reading response: schooling as factory

[response paper - the Gatto reading is online and extremely interesting, even essential in my opinion: The Underground History of American Education, Chapter 7--I'll post more about it]

This week’s readings are quite grim in their discussion of the ineffectiveness and inhumanity of many current school practices; yet they are also extremely illuminating, in that they help explain why the reality of U.S. public schooling bears so little resemblance to the “Goals2000” rhetoric, which is largely consistent with ideals of democracy and human values.

Very little observation is needed to conclude that U.S. schools do much more to rationalize inequality than to eradicate it. I am one of those who believe that meritocracy is a myth—an effectively hegemonic myth in that it justifies gross inequality while shaming and subduing the majority who supposedly “failed” to take advantage of their theoretically “equal” opportunity. However, until now I was not aware of the actual historical process by which these school systems had been initially imagined and constructed, nor of the overtly anti-democratic principles on which they were founded. The Gatto and Darling-Hammond readings, in particular, clarify chillingly how the current school system came to be based on inhuman principles of obedience, efficiency, compliance, conformity and “mass production.”

To me, the “human capital” conceptualization discussed in the Spring reading is the modern articulation of this same inhumanity. Thinking of schools as a production process in which money is invested with the hope of financial return is absolutely antithetical both to democracy and to human values. Worse still is the idea that businesses should shape curricula or indeed should come anywhere near schools. Corporate executives must prioritize the goal of making as much money as possible for the company—if they do not, they should be removed from their position by the board of directors, who are entrusted by stockholders with finding the executives who will make as much money as possible for the company. People whose primary goal is private profit have interests that are at best irrelevant, and at worst highly detrimental, to the interests of children in school.

what precisely is the problem with adolescence? - response to Steinberg & Eccles

[The comments of the instructor are inserted as footnotes; an email exchange follows]

"Young people are the solution, not the problem," reads a t-shirt that we stock at the local bookstore co-operative. As Steinberg notes, this idea does not seem to be very prevalent in U.S. society (Steinberg 2002, p. 16). Nonetheless, the t-shirt sells well: people of all ages pounce on it excitedly, commenting how pleased they are to find a rare positive slogan about youth.

Steinberg describes in some detail the variety of negative stereotypes that constantly re-appear in media depictions of adolescents: delinquents, hormone-driven idiots, or tortured misfits (ibid, p. 16). He comments that perhaps young people are portrayed this way because adults want to see them as different, for a variety of economic and/or social reasons (ibid, p. 17-18). Although he does not elaborate on a detailed refutation of these ideas, he implies that we will not finish the book with these stereotypes intact. Indeed, these stereotypes bear little resemblance to my own experience.

As Steinberg notes, adolescents can be very mature in one area while seeming childish in another (ibid, p. 3). When I think about my experience with middle school students (as a tutor and summer-camp counselor while I was in college) and high school students (volunteering at Shabazz for the past year), it seems to me that they exhibit this variability more than any other defining characteristic. One individual can seem very mature in one way, or at one time, and very immature in another way or at another time.

Especially with middle-schoolers, I felt that one of the things they needed from me was a sense of consistency, a solid and predictable sounding board against which they could play out their changing identities and emotions. It seemed to me that they needed to feel safe and loved, so that they could push limits and explore new territory. They still needed structure, in the sense of order and routine and rules, even if only to question and challenge and evaluate that structure. Although they seem to be demanding liberation from the structure, in middle school they are not quite ready for that, and indeed many would be lost if their demands for complete independence were suddenly fully realized. [note 1]

In the context of the Eccles reading, I wonder—what is the impact of the above-mentioned negative stereotypes on adults’ ability to be solid and safe for children, to maintain the balance between structure and growing autonomy? The Eccles article implies two answers to this question. First, Eccles et al report that seventh-grade teachers tend to have less confidence in their efficacy as teachers and concurrently seem to spend a lot of time trying to “maintain order” in the classroom (Eccles et al.1993, p. 95). Could it be that this lack of confidence is related to a perception that they are facing down a pack of wild, uncontrollable delinquents or some other such negative concept? [note 2]This is particularly unfortunate when we see what a large impact this lack of confidence has on the students’ confidence and motivation levels (ibid, p. 95).

