The Kind of SchoolsWe Need

In our determination to raise standards, wemust not mistake the academic for theintellectual.

/ IW I Ih0 -_ ftf1110 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~u-ld ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~U~~~~~~

48

ELLIOT W. EISNER

T he problems that plague theschools, particularly secondaryschools, seemn to be clear to virtu-

ally everyone. Test scores have beendropping for about a decade. From 1968to 1980, the SATs have fallen 42 pointsin the verbal and 26 points in themathematical sections of the test. Stan-dardized achieivement test scores such asthe California Test of Basic Skills showsimilar declines.' Discipline problemsappear to be more severe than a decadeago. The teachers with whom I havetalked say the students don't have thesame respect for teachers that they oincehad. Truancy has increased, to a pointthat in some school districts 20 percentof the students are absent on any oneday

The solutions to these prollemls ap-pear to many to be as clear as theproblems themselves. The reason stu-dents are not achieving is because thesare allowed to enroll in too manv elec-tive courses: electives are thought to beeasier than courses that are required.Furthermore, fewer students enroll inadvanced math, foreign languages, andscience courses than they once didThe way to solve this problem is toincrease the number of required sub-jects, reduce the number of electivesstudents can take, and make sure thatthe subiects that are required are diffi-cult.

As for discipline, the situation can beremedied by conveying to studentsclearly the kind of behavior that is ex-pected of them in school and by enforc-ing those expectations consistently. Bytightening up discipline and expellingunruly students, teachers will find iteasier to teach and students easier tolearn.

Regarding truancy, two remedieshave been and are being employed. Oneis to provide cash incentives to studentswho come to school regularly. Theseincentives, incidentally, are also offeredto teachers whose attendance records areexemplary. ' The other solution is tohave the police arrest students who areon the street when theyv should be inschool. 4

Elliot W. Eisner is Professor of Educa-tion and Art, Stanford University, Stan-ford, California

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

fII _ _ _

Finally, the solution to the decliningquality of education can be found byhaving teachers raise their academicexpectations of students. The publicbelieves these expectations have fallen.It has been too easy to receive an A;teachers have expected too little; wehave what has been called "grade infla-tion." The solution is to make standardsmore difficult to achieve, to give fewer Agrades, and to convey to students thatthey are capable of getting an A grade(while at the same time, fewer are giv-en).

According to newspapers, magazines,and television, schools can be returnedto their former glory by using the prac-tices I have described. The analyses thatare offered by educators as well as by laycommentators almost never questionwhether test performance adequately as-sesses what school should be about.Almost never is the significance of themagnitude of the decline examined ordiscussed; it's taken for granted. Almostnever is the concept of a hard subjectexamined; it is assumed that some sub-jects are intrinsically hard while othersare inherently soft. Almost never is thequestion of why students leave schoolsasked: the solution is to get them back bythe carrot--money or other extrinsicincentives-or by the stick by using thepolice. Almost never does the discussionof schooling exceed the simplistic analy-sis I have described. And woe be to thesuperintendent of schools who shouldraise such questions. For example, it isseldom asked what it is that the SATspredict. The fact is that they "predict" orexplain about 9 percent of the varianceof freshman grades in college._ It isseldom asked how many items missedon the verbal section of the test cause a42-point drop in average performanceover a 12-year period; the answer is thatsuch a drop is caused by answering fiveto six more questions wrong. 6 The 26-point drop in the math section is causedby answering three more questionswrong. It is seldom asked why absentee-ism in certain schools and school dis-tricts has risen; it is simply assumed thatit is better for students to be in schoolthan out of it, a conclusion that forsome students in some schools mightnot at all be true. It is seldom asked whystudents might prefer a course in themodern American film than one insentential calculus. It is assumed thatthe former is easier than the latter and

that if students show an interest in theformer they are trying to avoid work. Iquestion all of these pop diagnoses andsuperficial remedies.

As you can see. I am not very s!-mpa-thetic with the customanr complaintsconcerning the quality of our schools. Iam even less sympathetic w ith the reme-dies that have been proposed. I havelittle confidence in the educational sig-nificance of standardized achievementtest scores. It's not that the scores haveno meaning, it's simply that they tapmuch too slender a slice of what Ibelieve is important in education. Nci-ther standardized achievement tests, northe Scholastic Aptitude Test, nor thetests used for advanced placement ade-quately represent the kind of criteria thatshould be used to appraise the quality ofschooling or their effects upon students.

