Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Thirty-Four (Last Part): A Critique of an Attempt to Identify Dewey’s Progressive Educational Theory with Modern School Practice

When I was a French teacher at Ashern Central School, in Ashern, Manitoba, Canada, I started to place critiques, mainly (although not entirely) of the current school system. At first, I merely printed off the articles, but then I started to provide a summary of the article along with the article. I placed the summaries along with the articles in a binder (and, eventually, binders), and I placed the binder in the staff lounge.

As chair of the Equity and Justice Committee for Lakeshore Teachers’ Association of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS), I also sent the articles and summary to the Ning of the MTS (a ning is “an online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks”).

As I pointed out in a previous post, it is necessary for the radical left to use every opportunity to question the legitimacy of existing institutions.

The attached article for the ESJ Ning is prefaced by the following:

Hello everyone,

Since I will no longer be chair of the ESJ `Committee,` I thought it appropriate to send one final article to the Ning.

I prefaced it with the following:

Sharen Kucey and Jim Parsons, the authors of the article, “Connecting Dewey and Assessment for Learning,” provide a good example of how not to read Dewey’s philosophy. They argue that the principles of assessment for learning and Dewey’s philosophy of education essentially agree with each other.

Although Dewey would undoubtedly have welcomed an emphasis on assessment for learning (formative assessment) as opposed to an assessment of learning (summative assessment), he would take issue with many of the propositions formulated by the authors.

In the first place, since Dewey considered knowledge as an instrument for human ends that lie outside the process of knowledge (except for scientific inquiry, which indeed has as its goal the development of knowledge for its own sake), to claim that the concept “assessment for learning” is equivalent to Dewey’s view that teachers do indeed need to provide feedback to children and adolescents.

The view that schools are to be institutions for learning often leads to the view that learning is something that occurs exclusively in schools. One principal with whom I had a difference of opinion has a fetishism for “learning;” this principal defines schools entirely in terms of learning. If, however, learning functions for life (life is wider than learning; learning is not wider than life), as Dewey viewed it through his Darwinian lenses, then this principal—and many others—reduce human beings to pure learning machines rather than living beings with lives of their own that can never be reduced to pure learning for its own sake.

In the second place, the following needs to be criticized:

“One thing we know. Although Alberta is recognized as a world leader in education, success is marginalized by the fact that only 78.6% of students graduated in 2005-2006 (Alberta Education, 2009). Without uttering a word, these statistics question the relevance of the existing curriculum in relation to student engagement. From a historical context, each decade is subject to societal demands our educational system is expected to match. But decade after decade, our education system falls short of transformation. This fact begs us to ask at least two crucial questions: Is transformation ever possible? How might an education system hope to gain discretionary wisdom in the face of such dynamic change?”

Although almost a quarter of students not graduating probably does indicate a lack of child and adolescent engagement, the elimination of such a statistic does not necessarily mean that children and adolescents are engaged. Presumably, for the authors, if 100% of the students graduated, then there would be no evidence of a lack of student engagement and there would not be a need for a transformation in school policies and practices. For the authors, it is because there is less than 100% that there needs to be transformation.

Dewey would hardly consider such an inference to be justified since high-school graduation is not evidence that children and adolescents have grown through the reconstruction of their experiences. What it would be evidence of would be that children and adolescents would have learned how to obtain sufficient credits to satisfy the conditions for high-school graduation, and that administration and teachers have learned how to entice children and students sufficiently so that all receive a high-school diploma.

For Dewey, education is growth—not the receipt of a high-school diploma—unless there is a one-to-one correspondence between receiving a high-school diploma and educational growth; Dewey would deny such a correspondence, especially given the current curriculum structure. Indeed, the authors’ conservatism becomes explicit when they state: “As educators, we are bound by the curriculum, but many choices given within that curriculum provide opportunities to vary the content studied or the process by which the students represent their learning.” Dewey was not bound by the contemporary curriculum and created a very different curriculum, one based on the life process, with studies functioning for that process rather than vice versa.

In the third place, the authors state the following:

“A second thing we know. The pendulum of educational philosophy has swung back and

forth between traditional and progressive, between new and old, and between radical and conservative. New theories replaced those that didn’t work, only to eventually be discarded. This cycle of in and out should not be surprising. As Dewey (1938/1997) stated, “Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Or, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities…. Educational philosophy is no exception” (Chapter 1, para. 1).”

