· · · · · Five critical reviews |
· Book Title:by Lawrence Arthur Cremin Reviewed by Jim Boushay Culture: A Limitless Resource More education takes place outside the classroom than within it. Through not novel, this nonetheless engaging thesis is central to Lawrence Cremin's Public Education, a slim volume examining compelling educative forces exerting an impact on children. Cremin, whose earlier The Transformation of the School ranks as perhaps the most popular analysis of John Dewey's theories, unsurprisingly leans heavily on his mentor in a jargon-free treatise based on a 1975 lecture to the John Dewey Society. Like the educational reformer, Cremin argues for recognition within the classroom of outside-the-school forces playing a significant role in both lower and higher education. Identifying himself as well with provocative contemporary educationists, principally John Holt and Paul Goodman, Cremin argues that American education anesthetizes a student to learning by negating the value of the individual's background, experience, and environment. Holt's How Children Fail and Goodman's Growing Up Absurd, two passionate calls for reform, decry teachers unwilling to relate classroom lessons to life outside the school's walls. Cremin now adds his book to those volumes demanding loud reaffirmation of John Dewey's concept of the wholeness of learning. The author thoughtfully questions, for example, those teachers ignoring the revolutionary influences of film, TV, radio, the Internet, and other forms of mass communication. He explains the extensiveness of still other resources and influences—termed "configurations of education"—including libraries, museums, politics, neighborhoods, urban centers, factories, technology, and contemporary lifestyles. A child brings to the classroom an experiential background and an aggregation of values, attitudes, and relationships formed by the family. To recognize—and subsequently draw from—these other-than-school forces molding a child's world view is to begin reconciling a continuing dichotomy between what occurs in the classroom and what occurs beyond its walls. All society is a limitless resource made up of potent educational configurations. In the developing child, daily learning happens more effectively and persuasively outside of the often-restricting structure of the school. Needed, Cremin says, is a new definition of growing up and indeed of institutional education itself, a definition that should not exclude these real and latent configurations. Echoing the critical theories of American philosopher George Santayana, the book lucidly addresses the conflict between idealism and materialism in the United States. On the one hand is the school idealizing and mythologizing American reality. On the other hand are those beyond-the-school truths of the American experience, un-romanticized truths, which teach and form young people to become, typically, what they do become. To bring the two separate strains together in a more practical totality is to integrate the configurations, to integrate our culture's educative forces. Since a child enters the school with the entire self, he/she grows as a direct result of the play of one configuration on the other. This is not to say that each configuration is good, life giving, or worthy of attention and study. Some are patently odious, threadbare, immoral, and, therefore, may be counteracted within the classroom. Other configurations are manifestations of the cultural reality that is peculiarly, characteristically American. Cremin’s point is that for the educational institution to deny the existence or prominence of these multiple configurations in the life of the child is tantamount to insulating him/her from those essential derivatives of the American experience which, in fact, make the youngster unique. Thus school and society must work together to harmonize the competing educative forces molding children's minds and attitudes. A school in which learning is not separated from, but joined to, the rest of life is something toward which educational leaders on all levels must move as quickly as possible. Lawrence Cremin calls for a new and "great public dialogue about education" to discuss implementing strategies within the classroom for fostering the crucial interaction between school and society. Public Education is itself a forward-looking, cogent framework for beginning that dialogue. ______________________________ · Book Title: WAYS TO HELP PEOPLE DO THINGS BETTER by John Caldwell Holt
Reviewed by Jim Boushay Educators may be dismayed and disturbed by Instead of Education. John Holt wastes few words in denouncing S-chools and T-eachers (with a capital "S" and "T," respectively) and in calling for swift abolition of compulsory education as we know it today. Central to Holt's denunciation is that forced learning is "cut off from active life and done under pressure of bribe, threat, greed and fear." A liberal reformer of the 60s, the author has written and lectured extensively on education. His previous works, especially How Children Fail (1962) and Freedom and Beyond (1972), unequivocally document the connection between effective teaching and student success. However, his newest book abandons the hope of improving teacher strategies to spawn student success. He now believes schools are prisons bereft of any significant chance for real creativity and learning. Such a belief echoes persuasive educationists such as Ivan Illich (De-Schooling Society) and Paul Goodman (Growing Up Absurd) who also lament that school