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Welcome We all come to the table with experiences, and worldviews…. Let’s find out what our “feast at the table” will be like this week…. Public Education America’s noble experiment- universal education for all students is a cornerstone of our democracy.
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WelcomeWe all come to the table with experiences, and worldviews….Let’s find out what our “feast at the table” will be like this week….
Public EducationAmerica’s noble experiment- universal education for all students is a cornerstone of our democracy
“We are here not only to transform the world but also to be transformed” (Palmer, 2000, p. 97).
This Week What are schools like in the USA? How do they compare to your experiences in your country? Have schools encouraged a more socially just and equitable life for all? • Educational Paradigms • Federal Educational Standards • Racism and Inequality • War and Violence • Teacher Preparation
What has your experience been with schooling? Were your schools….
Traditional/ The Conservative Paradigm Life is difficult & dangerous. The supreme being is a strict & judgmental parent. Most people are weak, selfish, greedy, immoral & lazy. Evil is a prominent part of human experience. Individual responsibility is central. Trust in others must be limited to those very much like us. Competition is at the center. Great questions of the day have simple answers. Government is a thief and a waste. Progressive Life is difficult & dangerous. The supreme being is a nurturing, loving parent. Humans are basically good and always motivated. Evil is a minor part of human experience. Cooperation and sharing, collective action and mutual support are crucial. Trust is the core of healthy human life. Complexity and ambiguity characterize our lives. WorldviewsParadigms in the USA
Worldviews and Paradigms in the World? Where does your worldview fall? Take five minutes and list your worldview in comparison to those of the USA.
Educational Paradigms How do these worldviews affect the educational systems?
Educational Paradigms Share your worldviews with two other people from different countries (if possible). Now, using the Venn diagram, list your educational experiences that were the same and that were different.
The Conservative Paradigm in Education Students are untrustworthy, unmotivated, undisciplined, slothful and immoral. Students (and educators) cannot be trusted and must be monitored and coerced to do the right thing. Ability is the best way to identify and group students for learning. Isolation of able learners is essential. Education is evaluation and evaluation is education. Presentation equals teaching. Knowledge is the accumulation of brick upon brick of facts. Creative, caring, curious, critical citizens are not a priority. Public schools are a bloated ineffective government bureaucracy that should be privatized. The Progressive Paradigm in Education Human freedom and empowerment are more critical than accountability and punishment. Life is about relationships, not acquisition. School... democratic experience. Caring and trust for each person is the center of any truly professional activity. Schools are to improve society as a whole, not providing competitive advantage to the elite. Curriculum is best derived from the needs and interests of the learners. Instruction should engage active learners. Developmental appropriateness should supercede national assessment. School failure has political and economic causes. Educational Paradigms in the USA
The Progressive Paradigm Supports • Heterogeneous Grouping • Integrated Curriculum • Differentiated Instruction • Evolution as Science • Teachers as Mentors • Small School Strategies • Interdisciplinary Teams • Shared Decision Making • Teacher Education
Progressive Supports…. • Local Control of Curriculum & Assessment • The Progressive Paradigm in American History • Abolition • Peace Movements • Modern Psychotherapy • Civil Rights • Bill of Rights • Child Labor laws • Women’s Suffrage • School Desegregation • Gay Rights • Progressive Education • Environmental Movement
Three essentialquestions: • What is the purpose of a public education? • Who is to receive the educationalservices provided by the public? • And, how does government ensure the quality of these educational services? In various forms, these questions lay beneath all educational changes and reform.
18th century • short-term schools • ten or twelve weeks a year • favored boys over girls • charged parental fees • families responsible along with churches, neighbors, and peers • not very extensive • not free • not governmental • not secular… • family wealth, race, and gender had a strong impact
19th centuryCommon School • born in the mid-nineteenth century. • funded by local property taxes • charged no tuition • were open to all white children • were governed by local school committees, and were • subject to a modest amount of state regulation
Late 19th centuryReligious discrimination • half of New York City residents were Irish Catholics, generally poor and desperate for an education. • Yet in New York, they found that the public schools, while free and open to all, were effectively, Protestant… • In Pennsylvania in 1843, a Catholic church was burned to the ground and thirteen people were killed in a conflict known as the Philadelphia Bible riots. • Create a privately funded national system of Catholic schools. It became the major alternative school system in the United States.
