The American Lie

Is it not true that, like all good Horatio Alger novels, the only thing standing in the way of unlimited success for each individual is a little initiative and a whole lot of elbow grease (whatever that is)?

Though the collective American consciousness holds firmly to the optimistic “American Dream” that initiative and hard work are the only ingredients needed for unlimited social mobility, the true reality is that every individual is constrained by numerous factors outside of his or her control that dictate economic and social outcomes. Think about your own life for a moment. There is a good chance you, along with every other person in our class, was dealt a pretty decent hand of privilege cards (likely middle to high class, with educated parents, and a cute dog named skip). What if you had been born the child of newly arrived illegal immigrant parents with little schooling, no advantageous social connections, and with no savings? Would it be likely that you would be part of this class and participating in this blog about social stratification and education? Doubtful (though there are always extraordinary exceptions to every generalized rule, let us focus on the rule and not the exception).

The point is that no matter how “fair,” “equal,” and “democratic” we believe America to be, there exists a well-defined social & economic hierarchy that is very difficult to advance in (there have been numerous studies that have reported the limited occurrences of true social mobility). And if you are like me, after this week’s readings you have now been awaken to the chilling reality that the great “democratic” American educational system is in fact one of the primary forces that preserve this inherently unequal and undemocratic structure in America.

As one known for his verbosity, rather than dwell on each of the six theories discussed in the readings, I want to focus on Bourdieu’s “Cultural and Social Reproduction Theory” and how it relates directly to assessment and equity.

Bourdieu’s piece was hard to penetrate, yet extremely enlightening. He argues, in a nutshell, that schools fail students from minority cultures and preserve structural inequality because (1) they function in line with the values and dispositions of the dominant culture, placing minority students at a severe disadvantage (p. 493-94), and (2) the system determines aspirations, which translates for the dominant culture as success and for the minority culture as failure (p. 495-496). Bourdieu, however, offers a useful solution. He argues that schools and educators must explicitly transmit the skills and dispositions needed to succeed in the dominant culture centered institution (p. 494). The key, for Bourdieu, is making visible the invisible expectations of the educational system.

The Practical Modern Debates:

1. High-Stakes Testing.

In brief, one of the strongest arguments against high-stakes testing is that they are biased towards the dominant culture, and thus necessarily handicap individuals not in line with dominant culture. Studies have shown that high-stakes tests often test more accurately for cultural capital than intellectual capital, thereby limiting educational mobility and preserving the status quo.

2. Narrowing the Achievement Gap.

Much of the debate concerning the achievement gap has focused on the perceived deficiencies in individual students and their cultures, thus placing the blame directly on the students for their failure. Though helpful in some ways, this outlook ignores the dramatic roles that schools play in contributing to the failure of minority students. The readings seem to lend viewing minority divergent from the dominant culture as different rather than deficient, and thus placing on educators the responsibility of explicitly equipping students with the skills and dispositions needed to succeed in the dominant culture.

Questions to think about and discuss.

1. Do you agree with the authors that educational systems inconspicuously reproduce social and economic classes? Defend your answer.
2. What implicit values, skills, and dispositions are needed in order to succeed in the American educational system? Why are these necessary and not others? Provide specific examples of how minority cultures differ in regards to the values, skills, and dispositions necessary to succeed in school. How can schools and educators explicitly teach these values, skills, and dispositions in order to promote minority student achievement?
3. Is it possible to create a standardized test that is not culturally biased? If so, how? If not, what can be done to increase the equity of the test for members of minority cultures?
4. Can you identify any other modern educational debates and/or issues that these readings apply to?

Open Topic: Alternative Education?

Given our discussion of Dewey last week, the readings we have studied regarding democracy and education, and the question I had about home schooling, I wanted to look into a few alternatives to the public school system currently in place. Since there are a number of issues surrounding any sort of alternative, I have focused on two alternatives: home school and one non-traditional school. I realize that there are other forms of alternative education, including charter schools, schools set up specifically for disruptive children, military schools, art schools, and even special education. “Alternative education” is really a term to mean anything that isn’t traditional. What I want to focus on here is “alternative education” that is relatively comparable to a public school, specifically RMSEL (to be defined later).

