Matteo's Post in response to the 9/14 questions
It is late on Sunday night and I have an early morning in the field tomorrow so until we are able to coordinate our efforts as a group I will leave my blog response here.
1) Summarize/outline the different movements Kliebard introduces to this point: Humanism, developmentalism, and social efficiency (you may also choose to refer to the perspective of mental discipline, whose influence was waning). Refer to specific pages in the text so we have them on hand on Monday.
Humanism is the most conservative approach to turn of the century american curriculum reform described by Kliebard. The Humanists emphasize western cultural heritage and the cultivation cognitive processes, abilities, or faculties in the student. Elliot is presented as a typical specimen of a humanist believing that "The right selection of subjects, along with the right way of teaching them, could develop citizens of all classes endowed in accordance with the humanist ideal--with the power of reason, sensitivity to beauty, and high moral character." (Kleibard p.10-11). Kliebard frequently places humanism in dialectic with developmentalism, a movement which prioritized the natural interests of the child as the soundest direction for study. Developmentalism recruited sceince as the authoritative justification for its approach however Kleibard tells us that in reality, the movement used pseudo-science to justify it's romantic preconceptions of childhood. "developmentalists", Kleibard tells us "proceeded basically from the assumption that the natural order of development in the child was the most significant and scientifically defensible basis for determining what should be taught." (p. 11-12) social efficiency focused on conserving the time and effort dedicated to the education of each student by determining what the likely function each student would perform in society as adults and striving to best prepare them for that eventuality. Beyond the efficient education of the individual pupil, the social efficiency movement sought to optimize the function of society, as Kleibard put it "their priorities lay in creating a cooly efficient, smoothly running society." (p. 24)
2) How do you think Kliebard is relating Dewey to these movements?
Kliebard seems to argue that Dewey redefines the terms of the debate between these movements. He says that Dewey gleans elements from the various movements and synthesizes them into his own philosophy.
3) In 1951, as Dewey wrote about revising his 1925 book Experience and nature, he lamented that the "wholeness" of his concept of experience was "corrupted and destroyed" because it had become "effectively identified with experiencing in the sense of the psychological, and the psychological had become established as that which is intrinsically psychical, mental, private" (Later works, volume 1, p. 362). By that time he came to believe that the concept of culture would better suit his goals. Please review and interpret one another's 9/7 definitions of experience. In what ways do you see culture reflected in your definitions?
Nick, like myself, approached experience from a perceptual point of view. Unlike myself, he included context as a necessary constituent of experience. I think this is where culture comes into play in Nick's definition. I kept my definition as broad as possible, attempting to isolate the common denominators in experiences. I note the importance of perception and the necessity that a quantity of perceptions be receptive to the assignation of meaning. This is where culture may encroach on my definition, and a factor mediating the assignation of meaning. Kendra's definition seemed heavily influenced by the culture of adventure ed., western culture in general, and her experience reading Roberts in its entirety. On another note, it seems to me that the very conversation "what is experience?" is one rooted in fundamentally western philosophy. Sure, lots of cultures have perhaps approached this subject, the Hindu philisophical tradition, the Budist, Daoist, Confucianist, and myriad indigenous ontologies have surely tackled it. But our discussion is inextricable from our western cultural perspective, therefor, the lens of our culture colors everything we have to say on the topic.
4) What is one agenda item you'd like to discuss from this week's readings?
Has contemporary curriculum dogma progressed from the 1890's? Where does "no child left behind" fit into the arc of history?
Hi guys, greetings from the inferno! I have a few pages of notes here that I'll try to put into a comment. First, the thumbnail sketch of the several schools of pedagogical thought included in the reading. Humanism is a seemingly egalitarian approach in that it discounts the innate differences among learners. Closer consideration reveals that in valorizing form (the right way of teaching) over content (considered curricular concessions to different lifeways) a fallacy emerges which no doubt leaves some students unserved. While "beauty, reason, and high moral character" (p.10) are invoked in humanist pedagogy, there seems to be an implicit acknowledgement that some may be made of "finer clay" and more readily suited to convert on those values - calling to mind Thomas Mann's last book before his death. Meanwhile, this mode of teaching does serve to mettle its students against sophism and the specious. Developmentalism considers the content and nature of the child's mind and how both evolved over time. This invited some interrogation of the knowledge children were supposed to possess. The child study movement contributed the basis for developmentalism. It was this scientific basis that supported the idea that the child's greatest "capital" was time. In this way, poorly informed teaching came with an opportunity cost, and inefficient teaching may result in entirely missed opportunities as developmental stages went whizzing by. Social efficiency theory, stemming first from the draconian practices of mental discipline, build on early empirical foundations to engineer educational environments into instruments of social control. Social efficiency theorists felt the need for greater social control in the face of a rapidly changing society and a supposed social-institutional entropy that went along with it. At once schools could tilt against a spreading anomie while also equipping individuals for newly emerging work roles, environments, and technologies. Wound up in this mode of thought was that society was always in the presence of those seeking to undermine it, whose base impulses and values had to be absorbed and corrected. Ross contributed no few eugenic and supremacist ideas to social efficiency theory, although they were countered by ideas often in tension or opposition.
ReplyDeleteI did not get a good sense of where Kliebard placed Dewey in relation to these other schools of thought. He made it clear that Dewey did not subscribe to some of the pejorative ideas that underpinned social efficiency theory, while also noting that Dewey made some reluctant use of the social epoch pedagogy. Dewey's idea that the true usefulness (or pragmatism) of a curriculum lay in its ability to support social progress does ring of social efficiency as does his thought that school should miniaturize society in order to prepare children for it through a practical process. However, Dewey also prizes a social reality - granting a primacy to the social, or interpersonal, environment that other schools of pedagogy discussed here do not seem to include. Likewise, Dewey's centralization of the child and its priorities and interests seems to materialize out of thin air. The Lab School idea, though rarely implemented faithfully, seems to be almost entirely unique to Dewey.
ReplyDeleteAs for culture, I think it was Spirkin in discussing dialectical materialism who said (I'm paraphrasing, I think), "outside of culture man cannot exist as a human being." So I think its safe to say that if one wants to be or find oneself in the world (dasein), or experience it, culture is a matrix on which the phenomena and qualia of experience are understood, decoded, and made into meaning. I think Matteo and Kendra gave this a good look in comparing our definitions and I don't think I have a lot to add. Because I'm replying to Matteo, I'll say that I like his thought of culture coloring everything.
ReplyDeleteThis week I would like to discuss ways in which other students are building motivation and curiosity around the material. How are you relating it to things you already know? Does it have a bearing on your burgeoning practice?