Late 19th centuryRace and Education • The Civil War ended in 1865 • Four million Americans, formerly slaves, were now free. • Black literacy soared in the decades after the Civil War, from 5 percent to 70 percent.
Early 20th centuryWomen enter work force… • Promoted female teachers as a civilizing force in the West… “God designed women to be the chief educators of our race… It is woman who is [sic] fitted by disposition and habits and circumstances for such duties.” • Beecher founded colleges to educate women in philosophy, science, and mathematics and train them for service out west… • One young lady witnessed a gunfight outside her classroom. Another found herself boarding in a two-room cabin with a family of ten. • Kathryn Kish Sklar describes how women changed what went on in the classroom: “[The hiring of women] created a new ethic in schools that was feminized in which the teacher cared for the students-the teacher was not only a disciplinarian but also offered, not exactly the comforts of home, but a lot of the similar ingredients that had gone on in home schooling a century before that.”
End of the 19th centuryExclusion in schools • Public school expenditures rose from $69 million in 1870 to $147 million in 1890 • Public school enrollment increased from 7.6 million in 1870 to 12.7 million in the same decades • The United States was providing more schooling to more children than any other nation on earth • Yet not all children could attend public schools together • Native Americans were sent to special government schools, where they were forced to abandon tribal languages, customs, and dress. • African Americans also faced exclusion, and many created their own schools.
Early 20th centuryImmigration • immigrants arriving from every part of the globe • 1890 and 1930, over 22 million came to the United States, including almost three million children. • on the day after a steamship arrived, as many as 125 children would apply to one New York school. • Thousands of students attended school part time for lack of space. Some classrooms were as crowded as tenements. • Yet for many other children, school was nothing more than a mysterious building passed on the way to work. In 1900, only 50 percent of America’s children were in school, and they received an average of only five years of schooling.
Little girl spinner in Mollahan Cotton Mills, Newberry, South Carolina (1908)
20th centuryLife Skills Education • progressives claimed that schools could help to preserve the American way of life • Gary (Indiana) curriculum reached into areas like health and hygiene that had little to do with the three Rs. • progressive education would socialize students and their families at a time of widespread labor unrest • “…home economics becomes a big issue. If the woman learns how to cook and the worker goes to work well fed and works hard, and knows that there will be a good meal when he returns home, he doesn’t stop at the saloon and he comes directly home. And we will have industrial peace through home economics. So the school was suddenly the panacea for everything that was going on in society.”
Late 20th centuryBilingual/Global Education • before World War I, schools taught courses in the language of the major immigrant group, such as German. Historian David Tyack explains, “The Germans…were quite proud of their own language and tradition and insisted that their language be taught in places like…St. Louis and Cincinnati and Cleveland. Hundreds of thousands of children learned German or learned in German in public schools. And learned about the glories of Germany.” • But by 1917, the United States was at war. Former president Theodore Roosevelt was among those leading the call for an English-only curriculum.
Late 20th centuryDesegregation • In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that segregation was constitutional as long as separate facilities were equal. • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had traveled throughout the South, gathering evidence to prove that segregated schools were never equal and that black schools were often desperately underfunded.. • In 1950 Reverend Oliver Brown walked his eight-year-old daughter Linda to the Sumner School…The case, filed as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, went to the Supreme Court, where it was argued by Thurgood Marshall • On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the court’s unanimous decision: “It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity…is a right which must be available to all on equal terms. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
One of the “little rock nine” trying to enter high school in 1957
Early 21st centurySchool Choice • In 1974, educators in East Harlem asked some of the district’s best teachers to create small, alternative public schools, carving space as needed within existing buildings… • Deborah Meier, founder and former principal of East Harlem’s Central Park East Schools: “I had never heard of anybody offering to do that in the public system. And it was the beginning of a very bold and exciting experiment. Within ten years, East Harlem went from having twenty schools to having fifty-two schools in the same buildings • By 1982, educators in East Harlem required that all junior high students choose their school • By 1987, East Harlem was outperforming half of the city’s school districts.