As for the remedies, the idea thatschools should go back to the basics,when the basics mean the Three R's. isreally a symptom of wanting too littlerather than too much from schools.Reading, writing, and arithmetic haveno virtue in and of themselhes. They areskills and, as skills, are educationallvempty. What matters is not that one canread, but rather that one does read andthat what one reads is worth reading.Furthermore, the idea that reading andwriting are simply skills having little orno relationship to swhat is read is psycho-logically naive. What it takes to read aFaulkner, a cummings, or a Durkheimdiffers considerably. In fact, readingskills are so intimately tied to the con-tent read that most of us consult alawyer when we have to sign an impor-tant contract. Our reading skills arc notup to the task.

My point in making these observa-tions is not to comment on reading, butrather to illustrate the shallowness of thecurrent discussion concerning the prob-lems and solutions of American school-ing. We want children to be able to readbut we do not say what it is that makesreading an intellectually worthwhile ac-tivity. We talk about the Three R's asbasic skills but we disconnect those skillsfrom content. But mainly we seem tograsp for solutions to ill-conceived prob-lems and to rely upon slogans ratherthan deep debate to find out if theproblems are real and if the solutionsproposed are relevant. What all of thishad lead to is an emphasis on theacademic in schooling at the cost of the

'We seem to grasp forsolutions to ill-conceived problems andto rely upon slogansrather than deep debateto find out if theproblems are real and ifthe solutions proposedare relevant."

OCIrGoER 1983

gl

49

"As I look at schools, Isee largely teacher-dominated classroomswith mostly passivestudents. Indeed, thehigher the student'slevel of aspiration, themore willing he or she isto provide to theteacher what theteacher expects."

intellectual. But schools, includingprestigious private universities, can behighly academic places that have littleof the spirit or curiosity inherent in anintellectual form of life. The academicgrind takes over, students do well atwhat is expected, they may even getgood grades, and still miss that form ofexperience related to the life of themind.

You can discern from my remarksthat I am not happy when it comes tothe state of discussion concerningAmerican education. I am not happywith the way the problems have beencouched. I am not happy with the datathat have been used to justify theirexistence. And I am not happy with thesolutions that have been proposed toremedy them. Ironically, these solu-tions lead to expectations that arc far toolow. It is these discomforts that motivat-ed me to write about the kind of schoolswe need.

What Schools Should ProvideThere is one caveat that I wish to enterat the outset. I have never believed inone form of education that is good forall children, in all places, forever.Much of my own scholarly work in thefield of curriculum has addressed itselfto describing the alternatives that can bepursued in developing educational pro-grams for the young.- What is good ineducation depends at least in part uponthe context in which it is to function.Yet having said that, I am going todescribe seven characteristics of the kindof things that schools should provide tochildren. I will indicate why I think theyare important and what schools must belike to make them possible. Although insome places and circumstances what Iadvocate might be inappropriate, I amwilling to stand by them for most stu-dents in most schools in the nation.

1. Balance in theCurriculumFirst, there is the matter of balance inthe curriculum. I believe one of themajor missions of schools is to cultivatemultiple forms of literacy. By literacy Imean the generic process of securingand expressing meaning within pat-terned forms of expression. When weexamine the culture at large, we findthat a variety of forms are used to articu-late and make public the conceptions

that human beings create." These con-ceptions emerge in the forms wc calldiscourse, in poetry, in music. in thevisual arts, in mathematics, in dance,and in 2Oth-ccnturn art forms such ascinematography and video.

Humans are able to conv'cy througheach of these forms meanings that arcinexpressible in other forms. Indeed,the forms were invented and have sur-vived precisely because they are nonrc-dundant. Conception requires that aform be found, appropriated, or invcnt-ed that is capable of serving as a vehicleor medium for its public embodiment.The virtue of these forms, what I call"forms of representation. " is that eachmakes a particular form of experiencepossible. It is through that particularityof experience that meaning is securedand expressed. Without the necessaryliteracy, the meanings these forms con-tain cannot be experienced. Insofar aseducation as a process is concerned withthe expansion and deepening of mcan-ing, the neglect of these forms or inade-quate attention to them will leave thestudents graduating from our schoolssemi-literate, unable to avail themselvesof the meanings that might otherwise betheirs.

How are such lofty aims achieved?How do we help children and adoles-cents learn to "read" the meanings inthe various forms of representation Ihave described? First, by providing thetime necessary for adequate attention tothem in a school curriculum. What is itthat we would like students to be able todo with music, with mathematics, withthe visual arts, with the propositionaluse of language? How much time isnecessary for students to become literatein these realms? What sorts of curricu-lum activities might they engage in?Who should teach in these areas? Canthese realms of meaning be interrelatedso that they complement each other?What can be learned about a slice ofhistory through the study of the art andarchitecture of the period, its music, itstheological commitments? And whatcan students express of what they havelearned through different forms of repre-sentation? If through poetry one can saywhat words can never say, how canpoetry become an expressive option forstudents in the social studies or in thenatural sciences? What do the visual artshave to tell us about form and composi-tion that is informative about nature,

50~~ EDCTOA LlA RHI r_I

o50 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

and what can nature tell us that isinformative about art? How call weexpect to develop people who can haveproductive intercourse with these formswhen so manv are all but absent fromthe curriculum we provide?