The authors attempt to co-opt Dewey’s views to their own, much more conservative views. Dewey argued that many operate within “either-or” mentalities because they treat human beings as either pure physical beings or pure spiritual beings. The middle term which unites these two aspects of human beings is—the life process. Dewey attempted to avoid such extreme by including the life process in his educational philosophy and practice. For example, the life process includes both the living being and its environment, not one or the other. To be alive is to be in an environment; to be an environment requires a living being. The same idea is expressed when referring to a daughter; for there to be a daughter, there must be a parent.

Dewey attempted to avoid the extremes of the child or the curriculum by incorporating the life process into his philosophy and practice of education. By incorporating the life process into his educational philosophy and practice, Dewey escaped from a one-sided focus on either. He also, in addition, escaped from reducing schools to pure learning institutions and saw the need for the incorporation of characteristics of learning outside schools into schools. For example, Dewey argued that human beings, as living beings, are more concerned with ends or purposes than with the means to achieve those ends. Schools need to incorporate this aspect of human nature into the curriculum (most do not); gradually, the focus needs to shift to the means required to achieve ends.

 

In the fourth place, Kucey and Parsons argue that: “We seem to have missed Eisner’s (2001) point that, “the function of schooling is not to enable students to do better in school. The function of schooling is to enable students to do better in life” (p. 369).” For Dewey, the function of schools is to develop personalities in such a way that they make life better for all—a social obligation of improving the world. “To do better in life” need not entail such a social obligation if it is interpreted in an egotistical sense.  

In the fifth place, the authors, earlier, seemed to agree with Dewey that “either-or” stances in education are to be avoided. Now they contradict themselves. They write: “Specifically, Dewey’s philosophy allows us to see similarities between what he promoted and the goals of today’s emergent, learner-centered pedagogies.” Dewey did not argue for “learner-centered pedagogies.” Dewey criticized “child-centered” views as well as “curriculum-centered” views. Education always starts with the child but there is always an environment involved in the life process of children and adolescents.

In the sixth place, the authors’ claim, incorrectly, the following:

“We believe Dewey set the groundwork for modern educational practice. For Dewey,

democracy and education were interdependent and his philosophy of education was deeply rooted in the power of inquiry. “Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectiveness – the emancipation of the mind to do its own work” (Dewey, 1903, p. 193). Schon (1992) states that Dewey “devoted his life to the project of overcoming the dualisms that afflict the field of education… the dualisms of thought and action, research and practice, science and common sense, the academy and everyday life” (p. 121).

It is certainly true that Dewey linked democracy and education, but democracy for Dewey involves economic democracy, among other things. Democracy is a way of life and not just the occasional act of voting. Given the bureaucratic and hierarchical nature of modern schools, modern educational practices hardly correspond to Dewey’s notion of a democratic school ethos.

Furthermore, the modern curriculum structure does not evolve out of the experiences of the children themselves as they organize their experiences into a biological form, a physical form, a social form, a historical form, a legal form and so forth. Can even adults explain very well such common phenomena as the appearance of the sun moving in the sky? Or their experience as employees? Do children feel themselves part of the environment that they experience every day? Is the world increasingly a place for them where they locate themselves and, with every new experience, feel enriched and full of delight? Or is wonder lost as children and adolescents experience the bureaucratic grind and summative assessments? Do children—and adults—increasingly live in an environment that they do not understand or in which they feel at home? Democracy is more than just voting.

In the seventh place, Kucey and Parsons claim, incorrectly, that Chappuis transformed the idea of assessment for learning into seven principles with which Dewey  would agree. The first two principles, grouped under the heading “Where Am I Going?” are:

 

1. Provide students with clear and understandable vision of the learning target.

2. Use examples and models of weak and strong work.

Are these two principles in agreement with Dewey’s educational philosophy? No. The first principle disagrees with Dewey’s characterization of what learning involves. Dewey argued that learning and intelligence is required in the context of a problematic situation, where what to do is not clear and understandable. The need for learning and thinking arises in conditions that need to be clarified so that the person can continue to act in the world. In other words, if the learning  target is already clear to the child or adolescent, then learning is no longer necessary since the learning has been achieved. Part of the learning process always involves clarification of the target—not clarity beforehand.

