The School's Role as One of Many Formative Institutions in Society

While attending to the challenges of secondary education, readers often routinely consider students, teachers, parents, administrators both at building and regional levels, unions, elected school boards, and federal bureaucrats.

One often overlooked party is the faculty of the colleges and universities who prepare teachers: those whose task it is to teach the teachers to teach.

About this “pedagogical elite” or “academic hierarchy”, Bernard Iddings Bell writes:

They are too absorbed in teaching the teachers how to deal not with human beings but with creatures such as by nature ought not to exist, never could exist were it not for black magic; devoted to a more than dubious educational philosophy; pleased as Punch with themselves and unable to see how anyone in his right mind can jest at what they say.

Writing about an author who might venture to point out that some faculty, tasked with teacher preparation, are at best irrelevant and a waste of resources, and at worst actively diminish secondary education, Bell argues that such an author’s

thoughtful complaints will be welcomed by many who are intelligent laymen in respect to “education,” people like himself; by many percipient parents aghast at what the schools have done or are doing to their boys and girls; by many who, intent on promoting sound government and decent craftsmanship of thought and action, must take the products of our schools and colleges and try to make something of them and by them in terms of adultness.

One such author, evaluating teacher preparation programs, notes that one gap in the thinking of such syllabi is the failure to recognize that the broader definition of ‘education,’ in the sense of ‘formation,’ is wider than mere schooling. Mortimer Smith writes:

We are all apt to make the mistake of thinking of education only in its formalized aspect. If you were playing one of those parlor games that educators call “objective tests” and were given the word education and asked to write opposite it the first associated thing that came into your mind, wouldn’t you be apt to write school? We instinctively think of education as something we get from organized courses in a formal institution. Because of a persistent confusion in modern educational theory it is imperative that we emphasize the obvious truth that as education is the whole process of adapting the individual to the environment, the school can only be one factor in that process, not necessarily even the most important one.

Certainly, school is often the primary provider of “education” in the narrow sense: Where does one learn the quadratic formula? Where does one learn to conjugate a German verb? Where does one learn about the political intrigues surrounding the family of Henry II? Where does one encounter Shakespeare’s Tempest?

But school is only one provider among many of “education” in the broad sense: of “formation.” Usually, families are the primary locus of formation. In addition, there are clubs, neighborhoods, friends, religious institutions, the media, and many other social encounters which are apart from schooling.

It is folly, therefore, for schools to ignore, or deemphasize, their primary task of delivering education in the narrow sense. It is further folly if they assume that they are the primary or exclusive deliverers of education in the broader sense of formation.

[Andrew Smith is a German teacher at Huron High School and at Pioneer High School.]

Interior Architecture in Schools

There are two common arrangements for the interior space of a school; both lead to success.

In the first model, each teacher has a classroom. The teacher gives instruction exclusively in that room, and no other teacher uses that room. In this model, the room can be a rich environment, tailored precisely to the curriculum: posters, bulletin boards, bookshelves, and filing cabinets support learning.

In the second model, teachers change rooms several times a day. The rooms are minimalistic, with few pictures on the wall, and little or no storage in the room. The learning space is generic.

While these two different models lead to achievement, there is a third model which leads to disaster: the attempt to blend these two models meets with failure. Either all the teachers have their rooms, and the rooms belong to the teachers, or none of the teachers have their own rooms, and no room belongs to a teacher.

This third model fails because it sends a mixed message to the student. Consistency among the school's teachers on this point is crucial, even if they diverge on other matters.

To schedule a building, then, administrators should bear in mind that if some of the teachers are scheduled such that they have their own rooms, then all the teachers should be scheduled that way. Conversely, it is also good practice to schedule the building such that none of the teachers have their own rooms.

[Andrew Smith is a German Teacher at Pioneer High School]