrain your observation personnel. You tell yourself that the gaping hole in your ship is really beyond your capacity, but getting everyone up to speed on the latest techniques for effective use of bincoulars is something you can control.

Naturally, the ship sinks.

Silly, right? Well, the dominant ideas surrounding education are not far from this outlandish and absurdist scenario. The "huge gash" is the students who don't read because they are in households where computers, televisions and ipods have replaced books, magazines and conversation; the ship's captain stands for those "professionals" who always have the answers but remain blissfully unaware of the questions; the training in observation and binocular use represents the pathetic attempts to overcome overriding cultural indifference among the general population by teaching teachers new techniques and strategies of dubious value.

Yesterday I was made aware of the barbarizing effect of technology on good students. We're reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road in one of my English classes. I'm blessed with this small cohort of students who have superior reading abilities. I started the class by asking the group if they had been keeping up on the reading. The majority have and it shows in their penetrating observations about the text.

After class a student approached me and said, "I have a confession to make. I haven't done the reading." (This really surprised me because he had advocated strongly for this book at the beginning of the trimester.) He continued, "This weekend we got Netflicks and I've been watching all of these killer movies. I've got to stop." I said, "Yeah, you only have so much time and space in your life and if you do one thing, it means you can't do another."

This student is in a great place: he has sufficient self-awareness to recognize that if he follows the logic of entertainment, it will displace reading.

How is that this high school student can see it but the educrats can't?

No, Virginia, you can't have it all. If you want an education, you'll simply have to unplug.

For the Sake of the Children

Hearing this phrase is also grounds for reaching for the proverbial Luger or perhaps a reason for paying close attention to what the speaker says next.

On talk radio and during an interview
A local radio station (KHOW) has a show called "Caplis and Silverman" co-hosted by Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman; they are a great pair - far more interesting than, say, Hannity and Colmes were. Last week they were discussing a sick out by Boulder Valley teachers. Caplis was suggesting that everyone should agree to do "what is best for the children." Hmm, sounds good. But so does "pro-choice" unless you think deeply about what is being chosen. Yet unlike the "pro-choice" mantra, "for the children" is far more ambiguous.

Short term or long term?
In my experience, "what is good for the children" is sometimes proposed without reference to what is good for teachers. I've heard administrators say such things as "this isn't about teacher comfort, but what's good for the students" in reference to an inane and insane requirement that teachers call each student's home at least once per week. This was at a charter school where the parents were predominately Spanish-speakers. Call 120 homes in a language I don't speak; this benefits whom, how exactly?

On the "Caplis and Silverman Show," Dan Caplis was suggesting that teachers should always do what is best for the students, not themselves. (Not to get Kantian here, but does Mr. Caplis in his law practice do what is best for his clients without reference to himself - does he routinely foreswear compensation?) Implicit in this naive remark are at least two facts:

1. What is "best" for the children is rarely univocal.
Is it always best that teachers stay on the job and never strike? Well, that would depend on the rationale for the strike. Teachers might be striking because of bad adminstrative policies that "dumb down" the curriculum or teachers might be asking for an unreasonable pay raise; in the former case one would say, "strike," in the latter, don't.
Is a longer school day always best for the children? It depends on how the time is spent and what provision is made for teachers having adequate leisure [I find it interesting that the only people I hear say how "easy" teaching is, are either (a) incompetent teachers or (b) more likely, those who don't teach]. I met a guy recently who was fired from a charter school chain because he suggested that teachers have more time to meet together and fewer contact hours with students. In other words, because he was concerned about an "assembly line" approach to teaching, he was deemed to not be a "team player" (even as he was asking for more time for "the team" to coordinate their activities!)

2. What is bad for teachers is also bad for students.
Suppose you have a cadre of teachers that always believes a principal when he says, "This is good for the kids, so we're going to do it," and these teachers nod their heads in assent. If the administrator is wise, benevloent and saintly, then, well, perhaps all of these good things shower upon teachers and students alike. If however one lives on this planet, we would soon find out that "what is good for the children" (for now we'll assume that these are actually good things) -- things such as longer school days, more instructional time, and more lively instruction -- these things have a price that teachers must pay. Let's take them in order with the assumption that there are no changes in staffing:

A. A longer school day. This means that either teachers make their families and friends suffer by cloistering themselves away and continuing to grade papers long into the night and skip time with the family or these teachers, say, "Screw it, I used to ask for essays, but now I don't have time to grade them, so I'll start handing out multiple choice quizzes" or some other time saving measure. In the long term, students pay the price.

B. More instructional time or "contact hours."
Teachers teach more but they might also communicate less. A great booklet I recently read was Julian Carron's "Educating: That is, a Communication of Yourself." Carron makes it very clear that the most important thing a teacher communicates is not content per se, but how the teacher views all of reality. This is not pie-in-the-sky, but quite concrete. More contact hours may translate into uninspired teacher, which helps no one.

C. More interesting or lively instruction.
This one kills me: the vision of the teacher as entertainer and the assumption that students should be distracted into learning. In any event, where does the time for creativity come from? It has been taken away. If the teacher does make instruction more entertaining, it will in fact be less interesting; bells and whistles will have replaced curiosity and wonder.

Abstractions are useless
What I love about teaching is that reality is unavoidable. My students challenge me to ask daily why I do what I do (and if, in fact, it is worth doing!); I cannot just fall back into some ideology to explain reality: they won't let me.

Those who use ideological phrases like "it's for the children" aren't working with the children (even if there is a classroom of kids in front of them); they are working with abstractions. In The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, E.D. Hirsch has a great glossary of terms and he shows how eduspeak is a dodge from thought. Let's add "for the children" to the list.

