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
The New Progressivism Is Here
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)
15 comments:
I would like to address the following questions from Lindsay’s blog post: “How do we connect school and the “real world”? 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?”
A friend of mine turned in her capstone paper yesterday. Her topic was the value of place-based education. Place-based education is the idea that children best learn through personal experience and there is a real value of using the local community as a core in the curriculum. If Dewey was alive today, I believe he would be a strong supporter of the concept.
Dewey believed there were three pitfalls to rote learning; “1. the material becomes purely formal and symbolic; 2. there is a real lack of motivation; and 3. even the most scientific matter, arranged in the most logical fashion, loses this quality, when presented in external, ready-made fashion, by the time it gets to the child (Dewey, 201-204).” With this in mind, I think it is safe to think that Dewey believed in inquiry learning.
When Dewey states, “it is certainly as futile to expect a child to evolve a universe out of his own mere mind as it is for a philosopher to attempt that task (Dewey, 196).” What better place for children to learn from than their personal community. It is best to start with the child and build on that foundation.
As with the laboratory schools mentioned in Lindsay’s blog, another school which uses these concepts is the Journeys School in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The have personal school standards to be met each year but the children create the curriculum based off what they are interested in within their community and with its’ relation to the world.
I support this theory of teaching and learning and I am happy that it is sneaking (slowly yes, but at least it is happening) into curriculums across the country.
Erica Harlow September 16, 2008
I'm sorry about the quotation that was stretched out by the picture. It didn't show up like that on the preview. For clarification, here is what it says:
“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)
One question Lindsey posed was, "But are we willing to make the same kind of sacrifices as the black southerners of the early 20th century?" As we have discussed, the reason the black southerners were successful in starting schools was because everyone (children, parents, teachers, and the community) wanted to learn and cared about education.
Unfortunately, right now, I don't know if we, as a country, are willing to make those sacrifices. However, I, like Erica, agree that schools should start incorporating real world learning into the curriculum. Dewey stressed the benefits of focusing on the child and fostering the child's imagination and desire to learn.
I wonder if we make learning more enjoyable and applicable to the real world, if students would begin to connect and relate more to their community. Maybe then adults and our society would see the benefit of improving education. Clearly, as Lindsey mentioned, foundations, businesses and charities are donating to schools in Cincinnati. I wonder what their reasons were for donating to those schools? Clearly they saw the importance of investing in schools...but how do we convince the rest of society, who don't have a surplus of money, to care about our schools?
Avery discussed taxes being taken from black families and then being used to build better white schools and white programs.
I wonder if to some extent we still do this except a little more discretely. The Hope Scholarship and other merit based aid. Almost all of the funding for these scholarships come from state lotteries. The demographics of play the lottery come from low income households, whereas high income households go to college at higher rates and are more likely to have acceptable grades to qualify for the scholarship. It seems like we are taking money from the poor, and give it to better off kids to attend school for free. If we know that poorer people play the lottery, why not use that money to help that group through needs based grants and scholarships?
While I agree with Zach that the 'lottery tax' is a regressive system that takes money primarily from those of a low S.E.S. background and gives it to higher education, it is also one of the only forms of income that go to higher education. Most taxes go towards health care and education (in TN). Health care primarily going to those of a lower S.E.S. Outside of TN the most states use an income tax is generally a progressive system that takes more from the upper S.E.S. and gives to the lower. I would argue that in states that have progressive income taxes, there is little problem with using lottery money for higher ed. because it has few other sources of revenue, and there is a significant amount of money being directed from the upper to lower S.E.S. in other areas.
All that said, TN does not have a progressive tax system, by having no income tax, and relying on sales tax, the lower S.E.S. carries more of the burden of taxes. In states such as TN i would agree that it is unfair to direct even more money from the poor to the rich, which as you said is what the lottery does
While I don’t know exactly how the tax system works in Tennessee, I think we could all agree that education is under funded nationally. I remember a couple of weeks ago when we were discussing the article “America Skips School” by Benjamin Barber, the issue of children learning from society came up many times. Kids learn from social signals, and the lack of funding for education is just reinforcing the idea to the kids that education isn’t important. Yes, we need to get kids interested in learning, and keep them engaged. But we also need to show them the importance of education through our actions.