From my dissertation, Human Nature as Continuous or Discontinuous with Nature: A Comparison and Contrast of Dewey’s and Freire’s Philosophies of Human Nature and Education:

“For Dewey, though, the vague image becomes more concrete as existential conditions become identified and integrated into a more concrete whole. An image may be more or less clear, but in the context of a problematic situation it is always somewhat vague (hence Dewey’s opposition to rationalism); if all images were clear and unified from the beginning, then there would be no need for inquiry. When the image or images are clear, then the problematic situation has vanished. The image, as a more or less vague hypothesis of the proposed solution, must be used to sift out the existential conditions that clarify the situation (hence Dewey’s opposition to empiricism in the form of immediate knowledge) and point towards a solution or to a synthesis.”

The teacher may indeed know where s/he is going, but a child or adolescent, if s/he is to learn, must not have a clear idea. Dewey’s view that the image requires concretization, and that this concretization is synonymous with learning, is hardly consistent with what the authors argue.

(Moreover, a principal with whom I clashed contended that the specification of learning goals was the single most powerful determinant for learning. The principal, of course, provided no evidence to substantiate such a claim; indeed, one day before he submitted his report on my “Clinical supervision,” he sent me an email that simply listed a series of websites on how to specify goals while claiming that the website constituted “research.” Either the principal simply did not know what research involves, and tried to fake it, or he lied. Such is the ethical posture of modern school bureaucrats. Furthermore, even if the principal had provided some evidence to substantiate his claim, his evidence would consist of research grounded in the modern school structure—a tautological form of research that is hardly characteristic of scientific research. For the nature of scientific research or inquiry, see John Dewey: Logic: The Theory of Inquiry).

The view that learning requires clarity from the beginning contrasts sharply with Dewey’s Darwinian understanding of the nature of learning and intelligence.

Does the second principle, of providing exemplars, agree with Dewey’s educational philosophy? Again, the answer is: No. Dewey considered the image to be the beginning of a formulation of an hypothesis made by the child to solve a problem. To provide exemplars is to short-circuit the child’s or adolescent’s vague image by providing images that are introduced too early in the process of learning.

What Dewey had to say about demonstrations applies as much to exemplars.

From my dissertation:

“… there is evidence that Dewey did consider demonstrations—and there were demonstrations—to serve an educational purpose if the children unconsciously imitated the methods (not the ends) of such demonstrations:

The child may learn much from the incidental and mainly unconscious imitation of the methods used by others. There is all the difference in the world educationally between that unconscious assimilation of the mode of handling used by another better trained person, and the mechanical and set copying of that person’s work. One imitates the process and tends to set free the child’s powers; the other imitates the product and tends toward slavishness. Drawing is a language; there is much which, if not exactly conventional, must yet be learned by seeing how others manipulate the material and tools in order to get certain results. Hence the great value of good drawing done before the children, their conscious attention, however, being upon the picture itself and not upon the teacher. Much might be accomplished, I feel sure, by simplified reproductions of great landscapes showing how great artists have obtained certain effects. The landscape itself is an exceedingly complex scene of life. If some one would reproduce these pictures, simplifying their outline, their shading, and yet retaining their salient points and characteristic spirit, that one would perform a great service for our schools. (Dewey, 1896/1972c, 200)

For Dewey, demonstrations thus serve an essential function—to suggest how the images of the children can be developed.”

It must be emphasized that it is the image of the child that is developed through the suggestion of the demonstration (and the exemplar).

The authors nowhere address the danger that the exemplars may be interpreted by the children and adolescents as the standard to which they need to conform. The idea or image begins with the child and further carried along (becomes more concrete) through exposure to the exemplar. If, however, provisions are not made for making clear that the child or adolescent is not to merely copy or imitate the exemplar, then there is a real danger that the vague image of the child or adolescent will not be concretized and learning will not occur.

Principles one and two do not really correspond to Dewey’s educational philosophy.

In the eighth place, even when Dewey seems to say similar things as do the authors, the concepts are different.