Plato I

A Return to Sanity
Pretty bad when reading about a guy who is on trial for his life over trumped up charges seems like "sanity." In comparison to Dewey, Socrates is a breath of fresh air (whereas Dewey is largely stale error). There are so many things to learn about through the "Apology." Something that struck me on this rereading was Socrates' patience in explaining the context of how accusations arose against him. How preconception and prejudice led to his indictment; how he did indeed do things that were, in today's parlance, politically incorrect.
Two for One
As I mentioned previously, taking up an ancient text was motivated by a desire to get some distance from the modern mentality (well represented by John Dewey). Reading the "Apology"
and Aristophanes' "The Clouds" (a first) was also motivated by the opportunity to teach an undergraduate Philosophy course. I was able to get what I think is a very good translation by C.D.C. Reeve - it's certainly more readable than the Jowett translation (see The Trials of Socrates at http://www.hackettpublishing.com).

Dewey VII

Later, Dude!

Let God be the judge between you and me, Mr. Dewey! I tried (and tried) to read your book with an open mind in order to understand what is attractive about your thought. As I mentioned before, Experience and Education came highly recommended from a man I admire and respect (Dennis Littky), so I thought, "OK, I'll give Dewey a second chance."

I did so. When you went from obscurity to obscurity, I pressed on; when you used ordinary words (i.e., experience, freedom, purpose, etc.) in the most peculiar ways, I remained open to the possibility of some good emerging from my Herculean labors. While I can say that I do have some vague notion of what your approach to education is all about, I would have to emphasize "vague."

The Scientific Method

Were I forced to say what you say the essence of education is, it would run something like this:

Education is most authentic when it uses the scientific method as its means and ends: one hypothesis leads to another "truth" that serves as a stepping stone for another hypothesis which leads to more and more transitional truths, which lead to more and more growth.

I'll pat myself on the back for such a concise statement of your thought, but I freely acknowledge that it might be inaccurate. But this summary does seem to sum up your love for science and it as a model for education. But I think you are patently wrong on this score: If education is all about life, then take a look around and see how life is more than "science." Science reduces reality to what can be managed, manipulated and manufactured. Education-as-science is something ultimately inhuman.

A final quotation

On the last pages of Experience and Education you write:

What we want and need is education pure and simple, and we shall make surer and faster progress when we devote ourselves to finding out just what education is and what conditions have to be satisfied in order that education may be a reality and not a name or a slogan (90-91).

"Finding out"? "May be a reality"? I believe, sir, that the primary purposes of writing non-fiction are either to understand better some aspect of reality one is wrestling with or to communicate some truth to others one has discovered. It seems to me you have done neither.

Farewell, Mr. Dewey. I shall now take the advice of that great theist, C.S. Lewis, and read an ancient text after I have read your thoroughly modern work.

(Mutter, mutter! Twenty two days of reading his book and all I have are rambling posts and a raging headache! Mutter, mutter...)

Dewey VI

Authority the Unavoidable

Such was the title of a chapter in Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World. In the fourth chapter (Social Control) Dewey deals with the role of the teacher in the classroom and gives us the image of children at play as a point of contrast and comparison. With children at play we find an example of "social control of individuals without the violation of freedom" (54).

Dewey rightly indicates that the teacher often has an "undue role" that is forced upon him because of school design. I agree. He goes on to claim that in the "new schools, the primary source of social control resides in the very nature of the work done as a social enterprise in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute and to which all feel a responsibility" (56). These seems a little fuzzy and seems to ignore the obvious: in both traditional and new (now old) schools, authority is imposed from without. The freedom of the students is conditioned upon the willingness of the adults to give it to them (I'm not suggesting it should be otherwise, only that it is true in both cases).

I have seen numerous times when group projects quickly devolve into one or two students taking responsibility for what gets done and feeling (rightly) resentful at the slouching mass of students who have nothing to contribute.

Put me in, Coach!

Dewey claims that when schooling is more of a social process, "The teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator [no, I assure you, he wrote that] but takes on that of leader of group activities" (59). Sounds good; sounds democratic. But wait a minute. This transition is based on Dewey's earlier comparison of schooling with games. This image seems inapt on several points.

First, games have a natural attraction to kids that need no external mandate (at least before XBox and associated lethargy-makers); schooling is required.

Second, games cannot be sustained for prolonged periods of time. When you're done, you're done (Dewey might go so far as to urge the modification of the school day to fit the "needs" of the students, I don't know - I wouldn't mind a two-hour teaching day!)

A third thing that bugs me about the game image is that it implies that fun and "engagement" (now there's a thorougly misused term) are coextensive with education. I think this is patently false. Perhaps a more realistic metaphor for education is exercise. It requires self-discipline and endurance, but it possesses moments of fun and engagement. If I approach exercise with a gamish mentality, I shall soon slouch back into my couch potato self.

Next time: the role of the teacher and the myth of the teacher as the Great Architect.

Dewey V

An (The?) End in Itself

I well remember Aristotle's insistence that in the moral life, happiness is paramount. It is also an end after which we seek no further end. Once one is happy, satisfied, blessed -- the journey, in a sense, comes to an end.

Dewey's insistence on growth as good when it leads to more growth, which leads to still more growth made me think of Aristotle. Think of The Philosopher in this sense: What Would Aristotle Think (or WHUT)? I don't know what he'd think of Dewey's ideas about education, but I don't think he'd like his ambiguity.

Biology and Teleology

For Aristotle the moral life has a clear end - happiness; for Dewey, education has no end beyond vaguely differentiated, on-going (infinite?) growth. With Dewey's materialism, he surely recognized that life runs up against its terminus in death. So it seems the life Dewey envisions goes something like this: Growth, growth, growth, annihilation. You, me, everybody.

Here we find yet another case of "bad infinity," where the need for the infinite gets projected onto finite realities. In focusing on growth the way he does, Dewey is at odds with himself, for how can life (existence) come to an end but growth never come to an end?

Question: Did Dewey ever confront this riddle?

Dewey IV

Progress and Democracy

In Chapter 3, Criteria of Experience, Dewey says that "one thing which has recommended the progressive movement is that it is more in accord with the democratic ideal to which our people is commited than do the procedures of the traditional school..."(33). It is interesting how Dewey links "the progressive movement" (in education, presumably) with "democratic ideals." He paints both the "new education" and "traditional schooling" with such broad strokes (perhaps even bordering on caricatures of the latter) that he has failed to demonstrate this thesis. How odd for a man who takes the methods of science for his model in educational philosophy.

