Understanding Life in School

From Academic Classroom to Outdoor Education

John Quay

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137391230
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Teoría y práctica de la educación

Attending school is an experience that most people share but this leads us to accept rather than question the experience. Using the philosophies of Heidegger and Dewey, John Quay explores life in schools and juxtaposes the environment of a school camp with that of an academic classroom.

1

Understanding Life so as to Understand Life in School

The child versus the curriculum: Discord in the fundamentals of education

My aim in researching and writing this book has been to better understand life in school as experienced by the young people who live it, in order to share this understanding with you, the reader. The stories of school I offer are drawn from Australian students and informed by my experiences in Australian schools as a teacher of outdoor education, physical education and sport. In addition, I shall call on the work of others who have investigated this question of life in school before me, others whose experiences of school and life have occurred in different places at different times. The broad discourse concerning life in school draws on shared experiences the world over, for there is some truth to the notion that “school is school, no matter where it happens” (Jackson, 1990, p. xxi). There are similarities to schooling that enable us to communicate and share understanding across borders of space and time.

Investigating life in school requires, as Jackson came to understand through his study of Life in Classrooms, “learning how to see things differently” (1990, p. xviii) so as to get behind “the ubiquity of classroom phenomena” (1968, p. 177). Life in school is ordinary, so ordinary in fact that students (and teachers) become oblivious to much of the routine. The subtitle I have given this book – From academic classroom to outdoor education – points to a juxtaposition aimed at addressing this difficulty. To raise this ordinariness to awareness, one must see it against a somewhat contrasting background. For much of academic life in school, outdoor education offers such a background, and vice versa, academic classroom life offers a contrast to life in outdoor education, enabling nuances to be perceived.

I employed this juxtaposition in the design of a study I conducted which aimed at investigating young people’s experiences of life in school. This book is a product of this study. As such it aims to illuminate life in school by drawing on these experiences. What comes to light is underpinned by one of the most mundane and pervasive expectations of life in school (in an academic classroom or outdoor education): “that children will adapt to the teacher’s authority by becoming ‘good workers’ and ‘model students’ ” (Jackson, 1968, p. 32). While this may or may not be achieved in every circumstance, it is an interesting statement because the curriculum is not directly mentioned, even though the curriculum is the implicit reason for this expectation. In an academic classroom, we prize model students. In outdoor education, being a good worker is likewise highly valued, although here this usually means something different to being a model academic student. Front and centre, though, it is a way of being that is emphasized.

This basic insight – that education is concerned with being – is at the heart of this book. We commonly consider education to be chiefly concerned with knowing: with what one knows, doesn’t know, needs to know (its epistemic aims). However, the connection I shall make here is that education, at the same time, is concerned with being: with who one is, who one has been, who one will be (its ontological aims), even if this is not always explicitly acknowledged. In other words, the epistemic aims of education cannot be separated from the ontological aims. The sense of ontological I am drawing on here is Heideggerian and, indeed, Thomson (2005) has aptly described Heidegger’s philosophy of education as “ontological education” (p. 141). Heidegger’s philosophy has much to offer education and I avail myself of key aspects of his work throughout this book.

While there is a close connection between the epistemic and ontological aims of education – knowing and being – the nature of the relation between them is not well understood, leading to disjunctures and confusions in the way school works. This is one of the main points I attempt to make throughout this book. The usual response is to highlight epistemic aims as the educational priority. Ontological aims are aligned with such a goal, to the extent that being a model academic student is in service to what one should know. Thus being a model academic student is a way of being deliberately designed to best facilitate the acquisition of large quantities of knowledge.

This subordinate positioning of ontological aims is justified in three interconnected ways: who one is at school is less important than who one will be beyond school; who one will be beyond school is best prepared for through acquisition of disciplinary knowledge; and the work required to acquire disciplinary knowledge is good preparation for the work required beyond school. All three of these justifications are built around the traditional notion of preparation: school is basically preparation for life beyond school. This premise – school as preparation for life beyond school – may seem like common sense; however, it has major ramifications for how school is organized, and thus how it is experienced and lived. Aware of these ramifications, Dewey (1938) described this premise as “a treacherous idea” (p. 47). Such criticism is indeed damning – but do we really understand what Dewey meant? Clarifying Dewey’s position is another aim of this book and I draw liberally on his work, especially from his texts which focus on education.