Second, Eccles et al report that as adolescents develop a sense of autonomy, it benefits them psychologically to have more opportunities to be involved in decision-making both in school and at home. At the same time, Eccles reports that decision-making opportunities for children actually seem to decrease right at this crucial time (Eccles 1993, pp. 96-8). Could this also be, in part, due to the negative stereotypes outlined by Steinberg? Certainly, from my own observation, parents and teachers seem inclined to behave as though adolescents are extremely dangerous, and/or that they are extremely vulnerable to other dangerous adolescents in their environment. Are negative media stereotypes causing parents and teachers to clamp down in fear, precisely when they should be providing the kind of steady, supportive, open framework that students need in order to safely experiment with their developing identities? [note 3]

In closing I recall listening to a fragment of a speech on the radio some years ago, when I lived in Brooklyn, New York. The speaker seemed to be an older African-American pastor or educator talking about African-American youth in New York City. One of his strongest and most pleading messages was that African-American adults should not believe the media stereotypes about the next generation, but instead should reach out and try to form meaningful connections with younger people. He told how he had, several years previously, mustered the courage to just walk up and introduce himself to a group of young men hanging out in his neighborhood. He had been surprised, even shocked, by their eagerness for a mentor and guide, and had formed a strong and positive relationship with the young men. This was the first time it had occurred to me that people could be afraid, not only of other people’s children, but of their own. What a tragedy if media stereotypes can succeed in driving us away from our children right when they need us most.

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Instructor's Notes

Note 1:
Nice summary of the reading and connection with your own experience. [back to text]

Note 2:
Excellent question--how much of this change in structure is due to teachers’ personal perceptions/stereotypes/lack of informationa about adolescent development versus administrative structures and school district mandates and expectations for teachers? Eccles et al. don’t address WHY there exists a shift in teachers’ confidence in their teaching abilities.[back to text]

Note 3:
Another good question. I also wonder if parents and teachers inherently desire more structure and less autonomy for adolescents or if they are reacting to the adolescents themselves--given the rapidity of the pubertal, social, and cognitive changes during this age, might a normal reaction from adults be “fear” and the desire to maintain the child-like qualities parents and teachers are used to or expect? Or perhaps adults and authority figures realize that adolescents will be exploring their growing selves and in attempts to curb negative outcomes, overcompensate by highly structuring adolescent lives? We need to be careful in making cause and effect statements in development for individuals and the environment often have reciprocating effects on each other. [back to text]

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[email back to instructor]

Date: 2/2/03 9:16 pm

Thanks for your comments. I just wanted to respond briefly to one...

"We need to be careful in making cause and effect statements in development for individuals and the environment often have reciprocating effects on each other."

I agree completely, and I did feel that Eccles et al often made these types of connections with insufficient data. There is a lot of discussion of the differences between seventh- and sixth-grade teachers (less caring, less confidence, less challenge to students' higher-order thinking skills), but Eccles doesn't mention what I think is the most obvious possible reason for this--the fact that subject-area teachers are more likely to have "fallen into" their career because they like their subject area and aren't sure what to do with this interest, whereas the general-education teachers in elementary school are less likely to have gone into teaching because they like a specific subject and more likely to have done so because they like students.