Questions:
#1 Because a school is more "democratic" (whatever that might mean), is it a better school?
#2 What evidence would validate Dewey's thesis?
#3 What evidence would validate it?

Dewey's Mythical Anthropology (or why growth will not suffice for man)

Again and again Dewey highlights how education is all about growth. But a nagging question for me is: Is it possible to have the goal of growth as "the" end in education ["the educative process can be identified with growth" (36)] without a fairly definite idea (or ideal) about what this growth ought to tend toward? I think one must have an ideal, lest growth simply be an end in itself (growth for growth's sake), which leads towards ambiguity, incoherence, and perhaps even nihilism.

All of this growth talk by Dewey makes me think of the various schools of Utilitarianism with their future-oriented calculi: whatever brings the most happiness/pleasure for the majority, well that's the right thing to do. By invoking growth and the way he defines it without a goal for the human subject, one seems to be always stuck in the future (perhaps this makes the term progress apropos indeed).

[At some point it would be interesting to look at Dewey's ideal of growth in light of the biological fact of death. If death is the end for Dewey, then why bother with all this growth? Growth would seem to lead only to nothingness. Maybe later we can look at this.]

Dewey's growth (unlike Aristotle's flourishing, which is linked to excellence), lacks any end beyond more growth. "Growth without end, amen." Such is the prayer of Dewey.

I'm not persuaded. Dewey has the ideal opportunity to address the concerns people have about his definition of growth (really, a lack of definition) and how he would distinguish "good" from "bad" growth: "[A] man who starts out on a career of burglary may grow in that direction, and by practice may grow into a highly expert burglar. Hence it's argued that 'growth' is not enough; we must also specify the direction in which growth takes place, the end towards which it tends" (36). Indeed, we must; however, Dewey never does.

The closest he seems to come to a specification of ends is to say that good growth is the growth that has "opportunities for continuing growth in new directions" (36). Coming back to our burglar, we would seem to have no way of judging whether or not the "school of theft" is educative or mis-educative: if he grows in skill and expertise, this might be enough. Who ultimately is the judge of growth untethered from tradition, ethics and anthropology?

Questions:
#1 Is it reasonable to accept such a premise (growth and its inherently subjective nature) when it is on its face so incoherent? (If one were to say the goal of eating is more eating - would this persuade anyone?)
#2 How can a thinker who is all about democracy and community base his educative project on such a subjective premise?
#3 If it is possible to build democracy and community on such a principle, is it not necessary for the community (or the majority) to be in charge of creating conditions for appropriate growth or defining what is appropriate? (I'm tending toward thinking this is what Dewey is suggesting at some level.)

Next time: something about Dewey's use of biblical allusions or his definition of the aim(s) of education.

Dewey III

One out of three ain't bad

I had hoped to discuss what John Dewey thinks experience is, how it can be (or cannot be) communicated, and its telos, but at least through the second chapter, he has not given a defintion of experience. I had assumed that he would provide a definition because he says, "To know the meaning of empiricism we need to understand what experience is" (25).

Communicating experience. He does suggest that teachers help students experience things in an orderly fashion: "It is [the educator's] business to arranged for the kind of experiences which ... engage [the student's] activities and ... promote desirable future experiences" (27). Something curious about this the lack of his discussion of inter-subjectivity. That is, he does not discuss how one can create a lesson that is for one student a powerful, life-changing experience, but for another student it is "boring." (What teacher hasn't seen this?). In any event, we'll see if he goes into communication of experience in more detail.

I'm happy to report that he does define what the end or goal of experience is: further future experience. No joke. Here are a couple of examples:

Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of afresting or distroting the growth of further experience (25).

"[Y]oung people in traditional schools do have experiences [but the trouble is] their defective and wrong character -- wrong and defective from the standpoint of connection with further experience" (27).

Wholly indepedent of desire or intent, every experience lives on in further experiences. Hence the central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences (27-28).

"[A] coherent theory of experience ... is required by the attempt to give new diretion to the work of the schools.... It is a matter of growth, and there are many obstacles which tend to obstruct growth and to deflect it into wrong lines" (30)

All of these are from Experience and Education, but this zinger comes from Democracy and Education: "The educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end" (59).

If this is accurate, I think Dewey's view has staggeringly negative anthropological implications: humanity has no goal, no center, no point of reference beyond "growth" or the "educational process."

Questions so far in this chapter:

#1 Why doesn't he discuss his own experience (either as a student or as an educator)? This chapter is entirely too disengaged from any discussion relating to students and teachers (not even anecdotally do either show up).

#2 Dewey thinks that the empirical sciences "offer the best" kind of educational organization but he doesn't say why. Why?

#3 Is it ultimately coherent to say the primary purpose of education is to have experiences that lead to more experiences, ad infinitum? To achieve that goal, one could play in traffic, take hikes, read books.... Anything would seem to achieve the goal of richer, worthier, better experiences.

#4 How does Dewey's thought converge/diverge from Aristotle? I was think of Dewey's growth and Aristotle's flourishing. Are they compatible?

Dewey II

I remember a talk that Lorenzo Albacete gave a dozen years ago in Denver. At one point he said something like this: "All of these people running around talking about their experiences, but they're not talking about ex-perience because it's all about them.... All real experiences come from the outside, not our own subjectivity."

For some reason I recalled Albacete's remarks in my reading of Dewey. I'm now delving into chapter two of Experience and Education and I'm finding that Dewey seems to suggest something erroneous about what experience is and how it can be communicated. But first, something positive about Dewey (lest I never get there!):

The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative (25).

Again, experiences may be so disconnected from one another that, while each is agreeable or even exciting in itself, they are not linked cumulatively to one another. Engergy is then dissipated and a person becomes scatterbrained (26).

Just so. An experience is not merely a "something" that happens, for then we would talk about the experiences of monkeys and lions; rather, an experience requires a something, an event, but also reflection and an understanding of what the event means. Otherwise it's just one damn thing after another.