This is just another question about chickens and eggs. How do we really know which comes first? Should we engage the children to prove that money poured into education is a good investment, or should we invest in education to prove to the children that education really is valued in our society? Either side could be argued, but both increasing child engagement in schools such as Dewey proposes and providing more funds for education are steps that need to be taken.
Rather then continue the tax and money issue, I'd like to redirect the issue with the kids in relation to John Dewey and some of the other articles we've read previously.
While the argument for more or less money in Education battles on, I think the point that Lindsey makes about Dewey saying "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" is critical in this situation.
I believe that students, no matter the age, need to feel some connection from what they are doing in the classroom and how it relates to their outside world. We all find this class important and work hard at it because we each find a need to understand these issues for our future careers. Students need to feel the same way.
Thus, my question to everyone is this, do schools/teachers accomplish this now, and if not, then what (if anything) are they doing to make the NCLB world of education more relevant to student's lives?
I'm glad you brought this up. I was actually asking myself if it really is possible to have a "Deweyian" style classroom, or how I might be able to have one.
Last year, I was fortunate to observe a very dynamic teacher of the 5th grade. She had basically a self contained classroom but had a great over all perspective on what she wanted the students to learn (more than anything she wanted students to learn how to learn). She taught thematic units covering a wide range of topics that the students were very interested in. Within these units, she would cover basically all different subjects and state standards. This was all done with projects, inquiry based learning and group work. The students loved the class and teacher and produced work of the highest quality. It was funny because they only switched teachers for one hour a day, and not even every week. The teacher that they would have to go to was very lecture based and traditional. The kids absolutely dreaded going to her room.
I think today, with the diversity we see in the classroom community service projects or a general project where students are able to take their own approach to the topic would make students much more motivated. (example: for a diverse classroom- an investigation of your surrounding culture or community). Students can then get creative in what aspect of their community they want to discuss. I think the power of choice and creativity is essential in any successful classroom. This can still happen given standards but teachers have to be inventive.
Emily states that "teachers have to be inventive." I want to argue that teachers don't have the room to be inventive. Who is telling the teachers what to do? or Are teachers being told what to do?
In class we were talking about what if the national government told the teachers how to teach and if someone would vote for someone who was proposing that situation. Well I honestly believe that it is already happening. In most schools teachers are bound by the "curriculum" (scripted or not) to make sure they cover all the topics in "the book" which are bound by the “standards.” They are held accountable by the assessments of the school and state and ultimately by NCLB.
Yes I understand that standards are important, but when there is so much pressure to do them in a certain order or in relation to the specific thing then how do the teachers have the freedom to integrate and relate the standards to "real world" situations.
In ideal world the teacher should be able to use their understanding of teaching & learning and an "over all perspective on what she/he wanted students to learn" (emily) to guide their planning and instructional sequence, but as teachers we aren't given that freedom.
So I must continue to ask, are we letting Dewey's and other constructivists theorists and ideas of learning guide what the student learn and encounter, or are we just teaching to the test and letting the work be irrelevant to the individual students?
“Nolenteach”, I respectfully disagree with your assertion that “teachers don’t have the room to be inventive.” To support your claim you cited NCLB, mandated school-wide curricula, and high-stakes testing. None of those realities remove the educator’s ability and responsibility to be inventive, though they do provide the range of topics in which the educator can be inventive. It is important to note that educators are told WHAT to teach, and not HOW to teach (though there is arguably still a great deal of wiggle room in the area of WHAT to teach, at least in my area of Social Studies).
The educational process is a simple one for the educator: 1.) Determine what your students know (Point A), 2.) Determine what you want the students to know/achieve (Point B), and 3.) Determine the best way that effectively engages the students and brings them from Point A to Point B. Standards are often bemoaned as a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad, thing (Oh, to be young again…), yet they are an asset to educators in that they help them determine the answer to Step 2 (i.e. giving the "over all [sic] perspective on what she/he wanted students to learn"), so that the educator has more time to be pedagogically inventive.
I agree with Matthew that effective teachers know how to teach with innovation in concurrence with following standards and state curriculum. Take Math for instance. How easy and applicable is it to practice facts and word problems by using money manipulatives or a cash register simulation? I think that highly effective and efficient teachers know how to best use their time to promote quality education through creative means while sticking with the state and NCLB guidelines. Too many teachers pass out reproducibles/busywork to the children because it is "easy" and fills in the time.
