A happy face on your report card? A sitcom wades into the Québec school reform debate

 
We're all familiar with the well-worn criticisms of progressive school reform. It's "soft", it's written in "eduspeak", and it's ineffective. But when this kind of criticism makes it into popular culture, you know that it's having a significant impact.

In the clip below (which is subtitled), two major components of the Québec comprehensive school reform are targeted: non-percentage based report cards and cross-curricular competencies. Cross-curricular competencies are simply skills that are acquired across a range of subjects (e.g. critical thinking, problem solving), but the term itself ("compétences transversales" in French) has been surprisingly controversial, as the clip reveals... 



I'm still uncertain about why, exactly, cross-curricular competencies have received so much criticism. It's not as if the idea is particularly difficult to articulate or to understand, and goals like problem solving and critical thinking are uncontroversial. Percentage-based report cards, on the other hand, are part of people's established picture of how school is supposed to be, and so resistance here is less surprising.

Stretching through art

(This is cross-posted from Smart and Good.)

I am breathing slowly and deeply this morning, puzzled and saddened by something I heard yesterday on NPR. The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery pulled part of the art exhibition “Hide and Seek” on Thursday under pressure from, among others, the Catholic League. Removed from view was a 4 minute video exploring death by AIDS and depicting Jesus on the cross being eaten by large black ants. However, my concern here is not the piece, nor the protest nor even the pronouncement that the Smithsonian would remove David Wojnarowicz‘s representation of his lover’s death, “A Fire in My Belly.”

Others have had interesting things to say on both sides of this issue if you want to pursue it:

http://riskrapper.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/smithsonian-christmas-season-exhibit-fea)

I am most distressed today as an American educator by the post-game comments of Bill Donovan, the President of the Catholic League. Donovan, reveling in his triumph, is now working to undercut any and all taxpayer supported arts in the United States. What would this do to educational possibility in our present cultural and economic position? What do we lose if we fail to support the images and ideas that stretch us?

Donovan’s case goes something like this. Because there is no taxpayer support for that which “working people” appreciate, specifically the World Wrestling Federation, then there should be no taxpayer support for any other kinds of arts and entertainment. Hmmmm.

[Sidenote here: The government of Abu Dhabi has initiated a revitalization of their economy by importing branches of the Guggenheim and the Louvre – a decidedly different take on what impacts a people toward productivity.]

Now there’s a lot of art I don’t understand and a lot I don’t appreciate (including WWF), but even the stuff I don’t understand (sometimes especially that stuff) stretches me (including WWF). And that stretching is part of my ongoing education. Because WWF is widely supported by both people who work and people who don’t, it is available to me. I can be – and very occasionally am – stretched by it. But other arts not commercially viable are nonetheless valuable. Sometimes that which we most need to enhance our collective sensibilities, to expand our abilities to respond to each other with understanding and appreciation, is that which we avoid, resisting enhancement or expansion, because it is uncomfortable. We don’t want to be stretched.

WWF may be one way of exploring the human condition, but it is not the only way. The visual and performing arts have this exploration as their raison d’etre. Videos like “A Fire in my Belly “ are such an exploration, an invitation to feel, to think, to act with integrity in the world.

Now here’s the part that’s tricky. That which is shocking can either prompt or impede educational stretching. Shock is, by definition, experience marked by strong feelings. Such feelings can open us up to educational possibility, but they can also harden into fear (flight, fight and/or paralysis) before reason or reflection can connect those feelings to possibilities for new understanding or action. Mr. Donovan is afraid. Something has scared him. It’s not this particular video (a Christian who has pondered “The Passion of the Christ” has already dealt with images more shocking than these), but there is something that has prompted the members of the Catholic League to flee deeper understanding, to fight those who seek it for themselves, to freeze in the track of past experience rather than renewed possibility. As an educator, I have to name this as fear and resist it – and resist as well any effort to shrink the artistic world or narrow the aesthetic sensibility that is available to me.

Government-supported funding of the arts serves precisely this purpose: to keep in play just those representations and explorations of that human (American) experience that we do not necessarily seek out, that we don’t readily pay to support. It is never time to cut the budget for what educates all of us.

Without a 'canon' what?

I have been enjoying a Facebook multilogue on the great books initiated by Dianne Allen. Dianne posted a book list from the BBC of 100 significant books; although most are squarely in the Western cannon, the BBC estimated that the average reader will have read no more than six of them. My magic number was 22, but as I looked at the list I was amazed, and somewhat chagrined, that I had not read many more.