“The second set of principles, grouped under the heading” Where Am I Now?” are:

3. Offer regular descriptive feedback.

4. Teach students to self-assess and set goals.”

Principle three seems to agree with Dewey’s views. The authors write:

“Descriptive feedback, either verbal or written, is an ongoing process. For Chappuis (2009), quality feedback has the following characteristics: (1) it directs attention to the learning intended, focusing on strengths and providing information for improvement; (2) it occurs during learn while there is still time to make corrections; (3) it directly addresses partial understanding; (4) it does not provide the student with answers; and (5) it takes into account how much information students can process and act upon at a given time. This AFL strategy provides opportunities for students to evaluate where they are in the learning process.”

Who could disagree with these statements? However, when we look at the context of modern schooling, descriptive feedback mainly assumes the form of verbal or written feedback without any actions for children or adolescents to experiment to see if an hypothesis (or image or idea) is viable. Too much feedback assumes a symbolic form rather than a form characteristic of action on the environment. Dewey viewed feedback as often requiring action on the environment.

From my dissertation:

“Images, to become concrete, require existential action on the environment:

I refer, moreover, to the fact that such motor expression is not something done with an idea already made in the mind, but is necessary to the appreciation of the idea itself. If there is one principle more than another upon which all educational practice, not simply education in art, must base itself it is precisely this: the realization of an idea in action through the medium of movement is necessary to the vividness, the definiteness, the fullness of that idea itself. We cannot speak of an idea and its expression; the expression is more than a mode of conveying an already formed idea; it is part and parcel of its formation. The so-called mechanical phase is necessary to the integrity of the spiritual. Education, like philosophy, has suffered from the idea that thought is complete in itself, and that action, the expression of thought, is a physical thing. We are learning to know that thought is thought only through action. (1896/1972c, 194-195)

Unlike drawing, which requires greater control, children initially, during the play period, find their image spilling over into action without inhibition:

Here we have the natural psychical origin of drawing, as well as of all other forms of expression. There is a natural tendency for every image to pass into movement; an inert image, an image which does not tend to manifest itself through the medium of action is a non-existence. In later life, we have learned to suppress so many suggestions to action, and have learned to delay the expression of so many others, that this fundamental law has become somewhat obscured, but a study of child life and growth reveals in its purity and intensity, and reveals also that the suppression of manifestation of an image or delay in its passage into action is an acquired habit, a later acquisition. In the early period, the tendency of every image to secure realization for itself in the medium of action is witnessed in play and in the incessantly urgent desire of the child for conversation; his impulse to tell everything, to communicate. … it [play] is never a complete or self-sufficing mental condition, but requires to be fulfilled in expression, by translation into activity. It requires comparatively little observation of a child to reach the conclusion that the child does not get hold of any impression or any idea until he has done it; the impression is alien, is felt as inadequate, or unsatisfactory until the child makes it his own by turning it over into terms of his own activities. (1896/1972c, 195)

An image that finds only one mediating sensation for its realization will be impoverished since it will exclude other aspects of the world in its expression; it will be a very limited form of expression, without definition and distinction by being limited in some fashion through mediation.

                Drawing, however, requires a demand for greater concreteness since hand and eye must now work together rather than just primarily the hand (sense of touch) as the dominant mode through the sense of touch:

                Drawing as a development of play marks, however, a growing inhibition or control. The whole image at first moves in the whole organ by the principle of radiation or expansion. Drawing marks the limitation to certain channels, moreover it is divided more immediately by the eye image, not the experience as a whole; it marks therefore relatively an analysis. However, even here we must recognize the principle of integrity; it is only relatively that there is distinction.

                Drawings then at first are means of reinforcing and continuing some interesting life experience of the child, through giving it back to the eye by means of the hand. The start must be imaginative, not simply ought to be. Even in drawing objects the child will draw from his image, not from the object itself. There is no road from the object to the child’s motor nerves and hand, but only from his mental picture of the object. The use of the object must therefore be simply to help the construction of the image, anything else merely creates dependence on the external. It not only leads to servility, but by disintegrating imagery makes the product mechanical. Moreover, the child is interested in objects simply from the standpoint of the part they play in his life, their use, the value they have for him, not as objects but as factors in some life scene. Thus objects at first are seen, not so much in terms of their visual appearance as in terms of touch, because touch represent more adequately the immediate experience values of the object, what can be done directly with it, while sight represents more indirect, and as it were, symbolic value.[1] In any case, the object is apprehended as function, as service, as purpose, never as mere object. It is on this account that the picture, judged as itself an object, is so crude. It lacks proportion, definiteness of spatial form and structure. The child is unconscious of all these defects, because he sees not the mere external product before him, but the whole mental picture which interests and holds him. (1896/1972c, 197-198)

