education and the formation of the state. plato (427bce-347bce) disgusted with the state of...

Education and the Formation of the State

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Plato (427BCE-347BCE)

Disgusted with the state of politics and rulers

Wrote Republic to discuss what a true state should be

Taught by Socrates; followed by Aristotle

Dialogues are examples of the Socratic method

For Plato, private morality and politics were intertwined

The Matrix and the Cave



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRNMZEDOBrM

Revolutionary Era Ideology

Faith in reason (growth of science) Natural law (deism) Progress Nationalism/patriotism Natural aristocracy v. artificial aristocracy

Jefferson’s plan for public education

National Education Association Core Values

Equal Opportunity: We believe public education is the gateway to opportunity. All students have the human and civil right to a quality public education that develops their potential, independence, and character.

A Just Society: We believe public education is vital to building respect for the worth, dignity, and equality of every individual in our diverse society.

Democracy: We believe public education is the cornerstone of our republic. Public education provides individuals with the skills to be involved, informed, and engaged in our representative democracy.

American Federation of Teachers Mission Statement

The mission of the AFT is to improve the lives of our members and their families, to give voice to their legitimate professional, economic and social aspirations, to strengthen the institutions in which we work, to improve the quality of the services we provide, to bring together all members to assist and support one another and to promote democracy, human rights and freedom in our union, in our nation, and throughout the world.

Questions for Discussion

Can moral teaching exist without religious teaching?

Should leaders be educated differently than others?

What if someone only THINKS he/she is enlightened? How do you know the difference?

Can you be enlightened and not be good? What do you think about the pace of

enlightenment? Can it be too slow or fast?

Morals, Indoctrination and Education



Progressive Era (@1890-1930)

Urbanization Industrialization Immigration Ideology (faith in experts; rise of psychology) Education



Progressive Education

Two wings of it: Developmental Democracy and Social Efficiency

Common critique of schools (learn by doing; school as reflective of society; school should help solve society’s problems)

New educational objectives (social stability, employable skills, equal educational opportunity)



George Counts (1889-1974)

Influenced by John Dewey Accused of being a communist Critical of Progressive Education (said it was

elitist and without direction) Envisioned a ‘political’ role for teachers--they

should lead rather than follow society



Toni Morrison (1931-)

Nobel Prize-winning author, editor, and professor

Morrison and Counts are linked because they agree that it is the responsibility of the school and the teacher to teach morals and to acknowledge that morals/values are present at all times





Missions in Action

University of Washington Mission Statement Vales and Traits, Washington State Legislature

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=28A.150.211

Questions for Discussion

Can you think of a situation where you struggled with your values while teaching? How did you handle it?

Should schools and teachers play a role in the creation of a new social order?

What do you make of Counts’ definition of democracy (p. 41)? How do you think it would resonate in today’s schools?

What do you make of Counts’ discussion of indoctrination and Morrison’s admonition that ‘we teach morals by having them’? Would your answer change depending on the age of the students, the method of delivery, or other factors?



“What’s Wrong with Being Colorblind?” Liberalism and Racism



Questions for Discussion Identify some of Paley’s dilemmas; would

you have dealt with them the same way? Why or why not?

Are there situations where ‘doing race’ (or gender or religion, for that matter) is appropriate or inappropriate?

How does the Paley reading fit with some of the other readings you’ve done?

(**for next time, think of ONE book you believe all high school students should read before graduation**)

“I Saw it in Forrest Gump”: Textbooks, Popular Culture, and Truth







Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Prof of humanities at CUNY Pulitzer Prize winner for

books on the presidency Special assistant and

speech writer for Kennedy Considered a ‘lion of

liberalism’



What is Multicultural Education?Multicultural education is designed to help unify a deeply divided nation rather

than to divide a highly cohesive one. Multicultural education supports the notion of e pluribus unum... The multiculturalists and the Western

traditionalists, however, often differ about how the unum can best be achieved. Traditionally, the larger U.S. society as well as the schools have

tried to create the unum by assimilating students from diverse racial and ethnic groups into a mythical Anglo American culture that required them to

experience a process of self-alienation and harsh assimilation. However, even when students of color became culturally assimilated, they were often

structurally excluded from mainstream institutions. Multicultural educators view e pluribus unum as the appropriate national goal but believe that the

unum must be negotiated, discussed, and restructured to reflect the nation’s ethnic and cultural diversity. The reformulation of the unum must be a process and must involve the participation by diverse groups within the

nation, such as people of color, women, straights, gays, the powerful, the powerless, the young, and the old. The reformulation of the unum must also

involve power sharing and participation by people from many different cultural communities

(Banks, 1999, p. 8).

Wholeness v. OnenessWholeness, not oneness, is the master term in the history of the

production of democratic peoples. Indeed, the effort to make the people ‘one’ should be seen as but a single version of the more general endeavor, necessitated by the more fundamental democratic project, to make people ‘whole.’ The word derives from Old English and Germanic forms meaning ‘uninjured, sound, healthy, and complete.’ Now it means rather ‘full,’ ‘total,’ ‘complete,’ and ‘all.’ Neither the Oxford English Dictionary nor Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary treats ‘one’ as its synonym. The reason for this is simple. A speaker cannot use the word ‘one’ to mean multiplicity, but the word ‘whole’ entails just that. The effort to make the people ‘one’ cultivates in the citizenry a desire for homogeneity, for that is the aspiration taught to citizens by the meaning of the word ‘one,’ itself. In contrast, an effort to make people ‘whole’ might cultivate aspiration to the coherence and integrity of a consolidated but complex, intricate, and differentiated body.” (Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education, 17.)

Questions for Discussion What are the morals portrayed in the

textbooks? Had you critiqued your textbooks in high

school? College?

