Re: The Paradoxes of Certain Democratic Educational Slogans (was Algebra...)

[Arthur Hu <ArthurH@TANGIS.COM>]

Here are some more phrases to tell if a bureacrat has been
replaced by a OBE pod body snatcher:


All students can succeed
Accountability
Average is No Longer Good Enough
Bell Curve is No Longer the Paradigm
Best practices
Chalk and talk
Collaborative
Consensus
Continuous Improvement
Deep understanding
Delphi Process
Developmentally Appropriate
Drill and Kill
End of Mediocrity
End of Social Promotion
Facilitator
High Expectations
Higher Order Thinking Skills
Higher Standards
Holistic Scoring
How good is good enough
Increase student learning
Learning in Context
Leave None Behind
Lifelong learning
Mastery
Math for all
Math power
Meaningful Diploma
No Exception, No Excuses
Outcomes
Proficient
Quality Producer
Rote learning
Restructuring education
Root and branch
Rubric
One High Standard for All
Outcome Based Education
Paradigm Shift
Performance Based Education
Sage on the stage
Seat Time
Skills for the 21st century
Stakeholder
Standards Based Education
Student Learning
Total Quality Management
Varying Learning Time
What students should be expected to know and be able to do.
World class standards

-----Original Message-----
From: Dr. Leo Casey [mailto:LeoCasey@AOL.COM]
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2000 1:21 PM
To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU
Subject: The Paradoxes of Certain Democratic Educational Slogans (was
Algebra...)


I am at a bit of disadvantage here, because Gerald sent his article as an
attached file, and once again, it came across in unintelligible code. [Even
for those who receive the posts one by one, rather than in digest form, more
and more of us will not be downloading such attachments, since that is the
primary way one acquires nasty little viruses in one's computer.]

But I do want to make give a cheer (not three, but one) for slogans such as
"all children can learn." Not three cheers, because the slogan is far too
simple and unnuanced, leading easily to a view of all children as the same,
as one homogenized mass which can and should learn in the same way and at
the
same rate. But one cheer, because there is a fundamental democratic thrust
in
its spirit, a refusal to surrender to the invidious sorting that quickly
throws away all too many young people, invariably poor and of color, as
incorrigible in terms of learning and education.

Personally, I prefer something along the lines of "leave no child behind,"
since it does not pretend that child are the same, but sets out the moral
imperative that no matter what it takes -- and, as often as not, it will
take
much more (educational resource-wise) for those who start with much less
(economic and social capital-wise) -- all children must be educated well,
and
given comparable opportunities at life's start.

I want to insist upon this one cheer, and on this democratic and egalitarian
precept, because I see a contrary view, which does find its way into
discussions on this listserv, that the problem with "high" or "rigorous
standards" of any sort is what might be called, from this viewpoint, the
innate intellectual inequality of children. Some children can never master
the same educational standards as other students (no prizes for guessing
which children tend to predominate in these two categories -- the answer is
so obvious as to be axiomatic), this line of argumentation goes, because
they
are just not as intelligent. [Intelligence so understood is a genetic
inheritance, and not a socially acquired quality.] It is essential, I
insist,
to reject such a view, and to insist that while children are different, and
will learn in different ways and at different paces, children have
fundamentally equal capacities for learning and intellectual growth.

Deborah Meier wrote:

Gerald,

I can't resist, so while no one (but you maybe?) will read this long screed,
your wonderful little piece set me going.

We need - as you suggest - to "finish" the unfinished "all children can
learn" slogan.  Can learn what?  All--well, almost all--human children can,
I'm prepared to say, learn--if we organized life to make this kind of
learning accessible--to use their minds well--to tackle big and important
ideas, to take on complex ideas, to tackle novelties, to go beyond their
immediate experience of life to imagine other possibilities.  But it does
not
mean "equally well"--that's an oxymoron of a sort.  Nor does it mean that
they will all tackle the same ideas well.  We tackle stuff we are interested
in much better than stuff we aren't.  And while learning "habits" may
transfer they don't transfer in a simpleminded fashion. That's why we tried
to think about the "kinds" of habits of mind that might be apart of any
learning experience so as to foster such "transference"--those CPESS "habits
of mind".  They aren't magical, but they are one approximation of an
approach
to this issue.

Of course, the idea is even more preposterous when one takes a thoroughly
unequal society and insist that in the 1/6 of children's lives spent in
publicly supported schooling, we can make up for all the other advantages
and
disadvantages that impact on our intellectual lives--our idle curiosity, our
willingness to engage in abstract play, our leisurely pursuit of our own
ideas, etc. not to mention the particular vocabulary, grammar and syntax
that
comes to  us all with our mother's milk. It's "neat" when it just happens to
also be the "mild" that goes with the culture of power represented by
schools
and school achievement norms. (Race adds to the conundrum because it is
another place where kids' lives are bifurcated--with some kids turning on or
off of the "culture of status", and thus picking up or not picking up the
incidental knowledge that makes schooling more or less easy to take.)

And it's even more preposterous when the schools themselves are not equal.
And when the response to the cry for more "rigor" and "high achievement"
produces even more unequal responses--of course!  Note the data from
Connecticut--as scores go up the gap widens.  The NYC data recently shows
something similar.  Coaching for the SAT, we discovered at CPESS, was good
for most kids.  But it actually harmed the scores of about 20%, and it did
most for the kids who already had the highest scores!  The gap was greater
after coaching, not before.

And it's even more preposterous when the society seems hell bent on
increasing the family income and life-style gap between the top and bottom.

So an absurd notion that given equal input (which doesn't and can't exist)
we
would get equal output (which couldn't happen even if the former were
possible--we are NOT robots!), is made quadruply more absurd.

But we all pretend it's true because it "sounds" good, American as apple
pie.

Thanks, Gerald, for bringing the subject up.

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --

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