learning is too often separated from the rest of life. In a well-paced and colloquial style, Holt argues eloquently that in place of compulsory education children will learn to become unhampered "do-ers"—free to learn where, when, what and how they see fit. He explains the success of alternative models like the Beacon Hill Free School in Boston (serving adults mostly); the Learning Exchange in Evanston, IL (rekindling the John Dewey spirit of the wholeness of learning); the Children's Community in Ann Arbor (emphasizing entirely unstructured and undefined learning); and the Ny Lilleskole (responding to Denmark's large, conventional schools in which teachers and students coexist in a formalized relationship). Of course, deep in the dustbin of educational reform lie proposals similar to Holt's. How does he himself hope to change "the system" or, rather, to eliminate it? A realist, he acknowledges that his suggestions will indeed seem impractical and improbable—but not impossible—for at least another generation. That generation is now in the Year 2004 and then beyond. Yet he solicits the immediate help of parents discouraged by the presumably deleterious effects of education on their children. Parents are in the best position to help youngsters, he says, "play the education game better." As a first step in abolishing compulsory education itself, he asks educators and parents In fact, "freedom" is a key word in this compelling book, otherwise given to numerous facile and strained generalizations. Holt says: "Education, with its supporting system of compulsory and competitive schooling, all its carrots and sticks, its grades, diplomas, credentials, now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all social inventions of mankind." Elsewhere he states: "...schools for educators . . . get and hold their students by the threat of jail or uselessness or poverty. There is very little we can do to make these S-chools better, and they are almost certain to get worse." Such statements are plentiful. A serious flaw in Holt's fervent call for freedom and for learning related to real life is that, despite this most profound plea, his arguments are often contradictory and diffuse. His either-or assertions miss the point that many classroom teachers are already successfully employing methods he espouses in terms of compulsory education's demise. Some of his theories, however, deserve serious consideration, especially his discussion of the important role of parents in a child's learning. He recommends that educators reemphasize the value and necessity of energetic cooperation with parents as teachers. But even here he warns against a natural tendency to overprotect children. To intervene—however intelligently, gently, creatively—is to risk either squashing initiative or allowing learners less time for discovering and developing felt needs. The overriding issue for Holt is choice—the freedom to choose without fear of reaction, reprisal, restriction. He does not recommend that children be allowed to roam completely unfettered; he does understand that parents and teachers need to guard learners against obvious, as opposed to presumed, harm and danger. Yet frequent and unnecessary intrusions in the daily routine of youngsters engender distrust and fear rather than self-confidence and openness. In the author's view, knowing when and how to intrude, without jeopardizing the child's right to choose for him/herself, is the mark of a positive and humane John Holt does not apologize for repudiating compulsory education. Gripping is the urgency with which he calls for the abolition of forced learning, itself not a novel revolutionary proposal. Once overcoming the book's emotionalism and exaggerations, educators will find much to consider. One need not be a disciple of Holt to appreciate many of his forceful remarks about helping children become "do-ers." ______________________________ · Book Title: by Alfred S. Alschuler Reviewed by Jim Boushay University of Massachusetts education professor Alfred Alschuler tested a variety of "social literacy" techniques during eight years of research in middle and secondary schools across the country. The techniques derive from the beliefs of Paulo Freire, the famed Brazilian educator and philosopher. Says the author in the first chapter: "I am convinced that some of Freire's ideas lead to practices that embody our country's publicly stated ideals more fully than many current procedures in our nation's classrooms." Three convictions form the core of Freire's—and Alschuler's—beliefs about resolving discipline problems: (1) People can and should create "a world in which it is easier to love"; (2) people develop the ability to create their world; and (3) education that is based on problem-solving facilitates this development. When applied pragmatically to education in general and school discipline in particular, these three convictions lead ideally to a self-governing classroom structure rather than to a hierarchy of oppressive authority and power. The convictions represent an amalgam of current theories in social psychology, group dynamics, and organizational development and management. Alschuler's book presents an enormously intriguing look at the old problem of school discipline. The author argues persuasively in favor of democratic participation by students, teachers, and administrators in resolving disciplinary difficulties. In case history after case history, he demonstrates the practical value of collaborative efforts between students and educators in managing, reducing, or