One view of the disjunctures and confusions in schooling is Jackson’s (1968) reference to “two curriculums”: “the ‘official’ curriculum,” which details knowledge to be mastered, and concomitantly we have the “hidden curriculum” (p. 34). The hidden curriculum is just that – hidden from view in discussions of curriculum. It is sometimes mentioned in motherhood statements about school, in descriptions of pastoral care, and in classroom management and disciplinary policies, but it is rarely made explicit in documents pertaining to the official curriculum. So while the official curriculum details the “academic demands” (p. 34), primarily in terms of the knowing which students must achieve, Giroux and Penna (1979) describe the hidden curriculum as “the unstated norms, values and beliefs that are transmitted to students through the underlying structure of meaning in both the formal content as well as the social relations of school and classroom life” (p. 22). An important connection made here is that the norms, values and beliefs which align with being a model student (hidden curriculum) cannot be separated from the aim of acquiring the formal content (official curriculum). This means that who one is (hidden curriculum) is premised on what one must come to know (official curriculum). The social relations of school and classroom life are similarly aligned with this epistemic aim – in the main.

I say “in the main” because many schools also offer co-curricular (sometimes called extra-curricular) activities – such as sports, band/orchestral music and dramatic productions (outdoor education is also often considered in this way) – which seem to invert this relationship between epistemic and ontological aims. This alternative response attempts to emphasize what would normally be hidden curriculum, and vice versa, downplaying the official curriculum such that it is in effect hidden. This is essentially what Dewey (1938) saw happening around the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth century with “the rise of what is called new education and progressive schools” due to “discontent with traditional education” (p. 18).

In the early days of these developments, the two versions of education – traditional and progressive – appeared to Dewey as “different educational sects” (1902a, p. 7), with the older sect asking teachers to “ignore and minimize the child’s individual peculiarities, whims, and experiences” (p. 8) in order to “substitute … stable and well-ordered realities … found in studies and lessons.” In contrast, the newer sect positioned “the child” as “the starting-point, the center, and the end” (p. 9) such that “all studies are subservient; they are instruments valued as they serve the needs of growth” in the form of “self-realization.” This contrast led Dewey to proclaim “the case of the child vs. the curriculum” (p. 5).

Since Dewey’s day there have been many attempts to deal with the progressive versus traditional education dilemma, attempts that do not only involve the offering of co-curricular activities. Another way in which the conundrum presents itself is through what Cuban described as “two traditions of teaching (teacher-centered and student-centered) that have persisted for centuries” (1993, p. 245). Cuban’s choice of descriptor – two traditions – points to how progressive education has been institutionalized. Most important in Cuban’s account is that these two traditions do not exist separately (as if there are pure versions of traditional and progressive education) but instead we see “a blending of the two traditions” (2007, p. 5) with various versions positioned along a continuum. Cuban recognized that “most teachers hugged the middle of the continuum” by “blending activities, grouping patterns, and furniture to create hybrids of the two traditions” (p. 11). He called this most prevalent hybrid “teacher-centered progressivism” (p. 22). The name highlights how “hybrid classroom practices and particular student-centered features … have been incorporated into most teachers’ repertoires over the decades as they adapted their practices to regulatory policies” (p. 22). In other words, traditional education remains dominant, with features of progressive education incorporated where possible in an effort to strike a dynamic balance or compromise between the two: child and curriculum.

Many teachers are, for the most part, satisfied with such an approach, and they may baulk at the idea that education is somehow confused. Yet this satisfaction is rarely a deeply felt contentment and more often a tolerated coping, which leaves the two sides of the conflict intact, their muted interplay underpinning many of the problems experienced in schools. Dewey saw this compromise taking place in classrooms in his day, knowing that such a path would not resolve the underlying conflict. Significantly he recognized that the problem concerned more than just teaching practice. This was a genuine philosophical problem indicating the need to do more than simply look for a practical balance or compromise between the contenders. A philosophical approach was required in order to get beneath the conflict and understand it at a deeper level. The aim should be to understand the problem in such a way that a shift in practice may accordingly be developed, unhindered by the ongoing challenge of mediating a balance.

It is the business of an intelligent theory of education to ascertain the causes for the conflicts that exist and then, instead of taking one side or the other, to indicate a plan of operations proceeding from a level deeper and more inclusive than is presented in the practices and ideas of the contending parties. This formulation of the business of the philosophy of education does not mean that the latter should attempt to bring about a compromise between opposed schools of thought, to find a via media, nor yet make an eclectic combination of points picked out hither and yon from all schools. It means the necessity of the introduction of a new order of conceptions leading to new modes of practice.

(Dewey, 1938, p. 5)

The first step in Dewey’s philosophical approach was to ascertain the causes for the conflicts that exist. These causes are not merely traditional and progressive education (official and hidden curriculum; teacher-centred and student-centred pedagogy), but can be seen more readily if we turn to a very basic description of education, one that removes most of the sedimented layers that cloud our vision. Dewey put it this way: “the fundamental factors in the educative process are an immature, undeveloped being; and certain social aims, meanings and values incarnate in the matured experience of the adult” (1902a, p. 4). Again we can see child and curriculum presented here; but we can also see the ontological and the epistemic aims of education, now more clearly associated with life itself. Adults are acknowledged for their part – and not just as teachers.