1. Home school: Obviously, home school is one alternative to the public school system that does not require the same monetary investment needed to send a child to a private school with high tuition. Home school lacks many of the ideals of both Dewey and James Bryant Conant since it places children in a very isolated environment in order to complete their education. However, home schooling also has the potential to open doors that public education cannot. Robert Reinhold’s article “Class Struggle” placed great emphasis on the debate surrounding a new series of social studies texts. The new textbooks are greatly needed to address the diversity of American society, yet how can everybody be pleased? Even though there was much debate surrounding the new textbooks, “critics and admirers alike agree that the new books are superior to the soporific history texts used by generations of American students” (Reinhold, pg 89). I mention this in the section I’ve devoted to home schooling because, although parents who home school are required to teach certain subjects based on a state’s specific policies, there is no assigned textbook. This means that parents have the opportunity to present the whole story to their children/pupils, without worrying about whether a book is going to offend anyone. The potential is great, yet whether it is fully realized is hard to judge. That depends on the parents’ values, and what the parents want to teach their children. Is it likely that every parent who home schools will choose reading materials that present a diverse point of view of history, social morals, or religion, so that a child can put the pieces of the puzzle together for him/herself?

The other potential in home schooling is the ability to teach to the child. What I mean by this is that a curriculum can be entirely structured for a child’s specific learning style without being tied by NCLB standards, and there is greater potential to take the child out into the “real world” for learning purposes. Lisa Rivero put it nicely: “John Dewey's contributions to ideas of progressive education were monumental, but what has struck me most strongly in the context of home schooling is his emphasis on the child's experience and his call to understand the roles of subject matter and organization within rather than apart from that experience. If we watch our children, we see how their experience of the world is both rich in content and progressively structured from within” (http://www.besthomeschooling.org/articles/lisa_rivero.html).

The problem, however, lies in the environment. Home schools can isolate children if the parents aren’t part of a home schooling network. Thus, Dewey’s concept of teaching children in a manner that can be incorporated into real life falls to the wayside when the child is not “socialized”.

2. Alternative Education: The Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning, or RMSEL, is a public K-12 school in Denver, CO, that falls under the category of “alternative education”. Some jokingly call it the “hippy school”, or “hippy high” for the high school portion, mainly because of the strong association with the Outward Bound program. The mission of the school can be found on their website http://www.rmsel.org/ , but I would like to point out the strong focus on “engaging learning”. The students learn through everyday situations, in a very Dewey-esque manner. Children learn by being taken out into the world, and little time is devoted to classroom learning. However, the actual education that is received by the students is mocked by the very graduates themselves. I asked a graduate of RMSEL what he learned, and he responded: “nothing. I don’t even know basic algebra, but I know how to keep from getting lost in Mexico” (Xander Likes, class of 2003). This particular student even decided to take summer classes after graduation to better prepare him for a college education that he decided not to pursue out of fear. The transfer rate is also high, because parents fear their child’s lack of basic math, science, and history will prevent them from getting into college (thanks to Laura Lisk, mother of a middle-school transfer). Dewey’s ideas are so strongly incorporated into this school, where the children are engaged and learn in life situations as opposed to sitting in class, yet somehow the perception is that basic expectations of knowledge that are still important are ignored. Actual statistics show that the average ACT score of a RMSEL student is higher than the state average, so the knowledge is there. Why is it that students and parents alike don’t feel that the school provides an appropriate education?


3: Bringing the two together: Academics and Socialization: John L. Rury described high school life from a social point of view in his article “Democracy’s High School? Social Change and American Secondary Education in the Post-Conant Era”. What struck me in particular was his description of the students’ desire for self-expression. “These [cultural] developments were abetted by a general movement to expand students’ rights in high schools across the country. In 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, wherein it ruled that a suspension of two students for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War represented a violation of their First Amendment rights (Zirkel, 1999). Tinker set off a wave of litigation that soon broadened the definition of self-expression to include everything from dress to hairstyles,…” (Rury, pg 315-316). In the context of using school to promote democracy, which has been studied in many of our readings thus far, Rury’s description of the student seems to portray a success in the education system. Since democracy is a goal of education, and is considered an important aspect of everyday American life, can we assume that promoting democracy in schools is a something that Dewey himself would approve? If so, then home schooling has another problem, since “democracy demands diversity and requires deliberation and discussion to flourish” (Rury, 309). Even Conant felt that a diverse class that promotes debate over current issues was necessary to promote democracy (Rury, pg 308). At the same time, however, “democracy requires discipline in addition to individual or group expression and a willingness to abide by …conventions that are collectively determined” (Rury, 317). Both concepts of democracy are in conflict with the education systems promoted by home schooling and by RMSEL. Is there a way to combine the benefits of home school and RMSEL to create a school that is Deweyan and provides students with proper knowledge to succeed in life?