Next time I'll pick up on where I think Dewey goes off the rails with his understanding of what experience is, how it can be (or cannot be) communicated, and its telos.

John Dewey I

Just started John Dewey's Experience and Education. It's come highly recommended from someone I admire and respect; others have spoken highly of Dewey too. I'm trying to be open to anything me might have to say that could be useful.

As an undergrad I took a philosophy course devoted to Dewey's thought. What a mortifying experience. Terrible writer. And vague. Mystifications from a famous pragmatist. Well, everyone - especially one departed - deserves a second chance.

Experience and Education is allegedly a clear and concise overview of Dewey's approach to education. In the preface he says that he will "call attention to the larger and deeper issues of Education" (p. 6). We'll see. I'm open - no, really.

The Joy of Spring Break

How useful to step off the merry-go-round that teaching can be. Intense year, intense semester. Stepping back gives perspective (good, bad, ugly).

Began and finished Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut is so "unsummarizable" that I will merely point out that he has a great capacity for showing the depths of our human needs in a way that is always funny, profound, and unresolved - he was the president of a humanist organization, after all).

Began Augustine's Confessions and Chris Hedges' I Don't Believe in Atheists. Augustine is moving and deeply personal; Hedges not so much. Trying to "dip into" Augustine a little each week (I think I've got what I can out of Hedges' book, so I may stop reading - God love reporters, but they seem to have a real knack being superficial and annoying.)

Augustine on Cicero's Hortensius: "What won me in it was what it said, not the excellence of its phrasing" (p. 38, Sheed translation).

David Brooks on Obama's Education

No Picnic for Me Either is the title of Brooks' March 12, 2009 piece in the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/opinion/13brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion).

Here are my thoughts on what Brooks had to say. He seems completely correct at this point:

"We’ve spent years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is the relationship between one student and one teacher. You ask a kid who has graduated from high school to list the teachers who mattered in his life, and he will reel off names. You ask a kid who dropped out, and he will not even understand the question. Relationships like that are beyond his experience."

Just so. A minor oversight here is that relationships, while not wholly dictated by school structures, are certainly influenced by these structures. They can be more or less human. Although Brooks doesn't mention this school model by name, it sounds like he is familiar with the Big Picture model. They focus on "relevance, rigor and relationships" and are having some tremendous results.

Now for the Great Lacuna: What about our need for total meaning? Do human relationships exhaust our need for Relationship? Hell, no. Here is the problem with all reforms that don't acknowledge our existential depths: they possess an emaciated anthropology that doesn't admit of the Mystery. The teacher may possess it (and in this case, no power in the world can suppress it), but if it isn't given tacit acknowledgment, we're really just deluding ourselves and our students.

We seem to still be a long way away from acknowledging the depths of reality in education. Given the way government funding limits what schools can say about ultimate reality, we have a real dilemma on our hands. Like something out of the film The Village, God has become "Him we don't speak of" in public education. (For how absurd jurisprudence has become in this area, read about the coach in New Jersey who is forbidden from joining his players in prayer - as if students are too stupid to separate the coach from the State! )

(Here's a link to that story: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/supreme_court_rejects_east_bru.html)

The courts can continue to stifle the freedom of adults in the name of the liberation of youth, but the questions of the heart cannot be silenced. Let us pray for the courage to educate in a fully human way - no matter what the obstacles.

Revisting Fight Club I

What does this film have to do with education?

That's what I asked myself as I watched it again for the nth time. I think that the short answer is "more than you'd think."

The protagonist (for clarity I'll call him "Rupert") seems to have everything going for him: a decent job, a condo, the ability to afford Ikea products, etc. Yet he can't sleep. In fact he's had severe insomnia for a year. Materially he's full; spiritually, empty.

Rupert finds temporary solace in attending support groups for people struggling with disabling and life-threatening diseases (significantly, the first support group is for men with testicular cancer). It is only temporary because he finds that the presence of another impostor at these support groups, "Marla" (played magnificently by Helena Bonham Carter) means he once again cannot sleep. Marla serves as a provocation, both in Rupert's attraction to her and his need to move beyond a mere emotional catharsis to physical violence (those who think the point of this film is violence have completely misread it, I think).

Beauty and violence serve as points of transcendence for Rupert. Ultimately beauty wins out, but violence serves as a channel of grace (in a way that I think Flannery O'Connor might well appreciate) and, ultimately, love. This film is about the irrepressibility of the heart and our need for meaning and friendship and love.

Dead Ends

Admittedly, the film is more about what does not satisfy the human heart. There is a veritable laundry list of what does not satisfy our deep human needs. Tyler's "homily" deserves to be quoted in full here (found in full at http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Fight-Club.html, but I've modified it to reflect the dialogue as found in the final edit of the film)

I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived -- an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertisements have us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

We are the middle children of history, man, with no purpose or place.

We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed-off.

Tyler finds that violence does not satisfy his need for total fulfillment. What materialistic society offers is not an adequate answer. He will choose a two fold path: violence that moves from his fellow man to the structures of economic injustice in society, and the path of friendship and love (via Bob and Marla). The former has the louder voice in the film, but the latter wins out.

The Path of Communion

It might sound irreverent to call this a religious film, but I think it is (albeit in a very confused and halting fashion). There are clues sprinkled all around: (1) Rupert's tears on Bob's shirt that mimic Veronica's Veil; (2) the secrecy of the fight club "liturgy": like the early Church, outsiders are not let in ("The first rule of fight club is that you do not talk about fight club"), the fighting occurs in a basement (cf. the catacombs), the doors are closed to the initiated; (3) after Bob's death, the members of Project Mayhem take up a definite liturgical dimension: "His name is Robert Paulson; his name is Robert Paulson..."

It is Bob's death that shakes up Rupert to begin asking serious questions about himself - again, for the first time. Ulimate violence leads to a moment of grace: asking the questions that matter. Bob's death leads Rupert to discover two profound things: first, he is not who he thinks he is (or rather Tyler is not who he seems) and second, his profound love for Marla (he sends here away on a bus for her safety and confesses that her good is more important to him than her presence).