Several of the participants in this conversation mentioned that of the few they had read, most were assigned in high school. The question I want to raise is this: Now that we have pretty well destroyed the idea of a 'canon' on the grounds of its Eurocentric, racist and sexist implications, how will we ever have any common touchstones. Phrases that once echoed in our heads from the Bible, Shakespeare and Aesop will no longer provide these.

I am preparing to travel to Italy with my wife next year -- the standard (note that term) Rome Florence Venice tour. I am already reading about these cities and their cultural institutions, and am getting familiar with the locations of the main sights on the city maps. So for Florence I already can locate the Duomo, the Baptistry, the Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi, etc.

But imagine a city with no canonical works of art or architecture, no "standard" sights, no reference points. A city where everything is as significant, potentially, as everything else. Would this make the experience of the city liberating and fascinating, or just confusing and ultimately boring?

Yes of course, the real pleasures of travel have little to do with "doing" the sights. They are about chance meetings in coffee houses, unexpected and unpredictable experiences, personal self-discoveries. But where do you find these? On the way to the Duomo, or Botanical Gardens, or Uffizi, that's where.


So it goes with reading. Serious writing does not stand in isolation. It is a response to what has gone before it, and a portent of what is to come. This situation in a living history is what makes writing "literature". We always tell our grad students that when they write a term paper or thesis they have to do a "review of the literature". They they are making a "contribution to the literature". That they are "joining a conversation.

Would it be fascinating, or liberating, to just say whatever you wanted in response to anything, or nothing? Of course not. That is why reading books is important, and why we need some touchstones in literature. And we need them not so that we can say that everyone "did" the Bible or Jane Austen or Dickens, but so that as people have their chance encounters and make their personal discoveries they have something to talk about, and a sharable vocabulary.

Or perhaps you do not see it this way, in which case, please join the conversaton!

PS. I stuck the picture of Emerson on this post because (1) I always like to include a picture and hear that having a picture makes a blog post more inviting, (2) I had this on my computer, and (3) I think Emerson is worth reading if you want to talk about social issues within an American context.

Reading books as "silver bullet"?

Len Waks reminded us earlier this week of the impact of reading books. It’s not surprising, I suppose, that we who inhabit academic settings might have a vested interest in promoting the writing and reading of books. But my intuition is that Len is right, and his post reminded me of the lengths I went to turn my daughter into a book reader.

Emily was a rising sophomore in high school the summer I decided that I couldn’t abandon her to a lifetime without the entertainment, the consolation and the provocation of books. It wasn’t that she couldn’t read. She read easily and well, comprehending and putting thoughts into words without difficulty. But she was not “a reader.”

So I played “Let’s Make a Deal.” I offered this 14 year old an article of clothing for every book she completed that summer. Her eyes lit up but did not light upon a book until I started to read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible to her one June night at bedtime. (Do I need to remind any of us that we all like to be read to, even when, especially when, we are “too old for that”?) I read about 10 pages to her each night for five nights in a row. One night I was not at home when she went to bed. She picked up the book without me, started reading and never looked back. When she completed the book, she earned a skirt. When she completed the second book that summer, she earned a top that went with it. When she completed the third book, she didn’t ask for any sartorial compensation. Today, ten years later, she is never without a book close at hand.

I sometimes wonder why she became a reader that summer after ten years of successful schooling had failed to lead her there. Was it the external reinforcement of a material reward? Perhaps, the companionship of mother and daughter reading and talking about the same book? Or did those two extrinsic elements keep her nose in the book long enough to feel the intrinsic pay-off of reading as a window into minds and worlds not our own?

More importantly, what was it about reading in and for school that did not encourage that habit? I’m not a believer in “silver bullets” when it comes to solving educational problems, but if I were, the one I could believe in would be turning all the Emilys of the world into readers of books.

The Most Important Thing to do is Read Books

Mitch Joel, the inimitable guru of web marketing, writes an important post on 'the most important thing'. Two times on one day he ran into thought leaders who said, unequivicably, that the most important thing to do to move ahead in your life is to read books.

Yesterday morning, I went to see Jeffrey Gitomer (best-selling author) speak. Gitomer is pretty clear about what it takes to be successful. After spending some time with him, it's obvious that the real secret (for him) is in the reading. Gitomer reads a ton. He not only collects the books that inspire him, but he devours them and surrounds himself with them. He loves words. He's constantly learning and educating himself, and - from there - the ideas for his writing (whether it's a book, article, presentation or tweet) flow from an overflowing brain of ideas and inspiration.

Then, it happened again.

After Gitomer's presentation, I went for lunch with Julien Smith (co-author with Chris Brogan of Trust Agents)who told me about Charlie Munger (one of Warren Buffet's peers) and his passion for reading. Munger loves reading. Munger believes that the most successful people he knows are those individuals who are constantly reading... like in a non-stop kind of way.

