From Whose Perspective
“To the extent we continue to polarize the debate, with privileged power brokers dictating investments and practices designed to circumvent the professionals…we’re doomed to failure” says Cheryl Scott Williams’s Commentary in Education Week, October 17, 2012 ( www.edweek.org)
Thanks, Cheryl, for putting it together in one sentence.
Something that is happening all over “the world” (including in most so-called “developed” countries) can’t be countered by “reasonable argument.” There’s an agenda debate underlying the phenomenon between reformers like me and the phenomenon called GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement). It was fascinating to hear it reiterated in one country after another in Brussels, at the gathering of 140 or so representatives of trade unions around the world, last week. Although not necessarily encouraging.
If democracy really presumes that “everyman” (and woman) is a member of the ruling class, then schooling for “leaders” of the future, the privileged, etc. may not be the proper agenda for reform. Most, as products of privileged families (not all) and privileged schools (mostly private), have spent a lifetime internalizing the message of their “special” mission to create the future. So quite aside from greed or ambition, they have been trained to see themselves as entitled, due to their intrinsic merit. I went to such a school–a very good one with high ethical principles. But the explanation of why it had to be “selective” – even choosy amongst the rich – was that its job was to prepare the future leaders of a complex democratic society.
Amen to the purpose. But is there not another perspective, one tougher to tackle? Parcitularly, what should schooling look like in a democracy where everyone is supposed to be a member of the ruling class? Such an agenda is harder, more problematic, and will therefore also more often fail? I say yes.
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Deborah Meier on Education 