altogether eliminating classroom stress and conflict. In a well-paced and colloquial style that typically avoids polemics, the book includes specific vignettes from Alschuler's experiments in New England secondary schools—exceedingly successful experiments that called for identifying patterns of stress and conflict, analyzing their systematic causes, and ultimately modifying ineffective and cumbersome regulations. Explains Alschuler: "Literacy is more than simply learning to read and write the conventional idiom. It is a much broader problem solving process involving naming problems, analyzing the causes, and acting to solve these problems." The philosophy and techniques of social literacy were at the heart of the author's enormously rewarding experiments. When the schools changed rules and redefined roles in place of punishing or reforming individual students, discipline problems decreased sharply. Even more dramatic was the way in which this solutions-oriented approach enabled teachers to improve control and motivation, as well as, to increase teaching time and to reduce battle fatigue. The chapters containing how-to exercises are spiced with lively anecdotes many teachers will identify with. These chapters especially offer a guiding concept as well as measures immediately applicable to making the guiding concepts work in the classroom. Those guiding concepts include resolving conflict through dialogue; raising teacher and student awareness of how each group creates classroom situations that are ultimately disempowering to both groups; and helping students attain and then maintain a minimal level of educational competency. The author is careful to explain how it is that the practical exercises involve students and educators working collaboratively—the basic framework for social literacy. Such exercises appear to be in keeping with the democratic flexibility typical of discipline systems within some schools. That flexibility has generally been characterized by teamwork to improve behavior and to change rules so that students and educators, in cooperation with parents, become more conscious of expectations and responsibilities. Alschuler's practical exercises will offer fresh ideas to school teachers seeking to enhance that tradition of cooperative teamwork. The chapter on teacher frenzy and burnout is remarkable for the real-life story it tells of teachers and students working democratically to identify, analyze, and alleviate those patterns of stress that lead to burnout. This is an instructive section, considering that a recent teacher health survey named stress as the worst health problem within the profession. The chapter's conclusion is helpful. Says Alschuler: "Whatever pattern of stress you plan to attack, remember the criteria for socially literate problem solving. Consider rules and roles to change, not people. Thus the overall level of stress is likely to be reduced in a lasting, mutually satisfying way." The book's overriding issue is cooperation and collaboration—not authoritarian confrontation—in attacking discipline problems. This approach is a welcome counterpoint to the massive problem of school discipline in the nation's schools. Collaborative efforts to get at the causes of this massive problem, says Alschuler, must involve students, teachers, parents, and administrators working to achieve socially literate solutions. A realist, he acknowledges that some educators may think his approach and techniques impractical and improbable. Yet the recommendations for more effectively resolving the age-old discipline problem are pragmatic and feasible. The author calls for a considerable degree of renewed humaneness within the teaching profession. He does not apologize for insisting—sometimes eloquently—that commitment to democratic principles is the kingpin around which compassionate and high-quality education must revolve. Unlike educationists Paul Goodman (Compulsory Mis-Education), John Holt (Instead of Education), and Ivan Illich (De-Schooling Society), Alschuler believes, as John Dewey and Carl Rogers did, that schools can enhance a student's inherent instinct for learning. Learning is best accomplished, both Dewey and Rogers argued, within the flexibility of democratic classroom rule-setting that allows both students and teachers to thrive. Educators will find much to ponder and discuss discuss in this stimulating volume. It is full of problem-solving strategies that are challenging, practical, and within the framework of the best ideals of American education. ______________________________ · Book Title: By Nat Hentoff Reviewed by Jim Boushay Humane Education Nat Hentoff does give a damn, as do the principals and teachers he writes of warmly in this series of vignettes of their gargantuan struggles to improve the New York City school system. From the perspective of a quasi-investigative reporter, Hentoff looks searchingly at the schools that do work because educators are determined to see them work. Early in the book he says, "My main interest all along in writing about education has been in finding ways in which certain schools can and do work for all kids, or for a larger percentage of them than is or has been the norm." The author of the award-winning Our Children Are Dying (1966), Hentoff has continued writing on education, his trenchant social criticism appearing regularly in such periodicals as The Nation, The New Yorker, and Social Policy. He does not offer a panacea for education's chronic ailments but, rather, provides a multifaceted view of diverse