Education and the Formation of the State

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• Education and the Formation of the State

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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

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Revolutionary Era Ideology

• Faith in reason (growth of science)
• Natural law (deism)
• Progress
• Nationalism/patriotism
• Natural aristocracy v. artificial aristocracy
• Jeffersons plan for public education

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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.

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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.

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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?

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• Morals, Indoctrination and Education

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Progressive Era (_at_1890-1930)

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

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

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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

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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

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Missions in Action

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

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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 todays schools?
• What do you make of Counts discussion of
  indoctrination and Morrisons 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?

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Whats Wrong with Being Colorblind? Liberalism
and Racism
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Questions for Discussion

• Identify some of Paleys 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 youve done?
• (for next time, think of ONE book you believe
  all high school students should read before
  graduation)

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

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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 nations 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).

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Wholeness v. Oneness

• Wholeness, 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
  Websters 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.)

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Questions for Discussion

• What are the morals portrayed in the textbooks?
• Had you critiqued your textbooks in high school?
  College?

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Education as a Radical Venture In Theory
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Paulo Freire (1921-1997)

• Worked with rural poor adults
• Professor, government employee, and community
  worker
• Wanted to extend literacy and democracy

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bell hooks

• Writings focus on the intersection of race,
  class, and gender and the role they play in
  oppression and marginalization
• Books include Aint I a Woman? Black Women and
  Feminism Talking Back Thinking Feminist,
  Thinking Black Killing Rage Ending Racism

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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)

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Education as a Radical Venture In Practice
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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

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Brief Mississippi History

• Black statistics
• White reaction to Brown decision
• (SNCC and sit-ins)
• Summer 1964 Freedom Summer

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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?

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Language Issues Does an American Have to Speak
English?

• Ingles
• Englisch
• ??
• Inglese
• ???????

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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

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Questions for Discussion

• Reflect on the purposes of education as weve
  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?

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How Do We Define Social Justice in Education?
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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.

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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

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Excerpts from Brown v. Board

• Today, education is perhaps the most important
  function of state and local governmentsIt is the
  foundation of good citizenshipSuch an
  opportunity, where the state has undertaken to
  provide it, is a right which must be made
  available to all on equal termsDoes 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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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
  teachers role to assure interracial/intercultural
  /interethnic interaction?

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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
  briefs 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?