Waiting for Superman?

 

My reading of the press surrounding Guggenheim’s film Waiting for Superman has been accompanied by intermittent outbursts of giggling mixed with gagging.  While his film presents a very real snapshot of the inequities in our public education system, particularly concerning some of our struggling urban schools, his depiction of charter schools, which represent only three percent of all public schools in the country, is nowhere near accurate.  Like our exemplary public schools, there are exemplary charter schools, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Response to his film, however, has resulted in a nationwide dialogue on education, including a website called Not Waiting for Superman, focusing on Rethinking Reform.

It cannot be argued, however, that the current focus on standardized testing is the solution to the perceived problems in American education.  What Guggenheim does draw our attention to is the reality of inequity in our schools.  Students who live in our richest neighborhoods — or who have parents who have the means to send them to private schools — receive a much different education than those who do not.  This is not only about the way we fund our schools, but also about the social supports our society has in place to ensure children and families have the security that enables equal educational opportunity.

We could learn quite a bit by following Finland’s example.  In Finland,  a country that now ranks number one in the world in K-12 education after completely overhauling its failing system 30 years ago, “more 99% of students now successfully complete compulsory basic education” (Darling-Hammond, “Steady Work:  Finland Builds a Strong Teaching and Learning System”).  In addition, instead of placing blame on teachers, the Finns embrace them and invest in them.  According to Darling-Hammond, “all teachers receive three years of high-quality graduate level preparation completely at state expense.”  The Finns equitably allocate the resources for those who need them most, have high standards for all while supporting those with special needs, ensure qualified teachers with a competitive university system where only the top 15% of students who apply are accepted into teacher education programs at universities, and maintain a delicate balance between national regulation and local autonomy.  Moreover, the Finns hold the core educational principle that they must address the whole child and, as a result, all students receive a free meal at school each day, in addition to free health care, transportation, learning materials, and counseling (Darling-Hammond). At home, social supports for the entire family exist that include health and dental care, special education services, and transportation to school (Darling-Hammond).

And for all of the money spent on Finland’s schools, there is only one standardized examination given:  for those who wish to attend university.  Students receive feedback from teachers in the form of narrative comments instead of grades or numbers, so the whole child is addressed.  The idea is to use the information to improve learning and the children’s ability to work in groups and solve problems — real world activities — not to punish students, their teachers, or schools, as is the case with No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top in the United States.

Perhaps the United States still suffers from the stigma of having always been number one.  Now we can’t swallow our pride and admit that it’s not the case anymore.  Politicians are trying to place blame on schools and teachers when, in fact, test scores are really better than they’ve ever been (really, they are).  If we really want to compete with the world, however, perhaps we should look to who is number one and study what they do.  Let’s look at Finland.  Let’s study their system and mimic it.  Let’s strive to be equitable.  Let’s eliminate all social barriers so that all of our students are on equal footing.  Let’s be sure that all of our teachers are the best and the brightest by paying them a top salary, paying for their college education (and making it competitive for them to even get into teacher education programs), and revamping the way we train and ease them into the classroom.  Let’s send our professors and teachers to Finland for exchange to study their system.  Let’s send our politicians there to see how they do it.

It took Finland only 30 years to completely turn around their system.  We don’t need to wait for Superman.  He is within us all.

Are we too proud and too stubborn to enact real change?

Literacy Demands and the Workplace

If I were of the canine species, my reaction to reading Beaufort’s “Preparing Adolescents for the Literacy Demands of the 21^st-Century Workplace” (Christenbury et al., 2009, pp. 239-255) would have immediately resulted in my hackles being raised.  Instead, I read her arguments with great interest, yet also concern, as I disagree with some of her assumptions.  Even in the introduction to this section of the text, “Literacy Out of School,” the editors contextualize the importance of literacy outside of school by excerpting A Test of Leadership, a document that assumes a utilitarian view of education, citing that “business and government leaders have repeatedly and urgently called for workers in all stages of life to continually upgrade their academic and practical skills” (p. 237).  Noting counterpoints, of which Beaufort’s chapter is one, the editors, like the author, fail to question the validity of market-driven discourses.  Instead, they assume “that many workplace values and practices are specific to the culture of a particular profession and the corporate values of individual businesses” (p. 238), a position, that while not untrue, sets the nature of education – specifically literacy education – as one that is purely service-oriented.  In essence, an ironic contrast given what Beaufort proposes.