Also, when they talk about the mismatch between "should you have input into decisions" and "do you," and then go on to say that students who perceive the greatest mismatch also have the greatest problems, this also seems to me like a chicken-and-egg problem (as in, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"). One could imagine a student who is, for personal reasons (personal trauma, substance use, mental illness, anything), inclined to rebel, act out, resent authority etc.--such a student will naturally identify any restriction on their behavior as too much, will say they should be able to do whatever they want and that they are unfairly restricted, etc. In other words, the problems might cause the desire for more freedom from restrictions, rather than the restriction of freedom causing the problems. And, on the contrary, if a student is mellow, well-adjusted, and trustworthy to begin with, that student might receive more freedom (or have a more accurate view of his/her own need for structure) and consequently feel that the amount of input s/he has into decisions is appropriate. Of course, one can reasonably imagine scenarios illustrating either direction of causal relationship. Eccles et al do not advance solid evidence that the causality is more in one direction than the other, at least as far as I can see (I realize I have infinitely less training and information than you or Eccles & co so I am happy to be corrected if I'm overlooking anything).

book excerpt: Gatto on Prussian origins of US system

This blew my mind the first time I read it. The best part is, it's all online, so you can go read the rest of the chapter or the rest of the book.


Chapter 7: The Land of Frankenstein

The particular utopia American believers chose to bring to the schoolhouse was Prussian.
...
[A]n immortal speech, the "Address to the German Nation" by the philosopher Fichte [was] one of the influential documents of modern history leading directly to the first workable compulsion schools in the West.
...
In no uncertain terms Fichte told Prussia the party was over. Children would have to be disciplined through a new form of universal conditioning. They could no longer be trusted to their parents....Through forced schooling, everyone would learn that "work makes free," and working for the State, even laying down one’s life to its commands, was the greatest freedom of all. Here in the genius of semantic redefinition lay the power to cloud men’s minds...
...
The Prussian mind...held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.

The area of individual volition for commoners was severely foreclosed by Prussian psychological training procedures drawn from the experience of animal husbandry and equestrian training, and also taken from past military experience. Much later, in our own time, the techniques of these assorted crafts and sullen arts became "discoveries" in the pedagogical pseudoscience of psychological behaviorism.

Prussian schools delivered everything they promised. Every important matter could now be confidently worked out in advance by leading families and institutional heads because well-schooled masses would concur with a minimum of opposition.

To see the footnotes and to learn how this idea was adopted and developed in the US, go to Gatto's website and read the rest... scary eh!

inclusion: my introduction

[reflection paper written in response to a video about a student, Joselyn, with multiple disabilities, making friends and spending time with them. The reflection prompt question is...]

What [about the video] makes you aware of your own prejudices?

The video and the discussion that followed created a dramatic change in my thinking. I am embarrassed to admit that while watching the video, I could not stop thinking that Joselyn’s friends must be helping her due to their own mental “issues” of some kind. “She’s a dress-up doll for them,” I concluded harshly; “they just want to look or feel benevolent.” It was only during the small-group discussion afterward that my assumptions were really challenged and I saw that my judgments were absolutely, completely unsupported by the material in the video.

After this realization, I was stunned to retrace the way my mind had worked while watching the video. Every piece of information had been re-interpreted to fit with my pre-conceived notions about helping and being helped. For example, when Joselyn’s friends described how they redecorated her room, I thought that they must have "control issues"—why else would they just take over her room like that? The other students in my small-group discussion, however, pointed out that Joselyn seemed capable of somehow indicating what she liked and what she didn’t. They conjectured that her friends probably showed her different items so that she could choose which ones she wanted for her room. “We’re just not used to seeing relationships like this,” one of the women in my group pointed out.

This experience suddenly illuminated the intellectual understanding I had begun to form after reading the first few articles in the course reader. While reading, I had already become intrigued by the possibilities of inclusion as a way of individualizing the whole process of education—a way to create a genuine community instead of a hierarchy of “successes” and “failures.” But only after seeing my own bias did I begin to understand how true inclusion could transform society. A whole generation of children seeing themselves as equals? Is it possible?

archive links

Here is a list of all my posts on this blog, arranged by topic.

Some blogging services do this automatically. At the moment I have to do it by hand.

