RADICAL TEACHER
a socialist and feminist journal on the theory and
practice of teaching
Issue #65. 2003.
Introduction to the Teacher Education And Social Justice Cluster: Part II
Frinde Maher and Kathleen Weiler
The articles in this cluster represent the second half of a double issue on teacher education. Here we reprint the Introduction to the first issue, RT#64, adding descriptions of the essays in this one. When progressive people today think about teacher education, they often focus on the discrepancy between the ideals of radical teaching and the realities of contemporary public schools. Our articles on teacher education in these issues confront these contradictions in various ways, both by examining aspects of the current situation and offering approaches to dealing with these issues in our classrooms. Examples of transformative pedagogy, the need to respect and encourage the voices of students, curriculum critiquing popular culture and analyzing social inequality are invaluable to prospective teachers. Moreover, progressive programs educating prospective teachers need to include both models of progressive pedagogy and curriculum and courses exploring the historical and contemporary politics of education, to give prospective teachers tools of analysis and action. On the other hand, calls for liberatory teaching can appear to ring hollow notes in underfunded and inequitable public schools, where knowledge and teaching practices are increasingly standardized and monitored through high stakes testing.
As numerous educational researchers have documented, existing schools are profoundly unequal, stratified by race and class, and increasingly driven by the standardized testing of students and teachers and the deskilling of teachers through the introduction of packaged curricula geared to standardized tests. The "marketization" of education is dominant at both the federal and state levels, with free market educators calling for the privatization of schooling through a variety of means: vouchers, for-profit charter schools, the commercialization of school spaces and forced dependence on advertising. (Examples of the latter include the widespread presence of Pepsi or Coke machines in school buildings, with a cut of the profits used to pay for otherwise unfunded student programs, or Channel One, which provides schools with free TV sets but in return requires students to watch commercials during school time).
The changes that are taking place at both the state and the national level reflect the interests of groups like the Business Roundtable, that see public education as both the source of "trained" (as opposed to educated) workers and a potential opportunity for private entrepreneurs. In one version of the free market vision, education would be restructured along the lines of national defense, with private business gaining access to public funds through a system of government contracts. Despite what it usually feels like to public school teachers, there is a great deal of money in public education, in the form of funds currently controlled by local communities and public officials. However, if education is restructured along the lines of the defense industry, private companies could make enormous profits.
Needless to say, the lives of children are of very little interest in this scheme. Knowledge, however, may be even more dangerous than missiles. Conservative school reformers are not only interested in the possibilities of profit in restructuring schools; they are also concerned with control over what is learned in the schools. Encouraging students to think critically about the structure of their society and its values is not a priority for those who are now benefiting from the current arrangement. Thus, controlling knowledge through standardized tests is yet one more way of making sure that public education serves to reproduce the status quo.
In such a climate, progressive teachers and teacher educators quite naturally wonder what can be done to counter what seem like inexorable forces of reaction. How can a new generation of activist teachers be encouraged? How might teacher education programs be constructed to give student teachers the knowledge and skills that can help them teach critically and progressively in the public schools?
Despite the momentum of the marketization and standardization of education, talented and dedicated teachers continue to work with students in original and critical ways. Their own continual questioning of their own and their students' difficult positions in the beleaguered contexts of today's schools helps them teach their students about real struggles and real possibilities for intellectual growth and political change. Yet in order to serve their students in these ways, radical teachers need to do more than simply apply progressive and student-centered pedagogical techniques. They need to be able to study past educational struggles, to become acquainted with progressive critiques of public education, and to reflect on the underlying political meanings of so-called "education reform." They need to be able to help their students grow as people with race, gender, class and cultural identities that position them unequally within and beyond their classrooms and schools, and equip them with the language and histories of struggle and possibility. Their students need to learn about both the promise of the American Dream through education, and the political forces, both today and in the past, that seek to minimize and restrict that promise in the name of economic efficiency and social control.
Most teachers on the university level, like most citizens, hear about the "crises" and "reforms" in public education either from the sidelines or as parents. However, unlike most university professors, teacher educators are on the front line of the campaign by the state and corporations to control the content of knowledge and the process of teaching. Teacher testing and the standards movement, as attested to by several articles below, are attempting to control the content of teacher education courses and programs. At the same time, radical teacher educators can challenge prospective teachers to learn about and reflect on the broader context of schooling in this country, namely the persistent and continuing struggles over educational access and equality. In these two issues of Radical Teacher we therefore present articles that describe and analyze the current conditions facing teachers and teacher educators. But we also include articles describing innovative programs seeking to challenge prospective teachers to reflect on the issues we face, to think about their own practice, and to become radical teachers.