A Happy Ending and Beginning

Rupert's rununciation of holding on to Marla allows him to free himself from his shadow, Tyler. By beginning to love the other, he can finally have affection for his own humanity and emerge from the toxic shadow of Tyler. The form this takes is a kind of dying of self; a kind of 9mm exorcism. ("The kingdom of heaven suffers violence - the violent bear it away"). From this violence to self, the tenderness of a reborn Tyler emerges. Marla takes pity on Tyler and her love overcomes all the dysfunction and abuse.

As civilization is levelled by the bombs, Tyler and Marla hold hands to behold a new beginning. They are now equal: witness the way their clothing matches (Tyler has not pants, only boxer shorts which match Marla's skirt).

But what does this film have to do with education?

Ultimately, this film reminds me that the needs of my students cannot ever be met merely by material satisfaction. That going to college is a worthy goal, but is not sufficient for happiness. It reminds me that education is "always more." That it is openness to reality if it is real education.

What's wrong with American Schools? Anthropology for Starters

The British author G.K. Chesterton was asked (along with other U.K. luminaries) by an English newspaper, "What's wrong with the world?" His response was as follows:

Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely,
GKC

I think what is most atrocious in American education is our lack of regard for the humanity of the student. Often lip service is paid to things like a "student-centered curriculum" or leaving no child behind, but generally the rhetoric about children is a clever way for the adults (teachers, school boards, principals, administrators, governors, presidents, et al) to at once appear concerned about kids while retaining their hold on power.

What is lacking in far too many schools is a concern for the "I" in Chesterton's reply.

We are a homeschooling family and I teach at a public school (a damn good one, I might add). We don't think homeschooling is the right choice for all families, but we do insist that until we find schools that are concerned with our kids integral development, we don't plan on sending our kids to those schools. (The school I teach at is a high school and we do plan on sending at least one of our kids there when he is old enough)

Our culture is saturated with reductions of the human person: The person as economic cog in a vast financial machine. As a family, materialism doesn't interest us - regardless if that materialism flows from the mind of Adam Smith or Karl Marx or any of their progeny. Yet that is what most public schools offer: a "pragmatic" education that focuses on skills without reference to the meaning of life.

The justification for ignoring meaning (except in the occasional literature class) is often "church state separation." Yeah, best to ignore issues that might bring in a hail of lawsuits in our litigious culture. Or not.

Of course even the term "public education" seems to be a farce when public ideas, values, debates, religions, and ideologies are barred from the school house. (When I was crabbier I refused to use the term public education and substituted "government education," but the latter term is also misleading.)

The fundamental problem, as I see it is that we fear asking two or three questions because they could/would upset the status quo. Question #1: What is the human person? Question #2 What is education, really? Question #3: What would an adequate education of the human person require?

There's a can of worms! I have my "answers" to these three questions, but I'd like to hear what others have to say....

New Description; Similar Focus

The description for this blog since its inception read:

This site is devoted to inquiring about how a charter high school can be developed in Colorado that takes into account the human heart. "Sophia Academy" has been proposed because we take it as axiomatic that what is needful in our time, and for the next generation (hence, a high school) is Wisdom (both theoretical and practical). Our name may change in the future, but we will still be concerned with Wisdom and see this is as the sine qua non for Happiness.

The idea for a new school continues to percolate, but the focus is now broadened to include reflections on education in general, with an emphasis on a truly humanistic (in a fuller sense of the term) education. We hope to examine various bright spots in education and engage in critical reflection where there seems to be a reduction of the human person or freedom or the pursuit of truth. As before, our focus will be the high school level.

Education: Prisons and Schools

(This piece was published sometime in February, 2009 for the Denver Post online edition)

Why do our public schools lack so many public ideas? Look outside of school and find a cacophony of ideas, viewpoints and opinions; turn inward and inoffensiveness is found to be the defining characteristic. This absurdity crystallized for me several years ago as my class was exploring some point of Plato at a prison in northeastern Colorado: an inmate remarked that in prison one speaks of neither religion nor politics. “Good gravy!” I exclaimed, “Then what else is there to talk about – sports?”

Sadly, in this respect some public schools resemble penitentiaries. To exclude religion and politics from education means to radically diminish questions about where we came from and where we are going. Our schools should be places where ideas – radical and conservative alike – are argued for and against. They ought not to be places where we facilely equate high test scores with deep thoughts or assume a school is great because many students are taking Advanced Placement courses.

Part of our problem is that we don't know what we mean when we use the term “education.” In The Risk of Education, Luigi Giussani says that “to educate means to help the human soul enter into the totality of the real.” This seems to be a very satisfactory definition, but I will leave the reader to judge how well the typical public, charter, private, parochial or home-school educates to this standard.

Today our schools seem to be driven more by what can't be done than by what needs to be done. Rather than help students to discover reality, in and out of the four walls of the school building, the curriculum is reduced to a kind of lowest common denominator, lawsuit-proof, tapioca pudding: almost tasteless but inoffensive. Here are three fascinating topics that get roundly mistreated:

Sex. It becomes mere plumbing, hygiene and safety. No commitment, no adventure, no meaning. Then there's our human origins. We act as if Darwin's theory is – by itself – an adequate answer to the question, “What is man?” The more interesting metaphysical questions are entirely bracketed.

Lastly, there's God. The less said about God the better. I once had a (high school!) principal who said that because Christmas was rolling around, we teachers had best keep our mouths shut if students asked what we thought Christmas meant. While such overt censorship as this is rare, his comments do reflect a common attitude about God and education.

One can trace the problem of maligning and mismanaging God, man and sex back to a certain incoherence in the First Amendment itself. It speaks of both non-establishment of religion and free exercise of religion. Our schools seem to have taken the pragmatic course of ensuring that nothing gets established or exercised.