Social Studies

United States

• League of the Five Nations (aka Iroquois Confederacy or League of the Haudenosaunee)—links to various materials, including a summary of the European invasion as it may have been seen from eastern North America.
• Collections of key documents in US history--Declaration of Independence, Colonial Charters, and more modern stuff too
• Great Railroad War - 1877, Pittsburgh
  
• Draft riots- 1863, NYC (& response to "Gangs of New York" film)
  

World

• Lebanon - some history & other links, for help understanding the current crisis (Feb-March 2005)
  
• Nepal - again, links etc. for help in understanding the current crisis (Feb-March 2005)
  

Skills

• Thinking skills: inductive & deductive reasoning; logical fallacies

Ideas for teaching

• How writing good (measurable) objectives makes it easy to create assignments and assessments (Wong & Wong)
• How to structure cooperative learning to promote higher-order thinking skills and raise the achievement of ALL students (summary of Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 1994 - see also under "summaries, responses & reviews" for more detailed links)
• How to integrate presentation and discussion of current events?
• How to clarify the point of homework assignments?
  
• List of procedures needed for a smooth-running classroom
  
• making "the life of the mind" more accessible to students (Swiger reviews Graff)
  
• helping students understand the point of what they are doing, using a"toolbox" essential skills
  

Why does school suck so much?

Reflections:

• my early reactions to observing in an enormous high school
  
• grading: my first rush job
  
• What precisely are the problems of adolescence? - reading response (Steinberg & Eccles)

Racism

Research:

• Why are African-Americans disproportionately placed in "special ed"? - my first attempt to synthesize my reading and research
  
• Wisconsin's abysmal graduation rate
  
• [wrong] student tasered at local high school
  
• know your enemy: white supremacist "history"
  
• Teaching Tolerance - a great organization, with many valuable teaching resourcs--for FREE!

Reflections:

• Racism & White Privilege - reflections on McIntosh, Ferguson, Spring
  
• Unthinking teacher 1 - "I'm gonna give you a rope!"
  
• racism & discipline - self-analysis
  
• Blackness in pictures: representation of "poverty" and "neediness" in school support efforts
  

Inclusion

Research:

• Bibliography of research that supports inclusion
  
• Notes from a lecture on the history of education for people with disabilities
  
• table comparing "mainstreaming" with "inclusion" as pedagogical approaches

Reflections:

• Teaching English Language Learners - lengthy synthesis of my research and reflection
  

Schoolwork - reflections:

• my first encounter with inclusion
  
• thoughts after a history lecture
  
• playing devil's advocate
  
• is inclusion meant to be 100% of the time with 100% of peers?
  

General musings on teaching

• Making it too easy, also known as "effective teaching"
  
• Survival skills
  
• What have I learned from my second student teaching experience? - part 1
  
• Teaching & Buddhism 1 - Maitri
  
• Teaching & Buddhism 2 - letting go of trying to control everything and know everything!
  
• Psychological problems in the classroom: Rescuing
  
• "discipline" is not the opposite of "respect"

Summaries, reviews & responses

(Note: Most of these are also cross-listed under the relevant topic)

• Underground History of American Education, Chapter Seven, by John Taylor Gatto:
  · < Excerpts > · < Response > · < More recent response > ·
  
• Summary of Cooperative Learning in the Classroom, by Johnson, Johnson & Holubec (1994):
  · < Introduction > · < Overview > ·
• Summary of The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher, by Wong & Wong (2004):
  · < writing clear & measurable objectives > ·
• Response to "Gangs of New York" film (& some on Draft Riots of 1863 (NYC))
  
• Swiger reviews Graff on making "the life of the mind" more accessible to students (in Radical Teacher #71) - summary & response
  

Schoolwork - reflective responses to readings:

• McIntosh, Ferguson, Spring - Racism & White Privilege
• Steinberg & Eccles - What are the "problems of adolescence"?