Beaufort begins the chapter by immediately drawing connections to economy and utility.  While she is not incorrect in asserting that adolescents who do not have advanced literacy skills are often shut out of jobs – or job advancement – because of their lack of ability to think critically and write effectively, traits that are valued in the workplace (p. 239), her focus on education merely as preparation for work – a utilitarian function – addresses an incomplete philosophy of the purposes of education.  In this way, she is not unlike conservative writer Charles Murray, who argued in an op-ed piece in the New York Times that education is a utilitarian concept linked to economic functionality.  Simply, we educate the populous to perform tasks that ultimately serve to keep our market-driven economy operating successfully, ignoring the perspective that education, albeit idealistically, also serves as a tool for personal enlightenment as well as one of social utility.  By understanding how to think critically and write effectively, as Beaufort suggests, people are equipped with the skills to engage in pertinent matters that are political, social, or otherwise.  To reduce the argument to cultivating “literate behaviors” as they contribute to developing the “skills required in the various jobs [students] will do” (p. 240), especially targeting blue-collar workers and the changes reflected in blue-collar occupations as a result of the transition from a manufacturing-based to a technologically-based economy (p. 241), is telling and reminiscent of age-old arguments about the purpose of education.  Further, her suggestion that high school curricula be rewritten to facilitate both student independence and greater exposure to non-fiction texts (p. 251), while not bad, too easily dismisses the critical thinking and independence that can as easily be fostered with other texts (digital, film, fiction, etc.) given a knowledgeable and effective instructor.

Arguments addressing the purpose of education are myriad, though a brief article, “Liberal Education Versus Vocational Training,” appearing in Harper’s Magazine in 1944 and written by Medford Evans and George R. Clark, addresses these disparate views:

“In every society where there is a ruling class there is one kind of education for rulers and another for the ruled. Vocational training, which confines itself to teaching skills, tends to limit the individual’s interest in general social problems and to discourage intelligent participation in political life. As such, it is the ideal education for the servants of the ruling class. It is sharply distinguished from a vital program of liberal education such as that which provides a broad general training for rulers … The real issue is a political rather than an academic one: how widely available should liberal education be? There is no more radical and democratic idea afloat in educational circles today than that of providing liberal education for everyone” (p. 60).

Only because the needs of industry have changed – not because of an altruistic desire to improve the worker’s plight– is the focus on preparing workers with the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace salient.  Interestingly, though Beaufort supports preparing students by, among other things, “introducing them to the concept of discourse communities and the social nature of written communication” (p. 248), these goals have been hampered by the implementation of widespread standardized testing, which, in many cases, has resulted in teaching a disproportionate amount of working-class students skills using methods that are at odds with a dynamic curriculum that encourages independent and critical thinking as well as one that values the varied and complex nature of writing.   So, while Beaufort’s suggestions regarding curriculum design and assessment are not far removed from what schools encourage – and teachers implement – in traditionally successful programs, it is questionable how much free thought and skill industry wishes its workers to have before they are considered counterproductive to a greed-based, market-driven economy.

Adolescence, Literacy, and the Reform Movement

In the introduction to their text, Christenbury et al. (2009) identify three areas for focus:  adolescence, literacy, and research, noting that their definitions are not limited to the “simple, unified, [and] unproblematic” (p. 3), but that the complexities inherent in each are compounded when they interact. As the United States pushes forward in its education reform efforts and has fallen victim in the past to manipulation at the hands of so-called reformers whose political agendas have facilitated bias in the creation of reports that have served to influence the nation’s literacy policies, as seen in the production of reports like those of the National Reading Panel, whose recommendations advocating teaching reading based on phonemic awareness have since been proven dubious (Marshall, 2009; Luke & Woods, 2009), we would be remiss if we did not understand that literacy is a high-stakes endeavor that “bureaucrats, politicians, and governments [use] to shape relations between human subjects, to reorder and distribute material goods, [and] to regulate and govern flows of discourse and the shape of local practices” (Luke & Woods, 2009, p. 197).

While there are disagreements about what literacy comprises – from “learning to read and write” to “having knowledge or competence” (Christenbury et al., 2009, p. 5), there is no doubt that the concept and its instruction are both socially situated and political (Gee, 2001).  Given the unpredictability of adolescence, a relatively modern idea “that acknowledges the unique space between childhood and full adulthood” (Christenbury et al., 2009, p. 4), coupled with the complexities of understanding literacy, adolescent literacy researchers are faced with hurdles as many literacies, including digital ones, are “typically ignored in school” (Christenbury et al., 2009, p. 7), the place historically where much literacy research has been conducted.

Ippolito et al. (2008) write, “If knowledge is power, then literacy is the key to the kingdom” (p. 1).  In our digital age, however, access is still contingent upon ability, whether that ability is linked to cognition, socioeconomic status or equal educational opportunity.  Research shows that “the kind of literacy that safeguards self-determination is not simply about decoding words on a page or recounting the chronology of a story,” basic skills that often lend themselves well to standardized testing, but “it is about engaging with complex ideas and information through interaction with written documents” (Ippolito et al., 2008, p. 2), activities whose complexities are not as readily measured, and therefore not considered cost-effective or efficient areas to test.  As a result, the field of literacy education exists within an atmosphere of tension between traditional and progressive models of literacy education (Jacobs, 2008, p. 18).