teachers, schools, and programs whose only common denominator is hard work, commitment, and caring. Specifically he espouses three crucial beliefs that, emphasized repeatedly, serve as the kingpin around which effective education presumably revolves. First, children are educable. Second, parents are participants in the education of their children. Third, administrators and teachers are accountable for their failures. In a crisp, journalistic style sometimes approaching eloquence, Hentoff argues in favor of a humane education that does not abandon or even de-emphasize the basic goals of high-quality education. The educators he portrays relate their success stories, mostly with ghetto and minority children characteristically destined for society's junk heap. These successes result in large measure from the high expectations of principals, teachers, and parents all insisting cooperatively on essential reading and math skills within an environment in which children feel secure, cared for, and respected. One of those who cares—who gives a damn—is Martin Schor, a no nonsense Brooklyn elementary school principal. Fairly traditional in educational philosophy, Schor set high standards for his school's mostly black and Hispanic and students, many of whom were considered by professional observers to be "uneducable." Soon, however, more than half of these so-called "disadvantaged" students were reading above the national norm. Another who cares passionately is Luther Seabrook, a flamboyant administrator fond of the term third-world-kids to describe the mostly nonwhite teen-agers in the Manhattan high school he runs. He persisted in demanding that all pupils learn to read before graduation. Among other initiatives, he arranged for the transfer of teachers not producing solid academic results. Eventually he radically upgraded the school's previously poor level of achievement in core subjects. Still others who care—who refuse to give up on kids or become discouraged by budget cuts and the bureaucratic morass seemingly endemic in New York City—are John Simon, Harvey Scribner, and Elliott Shapiro. They reject the way schools systematically, albeit unconsciously, undermine the child's inherent instinct for learning. It is a thunderous rejection echoing persuasive educationists like Paul Goodman (Compulsory Mis-Education), John Holt (Instead of Education), and Ivan Illich (De-Schooling Society). But Hentoff himself advances a step beyond these social critics as he affirms the value and potential effectiveness of compulsory education within the public school system. What all of these educators hold in common—as revealed by vignettes in which the parties speak for themselves with little obtrusive commentary from Hentoff—is a pragmatic belief that schools are certainly accountable for what children do and don't learn, and that so-called uneducables are in fact educable. In April, 1975, James Harris, former president of the National Education Association, noted that more than 23% of all schoolchildren fail to finish school. Another large segment graduates as functional illiterates. Hentoff says, "Mr. Harris did not explain exactly why the schools, with all the marvels of modern pedagogy, are foundering, but he did emphasize quite reasonably that `If 23% of anything else failed—23% of the automobiles did not run, 23% of the buildings fell down, 23% of stuffed ham spoiled—we'd look at the producer. The schools, here, are not blameless.'" In addition to the lively accounts of notably successful schools and personnel, Hentoff has tacked on a chapter concerning the pervasiveness of corporal punishment in school districts throughout much of the nation. This is an angry section, made urgent and chilling in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling late last spring that corporal punishment does not violate protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Hentoff's chapter is ironic counterpoint, serving as background for the High Court case by relentlessly documenting incident after incident of abusive, severe, even crippling corporal punishment sanctioned by various lower courts. He explains that the U.S. is one of the last industrialized nations where corporal punishment as a means of disciplining students is still legal. This is a forceful and incisive study, although much of the material is not new and surely far from radical. Hentoff's optimistic message, hammered home in each of his major portraits, bears repeating: Children can learn, if parents, teachers, and administrators care enough to see that they do. Despite a variety of approaches, programs, and philosophies—from the traditional to the open classroom to alternative education—the book's unifying thread is that teachers must work hard and long, must be organized and dedicated, and must treat children honestly and humanely. More important, school authorities must support and encourage students while expecting high levels of achievement. ______________________________ · Book Title: PREFERENTIAL ADMISSIONS
Reviewed by Jim Boushay Confronting a Crucial Contemporary IssueA student with a high B average as an undergraduate and membership in Phi Beta Kappa, Marco DeFunis was outraged when refused admission to the law school of the University of Washington in 1971. He twice took the Law School Admission Test, the first time scoring 512 of 800 total points, the second time scoring 668. Claiming ill health for the first test, he held that, on the basis of his higher revised score and a respectable academic record, he should have been admitted.
