cornelius j. troost --- ucla school science & math ---p205+
The radical school reform phenomenon, heralded (often fanatically and irresponsibly) by Neil Postman, Jerry Farber, John Holt, George Leonard, Nat Hantoff, and others, is an outgrowth of the Progressive Education movement. All of these reformers preach the virtues of "the open classroom," or "informal education." Their basic position, with qualifications necessary in certain cases, is the following:
2. Relevance in education is paramount. What is relevant is defined in terms of what children want to do.
3. Learning how to learn has precedence over learning "content."
4. Joy and spontaneity are more important than knowledge, self- discipline, and good manners.
5. The teacher is a facilitator, not an authority.
6. Learning must be open, informal, and pupil directed.
7. In matters of values and morals, simple relativism must prevail.< The teacher should refrain from imposing her own values on the children.
8. Humanism is the order of the day. Humanistic values, though not imposed, should be encouraged.
9. Freedom is perhaps the supreme value of the Movement. The authority of tradition, custom, and our own system of government must not be imposed on pupils.
It is my opinion that this Movement has the potential to greatly aggravate the social and political discord in our country. Unhappy and confused as we are over the rising crime rates, polarization of criminals, colleges and professions, environmental decline, alienation, Vietnam, inflation, moral decay, and a host of other ills, we cannot afford a restructuring of education that will enhance disrespect for teachers, parents, police, etc., cultivate arrogance and narcissism, and undermine the social contract, including intelligent loyalty to our political and governmental system.
Let me make several general comments about the New Education.
First,
this Movement as a fashion has had far too much mindless support from
well-meaning teachers and administrators. Prestigious bodies like I.D.E.A.
and the Ford Foundation, not to mention many smaller groups, have been
pushing for radical reforms in a manner bound to effect attitude change.
Much of this is straight brainwashing.
Secondly, the ills of American education are profoundly exaggerated by techniques such as over generalization. An eminent colleague of mine, M. C Wittrock, told me that no technique of evaluation has yet been used that would lead one to believe that American education is a monstrous failure. On the contrary, the vast numbers of young people, praised by themselves and some professors as the brightest of generations, could hardly have gotten where they are on popcorn, TV, sex films, and each other.
Third, the utter lack of specific suggestions for carrying out the New Education gradually, peacefully and successfully is evidence that the romantics are victims of their own dreams. Practical problems, especially classroom discipline, do not receive the great amount of attention they obviously need. Moral education, that profoundly important subject, received almost no attention at all-a most interesting state of affairs. The science teacher, therefore, must cope with some unsettling recommendations. Let us focus on two that are going to be painful, assuming that the teacher is wedded to the idea that any change is a change for the good.
Few science teachers are authoritarian in an age of powerful anti- authoritarian feedings among the young and would-be young. Still, the New Education calls for a drastic change of roles. The teacher must shun telling, scolding, blaming, and any aversive control technique. Secondly, lie must be value neutral and show little or no favoritism ( loyalty ? ) to our own system of government, politics, and economics.
At first blush, a look at our crime statistics, VD rates, drug abuse data, suicide rates, income bracket data on psychiatrists and psychologists, race problems in urban high schools, and other interesting symptoms of crisis, should lead one to believe that we need more authority, more discipline, and more moral instruction than ever before. In a society which is incredibly permissive and indulgent vis-a-vis its youth, the prescription that we informalize the schools and reduce teacher authority becomes laughable were it not so tragic.
the usual classroom manager type delegated to him by the community;
the authority of his subject,
and his authority as a member of a profession.
While we may agree with the liberal reformers that a major goal of education is the mature, responsible, independent thinker, we have every right to question the validity of the "free classroom" as a means to that end. As the great educator J. L. Childs said:
"I summarize by attempting to state in brief the inclusive problem of authority for our time and community, as I see it and as I have tried to portray it here. Authority is a necessity of all stable community life. Today, under the impact of growing collective interdependence men are forced to rethink and reconstruct the operating bases of community authority. The widespread attempt under the historic liberal ideology to deny the principle of authority in human relations has helped to blur the recognition of operating bases of authority necessary to stable and responsible individual and group life, thus paradoxically contributing to the restoration of extreme authoritarianism in human affairs. The values of creative individuality which the liberal ideology rightly stressed. basically endangered by the recrudescence of authoritarianism-democrats cannot combat authoritarianism with the advocacy or practice of a partly fictitious and abstract "freedom." They must discover (in part rediscover), advocate, and propagate a type of authority organically united with freedom and individuality. Those who accept this challenge must find their redefined functions, their specific authorities, whether as parents, educators, publicists, or statesmen, within the conception and program of such an authority. Only such an authority is a proper foil to a widely resurgent authoritarianism."
Every teacher, including science teachers, must assert enough authority to act as the final adjudicator of classroom problems. Given total freedom, many, if not most children will lose cognitive drive, perseverance, and become bored and disoriented. Without final adult authority they may become as amoral as those feral children of Golding's Lord of of the Flies. Rules alone are not enough. They need persistent enforcement by a benign but tough authority.
