Search Results

This is the third of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the self-definitions of traditional cultures and to find ways of avoiding a confrontation with differences. David Blacker’s essay on civic friendship and democratic education develops a Rawlsian conception of civic friendship, the scaffolding of which is necessarily provided by the wide range of comprehensive conceptions of the good that characterize democratic societies. Thus, Blacker argues, a democratic civic education ‘allows citizens to embrace democracy on their own terms, drawing support for democracy’s requisite political conceptions from the perspectives of citizens’ many different secular and/or religious comprehensive doctrines’. For Blacker, a conception of civic friendship that is friendly to citizens’ multiple comprehensive doctrines also entails a substantial lowering of the ‘wall of separation’ between church and state so that courts might be more willing than they currently are to allow the use of state funds to support religious groups, in particular where these groups perform functions within public (common) schools that converge with public interests. The essay concludes by proposing and defending two American educational policy initiatives that are consistent with Blacker’s politically liberal ideal of civic friendship – the revival of a ‘school stamps’ plan first proposed in the 1970s, and a modified version of a ‘clergy in the schools’ programme recently struck down by a federal circuit court in Texas.

Joseph Dunne’s essay begins by examining the ways in which schooling in modern liberal–democratic societies tend to function as the agent of cultural homogenization and alienation, and thus block liberal–democratic efforts to offer meaningful recognition of local cultures and to promote the skills and dispositions required for participatory democratic citizenship. The danger here, Dunne points out, is that when the homogenizing elements of modern schooling become dominant, they might serve to encourage an ‘insouciant cosmopolitanism that may fail to meet people’s needs for identity (and by this failure help open the door to the very xenophobic nationalism it wishes to repudiate)’. The chapter concludes by reflecting on some possible educational responses that might offer some hopeful ways of addressing such dismal extremes. In particular, he is interested in the educational possibilities offered by a reconfiguration of national identities and state institutions in the emerging European Community in the context of national, cultural, and religious strife that currently besets Northern Ireland. Thus, like Waldron, Dunne sees local cultural identities – be they national, religious, or cultural – as complexly related to, but potentially compatible with, cosmopolitan historical forces.

This chapter attempts to identify the grounds of reservations that theorists of democratic education have about religious schools. It argues that those reservations arise from commitment to a certain conception of democracy, here called ‘strong deliberativism’. It then locates the grounds of the reservations in the requirements of a ‘deliberatively democratic character’, the set of dispositions good citizens must have if they are to govern themselves well on the basis of democratic deliberation. The chapter argues that some of the requirements of strong deliberativism are misconceived, and that religious schools can contribute to education for democracy.

Harry Brighouse’s essay concludes Part I of the book by taking up one aspect of the task of clarifying the role of common education, by applying it to the teaching of patriotism in public (common) schools. He asks whether liberal and cosmopolitan values are compatible with a common education aimed at fostering patriotic attachment to the nation. He examines numerous arguments recently developed to justify fostering patriotism in common schools from a liberal–democratic perspective, and finds them all wanting. However, even if liberal–democratic arguments for teaching patriotism could be found that withstand the criticisms he advances, Brighouse argues that common schools should avoid using history as the vehicle for fostering patriotic loyalty, since even the most honest, clear-sighted, unsentimental attempts to teach national history are likely to degrade and undermine the other purposes that teaching history properly has. The chapter proceeds as follows: Section 6.1, discusses briefly the justifications of patriotism and the further arguments that patriotism is something that should be taught to children in school – and in particular the argument that history is an appropriate vehicle for teaching it; Section 2 casts doubt on the arguments for patriotism and even more doubt on the idea that it should be taught; Section 6.3 argues that history is a discipline particularly inappropriate for conveying patriotic feeling; Section 6.4 concludes.

This chapter comments on Allan Bloom's critique of democracy in his book The Closing of the American Mind. It examines why this anti-democratic book has been championed by conservatives, and why it was supported by democratic educators when Bloom's views were clearly incompatible with modern democratic education. This chapter suggests that despite its anti-democratic objectives, this book was as smooth and painless a polemic from a critic of democracy. It contends that the leading characteristic of the book was its commitment to closed communication, to esoteric meaning and rhetorical ambivalence.

