I posted a blog by Edward F. Berger a few days ago, and as is my occasional failing, neglected to add the link. He said much that was wise and ended on a thoughtful and provocative note, which bears repeating. As you can readily tell from his writing and thinking, Ed is a veteran educator.
These are the tried-and-true tenets of education in a democratic society:
• We do not experiment on children.
• We honor and get to know each child, even those who are hurt and will not score well on summative tests. Unless the system is overloaded – not enough resources and too many children assigned to a teacher – no child is left behind.
• We honor a long history of One Nation united by our education system through common values, comprehensive curriculum, one overall language, and free K-12 education for every child.
• We reject the false assumption that schools can be run for profit. Profits take money away from children/schools. These are dollars that must go to services for children.
• School governance must follow democratic principles, starting with elected officials and elected school boards, and not mayoral control, politically appointed czars, or would-be oligarchs from the Billionaire Boys Club (think Eli Broad).
• We have a proven system of certification and competence. Educators are constantly evaluated by parents, administrators, peers, and students. This is the reason there are very few “bad” teachers.
As an amendment, I don’t think that Berger is saying that bilingual or dual language programs are not part of our tradition (they are), but that every citizen should eventually be able to function in English.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What puzzles me most about this post is if Dr. Berger means to apply it to all who are educated in a democracy or just those that are educated in public schools.
I am also curious if students will be allowed ahead. That will automatically create a group of students that are behind.
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Well stated and points long forgotten by those sitting in policy seats today. They want quick fixes for money and profit and are convincing themselves that education by regimentation, segregation, scripted curriculum, test scores, and discipline is the “new civil rights.”
Few want to go deep to learn and see what has been lost. If they understood the purpose of public education – yes – public education and not tax funded, vouchers for private schools – they wouldn’t be creating a gotcha culture obsessed with testing, putting scores on professionals, and competition-with-strings-attached funding.
For a full picture – every politician and policy maker should read the post above – and might I add Public Education Matters
Click to access booklet%20web.pdf
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good points you add, Jere
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One of my favorite posts. In other words, when our highest ideals and certain economic interests diverge, we pursue the ideals. This cannot be said succinctly, loudly, or often enough.
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I do small experiments on my students all the time though, trying new ways to explain things, no activities so they can discover things on their own. What are the limits to point 1?
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Edward,
Regarding Point Three: do you think there should be shared content? I don’t think we can be unified as a nation unless we share cultural content. I think this content should be amendable –for instance, it should definitely include Asian and African history, not just Western history –but it seems to me that sharing a body of foundational knowledge well-planted in our long-term memories is the only way a people can be said to be ONE. Physical proximity is not enough to make us a community. And when schools abdicate the job of providing this common knowledge, crappy pop culture fills the vacuum. We’re united now only by Dancing with the Stars, sports and Disneyland. Once critical bit of shared content, IMHO, is a robust understanding of why America chose democracy, what the alternatives are, and what it takes to maintain a democracy. This content is not being well delivered right now, it seems to me. Culture is a SHARED way of doing and thinking about things; if we share little, we can’t say we really belong to the same culture. For all its faults, Confucianism unified the Chinese. For this to happen, there was a very concerted effort to transmit Confucius’ ideas from generation to generation. We have no such concerted effort. We let Chance and the Invisible Hand of the marketplace fill our heads haphazardly. One thing I love about Native American and other non-postmodern cultures is the way their “education systems” ensured that everyone in the community stored a common library of stories, songs and knowledge in their heads. For all our libraries and Internets, our heads seem emptier, poorer and less soul-nourishing than theirs.
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cx: “Once” should read “One”.
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Dr. Berger is on the right track. However it seems to me a little out of focus. In a democracy (or any other type of civilized government) the future depends on educating our children. The better we educate our children, the better the future will be for society. I am not an economist, but an ecologist–a scientific discipline with the same Greek word of origin “okios”. In a living community there are some species that are designated keystone species which means that they create an environment which provides for the success of numerous other species within the community. Education is THE keystone in our society for future success of our citizenry. It is the foundation for a good economy, defense, communities, and individual prosperty in life.
Yet education in our democracy has been constrained to the point where it is becoming ineffective. We are waking up to this reality but, without clear focus on the problems, we have really begun to do serious damage to our children, to our economy and our government. Yes indeed! what is being done to education in the name of “fixing it” is destroying public faith in our democratic institutions. The public education system that we have sort of works, but instead of repairing it we seem to now be determined to dismantle it and replace it with an inferior product; destroying the lives of many students, teachers, and communities in the process.