While none of us likely to solve the great church-state separation debate, we can surely reflect more deeply on the goals of education. Suppose that all of us – like Giussani – actually believe that young people ought to be introduced to all of reality. How might that change what we ask of schools and the kinds of graduates they turn out?

This is a question that educator Dennis Littky has asked and answered. In The Big Picture: Education is Everyone's Business, he writes, “Over the course of three decades watching kids walk into my schools, I have decided I want them to be lifelong learners, creative, ready to take risks; to have integrity and self-respect; to have moral courage; to truly enjoy their life and their work.”

Like a good disciple of Aristotle, Littky insists that these results are attainable if we keep in mind the kind of student we want to see graduate. It is possible if we help the student discover reality in all of its splendor – without setting limits on what the student might learn. What our schools need is more reality, more humanity, more risk and less ideology.

[Matt McGuiness teaches at a public school in Denver]

Letter from a Denver-area teacher

Here's a letter from a reader who wished to remain anonymous, but asked us to identify her as "Mary."

I teach English at a public charter high school and every year we get a lecture about the supposed separation of church and state as it relates to that peculiar Christian holy day, Christmas. This year's homily was particularly egregious: “If a student asks you what you think, keep your beliefs to yourself” we, the adults, were commanded. Whether I was thinking prudence is the better part of valor or if I was moved by sheer cowardice, I kept my mouth shut, thinking, “Hasn't he heard of the #@*&! 1^st Amendment?” This incident helped clarify for me what's wrong with education in America today.

Among evangelical Protestants the concerns over public education, if we can believe what we read in the papers, tend to be centered around the lack of school prayer and the teaching of evolution as “the answer” to human origins. What ever truth there may be in this old stereotype, this two-fold concern is not mine, nor does it seem to resonate with most of the people I meet. Instead, it is a concern over the violence and superficiality of public schools that gives one pause. We are a homeschooling family because of the limited curiosity of the local schools. We don't want our children's education to be a series of subtractions from reality, but a presentation of the panorama of human thought and experience – a broadening of reason if you will. Ideally, the public schools should be collaborators in the task of education, but at present they are antagonists. Antagonistic to our insistence that education be a complete education. So-called religious neutrality is a big part of the failure of public schools.

A complete education cannot reasonably exclude religion, either in its historical or literary forms, or from its more existential exigences that spontaneously arise from the hearts of students. Talking to a school board member or principal and asking him or her, “How does your district (school) conceive of man? What is the human person and what does he need?” is likely to result in blank stares at best. Professional educators can wax poetic about test scores or the latest methods and strategies for getting students excited about learning, but when it comes to the true protagonist in education, the student, their view is superficial and hollow.

In The Risk of Education Luigi Giussani takes Joseph Jungmann's definition of education as axiomatic when it comes to the legitimate range of pedagogical concerns: education ought to be an introduction to the whole of reality. A moment's comparison with my administrator's narrow (and alleged secular) vision with these two clerics' insistence on an open horizon points out how the ideology of secularism has truncated the curriculum and become (paradoxically) parochial. Yet not all administrators or school districts are this timid, so I am hopeful that more schools will begin taking the humanity of the students seriously.

The rapidly accelerating charter school movement in our state is encouraging more pluralism, but given the track record of the courts concerning religious liberty and public schools, there is a possibility that these taxpayer supported charters may be allowed to promote only academic excellence, not human wholeness. While the voucher movement seems to have stalled, perhaps the charters can take up the cause of meaning-full education reform. It will take school leaders, teachers and parents who are not beholden to the secular status quo, but it just might happen; God willing, it will happen.

Quantity versus Quality?

This is a fascinating file! http://165.224.221.98/surveys/international/intlindicators/pdf/Teachers_working_time.pdf

It gives a comparison of the US and other countries with respect to the number of hours teachers teach. It does not provide statistics of how the students fare in this countries, but it is fairly common knowledge that these countries are (generally) doing better to educate children.

We have, I think, tended to equate hours of teaching with higher student performance. Not to say that students will "automatically" do better the fewer hours (individual) teachers have to teach them, but it does seem in the American system that the so-called accountability is (mis)placed on teachers instead of students.

What teacher at the secondary level hasn't felt exhausted and demoralized at the end of a week, thinking, "I have nothing left!" Our American system seems to resemble more of an assembly line than a school. Undoubtedly, American adminstrators think, "Those lazy Europeans! Those teachers do nothing!" But look at the quality of their "product." Less is more.

Wow, a school that expected more preparation (by giving them the time and breathing space necessary to do it well) and less contact hours per year from teachers. That would be innovative (and so simple).

Upcoming workshop

What is Education?
Saturday, March 15, 2008

Click here to get to the flyer: http://sophiaeducationinstitute.googlepages.com/

Giusanni and Adler I

Two educators I profoundly respect and admire are Luigi Giussani and Mortimer Adler. Adler's contribution to the Great Books movement is profound and helped lead a retrieval of Western thought in English translation; Giusanni's influence began in Italy in the late 1950s and has begun to be felt recently in the US. Both draw substantially from the Western tradition but there is a divergence when comes to understanding that tradition.

Adler's approach (as I understand it) is to present the student with a text of perennial value and help the student to ask deep questions from the dialogue with the text. From this dialogue, the student defines the meaning he or she finds in the text and refines (or recants) this understanding in conversation with others.

Giussani's approach differs inasmuch as he insists on the priority of experience in judging whether something is true or not. Giussani also envisions the educator at a witness to meaning; as one who carries a tradition in his or her person. The teacher is one who proposes a hypothesis of meaning to his or her students. Thus the student is invited to verify whether something is true or false or if judgment must be withheld.

Adler does not seem to admit proposing a particular hypothesis of meaning in the selection of Great Books but something similar to Giussani would seem to be afoot once one has said, "These texts but not these." Can the criteria for selecting books be anything other than the acceptance of a tradition?

Avoiding Presumption: Hiring Teachers

How easy it is to make assumptions about persons and things. For example, in the hiring of teachers it is often presumed that (a) demonstration of certain competencies (a degree, teacher training/certification, teaching experience, et al) translates into (b) a good or suitable teacher. Of course, we have all experienced "qualified" teachers who were dull, uninspiring or otherwise "useless" (with respect to communicating something to their students that was helpful to the students' lives).