Moreover, there is also dissonance between theory and practice that further complicates adolescent literacy, particularly as it relates to assessment.  Alvermann (2009) argues that the current system of standardized testing is at odds with anyone who assumes a sociocultural view of literacy — defined by Moje et al. (2008) as “acknowledg[ing] the role of print and other symbol systems as being central to literate practice, but recogniz[ing] that the learning and use of symbols is mediated by and constituted in social systems and cultural practices” (p. 109) — where “[t]he focus on individual rather than group meaning making” is difficult to negotiate (pp. 23-24).

Because “adolescent literacy is about complex social relationships between adolescents and their rich symbolic and discursive lives,” and “adolescents need both a personally safe and cognitively stimulating environment, where they can explore and take risks” (Langer, 2009, pp. 49-50), school environments adversely affected by standardized testing mandates are problematic.  Marshall (2009) argues that “standards and assessment policies in many school contexts are both narrowing the curriculum and restricting the resources teachers can draw upon in working with students” (p. 122).  While some argue that curriculum “should reflect student experience” (cited in Johannessen & McCann, 2009, p. 68), and this is what many teachers are taught in teacher education programs, “we are now confronted in many schools with assessment policies that directly undermine the teaching and evaluation practices we have long endorsed” (Marshall, 2009, p. 122).  This tension is a direct result of education policy.

Given that “[p]roponents of standards policies have often rested their arguments on a specific ideological perspective about what education is for” (Marshall, 2009, p. 114), we must consider the motivations driving the reform movement.  Anyon (1980) asserts that “public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes” (p. 67), serving to replicate “the tensions and conflicts of the larger society” (1981, p. 38).  Although Worthy et al. (2009) note the history of tracking for utilitarian purposes in a market-based economy, they also argue that we must go beyond such practices and create schools that are “transformative rather than reproductive institutions” (p. 230).

Thus far, although the literature tends to address issues of adolescent literacy important to researchers, teachers, and teacher education students, the philosophies underlying policy makers, most of whom have no direct experience in the field, are being driven by different assumptions that are completely at odds with what educators adopt as best practices as a result of research and practical application.  Hillocks (cited in Marshall, 2009) points to attitudes legislators have about teaching and learning that vilify teachers as morally deficient and students as lazy (p. 121) as being responsible for inflicting a reform agenda.  Of course, one can easily argue that it is much easier to blame teachers and students than to look at larger societal problems, such as poverty and joblessness, as causes undercutting teachers’ ability to teach and students’ ability to learn.  It’s much cheaper to continue the interminable cycle of education crisis rhetoric and legislate unfunded mandates than to address real issues that impact education.

References

Alvermann, D.E.  (2009). Sociocultural constructions of adolescence and young people’s literacies. In L. Christenbury, R. Bomer,  and P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent literacy research (pp. 14-28). New York: The Guilford Press.

Anyon, J. (1980). Social class and the hidden curriculum of work.  Journal of Education 62(2), 67-92.

Anyon, J. (1981).  Social class and school knowledge.  Curriculum Inquiry 11(1), 3-42.

Christenbury, L., Bomer, R. & Smagorinsky, P. (2009).  Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research.  New York:  The Guilford Press.

Gee, J.P. (2001).  Reading as situated language:  A sociocognitive perspective.  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 44(8), 714-725.

Ippolito, J., Steele, J.L., & Samson, J.F. (2008).  Introduction:  Why adolescent literacy matters now.  Harvard Educational Review 78(1), 1-5.

Jacobs, V.A. (2008).  Adolescent literacy:  Putting the crisis in context. Harvard Educational Review 78(1), 7-39.

Johannessen, L.R. & McCann, T.M.  (2009).  Adolescents who struggle with literacy. In L. Christenbury, R. Bomer,  and P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent literacy research (pp. 65-79). New York: The Guilford Press.

Langer, J.A. (2009).  Contexts for adolescent literacy. In L. Christenbury, R. Bomer,  and P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent literacy research (pp. 49-64). New York: The Guilford Press.

Luke, A. & Woods, A. (2009).  Policy and adolescent literacy. In L. Christenbury, R. Bomer,  and P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent literacy research (pp. 197-219). New York: The Guilford Press.

Marshall, J. (2009). Divided against ourselves:  Standards, assessments, and adolescent literacy. In L. Christenbury, R. Bomer,  and P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent literacy research (pp. 113-125). New York: The Guilford Press.

Moje, E.B., Overby, M., Tysvaer, N. & Morris, K. (2008).  The complex world of adolescent literacy:  Myths, motivations, and mysteries. Harvard Educational Review 78(1), 107-154).

Worthy, J., Hungerford-Kressler, H., & Hamptom, A.  (2009). In L. Christenbury, R. Bomer,  and P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent literacy research (pp. 220-235). New York: The Guilford Press.