Critical Issues in Education

1. Critical Issues in Education Course Notes Charlie Skipper Fall, 2005

2. Friday, Class 1 • Plan of Action • Introductions and Housekeeping • Syllabus Review • Create the Presentation Teams • Paige Emerich – Technology and the Writing Process at EA • Review Charlie’s Questions/Add Others • What is Unassailably True about Education? • Curing Presentism – Roots in Education • Philosophy and History

3. Focusing Questions • What is unassailably true about education? • What is the problem of presentism and why is it so pervasive?

4. Roots in Education • Education – Educere (to draw or bring out) v Educare (to train or bring up) • Historical Overview • Pre-Greek • Greek Models – Socrates then Academies • Church and Monasteries • Middle Ages and Universities • Pre-University Education Until French Revolution

5. Roots in Education • Elements pre-French Revolution • Elite • Religious • Tutors • Post-French Revolution • European Model – Meritocracy, State-Sponsored Education to Secular Ends, Harkens to Chinese Civil Service approach of national testing to privileged education

6. Roots in Education • Post-American Revolution • Traditional • New England and Schools to learn to read bible • Southern tutors to train the elite for admission to universities • Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann • TJ – Public education required for a democracy • Mann – Public education required for the workplace

7. Roots in Education • Industrial Revolution, Romanticism and Child Labor • Education comes to be seen as something other than an elite privilege • In the US, due to immigration, education comes to be seen as a mechanism for assimilation – tool of the melting pot • Labor gets organized and wants to move children out of the labor force • Romanticism and reformers seek to improve the lot of all, including children, and horror stories like those of Charles Dickens led to child labor laws AND a need for a place for children to be

8. Roots in Education • Public Schools, by the latter half of the 19th century, become the place that children should be. • 1st Curriculums based on elite notions of what a person should learn • African America divides on the question of education • Booker T. Washington – Vocational Ed • W.E.B. Dubois – Elite Education

9. Roots in Education • Work of John Dewey and Progressive Education • Students should be actively engaged in their learning • Students learn best when they study subjects or ideas related to their lives and world • Rejection of classical and elite model of learning

10. Roots in Education • Rise of Business Models and Interest in a “Trained Workforce” • Efficiency and effectiveness studies from Taylor’s work were applied to school settings • Schools as factories – students as products of managerial processes • Role of school is to rationalize the process of creating good workers

11. Roots in Education • The Great Depression Undermined much of the business orientation and outcomes focus – Why? • Rise of Professionalization of the Field • Accreditation of Schools • Ending Normal Schools and Rise of Required Degrees • Growth of Education Schools and Licensure