The Competing Purposes of Education

The question is rarely asked, and even less often answered, why do we send our children to school?

As we know, other aspects of education are endlessly analyzed and debated. But what is the purpose of education?

Of course, there are many answers being given. They are, however, usually implied rather than explicitly stated: perhaps people give these answers without even realizing that they are giving them.

Clearly stated, or more often merely implicit, these goals are offered: education should make students effective and able participants in a democratic system; education should be job training; secondary education should be focused on preparing students for college or university; education should develop ethical or moral thinking; education should teach life skills like nutrition and hygiene; etc. The list is diverse and endless.

With such a large and divergent set of potential goals, the construction of a coherent educational system is unlikely.

This is entailed by the nature of public education. Private education has the luxury of clearly articulating some goals, which by implication excludes other goals.

Bernard Iddings Bell, discussing a monograph about education by Mortimer Smith, writes:

Mr. Smith ends this admirable essay with a question. "We have been going on," he says, "for some time on the theory that education consists simply of experience and change and 'growth’ … Perhaps we need to set up some ends for education; perhaps we need to ask "growth for what?" He knows, of course, that there is no "perhaps" about it. Our professors of education, our administrators, our school boards, teachers whom they train and employ, avoid inquiry about purpose as they would avoid the plague - purpose in life, in labor, in thought, in love, in citizenship, in anything, even in education itself. Why? Because to ask about the “why” of things is both personally disturbing and disruptive of whatever static social patterns happen to be. To ask “why” might result in teachers remaining human beings and children becoming human beings, both given to making embarrassing inquiries instead of being content to be placid tools for production and consumption of goods, complacent believers in whatever those who happen to wield social control tell them is the truth. Men who ask “why” are necessary, to be sure, for the survival of freedom and democracy. But who nowadays wishes a free state at the price of possible discomfort? Who for democracy is willing to run the risk of questioning closely those flattering demagogues who pleasingly blarney the electorate and who give much in bread and circuses? Certainly not the rank and file of hard-headed Americans.

The desire for moral and ethical thought as a goal in the educational system has repeatedly found new homes, moving back and forth between the Left and the Right, between the social liberals and the social conservatives.

Each has items which it wants declared ‘good’ or ‘evil’ - whether it’s tobacco or condoms, whether it’s tolerance of specific sexual practices or tolerance of free market enterprise, whether it’s the inclusion or exclusion of spiritual thought in public discourse, etc.

While they view each other as opposites, they have this in common: at some level, their goals for education obtain a moral hue.

Mortimer Smith indicates those both sides find themselves perpetually disappointed:

Under the guidance of “the scientific spirit” modern education cannot but fail to give young people a knowledge of good and evil, for to the social scientist these are relative terms. The student is taught to believe that goodness is what “works out” something that brings “beneficent fruits in social and personal life,” without defining any standard of beneficence; “standards” and “values” are to the modern educator prescientific, theological terms. It is precisely this attitude that produces in the student that sinister lack of individual moral freedom which Lafcadio Hearn declared was the result of Japanese education, which, as he pointed out, has always been an education based on social cohesion. By fostering this attitude in the student he will never know whether we're right and Hitler wrong; he will never develop any value-system by which to judge the intrinsic worth of anything. At best this kind of education will produce only clever, wary animals who have learned how to keep out of trouble.

Smith’s discovery is that, while the charge of ‘relativism’ is often perceived to be a charge leveled by the Right against the Left, it is in fact an accusation which the Left, in its own way, also makes against the Right.

As long as the electorate has significant influence on educational policy - as long as those who oversee education, whether they be local school boards or state legislatures - are directly elected, the question of the goals and objectives of public education will remain an unsettled one.

[Andrew Smith is a German teacher at Huron High School and at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. These writings constitute a mere exercise and are not to be taken as a definitive statement of his views.]

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]

An Exercise in Jargon

Take one key concept, two related concepts, and a global context. Together, these form a statement of inquiry.

Questions can be factual, conceptual, or debatable.

[Ann Arbor Pioneer High School teacher Andrew Smith placed on assignment at WISD]

IB Examinations

Students at an International Baccalaureate school are expected to interact with a text in a language (e.g., German, Latin, etc.) other than the school's (or the student's) native language. This will be part of the standardized assessments which are administered by the local school but sent to IB for evaluation.

For example, students must pass a 90-minute test in which they are given four short texts in the target language. Students then write, analyzing those texts in the target language.

[Andrew Smith teaches at both Pioneer High School and Huron High School. Although based primarily out of Huron High School, during the 2014/2015 academic year, and possibly into the future, Andrew Smith is an Ann Arbor Pioneer High School teacher placed on assignment at Pioneer for two hours daily, and a Ann Arbor Huron High School teacher placed on assignment there for three hours daily.]

Getting Real - Ann Arbor Pioneer High School Teacher Reflects on Change over the Decades

In the 1970s, high school was not as serious as it is now.

Homework loads are greater, standardized testing has multiplied, competition between students is more intense, and the stakes are higher.

Our challenge, however, is this: a segment of our student body has not become more serious, despite the fact that high school in general has.

In the 1970s, the consequences for not doing homework or not studying were not as impactful as they are now.

Good study skills and good work habits are essential to get good tests scores and get admitted into a competitive college or university.

In the late 1970s, students who were average or a little above average routinely gained admission to Big Ten universities. Now, to get into U of M, a student must be significantly above average.

The University of Michigan, along with MSU and Wayne State University, has become quite selective. But a significant percentage of high school students haven't adjusted to this reality.

The situation is, naturally, multi-factorial, and there is no simple answer. But one essential part of the solution is parental involvement and encouragement. Without that, a student's chances of excelling dwindle.

[Ann Arbor Pioneer High School Teacher Andrew Smith teaches History and German in the Ann Arbor Public Schools.]

School Census - Interesting Demographics

A statistical overview of Huron High School's student body as of November 10, 2014, reveals some interesting ratios. Total enrollment for these purposes was listed at 1501, although in reality it is probably somewhat higher.

Of 387 ninth graders, 221 were boys and 166 were girls. This lopsided breakdown held for every ethnic or racial demographic group except Asians. Among those labeled as 'white' or 'Caucasian' there were 103 boys and 56 girls.

By contrast, of 344 tenth graders, the gender ratio skewed in the opposite direction: there were 155 boys and 189 girls. There were more girls than boys in the following categories: Caucasian, African-American, Asian, and Multi-Ethnic. Among tenth graders, there were slightly more boys than girls among the 'American Indian or Alaskan' and the Latino/Hispanic, Arab-American, and 'other' categories. There were no data points among sophomores in the 'Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander' and 'unclassified' categories.

Among eleventh and twelfth graders, there were no significant asymmetries in the numbers. The total student count included 745 males and 756 females.

The statistical quirkiness seems to be found primarily among the freshmen.