DeFunis sued the University of Washington when it held to the original rejection. The lawsuit charged the institution with what is sometimes termed reverse discrimination—giving preference to less well-qualified applicants who, DeFunis learned, were admitted over him. A trial judge of a lower court ruled in the applicant’s favor and he matriculated. In March 1973, the university’s appeal reached the Washington State Supreme Court, which overturned the lower court’s decision. DeFunis promptly appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, with Associate Justice William 0.Douglas issuing an order to maintain the status quo during the appeal. The Court eventually heard the arguments but refused to hand down a decision since, by that time, the plaintiff had assurances he would graduate in a few months. The High Court thus ruled the case moot. Robert M. O’Neil’s Discriminating Against Discrimination is a detailed yet readable study of the pros and cons of the celebrated DeFunis suit. An appendix includes the verbatim decisions of the two supreme courts and a helpful bibliographic essay. Partly because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to decide the case (by a bare 5 no to 4 yes majority), it remains controversial, continuing to spawn debate over the legality of preferential admissions. This useful, non-technical work for the education leader and interested lay-person makes a persuasive case for racial quotas by disagreeing with those arguing that the law should be “colorblind.” To remedy the injustices done blacks, Latinos, and other minorities, O’Neil maintains that indeed it is legal, ethical, and moral for a university or professional school to have preferential admissions policies. Affirming that a “compelling public interest is to achieve equality for persons and groups to whom equality has long been denied,” O’Neil concludes that racial preferences are the only means of producing a rapid influx of professionals from a given minority group. When the DeFunis suit went before the U.S. Supreme Court, O’Neil was chairman of the Council on Legal Education Opportunity, which filed one of the many friends of the court (amicus curiae) briefs in opposition to DeFunis. A lawyer and currently the vice president of Indiana University in charge of the Bloomington campus, he is also the author of numerous articles and nine books, including The Price of Dependency: Civil Liberties in the Welfare State. Few would question his qualifications for writing on the complexity of preferential admissions. The issue of minority access to higher education continues to be an anxious concern of do-or-die proponents of equal opportunity and equal rights. However, O’Neil favors moderate, practical, and effective preferential policies to avoid the imbroglio of the inevitable court battles. His somewhat orthodox, reasonable approach will help eliminate the kind of legal debacle typified by the protracted DeFunis case. In effect, O’Neil hopes to maintain the necessary balance between the competing forces of equal protection for individuals and preferential treatment for minorities. Of obvious value is the book’s political and moral justification of minority preference, a position O’Neil advocates without apology or timidity. He justifies preferential admissions within the framework of three goals: 1) allowing for greater minority representation in the professions; 2) righting some of the wrongs done minorities in the past; 3) responding more effectively to the needs of disadvantaged groups. These liberal goals are in direct contradistinction to the conservative views of Nathan Glazer’s recent Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (Basic Books). Sanctioning individual freedom and opposing educational egalitarianism, Glazer asserts that proportional representation is itself discriminatory. He endorses equal opportunity for individuals as individuals. This concept, he insists, legally conforms to the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but is at variance with preferential treatment for disadvantaged groups. Flaws in Discriminating Against Discrimination are minor. O’Neil fails to specify how “proportional equality” can be achieved and, for that matter, how “equality” itself is to be realistically defined. The drawback is that effective clarification of these weighty matters is still left to college administrators as they presumably move closer to their quotas. Another flaw is the seemingly cavalier—perhaps simplistic—analysis of the financial costs and other risks of racial preferences. The author admits that some will be hurt by preferential policies. If a university de-emphasizes intellectual tests for admission and, instead, admits an applicant on the basis of some type of compelling social right or need, who is to determine what these rights and needs are? The book does not deal with this inevitable concomitant of policies on racial preference.
Suffice it to say that, everything considered, O’Neil’s work is incisive and satisfying. His case for weighing minority applicants differently is designed to deal with the problem of tokenistic minority enrollment levels at many colleges and universities. Some will perhaps disagree that special admissions procedures can eliminate—or even significantly reduce—minority under-representation in higher education. Nevertheless in confronting so crucial and contemporary an issue, O’Neil has done a laudable job. ________________________________________________ These reviews are also available altogether |