Category Archives: advocating civic education

civic education: the case for smaller schools

The nation’s governors met this weekend to discuss high school reform. They identified real problems, including a high-school completion rate of only about 70% and a set of curricula and standards that obviously aren’t working. But their conversation apparently focused on preparing students for work and college–not citizenship. They called for regular standardized testing rather than reform of schools themselves. I was hoping for more emphasis on school size, which is a signature issue of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates himself addressed the governors and said:

The three R?s [rigor, relevance, and relationships] are almost always easier to promote in smaller high schools. The smaller size gives teachers and staff the chance to create an environment where students achieve at a higher level and rarely fall through the cracks. Students in smaller schools are more motivated, have higher attendance rates, feel safer, and graduate and attend college in higher numbers.

He was right, but the governors mainly focused their attention on standards and accountability.

The average size of American primary and secondary schools increased four-fold between 1940 and 1965, from 100 to more than 400 (see this pdf, p. 26). Toward the end of that period (1959), James Conant identified small high schools as the single biggest problem in American education. He argued that they were economically inefficient, unprofessional, and unable to provide a wide range of equipment and specialized teachers. In addition to these arguments, other factors probably contributed to massive school consolidation in that era, including a tendency to close down historically black schools under court desegregation orders (not to mention the desire to field better football teams).

The result was the creation of very large schools, especially high schools, in which students were seen as consumers who should be permitted to choose among a wide variety of offerings (curricular and extracurricular) provided by specialists. Students were presumed to have diverse interests and abilities. Thus it was right that some should choose student government and AP courses while others preferred “shop” and basketball.

If we hope to create effective, committed, and responsible citizens, huge schools have several marked disadvantages. Relatively few students–mostly ones who are already on a successful track–can possibly participate in the extracurricular activities, such as school government and scholastic journalism, that seem most likely to teach civic skills. Students in large schools tend to self-select into cliques and can avoid interacting with those different from themselves. Parents and other adults in the community have little impact on these large, bureaucratic institutions; so schools are rarely models of community problem-solving or active citizenship, nor can they create paths to participation in the broader world. We know that students who feel that they can have an impact on the governance of their own schools tend to be efficacious and interested in public affairs; but it is impossible for anyone to influence the overall atmosphere and structure of a huge school that is organized around private choice.

Finally, young people become victims of their own choices. You can pick up civic skills (as well as other ones) if you attend a school with a wide range of offerings and equipment and you elect to take the honors classes and work on the school newspaper. But those assets are of no use unless you have the confidence, motivation, networks ties, and knowledge to use them. In a huge high school, there is little chance that any adult will try to steer a student who is on a mediocre track onto a more challenging one. Twenty years later, the student who chose easy courses and avoided clubs may still be paying a price, economically as well as socially and politically.

reading and civics

It’s hard to modify the current regime for elementary education in America, which revolves around annual high-stakes tests in a few subjects. However, without changing the fundamental structure now in place, we could infuse civic ideas and values in reading education. In general, there is a remarkable lack of nonfiction in early reading texts. According to studies summarized in this article, nonfiction represented just 12 percent of the texts included in five major ?basal? reading series for first grade. “Furry-animal stories” dominate. A survey of 83 primary school teachers found that just 6 percent of the material discussed or used in their classrooms was factual.

However, students perform better on existing reading assessments if they have had practice reading in a variety of genres, including history, news, and science as well as fiction. Thus schools should incorporate more social studies into k-8 education as a strategy for complying with existing “No Child Left Behind” reading requirements. As a very important by-product of reading about George Washington, Rosa Parks, or Nelson Mandela, civic knowledge and skills should also increase.

the president’s budget and civic education

The Bush Administration’s budget proposal for education is available online. For those concerned about civic learning, here are two key points:

  • Funding for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools is cut in half, from $672 million to $317 million. This is the office that manages character and civic education, including grants to produce curricular materials, train teachers, etc.
  • The budget makes high school reform a major priority. There will be a big fight over what that means. Some believe that the standards-and-accountability regime that’s now in place for grades 3-8 should be extended upward to grades 9-12; others think that high schools should be made smaller, more various, and more connected to communities. In principle, we could do both; but in practice, there are likely to be major tradeoffs between the two approaches. For one thing, a standards-and-accountability regime will drive schools toward standardization, which will make it more difficult for them to develop idiosyncratic curricular themes, such as public service or American history. Many in the “civic ed” world see great promise in small, themed high schools, especially ones that emphasize civic values.

    The budget is somewhat ambiguous about how to reform secondary education. On one hand, the title of the relevant subhead is “Finishing the Job: Bringing NCLB to High Schools,” and money is earmarked for mandatory “testing in grades 9?11 in language arts and math.” On the other hand, the following passage implies some flexibility:

    • This initiative provides $1.2 billion to help States implement a high school accountability framework and a wide range of effective interventions. In return for a commitment to improve academic achievement and graduation rates for secondary school students, States will receive the flexibility to choose which intervention strategies will be most effective in serving the needs of their at-risk high school students. Allowable activities would include vocational education programs, mentoring programs, and partnerships between high schools and colleges, among other approaches. A portion of the funding will be used for randomized trials and evaluations to identify the most effective intervention strategies to enable school administrators to make better choices on what educational strategies to adopt.”