Doing in the specific form of drawing, rather than mere doing, imposes its own requirements on the child. The child intends to draw, but drawing involves drawing an object and not merely the reenactment of the image; the specific subject matter imposes its own conditions. The process is analytic in that, rather than the whole body being engaged in the act, the act is mediated by specific organs of the body, in this case the eyes in addition to the hand. The image still forms a unity, but it becomes differentiated through the specific requirements of perceiving it through the eye and translating that perception to the drawing by the hand. The image becomes more vivid through the mediation of hand by eye and eye by hand.

The child may intend to draw a tree, but drawing a tree has its own demands as opposed to the typical experience and immediate image of a tree. Drawing a tree is not the same as experiencing a tree personally for children—certainly not initially. If the child does in fact draw a tree, then she needs to learn what drawing a tree means or what it involves; the visual aspect becomes dominant, and the hand must be trained to become subordinate to this dominant mode of appropriating the tree.

Trees, like other objects in children’s (and in many adult) lives are linked to human uses. They are experienced simply in terms of their uses to human beings and not yet in terms of their own specific details and materials. It is the image of the child as she has experienced the object which is initially drawn, but the new medium, which has its own demands, results in a product that fails to correspond to the unified image. The object drawn does not form a unity of harmonious parts; as Dewey points out, as an object, it is disproportionate, for example. The child needs to develop the capacity to clarify and to unify the object as object in the medium so that it corresponds more to the image as a unified whole. At the same time, the image becomes clearer in the process itself:

 

Correction of this crudity, perfection of the picture considered as an object means the gradual development of conscious technique—the power of seeing the picture produced by itself as it is to the eye, not simply as it is to the whole of experience, and the power to control the movements of the hand and the eye by this visual picture as a standard. This involves a certain separation and abstraction. The eye activities and their resulting values, have to be set free from their close unification with the sense of touch. A new language, the visual language has to be substituted for the visual-touch-action language. (1896/1972c, 197-198)

The point of departure for the reconstruction of experience and hence for educational growth is the act or the doing, but the doing that simply finds expression independently of taking into consideration the specific conditions of the doing, with its dominant mode of sense as well as the attendant conditions of the environment, leads nowhere and is not educative. The educational aspect enters when the child, after doing, comes to realize that the specific way of doing has its own requirements if the image is to be properly expressed. The way of acting, rather than just acting in general, demands that the child attend to the implications of the specific way of acting if the image, which forms an abstract unity, is to achieve concrete unity in the determinate way of acting. The child must learn that the specific way of acting requires that she criticize her own work because the new way of acting will in all likelihood not be what the child intends because of the new way of acting and the associated means required:

                Psychologically, what takes place is a return upon an experience to see how it occurs, and the reconstruction of that experience, the making it over on the basis of the method thus brought to consciousness. The uniform law is, first the doing; then the consciousness of the how of  doing; then the return of this mode into the experience to enrich and develop it, a fuller, more interesting thing. (1896/1972c, 198)”

Feedback is indeed vital for learning, but feedback should be a function of becoming conscious of the means necessary to realize an idea that the child or adolescent is already trying to develop in the context of a difficulty experienced by the child or adolescent.

The authors do not specify how their concept of feedback agrees with Dewey’s concept of feedback.

The fourth principle—teach children and adolescents (not “students” since children and adolescents are much more than “learning machines”) to self-assess and goal setting—sounds reasonable, but if the goal or image is not something which the child or adolescent is trying to achieve, then so-called self-assessment is really assessment by the child or adolescent of whether s/he is doing what the teacher requires (satisfying the teacher rather than the task at hand). Since the Dewey curriculum centered around the life process, problems experienced by the children and adolescents—and the associated aesthetic activities related to that process during various stages in the history of human beings on this planet—required self-assessment and the setting of goals. The life process has its own demands.

Principles three and four do not really correspond to Dewey’s educational philosophy.

In the ninth place, even when Dewey seems to say similar things as do the authors, the concepts are different.