How to avoid "misplaced" teachers in the hiring process? For one thing, beyond screening through a simple cover letter and resume, perhaps we could additionally have the prospective teacher write about his or her philosophies of education and of life. If we are faced with a generic ("boilerplate") philosophy of education, there's a red flag; a teacher who thinks that life's meaning is found in mere financial success or other extrinsic rewards is one who should not teach at our school.

In addition we might ask a teacher to read a relatively short article, essay or story and ask, "If this were part of your curriculum, how would you use it? What is important or useful in it to you personally? What elements in it do you think your students will find difficult? How would you help them overcome the difficulties?"

"What kind of man or woman are you?" is far more important than the degree in hand. People with a passion for the destiny of their students -- that's the ticket.

What is Education? Upcoming Workshop in the Denver area

What is Education? Definition and Method. A free workshop

I know that education is not the same thing as schooling, and that, in fact, not much of our education takes place in school.

-Neil Postman

Education isn't explaining reality; it's helping students to enter into reality.

-Julian Carrón

The value of an education is measured by how closely and obediently it follows reality.

-Luigi Giussani

There is a lot of talk today about how to “fix” our schools, how to raise student achievement, and ways to hold teachers “accountable” for results. But what is missing from the current education debate is this: a clear understanding of what education itself consists of and how education ought to help us live a more fully human life.

Whether you are a parent, teacher, professor, homeschooler, or are simply interested in what education is and how it relates to life, please join us for this free workshop:

What is Education? Definition and Method
Part I. Education is an introduction to reality
Part II. Education draws from tradition
Part III. Education is an education in criticism
Part IV. Education requires verification of a hypothesis of meaning

This workshop will draw primarily from Luigi Giussani's The Risk of Education, but will also include reflections from Neil Postman (The End of Education), Christopher Dawson (The Crisis of Western Education) and others.

Location, dates and times are still being finalized.

A common educational tradition creates a common world of thought with common moral and intellectual values and a common inheritance of knowledge, and these are the conditions which make a culture. -Christopher Dawson

Scheduling and Courses

Before you yawn, think about this: Who says that we must have an 180 day year with classes five days per week, each lasting 50 minutes each?

What does the above kind of scheduling and the courses that conform to this schedule (note the inversion here of means and ends!) indicate about the various subjects? To me it indicates that they are all equally (un)important.



A Typical High School's Graduation Requirements.

Here is one from Jefferson County R-1.



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Course of Study Requirements

The following requirements are approved by the Board of Education for high school graduation. Principals have the option to grant waivers in course requirements based upon individual student needs and circumstances in order to deal with unusual cases. Students will be informed of a course waiver through the registration process. A credit is the equivalent of the completion of a full year course. A half-credit is the equivalent of the completion of a semester course.

English Language Arts: Four credits


-Four years of English language arts in high school
-Competence in all eight English language arts standards as demonstrated by classroom performance in the curriculum
-Three credits of required core courses that focus on and assess all eight English language arts standards
-One credit during the senior year based on the English language arts standards as defined by the school



Social Studies: Three credits


-Three years of social studies in high school
-Competence in all social studies standards including geography, civics, history, and economics as demonstrated by classroom performance in the curriculum sequenced by individual schools.

Mathematics: Two credits

-Two years of math in high school
-At least one year of high school math at the level of algebra I or above to demonstrate competence in high school math standards

Science: Two credits

-Two years of science courses in high school
-Competence in standards aligned with earth/space science, life science, and physical science as demonstrated by classroom performance in the curriculum sequenced by individual schools

Physical Education/Health: One-half credit


-One semester of physical education/health in a course aligned with the physical education standards, or
-Participation in a school-sanctioned activity that is aligned with the physical education standards and that receives pre-approval from the principal or designee. Students should confer with their counselor if interested in a waiver.



Fine/Practical Arts: One-half credit


-One semester of course work in one of the following: visual arts, music, technology, business, world language, consumer and family studies, or technical arts, or
-Participation in a school-sanctioned activity that is aligned with the applicable content standards and that receives pre-approval from the principal or designee



Electives: Ten credits


Four years of course work in additional academic core areas and/or school sponsored elective classes to equal ten credits

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Now I have numerous observations that could be made, but I'll limit myself to just a few. One of my observations is that this district (and it is by no means exceptional) has really no idea what it is doing. Seriously. 12 credits required and 10 left wholly to the discretion of the student?



Another is this: We sanction what is important by requiring it. Are the twelve credits equally important? Are there things missing from the "required column" that ought to be there? Should some of the required courses be deemed optional?



Third: need it be this way? Must the high school curriculum be directionless?



A sample curriculum sans electives


This is just a sample. As you will see, there are two things different about this curriculum and the typical high school curriculum. First, the courses do not have the standard 45 or 60 or 70 or 90 minutes of length. Course meeting times are different based upon purposes. The number of students in a given "part" of a course will vary.


Here's the idea: each course consists of some or all of these delivery methods: (1) traditional lecture (15-35 students); (2) seminar (10-15 students); (3) Shared Inquiry discussion group (10-15 students); (4) Debate or outside speaker (whole school); (5) panel discussion (whole school); (6) student-led demonstration of learning (whole school). The time spent in each of these venues would be different (e.g., more time would be spent in a seminar than in a demonstration of learning), but the courses would not fit the traditional time-bound mode.

For example, a literature class over the course of a semester might have 25 hours of lecture; 25 hours of seminar; six hours of debate; 3 hours of Shared Inquiry; 11 hours of DOL; 20 hours of panel discussion.



All courses required

Here's a very rough sketch of what might constitute the required courses. The district and state standards would be exceeded in all required areas without doing violence to the arts -- fine and physical.