    I read this as a negotiated statement. Those who simply want high-stakes testing to be expanded through the 12th grade probably have the upper hand, but they have made some room for people who see other ways to reform high schools.

    [cross-posted from the CMS Community blog]

    on “constructivism” in education

    “Constructivism” is one of the most influential words in the whole jargon of education–and a highly divisive one. It is a rallying-cry for many progressive educators and reformers, but an irritant to conservatives. Constructivists oppose the kind of scene in which a teacher stands before a disciplined class of children and endlessly tells them what is true. But they oppose that pegagogy for a variety of overlapping reasons, some of which I find more persuasive than others.

    Creativity: Constructivists often see traditional pedagogy as excessively passive, because children are given everything ready-made in textbooks or by teachers. They want children to be creative, to generate their own works of art, narratives (including factual ones), rules and norms, clubs and other organizations, and social or service projects.

    Child-centeredness: Constructivists often want educators to recognize the interests, goals, and “learning styles” of children at particular ages and in particular communities. Teachers are then supposed to tailor classroom experiences in order to capture kids’ imaginations and interests. Education should “start where the kids are.”

    Pluralism: Constructivists emphasize that interests, values, and dispositions differ according to the culture, gender, and social class of students. Thus they oppose standardization, as epitomized by textbooks and “standardized” tests.

    Experimentalism: Some constructivists want children to discover facts and methods through experimentation, not wait to be given answers. So, for example, it is better for students to re-discover an algorithm for solving a type of mathematical problem than simply to be taught how to solve it. According to constructivists, kids will remember and be able to apply the method better if they have “made” it themselves.

    Holism: Constructivists oppose the separation of intellectual learning from social and emotional learning and ethical development. They see traditional pedagogy as narrow and dismissive of the “whole child.”

    Democracy: Many constructivists argue that democracy should not only be an outcome of education, but also an aspect of it. Students should share authority and responsibility in schools and classrooms (to various degrees) with adults.

    Relativism/Skepticism: It is very common for constructivists to deny explicitly that there is any objective truth. They claim that people or cultures “construct” their own truths. Since many truths have been constructed, none is more objective or valid than the others.

    I’d like to unpack educational “constructivism” into its components, because I admire some and quite strongly dislike others. For example, I’m in favor of creativity; this is a core value for me. However, I think it’s an empirical question whether children use and remember knowledge best if they have re-discovered it for themselves. This may only be true of some knowledge and some children. Likewise, I think it’s an empirical question whether democratically organized classrooms and schools produce the most competent and committed democratic citizens. They may, or they may not.

    Relativism is my least favorite part of the constructivist package. Constructivists often deploy a relativist “epistemology” in the belief that it supports their practices. They favor creativity, democracy, experimentialism, holism, pluralism, and child-centerdness. They see “positivism” as the enemy of all these good things, and relativism as the one alternative to positivism that can support their pedagogy. The classic positivists believed that there were objective, verifiable, empirical (or “positive”) facts, in contrast to theories, values, and metaphysical statements, which were merely subjective. In contrast, “constructivists hypothesize that it is the subject who actually invents reality and that knowledge is tied to an internal-subjective perspective where truth is replaced by ways of knowing.”

    But reality is obdurate. We can invent some things, but other things are real whether we like them or not. Although classical positivism is flawed, there are many ways to defend objectivity without being a positivist. No serious thinker has ever believed that the objective world is obvious, directly apprehended by reason, and uncontroversial. But denying it would be equally foolish. Thus I’m very unimpressed by assertions that “subjects invent reality.”

    Moreover, I think it’s ethically bankrupt to pretend that people or groups can and should make up their own worlds. There are many white communities in which everyone would like to believe that chattel slavery was pleasant–or, at the very least, they would like to ignore it completely. The vicious wickedness of slavery is not part of their lifeworld. But it should be. If everyone “constructs” reality and individuals may decide what knowledge they want to create, then we have no right to challenge people to face uncomfortable realities.

    In fact, relativism is bad for “constructivism,” because two of constructivism’s best components, experimentalism and democracy, require individuals to deal with a world outside themselves–a world not of their creation and not under their control.

    students and the First Amendment

    I?ve spent the last day and a half in the magnificent 23nd floor offices of the First Amendment Center, which provide the most panoramic view of the National Mall. We have been discussing a new Knight Foundation report on students and the free press. As you might expect, American adolescents poorly understand?and undervalue?the free speech and free press clauses of the First Amendment. For example, just over half (51%) agree that newspapers should able to freely publish without government approval of each story. However, those students who have studied the Constitution and/or worked for school newspapers and other youth media are relatively likely to support freedom of the press.

    This is an important study, especially for its details. (The executive summary?which describes adolescents? general lack of knowledge and interest?will surprise no one.) However, some of the presenters, by decrying our clueless kids, simply reminded me why I prefer a different approach.

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