Balance in the curriculum is there-fore a plea for giving children an ade-quate opportunith to learn how to usetheir minds. "' While time is a necessih,it is not a sufficient condition. Skill inteaching something worth learning isalso required. I argue for balance in thecurriculum because in our anxiety overdeclining test scores we have all but lostit. It is well past the time to take a look atthe curriculum as a whole and to askourselves if it provides students with theopportunity to acquire the multipleforms of literacy I have described.

2. IntellectualIndependenceSecond, the schools we need woulddevelop the student's capacit ' to workwith a sense of intellectual indepen-dence. By intellectual independence Imean that students would be encour-aged to find and .use resources for deal-ing with tasks and problems that theyhave had some hand in conceptualiz-ing. By intellectual independence I donot mean individualized instruction, aprocess that in most classrooms meansstudents proceed at their own rate on atrack that virtually all other students takein order to achieve common goals set byothers. The reason I believe the devel-opment of such independence is soimportant is because students won't bein school the rest of their lives. Whenthey leave school they will not encoun-ter a curriculum already defined. Whatthev will need to do is to find theresources to deal with the unpredictableand ambiguous. The best preparation Iknow of to develop such dispositions isto have had experience coping success-fully with ambiguous situations. As Ilook at schools. I see largely teacher-dominated classrooms with mostly pas-sive students. Indeed, the higher thestudent's level of aspiration, the morewilling he or she is to provide to theteacher what the teacher expects. Thestakes are too high for students to raisemuch of a ruckus. This passivity, whatPaolo Freire describes as a bankingmodel of schooling, I wherein theteacher makes a deposit and theii col-

Ilects the deposit at the end of the term,does not augur well for developing thekinds of skills that most adults needduring the course of their lives.

There are, as sou might expect, cer-tain difficulties in encouraging studentsto define problems and to formulate andpursue plans to deal with them. Forone, this complicates the regularits andstandardization that has become so sa-lient a part of our thinking about curric-ulum. The more we lean toward thefactor, model of schooling. with theteacher conceived of as a worker whoprocesses students through known rou-tines toward goals that students have hadno hand in formulating, the more trou-blesome and problematic the view% I amdescribing becomes. That price is one Iwould gladly pay if it develops in theyoung a more active and self-reliantattitude and a greater sense of confi-dence in their abilities to deal withproblems themselves.

How can such skills and dispositionsbe developed? Two ways commendthemselves to me. One is to design intothe courses that are offered opportunitiesand expectations that students formulateproblems and projects that require theuse of resources bevond those found intextbooks and in workbooks. Too oftenwhat is considered to be the curriculumis limited to the formal content ofcourses. But once we recognize that thecurriculum includes the full range ofopportunities students have for learning,the wav content is made available, andthe type of skills and dispositions stu-dents develop in learning, these becomeas important as our more restricted con-ception of curriculum content. It isperfectly possible to teach significantideas in a classroom in which the oppor-tunitv to learn how to search for and touse data is almost nonexistent. Indeed,preoccupation with achievement oftenexacts a heavy price in developing theability to inquire 12 In the long haul.however, inquiry is the more importantof the two. Competent inquiry will leadto achievement, but achievement canbe secured without learning how toinquire. When the support and incen-tives are no longer there. the dispositionand ability to continue to achieve mavbe diminished.

A second wav in which intellectualindependence might be fostered is byproviding time within the school weekfor students to group themselves across

OCTOBER 1983

"Students ought to learn how to become thearchitects of their own education. Theycannot learn such skills simply by functioningas bricklayers who are supervised by ateacher."

-~ ~ ~ ~ - ~ .

52

age levels in order to pursue projects ofmutual interest. Such projects mightfocus upon the roots of the countrv andwestern music or on the politics of thespace program. Whatever the themle ortopic is, the setting should be one inwhich an adviser can guide rather thandirectly teach.

I can envision a school in w hichevery Wednesday afternoon students ofdifferent ages meet together to work ontopics that have special relevance tothem. The character of the settingshould differ from that of the typicalclassroom. The major responsibility forplanning would be in the hands ofstudents. But they would have the ad-vice of a teacher or perhaps a retiredperson from the conmmunitv who hadsomething relevant to offer. The partic-ular forms such groups couldl take arenumerous and I don't want to get tiedup in details. The central idea is what isimportant: Students ought to learn inschool how to become the architects oftheir own education. I hev cannot learnsuch skills simply bh functioning asbricklayers who are supervised by ateacher.