Chapter Seven summarizes the findings and arguments, ranging from cross-national to inter-organizational to between-group analyses. The chapter returns to the question: what are the features of school environments that make students' of color incorporation in education greater at some schools and smaller at others? It offers some recommendations for policy makers and educators to consider in attempts to uproot the weeds of educational inequality that have long vexed two national systems. Overall, it encapsulates the research discussed throughout Stubborn Roots, maintaining how the obstinate legacy of past injustices can be overturned to weed out the invasion of both overt and latent practices that stifle the growth of equity in schools found within two just, democratic societies.

This chapter traces how Dickens's novelistic pedagogy and democratic project for popular fiction were institutionalized in the English literature curriculum. It begins by elucidating the stakes of the temporary collapse and recovery of Dickens's reputation in relation to the professionalization of the literary field in the final decades of the nineteenth century. George Eliot and George Henry Lewes's both attempted to marginalize Dickens's art and his version of associationism in order to define literature and psychology as distinct disciplinary forms of knowledge. During this period, however, Dickens's status as a canonical author was being consolidated. Examining literary histories, biographies, and British and American school readers and editions published between 1846 and 1919, the chapter delineates the emergence of “the school Dickens,” a standard image of Dickens's authorship that updates his humanitarian advocacy for the poor into an egalitarian ethic central to the English literature curriculum's role in training children for participation in democratic institutions. Critics such as Henry James, G. K. Chesterton, George Orwell, and F. R. Leavis are able once again to celebrate Dickens on the basis of their own cherished childhood associations with reading his novels. Chesterton's and Orwell's shared image of Dickens's democratic laughter represents the self-subversion of this canonizing impulse in the “historical Dickens's” anti-institutional project.

Chapter 2 focuses on the reforms and designs national leaders devised to improve both public schools and municipal governance, and it offers depth and detail on the specific innovations that elites urged cities to adopt. The chapter describes three of the main educational initiatives undertaken by urban school leaders: administrative reorganization of school districts, classification of children into different ability groups, and reform and revision of the school curriculum. Despite the seeming inconsistencies scholars have described across these reforms, Gamson argues that several common tenets provided the conceptual backbone for these reforms. District progressives saw their mission as instilling an understanding of “true democracy;” they believed that not all Americans were intellectually equal, asserting that they could democratically differentiate elements of society; and they argued that reforms could be unified when implemented together on a district-wide scale. The chapter also posits that the narrow slice of time between, roughly, 1913 and 1918 constituted quite possibly the most productive period in twentieth-century educational thought and identifies concepts offered by reformers such as John Dewey, Ellwood Cubberley, and Lewis Terman. During these same years, civic-minded leaders poured forth a host of vibrant ideas and plans for reforming and strengthening American municipal governments.

Civic engagement and service learning are now part of mainstream American education, but such programs are normally embedded in hierarchical, rule-bound, and inegalitarian institutions. Even while called to service outside, most students are excluded from meaningfully shaping the social environment inside their schools. This chapter examines schools embracing a different model. Democratic schools involve students in curriculum design, teaching, and institutional governance. Regular all-school advisory meetings, student-led inquiry, peer juries, and other forms of participatory conflict resolution are common in these schools. Historically linked to progressive education reforms and to student power efforts in the 1960s, contemporary democratic innovators in mainstream K-12 education are motivated by three factors seen as under threat: professional identity, academic engagement, and genuine civic education. Drawing on interviews with teachers and principals working in democratic schools across different regions, this chapter describes barriers to growth as well as available resources for sustaining long-term reform.

The unconventional approach that the Progressive Era Denver public schools took to including teachers in curriculum reform during the 1920s has led the city to be seen as an alternative to rigidly administered, top-down districts. Chapter 4 examines how Denver Superintendent Jesse Newlon (1920-27) and his successor, A. L. Threlkeld (1927-1937), crafted a district culture devoted to democratic teacher participation. Nevertheless, although Denver educators articulated a vision of democracy distinctly different than that voiced by Oakland leaders, they implemented practices that were remarkably similar, such as the use of intelligence tests to classify students. Threlkeld’s persistent pursuit of the logic of democratic engagement, however, ultimately led district administrators to question, even challenge, some of their previous assumptions about student ability and classification. Ultimately, Denver’s experience demonstrated the potential that district progressivism could hold for the realization of serious research, experimentation, and reform when carried out by committed professionals in a local urban school system.

