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Who Do We Engage in Conversations about Education?

1. Posted by admin in 16 |
2. December 31st, 1969 |
3. Comments

Two education opinion pieces in the New York Times the past two days have got me thinking about who we seek to engage with in conversation about education. For those passionate about and working for educational change, the short answer might be “anyone and everyone,” right? Well, recently I’ve been wondering if that would be the best use of our time.

To demonstrate what I mean, I’ll briefly describe the two education pieces. The first, by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in yesterday’s paper, discussed Washington DC Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee’s approach to educational reform, focusing on identifying good and bad teachers, and rewarding or getting rid of them based on their results (aka test scores). The second, appearing in today’s paper by education writer E.D. Hirsch, Jr., proposes more content-specific curriculum and standards so that students will have the knowledge background to score better on tests.

While both pieces unfortunately take an uncritical look at the practice of assessing students and teachers based on test scores, the two writers come from very different starting points. Hirsch’s argument begins with a fundamental stance on the importance of content standards for all children. Looking into his many books confirms this, with titles such as What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know, What Your First Grader Needs to Know, and Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. And here is an excerpt from Hirsch’s op-ed:

These much maligned, fill-in-the-bubble reading tests are technically among the most reliable and valid tests available. The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards.

Meanwhile, Kristof’s starting point is that education in the U.S. reflects a deep injustice and “national shame,” and that education itself can be a powerful force for societal change, as he writes in yesterday’s piece:

Education reform could be the most potent antipoverty program in the country, and Ms. Rhee represents the vanguard in this struggle to try new tools to revive American schools.

Just as Hirsch’s starting point with content-standards is clear from his previous writing, Kristof’s social justice, human rights-based starting point is also apparent from his previous columns about the fighting and devastation in Sudan, and the sex trafficking of women around the world, among other topics.

Which leads me to the point that, given that there is an urgent need to work for educational change according to human rights and democratic values and that our personal time and energy is limited, we ought to consider how open people are to questioning their assumptions about education and re-thinking their positions. Perhaps Hirsch, whose core educational stance seems to be the importance of specific pieces of knowledge, may be less likely to think about democratic education than Kristof, who already bases his reporting on the very same values that are at the core of democratic education - namely, participatory decision-making, individual freedom, personal responsibility, and social justice.

The implication being that when there is a choice of who to engage with and reach out to, it may be wise to target those who appear more open and who appear to share one’s values, rather than getting stuck speaking with those who seem to be strongly lined up against those values. This does not mean some people should be completely dismissed, and for sure there will be times when we guess wrongly about where people stand.

Yet, we can get bogged down if we focus on those who are strongly set against our views and are most vocal about it (because, let’s face it, people with the most polarizing of views are often the most emphatic). We may even get burned-out and never realize that while we’ve been putting our energy into the several dozens of outspoken critics we’ve missed out on the several hundreds or several thousands of sometimes quieter potential allies. And I do know that indeed there are many more people who are closer than farther to the views of this blog: that education ought to reflect and practice the democratic values and human rights that our nation and our world hold dear.

So, (as hard as it is to not respond passionately to E.d. Hirsch, Jr. every time he writes something new) let’s not expend all our energy on those who, at least for now, are set in their beliefs in a standardized educational model. Instead, let’s target, identify, and reach out to those people who already know that every sector of our society must reflect and practice the values of a democracy if we are to build a more just, sustainable, productive, and peaceful world. Perhaps they already work for justice in a different sector, such as housing or immigrant rights or world hunger. Perhaps they always tell you about new happenings in the fields of sustainable energy or equal rights for same-sex couples. And perhaps they’d be open to transferring those same motivations for justice and personalization to the education and youth realm.

It is these individuals who can help lay the groundwork for a grassroots, people-powered movement to hold school leaders and policy-makers accountable for an education system and practice guided by our democratic values.

ps - as I posted this, I found a word cloud of Hirsch’s op-ed on Wordle, and decided to do one for Kristof’s, as well as my own post about them both. Thought you might find them intriguing (thanks Gretchen for the Wordle link). You can find these and make your own at www.Wordle.net:

Hirsch Wordle

Kristof Wordle

Today’s DE Blog post (also shown below)