If schooling is beyond the "expertise" of lay citizens how dare we claim, in our civics classes, that anything else is within their expertise? If democracy is never practiced within the world in which children grow up, how else are they to learn how to be effective practitioners?
So ends a post by Deborah Meier entitled, as is this diary Who Shall Govern Our Schools?. It was posted at the blog of The Forum for Education and Democracy about which I have written in the past, and for which Deborah Meier serves as one of the convenors. I thought a diary on an important subject other than diaries might at least interest a few people, so I invite you to continue reading. Or you can save time and simply go read Meier's blog post
If you have come this far, let me offer some of what Meier has posted along with a few thoughts of my own. She begins with an 1820 quotation from Jefferson:
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion."
and immediately follows that with two sentences that set the context in which she writes:
The question of how best to "inform their discretion" while retaining control by "the people" is the task facing democratic-minded school reformers. If democracy be our ends, noted another famed educator, John Dewey, then it must also be our means.
Democracy as both a means and an end. We might well view this in a larger context, and I will revisit this issue a bit more later.
Like the other conveners of the Forum, Meier wants to make a distinction between the idea of democracy and role of the marketplace, which while they may overlap are not identical either in purpose or in functioning. She is not opposed to private schools, and makes clear that they have a role, but they cannot be a substitute for the societal responsibility to provide an education for all students, not just those whose families can afford to pay directly the full cost of each child's education. And she also provides an overview of the disparate models that have been proposed for school governance, including models based on those of medicine where the professional experts are the ones with authority and responsibility. Of this model she notes that
even in medicine (where the definition of good health is somewhat easier to define and defend) there is a need for lay interference. In fact, we may have late gone too far in that direction, although the lay bodies in this case tend also of late to be private (insurance companies, HMOs, etc).
She returns to the thoughts of Dewey, and reminds us
Youngsters cannot learn democracy from adults who are powerless any more than they can be taught literacy from illiterates. Nor can young people learn about democracy in schools that are prevented from creating the very "commons" that the proponents of public schooling originally had in mind.
Meier goes through some of the rationale for the Forum, and what it means in terms of how those in the Forum approach many issues of educational policy. She notes that
Public estrangement from public life is perhaps today one of the greatest dangers we face.
and notes how schools can alleviate or aggravate this danger. The conveners believe that increasing local control over the structure of education is the best way of addressing this crisis.
Let me offer three key paragraphs that set the frame for what I wll then at most summarize:
We would furthermore argue that in meeting the needs of democratic life we need not trade off other forms of intellectual and social competence. The future requirements of the workforce or the academy are at best guesses; but even were we to know them more clearly than we actually do an education for democracy would serve them well. In contrast one focused on our assumptions about the latter too often shortchanges democracy.
We've tried to list below the particular issues that require "decision-makers" and contemplate approaches to them that take each of the various constituents-from the most local to Federal-in mind. It is in each of these areas that we need to develop policies that best respond to the issues facing us in the 2lst century.
We have, essentially, turned NCLB on its head, leaving to local communities far more of those decisions NCLB seeks to control, and to the Federal and State governments those decisions that can provide resource equity to local communities. We have tried to imagine, in our discussions, what risks are involved in any policy even as our default position is in favor of "all power" to those closest to the implementation of policy. In general we have focused on the risks around equity and basic health and safety concerns.
Equity addresses issues of racism, sexism, and class, which have continued to exist and perpepuate inequity in our public institutions including our public schools. And Meier warns us, a propos of a trend that began well before NCLB
Our forms of assessment are increasingly driving us away from equity, in its name.
She goes on to discuss the issues of public versus private, who should participate in the making of policy, and the question of the resources that should be allocated for public education.
Meier then explores the four principles that influence and guide how the Forum seeks to address the various "thorny" problems of public education. I will not attempt to summarize or recapitulate, as I do want you to read her original post. Listing the four principles should give you some idea of the thrust of her post:
- Transparency and Accountability.
- Graduation and post-graduation criteria.
- Choice
- Governance and control.
It is interesting how much overlap there is on these issues and other areas of our public life, how issues of choice, of governance and control, of transparency and accountability, are important parts of our current national political discourse. We discuss them in terms of the political leaders we will select, in how our government should operate, in what voices should be heard in the making of laws and of policy. In that sense our schools are in many ways a reflection of our larger society. And as I have noted before, given the roles our schools play in socializing future generations, what happens in our public schools should serve as an indicator, even as a canary in the coal mine, for what will be happening in our society at large.
Democracy as a means and as an end. Ultimately we can neither establish as we have attempted to do overseas or maintain as we in theory should be doing at home a democratic society and government by force, by intimidation, by secrecy, by any method other than democracy itself. It is true that in the exercise of democracy people can choose to surrender that very democracy, that they can vote for tyranny, for the strong man to save them from their fears. But if we inculcate democracy into our very being, into all of the aspect of our public and private lives, that makes it far less likely that we will willingly acquiesce in our democracy being taken away from us. I teach in public schools because I believe they are an important component to the future of our liberal democracy, but I also acknowledge how flawed they are, how in so many ways they are undemocratic, and in their structure as well as their governance undercut the very idea of preparing our young people to function in a democracy when they leave our charge. Changing the governance might be one way to begin to address these problems. Which is why I took the time to try to make Deborah Meier's piece more widely visible.
Finally, let me close with the paragraph that immediately precedes that with which I began, the penultimate of this important piece by Deborah Meier:
We have choices, and which ones we make has to do with what values we hold most dear. We of the Forum are arguing that a well-educated public--across lines of race and class--is at the root of democracy. Democracy is, in fact, one powerful form of accountability and must not be wiped away in its name. Public education's primary task is to see to it that we have the public we need. A family and a community have a right to directly face-in person and in public--those making the critical decisions about their children. But schools are not the only vehicles for individual advancement and growth. Society as a whole benefits from interactions between schools and their varied publics-however occasionally contentious.