Chapter 3 traces the evolution of the modern city school system as enacted by leaders in Oakland, California. Despite their reputation as quintessential “administrative progressives,” due to their swift adoption of efficiency-oriented practices after World War I, some Oakland leaders dedicated energy to implementing a series of broad pedagogical initiatives that contravene standard narratives portraying administrators as unimaginative central office bureaucrats. Indeed, teachers implemented remarkably creative instructional practices, some designed to engage students in problem-solving, others implemented to help struggling students return to grade level. The chapter devotes special attention to Superintendent Fred Hunter (1917–28), an aggressive, nationally prominent innovator who asserted that he was “democratizing” his schools and providing equal educational opportunities to meet the needs of all students. In practice, the application of such opportunities meant working with Lewis Terman’s protégé, Virgil Dickson, to spread IQ testing throughout the district while designing curricula to match ability levels, backgrounds, and prospective futures. Hunter’s ascent was facilitated by the local business community, and his tenure paralleled periods of local labor strife, ethnic and racial tensions, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, all of which serve to illustrate the close connections between civic organizations and school politics.

This chapter introduces the key conceptual frameworks that are deployed and developed in the book. It begins by situating the book within recent geographies of education and childhood, sub-disciplinary concerns that form the immediate context for this book and my own research. It then highlights three theoretical strands that inform the analysis and which each defy simple labels: ‘radical’ theories of education, informal education, and alternative education; diverse economic and autonomous geographies; nonrepresentational geographies and the politics of life-itself. Cross-reference to longer-standing work on sociologies of education and education studies is also made throughout this chapter. Attention is also paid to critiques of ‘radical’ and alternative education approaches.

In this chapter I offer some insight into our current context and needs in order to highlight some of the habits that schools should be fostering to sustain key elements of democracy and improve existing democracy. At the same time, I recognize that the educational approaches and goals themselves must be open to change. Aligned with the definition of responsibility I offered in chapter five, these habits are social and relational. They often entail a proclivity to act with others and are driven by concerns with the well-being of democracy and fellow citizens. Developing these habits can help our budding citizens fulfill their role responsibilities. I complete the cycle for sustaining democracy via education by describing improved citizenship education, including habits of democracy teachable within our schools, where we develop citizens through democracy and our public schools.

The conclusion addresses a fundamental hazard of the analytic urge to divide educational practitioners into distinct categories: it masks the core nature of district progressive practice. Not only did administrative reorganization accompany more pedagogically oriented reforms, but progressive leaders often saw such reorganization as essential to carrying out their instructional and curricular innovations. Where scholars see contradictions among practices, they saw pragmatic programs that helped them reach their goals. Gamson also argues that a policy window opened for American schools in the years between 1909 and 1919, a period before the widespread use of intelligence tests when local practitioners not only sought out the reasons for student failure but also experimented with viable approaches to getting pupils back to grade level. Finally, the author suggests that American society is undergoing a major transformation that is not dissimilar to one that occurred roughly a century ago. Progressive educators ultimately delivered an inequitable education system within the context of an unequal world. Can twenty-first-century Americans learn from the mistakes of the past and offer a richer response that fulfills the potential of education in a democracy?

Chapter 4 explores the role of the narrative imagination in education, both in the classroom and beyond. Drawing on more than 25 years in the classroom, the chapter examines the stifling effect of current models of education on the ability of students and teachers to make connections between their formal learning and their lives, as they are and as they might be. The chapter poses fundamental pedagogical questions: What do we want our students/our children to learn and why? What can ignite curiosity, a desire to question, and to investigate? What is the relationship between learning about the world as it is, and imagining ways of improving it? The chapter concludes with a discussion of the vital role of education in teaching individuals about the meaning of democratic citizenship.