Literature: Three credits (but really really five and one half credits, as will be explained below)
1. Composition; 2. Research Report Writing; 3. British Literature; 4. American Literature; 5. Modern Literature; 6. Post-modern Literature; [7. History, ILL; 8. Science, ILL; 9. Math, ILL; 10. Fine Arts, ILL; 11. Physical Arts, ILL].

History: Four credits
1. History: Its Language and Literature (=ILL; These foundational courses explain the philosophical and literary underpinnings of the subject, hence meta-history, meta-science, meta-mathematics, etc. These are dual listed as Literature and the subject matter); 2. Western Civilization I; 3. Western Civilization II; 4. European History; 5. Asian and African History; 6. American Government; 7. U.S. History I; 8. U.S. History II.

Science: Three credits
1. Science, ILL; 2. Technology and Society; 3. Biology; 4. Chemistry; 5. Physics; 6. Earth Science

Mathematics: Four credits
1. Math, ILL; 2. Algebra I; 3. Algebra II; 4. Geometry; 5. Pre-calculus; 6. Calculus; 7. Statistics; 8. Economics.

Fine Arts: Three credits
1. Fine Arts, ILL; 2. Art Appreciation; 3. Music I; 4. Music II; 5. Sculpture; 6. Post-modern Music and Art.

Physical Arts: Three credits
1. Physical Arts, ILL; 2. Basic Physical Fitness; 3. Yoga; 4. Orienteering; 5. Track; 6. Self-defense.

Philosophy: Three credits
1. Introduction to Philosophy; 2. Greek Philosophy; 3. Christian/Medieval Philosophy; 4. Eastern Philosophy; 5. Modern Philosophy; 6. Existentialism/Post-modern Philosophy.

Somewhere to be determined: One credit
1. School and Society, ILL (lower division); 2. Senior Thesis and Presentation (upper division).

Cultivating Controversy II

Notes on a curriculum unafraid of controversy

What would be included in a high school curriculum that was at once juridically responsible and intellectually far-reaching?

I can think of no better way to preface my remarks than to quote from G.K. Chesterton's Heretics:

When the old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says. The former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees inquiry as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating. Never has there been so little discussion about the nature of men as now, when, for the first time, any one can discuss it. The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/heret11.txt.

Turning loose "the hounds of inquiry" would seem to be the kind of education that is needed in our time. With respect to a juridically responsible education, a bit more research must be done. Nevertheless, here are some topics that an interesting high school ought to approach:

• The nature of the universe
• God (Eastern and Western views)
• Science (what it can tell us and what it cannot)
• Theology (what it can tell us and what it cannot)
• The nature of the human person (from conception to death; good and evil; immortality; etc.)
• What makes the difference between great art, music, literature, or any other subject and lousy art, music, literature, etc?
• What it means to live a good life (beyond economic utility)
• How to judge reality and live a good life

Naturally, we will include "required" courses, but there seems to be no reason to avoid questions that actually mean something. How this might translate into specific courses and structure of the school is still to be determined.

Cultivating Controversy I

"Thou shalt not offend"
In some school districts this would seem to be the eleventh commandment. School boards have a diverse clientele to keep happy, so avoiding controversy seems to be a way to "give the people what they want." So a district may offer a curriculum that is said to be "academically rigorous" but one that also fails to address controversial issues or questions in a vigorous way. Sometimes topics are not discussed out of ignorance. More often though, the strategy of "avoidance" is employed by either banning certain discussions or, more commonly, simply avoiding speaking their names. These issues and subjects (a la The Village) become "those we don't speak of."

Those we don't speak of
God, human nature, death, marriage, sex (unless it is about plumbing or avoiding -- physical and physical alone! -- consequences), politics, and, my personal favorite, the tasks of education. All of these "get discussed" on various occasions but they are generally avoided. They are not "part of the curriculum" as a whole. Put another way, most education is broad, shallow and lukewarm.

Cause and effect
Another word for lukewarm is mediocre. Subtract controversy from education and not much is left. In fact, if you curtail discussions of religion and/or politics, what is left? Sports? (How odd that there are more cases of parental violence over their children's sporting events: parents killing each other or coaches or referees!). I don't know of one can "scientifically" correlate "controversy avoidance" and "functional idiocy" (by a functional idiot I mean the high school graduate whose human aspirations don't go beyond sex, drugs and/or video games), but it would seem there is a connection. After all, if one asks stupid or vague questions, one can expect sub-standard answers.

Not asking the questions
Recently I overheard an administrator tell her teachers that because Christmas was coming up, they should avoid telling students their religious views. What was interesting to me was not only what was said, but what was left unsaid. She is surely on shaky constitutional ground to suggest that teachers lose all "free exercise" protections of the 1st Amendment when they enter the classroom, and that this personal (if temporary!) agnosticism is (somehow) necessary to ensure a non-establishment of religion at the school. What her comments suggested was that religion is off-limits: don't share your views. This tactic of soft intimidation might work on young educators, but anyone who has read even a few Supreme Court cases on religion in the schools can tell you that while the public school cannot be a place of "proselytizing," religious views are not forbidden, nor is the discussion of real existing religions. If a discussion leads to the Gulf War and Christianity and Islam and a student asks, "Miss, what do you believe?" -- must you whip out a roll of duct tape to ensure your "religious ideas" don't seep out? By no means. It is wholly constitutional to tell students what you think or to refuse to tell them. If it weren't, why draw the line at religion? Why not avoid sex, marriage, politics? In short, the teacher would become a mere appendage of the (wholly) secular State, whose metaphysical views were masked by a claim of "religious neutrality." Thank God it hasn't come to that.

A consequence
But the cumulative effect of administrative over-reactions and/or muddled thinking seem to have led to a regime of "don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to controversial questions. Another generation raised without being challenged to look at all aspects of life. Another generation offered inadequate answers to the yearning of their hearts. If students don't engage in meaningful questions in a civil and curious way early in life, how will they face life as adults? Just like the majority of Americans: plugged into TV and satisfied to rely on the secondhand opinion of the "experts."

The mystery of the incurious
A question for another time is, Why are so many so-called educators seemingly satisfied to not help their students ask deep and meaningful questions about life?