The science teacher is uniquely authoritative in that the subject, while in disrepute these days for the wrong reasons, has intrinsic power of appeal. We live, after all, in a scientific age, and it would be a poor teacher who cannot provide a reasonable analysis of how we came to be scientific society. If students really understand the nature of scientific activity, they will come to realize both the authority of that activity as the best means for understanding the universe, and the authority of scientific facts as a last court of appeal in the search for truth.
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The science teacher, then, becomes an authority by virtue of the fact that he has the facts, concepts, and principles so important to the learners if they are ever to function as scientifically literate citizens. I secretly wish, however, that technology, too, received more attention, because even many of our fine science students fail to investigate the interface of technology and society. It is a sad scene when science students become ranting technophobes, allowing political ideology to dictate their judgement of the value and future role of technology. another point of conflict between science and the radical reform philosophy is the logical structure of scientific knowledge. James Robinson, in his excellent work called The Nature of Science and Science Teaching, provides a detailed analysis of the physical and biological sciences as product and process [to]. The relationship between facts, concepts, conceptual schemes, and principles is drawn, implying that an education in science must have a structural order. Students with unprepared minds, lacking linguistic, structural, and methodological skills, will go nowhere in science studies. The structure of science, of course, may be built into the curriculum by the authors of the text or process program being used, but it is the teacher who can help interpret the vague terminology, meanings, and so on, in the established program. As an interpretor and guide, the teacher is essential to the learning process. Paul F. Brandwein has been recommending a strong structural approach for years. He calls concepts the ideas by which we "combine, associate. or synthesize" our experiences. Brandwein, in building his own science curriculum, relied largely on a learning model developed by
2. principle requires learning conditions for a principle plus pre- requisites ( subordinate ) objectives of concepts;
3. concept requires learning conditions for a principle plus requisites (subordinate) objectives of concepts;
4. multiple discrimination requires learning conditions for multiple discrimination plus prerequisite ( subordinate ) objectives of verbal or motor chains; and
5. chain requires learning conditions for a chain plus prerequisite objectives of S-R bonds [6].
Inquiry or discovery in science can be exciting and useful to students, but they cannot get very far unless the curriculum is well structured or the teacher provides ample assistance.Related to what I am saying is the idea of the teacher as an intel- lectual authority. Here we run into trouble. Despite the childlike faith in discovery learning, critical thinking, and other approaches encouraging development of the rational powers, my own feelings are that most teachers are not competent as experts in logic, critical thinking, or philosophical analysis. They are "content" authorities and we know of no good way of mass producing teachers who are both philosophers and teachers of intellectual skills. The discovery method won't work, so the full weight is on a teacher who simply can't measure up. The task, as I see it, is hopeless, if one clings to the dream of mass producing "thinkers." If the teacher's loss of authority would be disastrous for our society, the business of being permissive and child-centered, together with extensive use of positive versus aversive stimuli, would be the coup de grace. The science teacher these days will hear appeals to "humanize" his courses. The beautiful structure of the sciences might soon be disrupted by "informal, relevant science." Respect for the facts will become passe'. Doing one's own thing in science will be valued for its own sake, evaluated only in positive terms, and each "investigator" is his own final court of appeal. not only do we need structure in our mental life, we need it in our emotional life as well. Vulgarity, disrespect, and blind hedonism are normal outcomes of total freedom. Cheating, lying, drug-taking, sexual license, and so on do not seem to correct themselves in our youth culture. This writer has talked with various police officers about the kinds of parents they meet when they arrest young drug abusers, vandals, loiterers, and robbers. Needless to say, the modern suburban parent with problem children is a permissive, indulgent misfit who defends the child automatically against the "authorities." If there is a single basis for a sick society, this is it!
A highly progressive administrator friend recently returned from a visit to Summerhill. He was deeply distressed. Rather than buoyant, creative, happy children, he found them hostile, aggressive, arrogant, and amoral. His daughter, a former student of mine, was physically assaulted by one of these "children of the dream."
Scientists, like artists and literary intellectuals, are highly disciplined people. Discipline does not come easily. The moral philosopher R. S. Peters, together with Paul Weiss and Michael Scriven, has addressed himself to the problem of becoming morally mature and independent [S]. All three of these philosophers believe that early training in traditions and rules is a necessitn line with Piaget's findings, each child must be socialized and ready (ages 11-13) before he can really progress toward intellectual and moral self-discipline (autonomy). Patience, tolerance, humility, humane skepticism, and respect for facts are scientific values probably impossible to cultivate in a noisy, semi-barbaric "free classroom."
Furthermore, D. P. Ausubel points out that punishment (aversive treatment) may be essential in informing children of the limits of the acceptable. If only positive reinforcement is used, how are children to reason in reverse to determine what behavior is not allowed? Mso, how is super-ego (conscience) developed without some feelings of guilt for wrong-doing? Punishment is a fundamental and very useful tool for every teacher in a time when pupils come to school undisci- plined, negativistic, and egocentric to a degree never before seen in American history.
The time has come for all of us to take a close look at the New Education in the cold light of day. Reality has a way of dashing our dreams to bits. Let us hope that B. F. Skinner's utopia does not have to be, because we were too blind to the miserable excesses of permissiveness and crude freedom.