The state tests are like elephants in the room- if you admit that it is there and you work with it, then you can succeed.
Whoops, sorry I'm a bit behind this week...
I'm really fascinated by this idea of standards being imposed on "what to teach" as opposed to "how to teach." It's true that current policy doesn't explicitly dictate how teachers approach the material, but I'd like to suggest (strongly influenced by my Ed Psych reading for next week...) that the WHAT very strongly influences the HOW.
Our current system of standardized testing seems to strongly favor "declarative" knowledge. Although we seem to agree in this group that procedural knowledge and reflective/meta-cognitive learning (or the "how to learn" that Emily mentioned) are really the best ways to acquire declarative knowledge, I think a lot of teachers feel stifled by the time constraints and the utter specificity of the declarative knowledge that is tested by the state. As a result, they resort to less effective, de-contextualized methods like rote learning. I am reminded of my high school U.S. History teacher, fresh out of college and completely unprepared to deal with a variety of learning styles and backgrounds, not to mention the newly imposed end-of-course exams that Georgia introduced that year. How did he cope with this? A few nights before the big test, he handed us a "test review" study sheet. When he handed us the test, it was clear toa nyone with half a brain that he ha dliterally sat down with the test when he received it and re-worded every single question for our "review sheet."
Granted, that is a particularly reprehensible--and in that particular instance, unnecessary--way of responding to state demands, but I think it exemplifies what a lot of teachers are resorting to.
I suppose one could make the argument that teachers simply need to be more creative, better prepared, etc., but I've heard a lot of my fellow classmates who have actually taught in public schools explain very convincingly that the real issue is time and a lack of resources.
While I don't think we can place ALL of the blame on the standards themselves, I don't think it's fair to expect teachers to simply "work around" the implicit values and requirements of those standards. While standards could be the kind of boon Matthew suggests in terms of helping teachers define "what you want your students to know," another problem arises when teachers have a fundamental difference of opinion regarding the merit of what the state has determined the students need to know. It IS refreshing, in a way, to hear someone argue in favor of standards, and I agree with what Matthew says on a theoretical level, but I don't think it bears out in reality. I'd be interested to hear a discussion of how we could help it bear out in reality without simply eliminating the state/federal standards completely.
It seems that there are two distinct ideas of what standards can be: 1)a limiting constraint 2) a much-needed guidance for teachers.
I do not think the concept of standards is a bad thing as long as the standards are with merit. Many teachers have felt the pressure of the standardized tests and as a result, teach for the test (Nicole experienced this first-hand). Would this be a bad thing if the test was a true measure of students' ability and the tests contained worthy content? Can any test truly measure one's learning?
Unfortunately, our system acts as if we can measure ALL students' learning on a single test. With this being the reality, as many of you asked, how can teachers act creatively with these limitations? Most of you addressed this point, so I won't harp on it, but it is a dilemma we will have to face. I think this connects with one of the original questions posed by Lindsey, "How do we connect school and the "real world?" Is it by bringing Dewey back into the classroom? Is it possible to teach based on Dewey's principles while meeting standards?
Nicole asks, "how we could help it bear out in reality without simply eliminating the state/federal standards completely?" I don't have an answer for that, but I would argue that teachers can do this with standards in place. It is no easy feat, but it has been done. Emily saw this first-hand in her classroom. Standards are here to stay, so we need to come up with some solutions for teachers to meet them without feeling constrained by them.
I think that Daniel made a powerful statement when he said "I believe that students, no matter the age, need to feel some connection from what they are doing in the classroom and how it relates to their outside world."
This, in my opinion, is the key to the student's success in the classroom. So many times you hear people say in reference to Algebra or Calculus, "Why do I need to know this? No one uses advanced mathematics in everyday life!" Well I felt the same way until about three weeks ago when someone explained to me that the math problem itself is not what's important- it's the brain processing that takes place when figuring out the problem that is important. If someone had explained this to me in the 8th grade, perhaps I would have done more homework, haha.
Seriously though, I think that teachers and schools need to start focusing on this, but NCLB makes it hard. There are so many things that students need to learn that can't necessarily be measured by a test.
Post a Comment