In Issue #64, Frinde Maher's article situated high-stakes teacher tests in the context of other schemes to create a two-tiered system of public education in her article "The Attack on Teacher Education and Teachers." In "Weighing in From California," Ann Berlak provided an account of what school reform means on the ground for teachers and teacher educators by showing the effects of California's obsession with standardized testing. At both state and national levels, the extent of state surveillance and control of public schools continues to expand. The other two articles in Issue #64 described specific programs and approaches. In Polly Atwood and Jimmy Collazo's article, "The Toolbox and the Mirror: Reflection and Practice in 'Progressive' Teacher Education," two advisors of student teachers reflected on being caught between the "arrogance of theory" that can characterize university teacher education programs and the "arrogance of practice" with which public school teachers can view the ineffectiveness of theory in "real" classrooms.
Finally, in "Re(in)forming the Conversation: Student Position, Power, and Voice in Teacher Education," Alison Cook-Sather described a program designed to bring students and student teachers together from across the hierarchical divisions of public schools. High school students and student teachers write letters to each other and meet together over the course of a semester.
The articles gathered here in Issue #65 continue to reflect this balance between critique and possibility. In "Developing Teachers for Social Justice," Herb Kohl describes an innovative teacher education program he has founded within the private, Jesuit University of San Francisco, where practicing teachers are brought together to explore dimensions of teaching for social justice. The students in the program are all teachers in local urban classrooms where they have been frustrated by the demands of the system and their own isolation: in this program, they create a learning community to explore how to bring their concerns for children's development and social change into their schools and classrooms. They read a variety of materials on history, philosophy and classroom pedagogies, by authors ranging from Lisa Delpit to Miles Horton to Bill Ayers and Paulo Freire, and use the readings, discussions and projects to critique and reenvision their own practices. The community they build with each other to support their experiments in challenging and changing their own specific situations is a key part of the program.
In "Hope and History: What do Future Teachers Need to Know?" Kathleen Weiler argues for the importance of providing courses in history as a part of teacher education programs. Too often, teacher education is seen as the mastery of the content of specific disciplines and teaching techniques to be used in isolated classrooms. The rich tradition of historical struggles over education and the collective work of teachers is lost. She describes a course on the history of education she and others have taught at Tufts University over the past decade. This course, Class, Race, and Gender in the History of U.S. Education, views the history of education in the United States as a story of struggle over knowledge and power. The course addresses the meaning of education, both informal education and state-controlled schooling, for different groups, including Native Americans, African Americans, women of different classes and ethnicities, and immigrants from a variety of cultures. It explores the growth of the state as well as the actions of subjugated groups, who have seen education as central in their fight for civil and political rights. It is founded on the belief that teachers need to understand their own work in the context of a broader historical and political enterprise.
In “Interdisciplinary Connections: Teacher and Student Empowerment through Social and Cultural History, Critical Pedagogy, and Collaboration,” Eliza Fabillar and Cynthia Jones describe their work at the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning’s Making Connections professional development program. This program offers a model for teacher education which continues past teacher preparation. High school teachers team up with CUNY faculty members of ASHP/CML scholars to study, plan and teach interdisciplinary English and Social Studies classes. The deep collaboration, rich resources, and progressive curriculum of this program strengthens and challenges teachers’ classroom practice support and stimulate teachers at all levels of experience. The article describes the program and looks in depth at a unit of study developed by one high school teaching team.
The notion of an irreconcilable "theory-practice" divide has often been used to attack radical and progressive educational approaches. Long before the current trends towards further standardization and privatization, critics have decried as "nice in theory but impossible in practice" the ideas of listening to children's desires and needs, of using classrooms as settings to explore societal diversities and inequalities, and of making schools laboratories for creating models of more democratic communities. Such practices, we are always told, would not "work" in the real world of overcrowded classrooms and a curriculum to be "covered." The current attacks on schoolchildren, particularly working class children, and their teachers are indeed designed to make such democratic classrooms less possible. But these current policies underscore the importance of the real lessons that we can draw from the articles above and those we included in the first issue. While they articulate these themes in different ways, all our authors stress the importance of teachers confronting politically the complex contexts that they inhabit. Teachers and teacher educators cannot just close their classroom doors and teach "progressively”; they need to be aware of the historical and political bases of the current struggles over the schools. They need to talk to their students and their colleagues in new ways, and see their schools and communities as well as their classrooms as places for these dialogues. In some ways the current discussion of our educational "crisis" and "reform" provide excellent opportunities for this; everyone is talking about education these days. We hope these articles will help promote these necessary conversations.
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