Some websites that you might find interesting in the study of alternative education:
http://www.aaengroup.com/about.htm
http://www.urban.org/publications/411283.html
http://www.besthomeschooling.org/
http://www.edreform.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=section&pSectionID=5

-Michelle M. B. Lilly

Melting Pot

Most Americans value and take pride in our melting pot of cultures, ethnicities, races and religions. American culture is formed from the assimilation of the diverse ideals and beliefs from these different groups. Our readings this week bring out the dilemmas of our pluralistic society. The articles tackle the issues of the distance an individual or group takes our freedoms in the religious, political or racial sectors and poses the question: Do we decide on a common standard of freedom to apply in the educational system and if so, how much of a standard are we able to enforce?

Amy Gutmann believes that our pluralist nation should find a common thread and focus that commonness on a democracy in education that demands respect of others’ beliefs and allows us to critically reflect on our own culture. She desires to find the one, morally best way of coping” ( 2) with our differences in order to value democracy. A. Wolfe agrees with Gutmann that we should have a “guided pluralism” and that those people that value virtue should give into those that value freedom. He also mentions another scholar names Rosenblum and her contrasting idea of a “hands-off” behavior to pluralism. She states that any private association (religious schools, churches, minority groups etc) should continue to function on its own. According to Rosenblum, these associations will still provide moral benefits. With these differing views of how to handle pluralism, I have to ask, “Which method will best handle our current diverse society? Should we try to maintain a common standard or should we enact a sort of laissez- faire ideology and agree to disagree without any regulatory involvement?

These issues of diversity and questions of how to handle it lead us to the discussions I found interesting ( and controversial) in Steele’s article. Like Guttman who believes that a “state of individuals” cannot form a cohesive path to mutual respect, Steele breaches the idea of “collective entitlement”. He sees that some strives for diversity from certain groups (such as women and African-Americans) have lead to a sense on entitlement which will ultimately result in a feeling of sovereignty, autonomy and eventually inequality and exclusion. I have difficulty tackling this issue. Like Steele, I agree with the notion of appreciating diversity but also question the benefits of an exclusionary, entitled view without any respect for the opinion of others. If equality is what all groups strive for, how far is too far to take our notion of freedom? If we end up segregating ourselves (like in the example of women’s studies department and ethnic dorms), should we try to re-integrate and how do we turn 180 degrees and re-integrate to form a collective yet diverse society?

I want to shift a little from these questions to the background of diversity in schools. Rury’s article focuses on the fact that a democracy in schools must “demand diversity and require deliberation and discussion to flourish”( 309). He argues that in our current culture, ensuring diversity in a high school is hard to maintain. His factors of youth culture and the increase of suburbia attribute to the change in views of democracy in schools. His notions on the effects of youth culture in schools and society remind me of a recent episode of “Mad Men” ( see link below). “Mad Men is a show about an advertising agency set in the 1960s which depicts the current issues, dilemmas, and behavior common during this decade. The advertisers realize the growing strength of the youth culture and want to “capture the attention of youth” in their coffee commercials. The youth brought in to help in this endeavor are quoted as saying, “We don’t want to be told how to live and act. We just want to be… We want to feel.” The strength and appreciation of this culture dominates society in the 60s. On the whole, isn’t it still this way today? Are schools adjusting to the youth culture in their curriculum and structure?
On Rury’s topic of the rise of suburbia and the resulting racial segregation, does our nation still purposefully segregate neighborhoods along the lines of ethnicity and race? Or, are the neighborhoods separated solely by class, like a caste system? Do our lending laws help in this regard? I hope and have a feeling that the questions asked in the weekly articles and the blog will lead to an animated discussion.

Related sites:

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/
http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/lending/index.cfm Fair Lending
http://138.23.124.165/exhibitions/suburbia/# Great Suburbia pictures
http://www.cpyu.org/ Site for parents on youth culture

EdWeek live chat

Hi everybody,

I know that most of you already subscribe to EdWeek and get their, ahem, frequent e-mail updates, but I wanted to bring this to the class attention:

This week's live chat: Adding More Time for Learning

The chat will take place on Wednesday, September 24, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., Eastern time, and EdWeek is currently accepting questions for the chat.

It looks like the discussion will relate directly to what we discussed in our "ideal classroom" exercise, particularly the issues surrounding year-round schooling. It also might touch on some of the things we discussed in the comments for last week's blog post.

See you all tomorrow night at the Board meeting!

The School and Today's Society

“From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while, on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning at school.” (Dewey 1900)

How do we connect school and the “real world”? Is that even a valid endeavor? How much of learning must be applicable and how much should learning have value in and of itself? I don’t think Dewey is arguing against the intrinsic value of knowledge but suggesting that connecting information to experience is an effective way to learn. But maybe not. Maybe he is only advocating the kind of education that is practical for everyday life.