Education as a Radical Venture: In Theory

Paulo Freire (1921-1997) Worked with rural

poor adults Professor,

government employee, and community worker

Wanted to extend literacy and democracy

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

bell hooks Writings focus on the

intersection of race, class, and gender and the role they play in oppression and marginalization

Books include Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism; Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black; Killing Rage: Ending Racism



Questions for Discussion Does liberation demand action or not? Are liberation and self-actualization the same?

Different? Sequential? Is “banking education” inherently bad and “problem-

posing education” always good? How might you critique Freire (most folks merely

celebrate each and every word)? What does the type of education proposed by Freire

and hooks mean for teachers, society, conceptions of citizenship, and morals?

Are the categories of oppressor and oppressed fixed? (also think about the concept of “false generosity”)

Education as a Radical Venture: In Practice

Highlander Folk School, Myles Horton Founded as adult

education center; aim was to build a progressive labor movement

Changed focus in 1953 to Civil Rights Movement and voting rights



Brief Mississippi History Black statistics White reaction to

Brown decision (SNCC and sit-ins) Summer 1964:

Freedom Summer



Questions for Discussion Is working inside the system or outside the system better? What

does either mean for the possibilities of education for liberation? What about the time constraints on ‘freedom?’ Do we have the

luxury of time to allow ‘the people’ to come to their own conclusions?

What do you make of citizenship schools excluding credentialed teachers and whites because organizers thought they would discourage the adult students from expressing themselves?

Where have we seen a SNCC-type educational purpose/mission on a school-wide scale?

What do you make of the SNCC primary materials? How do you make sense of these readings in light of previous

readings ranging from Plato to Freire?

Language Issues: Does an American Have to

Speak English?

Ingles

Englisch

英語Inglese

إنجليزي

Meyer v. Nebraska, 1923

Question: can a state prohibit teaching in a language other than English?

Decision: No, although court recognizes the impetus for it

“The state may do much, go very far, indeed, in order to improve the quality of its citizens, physically, mentally and morally, is clear; but the individual has certain fundamental rights which must be respected.”

Lau v. Nichols, 1974 Question: Is equal or equitable treatment required by

schools? Decision: equitable treatment (though critical mass

necessary) “Under these state-imposed standards there is no

equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.”

Language, Race/Ethnicity, American Identity, and Citizenship No Official Tongue Germans and bilingual schools (1875) Spanish language rights (1880/1881) Tape v. Hurley (1885) Barbarous Dialects (1887) Teddy Roosevelt speech (1917) Alvarez v. Lemon Grove (1931)/Mendez

v. Westminster (1946)

“Recent” Developments English Only Movement/US English,

1983 Proposes immersion, reduces support for

bilingual education Proposition 227 (CA), 1998

Restricts length of time students can spend in bilingual education

Questions for Discussion Reflect on the purposes of education as

we’ve discussed them; how does bilingual education fit?

How does bilingual education fit with our discussion of integration/assimilation/ acculturation/separation/segregation?

How do we reconcile “Americanness” with diversity? How about the relationship between language and citizenship?

How do we reconcile Lau with Brown?

How Do We Define “Social Justice” in Education?

14th Amendment (1868) …No State shall make or enforce any

law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Cases that make up Brown Briggs v. Elliott (SC), 1950 Belton v. Gebhart; Bulah v. Gebhart

(DE), 1951 Brown v. Board of Education (KS), 1951 Davis v. County School Board of Prince

Edward County (VA), 1951 Bowling v. Sharpe (DC), 1952

Excerpts from Brown v. Board Today, education is perhaps the most important

function of state and local governments…It is the foundation of good citizenship…Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms…Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

Pivotal Cases Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)

Colleges can use race as a plus factor in determining whether a student should be admitted; while race may not be the only factor, the decision allows admissions committees to take race into consideration along with other individualizing factors; says race-conscious policies must be limited in time

Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) Undergraduate system was ruled unconstitutional

because it was a rigid point-based admissions policy which was considered too much like a quota system

Parents Involved v. Seattle School District (5-4 decision) Cannot use race as a tie-breaker Use of race is ONLY for racial balance,

nothing more Seattle schools were never legally

segregated or under a court order to desegregate

The Brown decision prohibits states from according differential treatment based on race

Justice Anthony Kennedy Concurred but believed decision too

dismissive of the goals of avoiding racial isolation due to de facto segregation

Mistaken in saying the constitution required state/local authorities to accept status quo

Lists possible solutions: strategic site selection, directing resources to special programs

Justice Stephen Breyer Dissents and argues that local

communities would be stripped of tools necessary to prevent re-segregation

Their claim to Brown is a cruel irony The difference between de facto and de

jure segregation is meaningless

Personal Reflection To what extent did your K-12 experience give you the

opportunity to learn and interact with classmates that were of a different race, nationality, or ethnicity? To what extent has this impacted your adult life?

In your teaching and learning experiences, how does interracial, intercultural, and/or interethnic education look? What would you say the level of interaction is amongst differently identified groups? To what extent is the teacher’s role to assure interracial/intercultural/interethnic interaction?

Questions to Discuss re: Amicus Briefs

What are the goals of American education (find quotes)? Whose interests do these goals serve? Can you see how the goals set forth would be in tension with other goals?

How is the Brown decision discussed? What are the arguments used to support the brief’s

stance on the pupil assignment plan? Are there alternatives offered that would prevent re-segregation, and how does the brief argue against other alternatives?

How do you make sense of the decision and your brief in terms of “Education as a Moral Endeavor?”

education and the formation of the state. plato (427bce-347bce) disgusted with the state of...

Documents

quality public education

reflective of society

developmental democracy

social aspirations

state of politics

representative democracy

just society

diverse society