“Closing the Gap

Strategies 5 and 6: A Focus on Specific Learning Targets and on Revision

Formative assessment enables the teacher and student to determine the rate and quality of learning that has taken place. At this point in the AFL continuum, the teacher focuses on students who have partial understandings of the outcomes or lack the skills needed to proceed to the next level of learning.”

The premise of Strategy 5 is to centre the teacher’s attention on a particular concept or skill that needs revision. Instead of addressing many skills, a specific skill is honed.

This view seems to make sense. After all, it is necessary to adapt skills to the requirements of the goal. However, this apparently reasonable principle fails to include something vital: the need to concretize, or make more explicit, the image, idea or purpose of the child or adolescent.

The authors operate in what could be called an outcome-based education (OBE) approach to learning. Since I have criticized such an approach in other posts, I refer readers to those posts. Suffice it to say that a focus on specific learning targets confuses means with ends. For example, my principal claimed that the single most important determinant of learning was the explicit specification of learning goals. What he meant by “learning goals” was unclear to me at first since, in Deweyan terms, people naturally seek goals that relate to themselves and often neglect to think carefully about the means required to achieve their goal.

For example, I had grade seven preteens create a family tree, with the use of the possessive adjective “mon, ma, mes.” From the point of view of the preteens, the goal was the creation of a family tree; from the point of view of the teacher, the goal was the possessive adjectives (the means needed to achieve the end).  The principal criticized my pedagogy and indeed used it as a means by which to harass me.

Undoubtedly, children and adolescents need to learn to connect means to ends and to treat the means themselves, temporarily, as ends. However, unless they themselves see the need for the focus on means as ends—the perfection of the ends by way of perfection of the means—they may well be forced to focus on the means when that is inappropriate to do so—something which occurs frequently in schools. For instance, children certainly often do not see the need for learning to write at an early age. In the Dewey School, by contrast, the children learned to write formally in the context of studying the Phoenicians, a trading people who needed to write (and read and do arithmetic) because of their specific occupation. Writing then became a solution to a social problem, and the children experienced the need to focus on writing because it was a means to a social problem that they all shared.

In later years, adolescents often wonder why they are learning certain details or subjects (such as the transcription and translation of mRNA into proteins in grade 12 biology or circle geometry in grade 9 mathematics in the Manitoba curriculum). The need for such topics is unclear—except for the internal need of the people who may use such information in their future studies. The modern curriculum is designed more according to its internal structure of subjects rather than for the psychological appropriation of such subjects by children and adolescents.

The principle of revision also seems reasonable.  Revision, however, for what purpose? To hone the product to achieve the purpose of children and adolescents? Or is it to refine the product according to a curriculum that excludes real purposes from being achieved? Since outcome-based education seems to be implied in the article, the externally imposed outcomes will require revision by children and adolescents rather than revision of their own images and ideas.  Moreover, revision based on one criterion at a time may easily fragment the image or idea, which is one or unitary (that is the function of an idea or image—to unify apparently disparate elements into a new whole) at too early a stage, interfering with the development of the image or idea and leading to a fragmented experience.

Certainly, differentiated instruction and scaffolding are pedagogical innovations that teachers may need to incorporate into the process, but what is typical in the whole article is how the curriculum is assumed as fixed and the responsibility lies with teachers to implement a fixed curriculum regardless of the adequacy of the curriculum in meeting the needs of children and adolescents. Foisting responsibility onto teachers is a typical bureaucratic ruse to lay the blame for any lack of “success” (defined by the bureaucratic school system, of course) on the backs of teachers. Since teachers have little say in how curriculum is created and organized (apart from limited consultation of a few teachers), shifting responsibility to teachers is a bureaucratic way of blaming teachers for an irrational curriculum and the consequences that ensue for such an irrational curriculum.

During the stage of revision, the authors refer to the possibility of summatively assessing either process or product (rather than just product). However, they do not investigate why summative assessment is at all necessary educationally. Formative assessment is certainly necessary educationally—to give children and adolescents constructive feedback for suggestions on how they could approach a problem or define a problem that is indeed their problem. The need for summative assessment remains untheorized and is merely assumed to be legitimate, without any educational justification at all.