Most of us really give up on reading after university.

I've been thinking a lot about reading lately (and how much I love it)... Tweets, status updates and Blog posts that tell you how to generate more Blog readers don't count much . . . The majority of newspaper and magazine articles are probably right on the edge of valuable reading, but the guts of reading that will truly make you smart and successful comes from the high brow stuff. The books, periodicals and longer thought/research pieces.

It takes a corporate executive ...

To run a school system?? Have you been following the Michael Bloomberg/Cathleen Black/David Steiner saga in New York City? Bloomberg wants a long-time media exec with no public educational experience and no apparent interest to “manage” (read slash costs) in the city schools. State educational commissioner David Steiner initially refused to grant Black an exemption from required credentialing – with apparent good reason – and Bloomberg, to his surprise, couldn’t garner enough political support to pressure Steiner. So the accommodation is a “chief pedagogical officer” to support (challenge?) Black’s lack of understanding.

See, for example, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/nyregion/27black.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a2.

Dave Waddington’s previous (and damning) post about a leading corporate university’s failure to provide value for dollars spent suggests that a corporate approach to education can be (and often is) more expensive and less effective than present efforts. The jury is out on Cathleen Black, with or without her pedagogical sidekick. (One hopes that she would have been smart enough to make this appointment on her own – but who knows?) I, for one, hope that she succeeds wildly. But success must be determined by looking at both sides of this complicated cost/benefit equation. Potential educational benefits to the kids and families of New York can cut the costs to the city far beyond the dollars the taxpayers actually spend on schools. But that requires a long-range view that corporate executives can rarely sustain.

America's Subprime University: 9% Graduation Rate at University of Phoenix

A new report from the Education Trust has just been released that analyzes the growth of for-profit universities.

Some highlights:

-- University of Phoenix (all campuses) graduation rate: 9%
-- University of Phoenix (Online) graduation rate: 5%
-- University of Phoenix (Cleveland) graduation rate: 4%
-- University of Phoenix (all campuses) % revenue from federal financial aid: 90%
-- Pell grant aid to U of P in 2009-2010: more than $1 billion
-- Median student debt upon graduation at for-profit universities: $31,190
-- Median student debt upon graduation at public universities: $7,960

The facts speak for themselves. The University of Phoenix preys upon the most vulnerable students and leaves them with a hefty bill.

If You Want to be a Princess, First You Need an Education

I can’t say I’ve thoroughly combed through the media commentary on Prince William’s announcement that he will marry Kate Middleton, but I did read a little of it this morning after this statement in a New York Times article caught my attention:

“Should Miss Middleton become Queen Catherine, she will be the first queen in British history to have a college degree, or indeed, to have any college education at all.”

Some commentators have lamented the fact that future Princess Kate has done little with that college education except procure a husband, but I think that overlooks a more important point.

For the past few weeks, my undergraduate classes have been reading about gender and sharing their thoughts on gender roles, marriage and family, media influences and girls’ education. In a comparison of contemporary and 19th century arguments about single sex education, one student commented that at least nowadays women’s main reason for attending college isn’t to find a husband. Agreed, but when I asked them whether as college women they feel pressure to find a boyfriend, or at the very least to procure male attention, stories started to pour out about friendly teasing at family gatherings and being left out of social events as friends paired off. The story that floored me, though was one young woman’s account of deciding in seventh grade to save her money for higher education, a commitment she stuck to when she recently faced the choice of getting married and starting a family or staying in college and continuing on to the graduate degree she wants to complete.

Two traditions are at issue here. One is education versus marriage, the notion that education (and the career, as e.g. abbess, teacher, social worker, college president, that education can lead to) exists as a respectable alternative to family life, giving women a path to success that runs parallel to the marriage track. Second is education as a means to marriage. A third, far more lovely and quintessentially modern, possibility, is that education is neither the autobahn to marriage nor the functional frontage road running next to it but, rather, a road to adulthood on which women can maintain an autonomy that serves them, and their relationships, well. Education not only provides careers and husbands; it provides the ability to make sense of it all and to keep afloat no matter what follows (divorce, job loss, dissatisfaction, media hullabaloo, whatever life brings).

A few years ago, in a New Yorker review of biographies of Diana Spencer, John Lanchester commented on her “outlandish lack of education” and how poorly it served her in later life. “In retrospect, it’s clear,” he notes, “Diana would have been better off with a mug of cocoa and an art history book than with jetting around Europe with Dodi Al Fayed.”