I would offer the following:
a) Public Education is an essential part of any democracy and must always be a top priority. It is vital that we repair the public education process, not destroy it.
b) Education should be focused first and always on the children, not on the budget, not on tests or test results, and not just on the factual content of education material. Education must be about the whole process of educating all (each and every one) of our children: providing knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will equip them for a successful life.
c) Educational success cannot be measured effectively by test scores but by the success of students and their contributions to society after they have completed the educational process.
d) To solve our educational problems, we should make some firm decisions about the real objectives of our K-12 educational process: What skills, attitudes, and knowledge should graduates have to become successful members of our society? How can we best cultivate the myriad talents individual students have? How can we stimulate interest and curiosity and then develop confidence in our children?
e) Children are individuals, not empty vessels or blank slates, and should not be force fed educational content in large groups. They should be educated in an environment where they have free, interactive communication with their instructors and encouraged to think about, question, and practice what they learn. Only then will our children be able to approach their real potential and become the benefit to society that they could be.
Resolving this keystone issue is the most pressing concern of our time. A good solution offers us the opportunity to fix many, perhaps most of the problems we face in our society today and perhaps in the world we live in.
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I would like to add one point.
f) Educators must be part of developing the solutions. As long as lawyers and politicians are deciding how to fix education, then nothing will ever be accomplished. After all….do you call the plumber when you break your leg!
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Drext727,
It seems to me that having politicians involved in educational policy is the dark side of the democratic control that Dr. Berger calls for.
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True…unfortunately there are not just a part, they are all of it. Until educators are sitting at the table, nothing will change.
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I agree, sort of. I retired after teaching science for 27 years to a wide variety of age groups and teachers and I have the utmost respect for the teaching profession. I have had some negative encounters with educational bureaucrats however and have decided that all “educators” are not equal in their focus on our children. Much of the problems in education seem to me to have accumulated in order to accommodate educational bureaucrats. To wit: too much paperwork, standardizing everything, too many meetings and not enough classroom support. So I would say that professional teachers must be part of developing any meaningful solutions, but we should be wary of the professional educator bureaucrat.
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Al…I can agree with that….I want educators not educrats at the table making decisions.
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Glad to see this.
I am reading this wonderful book called MAKE IT STICK about what ideas prevail and stick (urban myths included) and it explains that is very hard to make something unstick once it has stuck. You can’t unstick it by fighting stick with stick. BUT you can outstick with a sticky action. . .and also just wait it out. The “public school failure” myth stuck somewhat and now we are waiting it out. BUT I believe that the democracy aspect is something that ousticks the stickiness of the failure myth.
Anyway, read the book.
Also, the racial discussions in the news right now are so timely with debunking the school failure myth. Minority and inner city schools had the deck stacked against them. Time to wake up and accept all the reasons contributing to that, including the intentional blocking of minority progress.
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teachingeconomist and Ponderosa:
I am sorry to ask how long have both of you been in the teaching profession?
To teachingeconomist, you always make a very vague statement and then ask a nonsensical question. Readers like me, particularly, I would like to know your specific experiment on your students. As a result, readers can assess your teaching ability and knowledge about the meaning of experiment which Dr. Berger emphasizes in number 1, as in “We do not experiment on children.” For instance, if I were you, I would state the definition of experiment according to my understanding, then I give an example that I do experiment on my students. Finally, I would pose a question that shows the conflict or difference between the meaning of experiment in my definition and in my action. From there, readers will help you out by pointing out your misunderstanding without wasting readers’ energy and time. You do not seem to me that you are good in economy because you do not have a focus.
To Ponderosa, your critical statement is blended into a conflict question, “One critical bit of shared content, IMHO, is a robust understanding of why America chose democracy, what the alternatives are, and what it takes to maintain a democracy.”
Yes, in my humble opinion, to share with you that if we have “a robust understanding of why America chose democracy””, then I do not quite understand “why should we search for the alternatives after we affirmatively choose democracy with a robust understanding?” However, Dr. Berger’s tenets of education are the answer in itself to your question “what it takes to maintain a democracy?”
BTW, I have learned Confucius teaching at my very young age. His teaching has been abused and manipulated by con artist and greedy entrepreneur. His teaching aims to cultivate the mutual trust between a conscientious and civilized mind in leaders and all faithful, but weak followers. In reality, like today, we have crooked and cruel mind in business leaders, but the majority of intelligent and civilized people in the work force. Therefore, we, the people affirmatively choose democracy with a robust understanding.
For this sole reason, I hope that you will join us to maintain a democracy in America and to boycott all greedy tycoons. HOW? Please educate their children with Dr. Berger’s tenets of education. Back2basic
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m4potw,
The major way I am currently experimenting on my students is by deemphasizing the lecture and moving much of it outside the classroom. Specifically I am recording some of what I would say in a lecture and allowing students to access it outside of class and am using class time for collaborative work inside of the class. I am also going to more frequent, lower stakes exams instead of the traditional midterm final format. There are a myriad of other small things I am doing as well. Increasing the use of experiments in my class, for example and requiring students to do be more reflective about their work. All different from the traditional way economics is taught, but I have some hopes that it will be more effective for student learning.
I am also teaching an online class. Again, I am unsure about how effective it will be for student learning, but unless I give it a try, how will I ever learn.
In my online class about economic development I ask my students to watch this video about the God complex. Perhaps some here would find it useful as well: http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford
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“. . . but that every citizen should eventually be able to function in English.”