Could there not be a contradiction between the need for revision as required by the actual problem and the need for obtaining a high mark? Or the attempt to satisfy what the teacher wants and what the problem demands (even if it contradicts what would be considered a high mark based on outcome-based education)?

(When I had a meeting with the principal and the superintendent, the superintendent claimed that she would have a debate with me on the supposed contradiction between formative and summative assessment that I had indicated in my response to the principal’s “clinical supervision.” Her claim was in the context of forcing me to undergo “intensive supervision”—as a prelude to firing me. I doubt that the superintendent would dare challenge me openly in a different context. That context was that she was the representative of the class of employers and I was a mere employee.  She never did justify her assertion. She did, however, refer to Charlotte Danielson’s work. Her “justification” is based on Charlotte Danielson’s work—performance-based  tasks grounded in outcome-based education ideology. (See the attached article by the right-wing Allan Odden.) This work—American—is a way of controlling teachers and children and adolescents. It is interesting how teachers are supposed to be able to engage in critical thinking, and yet the introduction of outcome-based education into Manitoba schools seems to have occurred with little resistance from teachers—an indication of a lack of critical thinking.)

Do teachers really experience little contradiction between formative assessment and summative assessment? In the Dewey School, there was no summative assessment, but there was plenty of formative assessment. The authors of this article are blissfully unaware of the contradiction between formative and summative assessment.

Principles five and six do not really correspond to Dewey’s educational philosophy.

Finally, and similarly to the problem with principles five and six, even when Dewey seems to say similar things as do the authors, the concept expressed in the seventh principle—self-reflection—is different.

The authors explain self-reflection in the following terms:

“Self-reflection encourages students to consider a collection of work as evidence of learning,

 identify their strengths, and feel in control of the circumstances that led to success. Based on

clear learning targets, students compare previous and current knowledge. Both previous and

current knowledge serve as evidence of learners’ achievements and growth. Reflection can

also include communicating and sharing what students know to peers, parents, or teachers.

By reflecting on their learning, students deepen their understanding. (Chappuis, 2009)”

This principle hardly corresponds to Dewey’s views. Clear learning targets may exist for the teacher, but as I have indicated above, Dewey considered learning to always involve unclear learning targets for the children and adolescents. The task of learning is to clarify and unify the image or idea through action and observation of consequences of those actions. Children and adolescents may well survey or reflect on the process by which the problem emerged, a vague suggestion, image or idea emerged, how that image was concretized (and modified in the process of concretization) and how the problem was resolved or not resolved, but such self-reflection is quite different from the meaning of self-reflection by the authors. Furthermore, if the action and its consequences have implications for the character of the children and adolescents who perform the actions, then self-reflection assumes an ethical character and the reflection is truly a self-reflection. Finally, Dewey categorically denied that learning is mainly an affair of previous knowledge and later knowledge.

There is a type of “leader” in schools, often met today, who considers schools to be primarily “learning” institutions and children and adolescents as learning machines. Since learning for Dewey was instrumental –a means—for the ends of living a better life, then schools should function to that end as well. This fetishism for “learning” as an end in itself by some principals and superintendents, among others, merely expresses the reduction of life to learning and life as a means for learning. Of course, such principals and superintendents do not themselves reduce their own lives to the process of learning. If they did, then principals and superintendents would strive to become academics or scientists (which they are not)—for that is the “calling” or “vocation” of academics and scientists—to pursue inquiry for its own sake and to subordinate their efforts to the requirements of that calling. To expect children and adolescents to act like academics and scientists, when principals and superintendents themselves do not so act, is the height of hypocrisy. Such is the nature of the modern school system.

 

This article is a good example of the rhetoric in schooling and how such ideologues of schools attempt to co-opt more profound philosophers of education, such as Dewey, to their own limited views.

 

Do children and adolescents not deserve the best education that adults can provide? Are they receiving it? If not, is this not an injustice that needs to be rectified?

Should not those who are interested in equity and social justice issues attempt to rectify the extremely inadequate education of children and adolescents—an inadequacy due, in large part, to the structure and content of the curriculum and administration and not to the pedagogy of teachers?

This is my last summary and commentary—I can no longer be a chair because I will soon no longer be an employee of a school division—considered incompetent by my employer, among other things.

 

Good luck in your future endeavours at seeking to achieve equity and social justice—as objectively required by modern conditions and class relations.