With increased professionalization of education, these fundamental factors have morphed. Instead of an immature, undeveloped being, we have the student or learner; and in place of the matured experience of the adult, we have the curriculum, enacted by a teacher – to the extent that the identity of many teachers in secondary schools is prescribed by the curriculum via the subject matter they teach.

But in a more fundamental sense education is not just about teachers and students. Stripping education back to these fundamental factors suggests that the basic causes for the conflict are two states of human being – childhood and adulthood – existing in discord. However, this should not be considered a fight between particular people, for “it seems as if it were the institution of the school rather than the specific people it houses that occasions most of the discontent” (Jackson, 1968, p. 49). Both traditional and progressive education, as reflective of different versions of the institution of the school, play discordantly in relation to childhood and adulthood. “It was the weakness of the ‘old education’ that it made invidious comparisons between the immaturity of the child and the maturity of the adult” by “regarding the former as something to be got away from as soon as possible and as much as possible” (Dewey, 1902a, p. 15). And “it is the danger of the ‘new education’ that it regards the child’s present powers and interests as something finally significant in themselves” (p. 15). Childhood and adulthood come together in the institution of school, but neither traditional nor progressive education, each of which takes a side in the debate, offers a way forward that does away with the discord.

Having identified these more basic causes, Dewey was adamant that the solution did not lie in taking one side or the other by emphasizing either childhood or adulthood as more important educationally. Nor could a solution be found by compromising or searching for some balance between the two, offering a hybrid that suited children at some times and adults at others. Instead the solution lay in digging deeper, in seeking a better understanding of this pathway of life from childhood to adulthood. This is indeed a most fundamental challenge for educational philosophy. Traditional education is one form of response, progressive education another, and the many hybrids more still. And yet these responses fall short because they fail to adequately account for the living continuity between these two states of human being.

Life and evolution: Education as growth

In order to address this situation, we need to better understand life in school. To do this, we must look beyond school and seek to understand life – human life – and how it works. For if we better understand life, then we better understand how school should work in support of life. Specifically, a better understanding of life may enable us to formulate a more fitting way of working with the fundamental factors of education: childhood and adulthood. To say this is to acknowledge that school is already founded on understandings of how life works, but understandings which are inadequate to the task – traditional and progressive education, and hybrids of these.

Asking questions about life is not a simple undertaking. Typically today, when asking questions about life, we move into the realm of science – particularly biology, but also chemistry, physics, psychology, sociology and anthropology (as perhaps the main “sciences” of life). A biological understanding of life points towards the physiology of organisms. It also emphasizes the evolutionary relationships between various types of organisms, as captured in Darwin’s famous reference to “the great Tree of Life” (1876, p. 112). Darwin represented this “tree” via a diagram (p. 97) showing the evolutionary branching of species (emergence and extinction) over many generations, a way of showing evolution that is fairly commonplace today. This tree of life metaphor – while now understood by scientists as somewhat simplistic and mechanistic – remains very helpful in conveying to a broad audience a general idea of how life works, in the sense of evolution. Importantly though, this tree wasn’t intended as a static representation of the fossil record, rather it was a growing and thus changing organism, continually developing and decaying.

As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.

(Darwin, 1876, p. 112)

Dewey, enamoured with Darwin’s theory, stressed this idea of growth when he declared that “evolution means continuity of change” (1922, p. 284). The importance of this emphasis on growth and change can be seen if we are aware of the situation preceding the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, when “the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created” (Darwin, 1876, p. xiv). In this traditional understanding, the emphasis is on a particular way of comprehending “order in flux” (Dewey, 1910, p. 5), where species provide the order and any change is merely a process of reproduction of this order. So, whilst change is acknowledged to occur, such as the growth of an organism (as in childhood), this change is always orientated towards a fixed point, “a true final term, a τελος [telos], a completed, perfect end” (p. 4). This complete version is how we know a species. In human terms, this is the adult – the adult is the state of completion and thus of order; before this we are in flux, which positions all growing (childhood, adolescence, etc.) as merely development towards adulthood. Life is thus understood as reproduction of the adult form. The adult form engenders “the superiority of the fixed and final,” while change or growth is a sign of “defect and unreality” (Dewey, 1910, p. 1). Childhood is defective because it is merely on the way to the finished adult version. One can see this understanding embedded in traditional education, where being a child is a mere transit point on the journey to adulthood. Being a student is perceived as merely becoming, which only achieves fulfilment in the adult form.

Playing further into the hands of traditional education is another application of this particular way of understanding order in flux. The fixed and final was (and is still considered to be, in certain circumstances) “also the central principle of knowledge,” being foundational for “the logic of science” (Dewey, 1910, p. 6) – as this was generally understood at the time. In this vie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Photographs
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Understanding Life so as to Understand Life in School
• 2. Investigating Life in School
• 3. Life in School: Occupations and Outdoor Education
• 4. Life in School: Occupations and Academic Classrooms
• 5. Life in School Is Occupational
• References
• Index