Yesterday in class, my students discussed media images of women and the out-of-school education those provide. We talked about how much more the media is a part of our lives than ever before and why girls and women hold themselves to the standards of beauty sold to them by television, magazines, the internet, music, film and ads at every turn. And we talked about how to raise girls possessed of self-respect, dignity, insight and resistance to manipulation. At times, the prospects looked hopeless. The education that teachers and parents can offer our girls and boys seems a frail opponent to the forces of popular culture. But the notion of a college educated British princess makes me hopeful. Parents and teachers everywhere can now say this to all those little girls begging for tiaras: If you want to be a princess, first you have to get a higher education.

Glenn Beck takes on John Dewey

Given his high level of animosity toward American Progressivism, it was, perhaps, inevitable that Glenn Beck would eventually have something to say about John Dewey. In his latest book, Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government, he dedicates a whole chapter to education. A healthy portion of this chapter is, unsurprisingly, dedicated to progressive education, which Beck hates.

Beck’s opening comments about progressive education leave no doubt about where he is going with the narrative:

Education is about learning. Learning, like weight loss, is sometimes hard. You have to stay committed and push yourself day after day to see results. Don’t ever say this in front of a progressive (don’t worry, none of them are reading this book), but some people are better learners than others.

The problem with progressive education, in other words, is that it is too sentimental and soft-hearted. School should be a competitive institution that should act as a mechanism to figure out who can survive in the tough business of learning.

Beck then offers a couple of Dewey quotes to illustrate the alleged wooly-headed softness of the progressive educators:

Existing life is so complex that the child cannot be brought into contact with it without either confusion or distraction; he is either overwhelmed by a multiplicity of activities which are going on, so that he loses his own power of orderly reaction, or he is so stimulated by these various activities that his powers are permanently called into play and he becomes either unduly specialized or else disintegrated.

And

I believe that the teacher’s place and work in school is to be interpreted from this same basis. The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences.

Both these quotes are taken from My Pedagogic Creed (1897), which is a useful summary of Dewey’s early views. The Creed is not, however, a statement of Dewey’s considered views on education—it’s a quick one-off piece that simply lists a number of beliefs (“I believe X, I believe Y, I believe Z”) without any further explanation.

I’m not really sure why Beck (or his co-author) picked the first quote. Although it contains some questionable 19th century psychology, it is actually relatively uncontroversial. Everyone knows that “real life” is complex and that children are not immediately prepared to appreciate all of its complexity. Little Johnny isn’t interested in what, say, actuaries do or in understanding the nuances of bureaucratic procedure.

The second quote is a more promising choice, at least from the perspective of Beck’s argument. The point of this second statement is to emphasize Dewey’s rejection of the traditional approach to education. Quoted in isolation, it makes Dewey appear to be a partisan of a hands-off variety of progressive education. Yet although Deweyan education might have been relatively freewheeling according to the standards that prevailed in the 19th century, the Dewey School was still a carefully structured educational environment. Katherine Mayhew and Anna Camp Edwards’ account of life at the Dewey School makes this clear--Dewey wanted children to be active inquirers rather than passive recipients of knowledge, but the learning situations were carefully planned.

This is not the conclusion that Beck draws, however. He remarks:

In other words, teachers aren’t there to tell a child if he or she is “right or wrong” (especially not in red ink), they’re there to help the child through a touchy-feely period of self-awareness and discovery.

Beck wants to establish Dewey as the apostle of “touchy-feely” progressive education, but this is a hopeless mission. As I’ve pointed out in a recent article in Studies in Philosophy and Education, Dewey was actually opposed to sentimental approaches to education. He felt that these approaches posed significant dangers to children’s development and hindered the growth of their habits of inquiry.

So much for Dewey’s appearance in Beck’s book. As we know, however, books are not really Glenn Beck’s métier—he is more of a TV and radio kind of guy. Has Beck been saying anything about Dewey on TV? On the July 12th edition of the Glenn Beck program, which featured Larry Schweikart (author of 48 Liberal Lies) and Burton Folsom (The Myth of the Robber Barons) as guests, someone posed the following question:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, my question was in the Progressive Movement and its original roots. How did public education play a role in that with our founders such as John Dewey who are big advocates of public education?

It is hard to tell exactly what the question is, at least from the transcript, but that did not stop Beck and his guests from commenting on it.

The initial response is telling:

SCHWEIKART: Well, you know, that's a great question.

BECK: Good question.

