Critical Issues in Democratic Schooling

Curriculum, Teaching, and Socio-Political Realities

Kenneth Teitelbaum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000058116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Focusing on a wide range of critical issues, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the linkage of different educational ideas, policies, and practices to a commitment for democratic schooling. Informed by significant, interdisciplinary research, as well as by his own extensive professional experiences as a teacher, professor, department chair, and dean, Teitelbaum examines contemporary concerns related to three broad areas: 1) teaching and teacher education; 2) curriculum studies; and 3) multiculturalism and social justice. His approach is to integrate the current and the historical, the practical and the theoretical, the technical and the socio-political, and the personal and the structural. With this volume, Teitelbaum considers how schools should be organized and funded, what they should teach and to whom, the role that teachers, students, and parents should play in school life, and the need and prospects for schools and teacher education programs that foster meaningful learning, critical reflection, and social justice.

PART I

Teaching and Teacher Education

1

Teaching Has Its Own Rewards

When I was a high school social studies teacher years ago in upstate New York, I taught an elective class in Sociology, which was primarily taken by seniors. During one year, I had a student named Nick, an Italian American, who seemed to be a pleasant fellow and was typically quite reserved during class discussions. Except when we studied a unit on racial prejudice and discrimination, during which he became animated in his opposition to comments made about the severity of the issues we were addressing. On occasion, he expressed sentiments that were uncharacteristically insensitive and hostile, clearly with bottled-up emotions that the conversations in class were providing him with an opportunity to release. I was told later by a few students that personal issues were involved, in part having to do with difficulties his younger sister and her friends, all of whom were white, were having with a group of black girls in the school. There may have been a physical altercation of some kind. Although I made my best efforts, I concluded this was one student whom I was not able to “reach” regarding the goals for the unit, that is, for students to better understand the nature of race relations in our country and to appreciate the need for more inclusive and equitable treatment in our policies and practices.

Because the topic was so important to me, I was especially disappointed. But I realized that although a teacher should always try to reach all students, for various reasons one might not be able to do so. For some students, resistance might be due to my relatively casual approach and friendliness with students, which they could experience as unsettling or inappropriate for a teacher. Or, it might be due to my expressing viewpoints they think are too liberal and that challenged their family’s belief system. Or, they did not like my longish hair and beard, even though I wore a tie every day, as I was expected to do at this school. Or, perhaps they thought I talked too much in class, or let students talk too often; or I assigned too much homework; or my expectations for their work were too high; or they simply disliked the course I was teaching. Or, maybe some students took the position of “I won’t learn from you,” what Herbert Kohl describes as “willed not-learning.”¹ Yet, none of these reasons seemed to apply to Nick. It was only for this one unit in our Sociology class that Nick seemed unwilling to deal constructively with the topic. I must admit that with all else (including 150 other students) to deal with on a daily basis, and the fact that he was not misbehaving or doing poorly on graded assignments, I never talked about it with him outside of class. And things returned to normal, so to speak, as the class continued. Nick became one of the many who graduate and move on, presumably never to be heard from again.

In the fall, Nick enrolled at the local community college. During the following March, I received a phone call at home after midnight, with an operator on the line telling me that Nick was calling and he wanted to reverse the charges (a practice that was not so unusual during the pre-cell phone days, especially from a child to a parent). I had been asleep, was groggy, and could hardly understand what the operator was saying to me, but I accepted the call. Nick was a bit drunk, probably not completely aware of what time he was calling. But apparently, he felt the need to contact me, about nine months after he had graduated, to tell me he was in Florida on spring break, had been at a party with other young people, danced with some black girls and even kissed one, and he wanted me to know how good he felt about it, and presumably about himself.

I will not claim that this was one of my major triumphs as a teacher, though it is a memorable one. But I will say four things: First, sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, students do not readily reveal what they are thinking, or what they are learning. In fact, the outward signs can indicate otherwise; perhaps the students don’t even know themselves at the time what insights they are gaining. Second, sometimes the most important results of teaching are not known until well after a class ends, for the students as well as the teacher. Third, classroom discussions, as well as paper-and-pencil tests and written assignments, cannot necessarily capture what might be the most significant learning taking place in a classroom. And fourth, and perhaps most importantly for this essay, the rewards of teaching cannot be measured solely in terms of dollars, test results, or grades. This is absolutely not to downplay the issues of low salaries and unprofessional work conditions. It is to suggest that, with all the challenges and difficulties facing teachers these days, it is still a profession for those who want to create and inspire, for those who love learning, for those who care deeply about youth and the future of our world, and for those who enjoy and appreciate the wonderful, sometimes incredible growth that can take place among young people.

About a week after Nick’s phone call, I had a visit from his sister, whom I did not know. She brought me an envelope with several dollars in it. It was from Nick. To pay for the collect phone call.