“Why hasn’t Dewey’s influence as an educator been as widespread and enduring as he and others had initially hoped it would be? Why haven’t more of his ideas been put into practice?” (Jackson 1990)

Jackson posed this question in 1990, when this edition of The School and Society was published. I would like to ask it again about today’s school system: To what extent are Dewey’s ideas used in today’s schools? Are they applicable? Could they be used more? What would that look like?

I found a few sites about Dewey and today’s schools:
The New Progressivism Is Here

Dewey’s Laboratory School in Chicago
The John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, New York

and Envision Schools in California, which “adopt project-based teaching, helping to engage and motivate students by making their course work relevant to the ‘real world’”

I thought Chapter 6, or “The Black Public High School and the Reproduction of Caste in the Urban South, 1880 – 1935,” was interesting in light of Dewey. What is the distinction between Dewey’s insistence on occupation in the classroom, for instance the children working with textiles, and the industrial training proposed by white southerners in an attempt to keep blacks “in their place”? Is education, or the withholding of it, still used as a means of control today?

Both Chapters 5 and 6 of The Education of Blacks in the South, like Chapter 1 in last week’s reading, focused on the efforts of African-Americans to provide quality education for their children, despite much opposition.

“Rural black southerners, living in a cash-short economy and virtually disfranchised by public school authorities, paid from their limited resources a tremendous private cost for their ‘public’ education.” (Anderson 1988)

“Rural blacks were forced to take from their meager incomes and contribute money to the construction and maintenance of public schools for black children because southern state and local governments refused to accept responsibility for black public education.” (Anderson 1988)

Despite the efforts of white Southerners, including the local and state governments, to withhold access to quality education for black children and despite the poverty in which they themselves were living, black southerners united to build and support thousands of schools (though many were eventually defeated by Great Depression and lack of financial support). The African-Americans of that time realized that they had to take control of their education. They couldn’t rely on the government to provide education for them; if they didn’t do it themselves, no one would.

The black southerners were able to accomplish so much with so little because they put education first. If they didn’t have money, they donated time or building materials. Anderson mentioned one man who mortgaged his house to fund the completion of the school, and he didn’t even have children!

How much of the education problem in America is due to bad policy? How much can we blame on the government? And how much is the result of society simply not caring? I think this is an issue that has been discussed to some length in earlier blog comments, but it’s such a big issue, especially in light of this week’s reading. How do we get people to care about education?

In Education Week: How Cincinnati Turned Its Schools Around, Joe Nathan discusses how the improvement of the Cincinnati school system, which, “as of 2007, eliminated the gap between African-American and white students in graduation rates” (his emphasis). This was accomplished, in part, because the school district forged partnerships with corporations, universities, and foundations. One of these was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/UnitedStates/Education/), whose support of education reminded me of the Julius Rosenwald Fund discussed in the Anderson reading. The involvement of these private organizations and philanthropists seems to improve education. Should we focus more on getting this type of support for schools, perhaps from local businesses and charities, rather than attempt to fix education through the federal government? How much control does government have over education, anyway? In what Anderson terms “The Second Crusade,” the local and state governments did their best to withhold education from black southerners, but, because they understood the vital importance of education for their children, the black southerners came together to make sure their children could go to school. Many people today care about education. But are we willing to make the same kind of sacrifices as the black southerners of the early 20th century? Or will we allow our apathy to rule us and be forever defined by mediocrity? (I'm promise I'm not actually trying to sound like a high school valedictorian, just trying to incite thought)

The Common School Movement and Today

The common school movement had many issues that are still discussed today. The pendulum swings back and forth with no finial answer. Some of these issues are:

A) Control and Choice:

“Advocates of compulsory schooling often argued that families were failing to carry out their traditional functions or moral and vocational training.” (Tyack 1976)

In other words it is time for the government to take control from the families and schools are now responsible for moral and vocational training. This is a discussion that happened during the common school movement and still is discussed. Barrack Obama is for the “Zero to Five Plan” that will “provide critical support to young children and their parents… move toward universal pre-school” (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education). By instating this type of plan we are saying that the parents do not have the tools to prepare children for schooling. Where as McCain debates that “public education should be defined as one in which our public support for a child’s education follows that child into the school the parent chooses” (http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/issues/19ce50b5-daa8-4795-b92d-92bd0d985bca.htm).

Where does that control lie? Who is molding the children of our nation?

B) Role of Education:

“Americans had enormous faith in the power of schooling to transform all kinds of people – even “enemies” – into citizens.” (Tyack 1976)

Immigration and language differences… Do we keep their old culture or assimilate it into ours? Do we insist on the students becoming fluent in English or can we have a multilingual nation?