But that won’t happen and never has. From what I’ve seen (from my grandparents-German on) is that many times the first generation to emigrate to here never learns English. Their children are usually bilingual and the grandchildren are usually fully integrated into the culture and speak English exclusively.
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Dear Duane,
Please don’t generalize re immigrants learning English. My Dad’s parents, who came from Holland, spoke English because “we’re in America now.”
In New Jersey, I have first-generation friends from Albania, the West Bank, Peru who may speak English with an accent but function well. As a world language teacher, you may recognize that their receptive language surpasses their productive language.
BTW, have been reading Dr Ravitch’s blog 6+ months & enjoy your comments in the community.
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Booklady,
Thanks for your kind words.
And your right, generalizations can usually be shot through fairly easily. I should have said “generally speaking . . . ”
And you are quite correct in “. . . their receptive language surpasses their productive language.” I emphasize that to my students all the time. Recognition is about a third of “learning” another language. Production is the hard part.
I hope you feel free to comment more here as the more voices the merrier.
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teachingeconomist:
Thank you for beating around the bush. Please be focus and let get straight to your question about Dr. Berger’s tenets of education, point number one, “we do not experiment on children”
In general, experiment is an action with “bad” intention if we test on human being directly without any proven successful result in hypothesis according to all experts within the field. For instance, in educational field, according to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Harvard-trained brain scientist, when the amygdala is triggered due to fear, learning is blocked. Currently, all edu-Reformers try to impose the fear of long hour’s tests on young students. This is called experiment on children.
In your case, if you intention to damage your students’learning with unproven or unsuccessful method of teaching, then I would positively say that you experiment on children. Therefore, please stop doing experiment on children. Back2basic
Please click on the provided link in this post to read more info. Below is the extracted info from Dr. Berger’s tenets of education article.
Let’s tap Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s clear definition of the direct antithesis of the “reformer’s mantra”.
“It might be of interest to note that all of today’s ‘brain-based learning’ techniques used in elementary through high school capitalize on what neuroscientists understand about the functions of the limbic system. With these learning techniques, we try to transform our classrooms into environments that feel safe and familiar. The object is to create an environment where the brain’s fear/rage response (amygdala) is not triggered. The primary job of the amygdala is to scan all incoming stimulation in this immediate moment and determine the level of safety. One of the jobs of the cingulate gyrus of the limbic system is to focus the brain’s attention.
When incoming stimulation is perceived as familiar, the amygdala is calm and the adjacently positioned hippocampus is capable of learning and memorizing new information.”
Dr. Taylor goes on to point out that when the amygdala is triggered, learning is blocked.
I have observed that almost every attempt to reform schools is accompanied by threats, punishments, bribes, and fear-generating ideologies. High Stakes Testing, Common Core, PARCC, the SAT, are all threat-based approaches. Most State testing programs are threat-reward based. (Teach what we tell you to teach and your school will get an “A” rating).
Fifty years ago many teachers used tests as threats and punishment. Today, teachers are aware of brain-based studies and no professional educators believe that fear, pressure, and student abuse are acceptable in a learning environment.
Why then does the USDOE (Arne Duncan), Pearson – a foreign company extracting billions of dollars from American schools – continue measurement systems that are not educationally viable, and in fact block learning? The answer is simple. They actually believe that people are motivated, learn, and work harder when they are threatened and under pressure. There is no evidence to support this, but of course, they are fact-adverse.
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m4potw,
It seems to me that you are using a very idiosyncratic definition of experiment. Experiments are NOT ” an action with “bad” intention if we test on human being directly without any proven successful result in hypothesis according to all experts within the field”. Experiments are an attempt to learn what the results of an action will be on humans. Archie Cochrane experimented on his fellow prisoners of war by giving half of them vitamin C and half of them marmite in order to figure out what was causing their illness. Archie experimented on cardiac patients by having half recover in hospital and the other half recover at home to find out which was better for the patient.
These are both experiments using the conventional definition of the word and have NOTHING to do with “bad” intention, the intentions were actually very good.
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teachingeconomist
Thank you for a good laugh. Please focus on the idea, like “test on human being directly without any proven successful result in hypothesis according to all experts within the field.”
You give me two examples in which Archie knows solidly the GOOD result, but he makes sure that which method will yield better result in term of time, money and convenience to consumers.
Please go back to your original comment and question in your own post and then re-read my definition that goes with my example regarding Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor about the relationship between FEAR and LEARNING in education field.
Please do not feel like a LOSER when you label me or others because you know well that you enjoy beating around the bush without any focus. Please be honest to admit that Dr. Berger’s tenets of education are superior, period. Back2basic
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M4potw,
I think you assume too much about what Archie knew. It may have been that his Virginians would have had no impact on the illness of the prisoners of war. It was very possible that his sending cardiac patients home, deviating from the standard practice at the time, would result in many more patient deaths.
In any case, our disagreement is about the meaning of a word. Perhaps you might look it up. Here is one definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/experiment
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