Several years before I was a high school teacher, I worked as a youth group worker at a community center in San Francisco, California. Among the children I worked with in an after-school program was a six-year-old boy, Jonathan, who apparently had a difficult time getting along with children at school and sometimes was overly aggressive. There was cause to believe that his behavior was a result of his parents’ recent divorce, with all the feelings such an experience generates in bewildered young children. His mother signed him up for one of my groups in the fall, hoping that perhaps an after-school environment with children he did not know might be helpful. Not being trained as a therapist, I did not see it as my role to talk directly with him about his parents and their divorce, although, as I got to know him better, we did occasionally talk about what he was feeling. I found Jonathan to be a very bright boy and actually quite appealing. I took a strong interest in him, and he continued to join my groups during the rest of the school year. I hoped my involvement with him was helpful but I wasn’t sure. Near the end, I told the children that I would be leaving San Francisco, to return to the East coast. They seemed disappointed but I didn’t notice any particular reaction from Jonathan. I was sure he had heard what I said, but it did not seem to register. Echoing Vonnegut, I just figured, “so it goes.”²

On the last day our after-school group met, Jonathan’s mother came with him to see me. She told me he had cried when telling her my news, but that he was dealing with it maturely. She also said she thought his behavior and sense of self had improved markedly during the year. As they left, Jonathan came over to give me a hug. I still get a bit emotional when I think about it. I wonder how the rest of his life went.

There are many excellent teachers throughout our country and no doubt they have similar stories of successful teaching to share. One of the difficulties of being a teacher is that oftentimes one does not learn about one’s impact until much later, after many years in the classroom, if at all. One moving profile was included on the CBS Sunday Morning program on July 15, 2018. Robert Moore of Ponca City, Oklahoma, had been a high school music teacher and choral director for 30 years and was being honored 20 years after he retired by several hundred former students. Apparently, Mr. Moore was not known as an especially likeable or warm-and-fuzzy teacher, but rather as something of a disciplinarian. But the gratitude of his students was striking, with remarks such as: “You were the greatest influence that ever hit my life”; “You’re the reason I’m teaching right now”; “You changed my life; it couldn’t have happened without you”; and “He pulled things out of you, you didn’t even know were there.” As the television reporter suggested, the event was “a testimonial to what a good teacher can accomplish in a career.”

Of course, such tributes sometimes do not occur soon enough in a beloved teacher’s life, a point I will return to in Chapter 3. Nor do accolades put food on the table or necessarily result in teachers being appropriately respected by one’s students, parents, colleagues, and the public at large. But the inner satisfaction that can be gained from such work should be emphasized to all those who consider entering the teaching profession and to those current teachers who may be feeling beleaguered. To be sure, teachers still need to join with colleagues and others from the community to gain the compensation and supportive, professional work environment they deserve. But they should never forget the Nicks and the Jonathans who are out there, and who gain so much from them, even if their students do not readily show it during class, or express it with a drunken phone call in the middle of the night, a hug on the last day of class, or a high score on a fill-in-the-bubble test. Hang in there. There are many who appreciate your efforts.

Notes

1 Herbert Kohl, “I Won’t Learn from You” and Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment (New York: The New Press, 1994), 2 and 6.

2 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade (New York: Dell, 1969). The phrase appears often in Vonnegut’s book.

2

Despite What Some Think, Teaching Isn’t Easy

During a springtime dinner to honor scholarship recipients and their donors at a university where I was a college dean, a first-year teacher education student told me about someone she knew back home who questioned why she needed to attend college for four years to teach first graders. The person did not believe teaching young children is particularly difficult work or needs a great deal of preparation to do well. One increasingly hears such views from people uninformed about the challenges and complexities of teaching, though of course such a perspective is certainly not new. It emanates in part from the profession being identified primarily with women during the last 150 years, the so-called “feminization of teaching,” with the long-held presumption that, “because of their [women’s] inborn capacities for caretaking and nurturance, … the training they need is minimal, and the pay they deserve is the same.” In general, women’s work has been “considered somehow inferior or of less status simply because it is women who do it.”¹

Contrasting viewpoints can be readily found, however. In one recent newspaper article, for example, a father is quoted as sympathetically saying, “They have quite the job, trying to take care of everyone and being with our children for eight hours a day.” At the same time, while only one-third of respondents to a USA Today/Ipsos poll agree with the statement, “It is easy to be a teacher,” nearly six in 10 believe that, “If I wanted to, I would be an excellent teacher.” Apparently, according to more than half of the respondents, it cannot be so very difficult. Responding to other comments, a teacher in North Carolina lamented, “People who believe I can be replaced by an app don’t understand what I do.”²

The Realities of Being a Teacher

For many who are not teachers, the work may seem relatively simple: Here is a classroom of girls and boys, of whatever race, fluent in English, neatly dressed, well fed, hands folded in their laps, eager to learn, and with parents who closely monitor their progress. A teacher with basic knowledge of the three Rs and whatever aspects of mostly Western culture are included in a set curriculum delivers a well-organized lesson, telling students what they need to know and do. The students listen carefully and politely and occasionally scribble down notes, do their homework diligently in class or in a quiet room at home, and every so often during the year fill in test bubbles to show that they remember (and presumably understand) what was taught. While some exceptions may be acknowledged, this is basically how it goes on a weekly basis.

For the most part, such a scenario is a figment of the “teaching is easy” imagination. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt describes his own experience as a high school teacher: “You think you’ll walk into the classroom, stand a moment, wait for silence, watch while the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• PART I: Teaching and Teacher Education
• PART II: Curriculum Studies
• PART III: Multiculturalism and Social Justice
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Index