“… education not only produced good character and multiplied knowledge but that it is also the most prolific of material riches… Education enabled people to become rational decision makers by comprehending… school made workers punctual, industrious, frugal, and too rational to cause trouble for their employers.” (Tyack 1976)

“…both saw teachers and other intellectual workers mostly as servants of vested interest but believed that educators could become an important means of spreading the light for socialism.” (Tyack 1976)


What is the goal of our education system? Are we training our citizens to become a person who fills a role or one who is a free thinker?

You do not hear the argument very often of how our tax dollars are directly affecting our education system by putting them into schools. If we were to discuss the direct connection between the tax dollar and outcomes of education there might be an increase in support towards the rising educational costs? If people were able to see the direct connection they might be driven to develop the citizens that will produce some revenue in the future. This argument might also go back to tracking towards certain vocations because there would not be “wasted” investments in educating specific students. And that leads us back to what type of students are we producing through our schools?

“Children learn that liberty was their most cherished possession and their birthright as Americans.” (Tyack 1976)

Do we just deserve the rights we are born with or do we have to “earn” those rights?


C) Equal Access:

“Women could not be citizens because they were not “independent”… their citizenship…through education of their children and their moral influence over their husbands… to maintain the moral conscience.” (Reuben 2005)

“Racism permeated the school curriculum, and until the 1960s, educators generally ignored African Americans’ efforts.” (Reuben 2005)

Do we actually have equality at this point? What would/does equality actually look like? Is having all classes together as one lead to equality in the classroom or is it just covering up racism (ethnic, gender, etc.) in schools today?


In summary, “education remains a key of “enacting” ideals of citizenship – communicating and debating changing values, translating ideas into expectations for behavior, and expressing beliefs in institutional forms” (Reuben 2005). How are we using education to “enact” ideals into our children? How are the expectations of our nation influencing our education?

These issues will always be adapting and evolving to meet the needs of our current society. As future educators I agree that education is the place where children learn many lessons about how to be a citizen and learn the tools to be successful. Also I believe that the family is important to influence many of the social and emotional needs of the child. With this burden upon us as teachers, I need to be self reflective and socially reflective so that my teachings and understandings can reflect the two.

Teach through active citizenship

“The eyes of the virtuous all over the earth are turned with anxiety on us, as the only depositories of the sacred fire of liberty, and …our falling into anarchy would decide forever the destinies of mankind, and seal the political heresy that man is incapable of self-government.” - Tyack quotes Jefferson

In other words, the world was and still is watching us. The 2008 presidential election is a pivotal point in our nation’s history. Not just because the times are changing but because millions of people are turning into active citizens by taking interest in the election. Elshtain states that, “a compilation of opinions does not make a civic culture; such a culture emerges only from a deliberative process.”

In the movie, The American President, the president makes a speech in which he declares,

“America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.”

Debates are an essential part of American politics and when we come to a respected acknowledgement of different positions, it is then time for compromise. Elshtain claims that democracy “embeds at its heart the ideal of compromise.” Obama seems to agree. In his speech last Thursday he said, “but this, too, is part of America's promise, the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.”

In Bowling Alone, Putnum observes a decline in American civility. The American people turned into passive citizens. “Security guards and metal detectors (in our schools) are poor surrogates for civility,” states Barber. Kids are smart. They watch and learn from the way society acts. Barber goes on to state, “are our kids stupid or smart for ignoring what we preach and copying what we practice? The young, with their keen noses for hypocrisy, are in fact adept readers—but not of books. They are society-smart rather than book-smart.” Barber goes on to say, “most agree that although money can’t by itself solve problems, without money few problems can be solved. Money also can’t win wars or put men in space, but it is the crucial facilitator. It is also how America has traditionally announced, we are serious about this!” Americans must demand that we get up and get serious. Jefferson said we must, “reclaim them by enlightening them.” As of right now, America does not care enough to seriously improve education nor even to vote for a president. Who we vote into the White House will have to power to make change. Maybe the next president can put our children on the track to becoming both society and book-smart.

This election is important because people are starting to wake-up from an apathetic haze. We can teach our youth by being role-models, being active citizens and by voting in this election. Elshtain states, “for when equality and justice seem far-off ideas, freedom preserves the human discourse necessary to work toward the realization of both.”

Erica Harlow September 1, 2008

Related links:
Glassbooth.org
RocktheVote.org
Transcript of Obama’s nomination speech in the New York Times
GenerationEngage.org
American President clip (1.15-1.40minutes)