Clearly, Beck and his guests have absolutely no idea how to answer the question. Still, the wheels creak into motion eventually:

SCHWEIKART: The answer goes to the essence of reform, I keep coming — of progressivism, I keep coming back to this, is reform. It's all about reforming to what? To perfection. The idea whether they're children, whether they're corporations, whether they're city governments, you can if you just keep reforming them long enough, you will finally get to perfection. It's a view that denies human sin. I hate to go there. But that is the point, it denies human sin.

We’ve gone completely off the rails here, at least as far as Dewey is concerned. Deweyan education is non-teleological—there is no specific endpoint in mind. But Beck picks up this strand of thought and runs with it:

BECK: I mean, it is really the collective salvation. If you look at it, it really is the whole misunderstanding of humans can be perfect, if you just have administrator administrate all the time and keep them in a box. Humans can be perfect, which is a lie and that there is collective salvation that we will all be saved together, right?

SCHWEIKART: Exactly.

BECK: So it is really kind of, the roots of it —

SCHWEIKART: The roots, yes.

BECK: — are extraordinarily spiritual, evil, really. Right? Yes.

It’s really hard to tell what exactly is going on in these statements, conceptually speaking. The line of reasoning seems to be that Deweyan progressivism involves a toxic, perfectionist ideal. Now, one could see how this could be a problem, if it were true, but there is no evidence to suggest that it is.

The comments about evil are interesting because they move us from a potentially rational conversation about the dangers of utopianism into the realm of paranoia. Remarks like this probably the constitute the heart of Beck’s appeal to the radical fringe—he is a truth-teller, a man who is unafraid to reveal the dark heart of progressivism, of which others are either too cowed or misled to speak. Folsom, the quieter of the two guests, seems puzzled by these odd comments and returns to the facts about John Dewey that he knows:

FOLSOM: Well, and John Dewey was a progressive. That was a good question. Dewey was a progressive, supported the progressives.

Evidently, the understandings that Beck and his guests about Dewey are a blend of misinformation and fear. They know that John Dewey is someone that they shouldn’t like, but they don’t have a clear idea of exactly why they shouldn’t like him.

Since the few facts that Beck possessed about Dewey in his book seem to have eluded him when it came time to respond to this audience member’s question, perhaps some good old drill and practice might help him be better prepared for the next time a Dewey question comes his way.

A Big Slam Dunk for the University of Phoenix

An angry owner, bitter Clevelanders, jubilant Floridians, and even Jesse Jackson! No matter which way you slice it, there's been a lot of hullaballoo about Lebron James' recent decision (announced in an hour long ESPN special) to move to the Miami Heat. In many respects, the coverage has been exhaustive. Yet, in the midst of the media circus, there is one aspect of James' announcement that hasn't received much attention: the fact that the lead sponsor of the ESPN special was the University of Phoenix.

University of Phoenix logos were prominent throughout the broadcast, and the company was mentioned several times. Brand Freak reports the story as follows:

The eight brands in the broadcast got nearly $3 million worth of exposure, according to media research firm Joyce Julius & Associates. (We can safely assume that's a whole lot more than they paid.) Top of the list was the University of Phoenix, with its banners, on-screen graphics and logos appearing for a total of two minutes and 22 seconds, and earning 11 verbal references, for more than $1 million in value.

Notably, James also made a personal appearance with Phoenix officials. The corporation agreed to donate $500,000 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, and provided five full tuition scholarships to the University of Phoenix. Here's the video of the love-in:

Lebron James and the University of Phoenix clearly viewed this partnership as a win-win situation, and it is easy to see why. Lebron gets to appear as though he cares about education, while Phoenix manages to burnish its brand image by appearing to be charitable. Furthermore, the donation of scholarships makes Phoenix look more like a traditional university--one can now win a scholarship to University of Phoenix, just as one might win one to NYU. The aura of legitimacy, of course, is precisely what this for-profit corporation craves.

The University of Phoenix now enrolls an incredible 443,000 students, up from 362,000 in 2008. Notably, it is also the #1 recipient of federal student aid, having consumed an extraordinary $938,591,658 in federal student aid in 2009. Other for-profit universities (DeVry, ITT) are also well-represented on the list of top student aid recipients:


The full list of aid recipients is here--you'll note that University of Phoenix hoovers up an incredible 4% of all federal student aid.

The growth of this for-profit institution highlights the key question: do students get a solid education at the University of Phoenix? It's difficult to say. Certainly, a recent whistleblower lawsuit about a cash for enrollments scheme raises some serious doubts about practices at the institution. I think there's a strong argument to be made that a lot of Phoenix students would be better served at public institutions like state universities and community colleges. Yet the fact remains that somehow, Phoenix is managing to persuade a significant number of students to pay for its offerings. This is a trend that should worry those of us who work at more traditional institutions.