3. Formulation ofProblemsA third characteristic of the schools weneed is related to the ability to work inan intellectually independent wav. It isto help students learn how to formulateand cope with problem-centered situa-tions. When we talk about dealing withproblems in education, we often mis-conceive the nature of the problematic.We give students a text, say in algebra,and ask them to do the problems onpage 316. But this is a request for themto engage in tasks, not to solve prob-lems. Tasks become problems onlyvwhen the student does not have theskills needed to deal with them. If theskills are present, then the task is one ofproviding exercise or practice in the useof such skills. It is not a task thatrequires problem-solving skills. If stu-dents don't have the skills, then thev doindeed have a problem, but those situa-tions are, by comparison, rare. Further-more, the problems in the book, evenwhen they are truly problematic, areproblems that are already formulated.When one considers that the most intel-lectually significant tasks are not those

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

I-

L

r

-I I I _ _ _

that focus on problem solving, but rath-er on problem formulation," the ab-sence of opportunities for students tolearn how to formulate problems is,from an educational point of view, adeprivation of enormous proportions.

What we tend to do in school is toassign students pseudo-problems andthen expect them to employ the skills wehave already taught them in order to"solve" them. What we seldom provideare opportunities for problem formula-tion. As a result we dichotomize con-ception from execution, and in theprocess "deskill" students, to use Mi-chael Apple's phrase.

Again, the reasons for this approachto instruction are not too difficult tounderstand. To give students the oppor-tunity to formulate their own aims, or tocouch their own problems and then topursue them is inefficient; it deregular-izes the system we feel we need tocontrol, and it leads to unpredictability.Who knows what problems studentsmight formulate?

Few of us can tolerate an utterlydifferentiated approach to teaching.Thirty students, each on his or her ownjourney, is more than most of us canendure. But I would urge teachers toprovide some time in their classroomsfor such opportunities. Treat time andcontent as variables, and provide somespace for such modes of learning to bedeveloped. Seeing the results of ourschools at the doctoral level at StanfordUniversitv, I can tell vou firsthand thatone of the major problems graduatestudents encounter en route to the doc-torate is the formulation of a problemfor a dissertation. Course content ishandled well; the task of formulating adissertation problem and then followingthrough on its completion in a relativelyindependent way, however, is trouble-some for some of the best and thebrightest. 14 The schools we need wouldprovide students with many opportuni-ties not only to develop intellectualindependence, but also to learn how toformulate questions. The current na-tional climate impacting schools islargely antithetical to the sort of abilitiesI have described.

4. Cultivation ofSensibilitiesA fourth characteristic of the schools weneed would give special emphasis to the

cultivation of the sensibilities. Attentionto the sensibilities in schooling has al-ways been a low priority. The senses aresupposedly bodily functions, somehowunconnected to the mind. Feeling, orawareness of qualities, is supposed torely upon soma, and educational experi-ence is supposed to deal with psyche.The break between mind and bodv isfurther legitimated by the reification ofcognition and affect. We tend to regardthe former as linguistically mediatedthought-a kind of inner speech-andthe latter as feelings that need no helpfrom mind or intelligence."

These distinctions, when dichoto-mized, are psychologically faulty, andany educational program that neglectshelping students learn how to experi-ence the nuances that constitute thequalitative world robs them of the verymaterial out of which concepts areformed. Whether in physics or sociolo-gy, biology or history, the need to per-ceive subtleties in the environment iscrucial. The ability to manipulate thosequalities imaginatively is necessary ifwork is to be other than humdrum orroutine. The fact of the matter is thatwords depend on wordless images inorder to be meaningful. Words whosereferents cannot be imagined cannot beknown.

What all this means for schools mightbe summarized under the general head-ing of developing perceptiviht. And per-ceptivity can be developed by enablingstudents to see and to hear more thanthey are likely to see and hear when leftto their own devices. What does thatman really look like? How do these treesdiffer in their expressiveness? What arethe qualitative differences between theRolling Stones and the Grateful Dead?How does the tempo of an editorialpersuade? What do the connotativemeanings of the words convey? Howcan we characterize complex social situ-ations through the use of metaphor?How have poets done so? In short, howcan we help students learn to see, andhear, and feel? How can we awakenthem to the qualities that function inthe lower register of experience?

Any verbal description of experiencemust begin with actual experience. Thesensibilities are the means throughwhich experience is secured, and to theextent to which we live Saran-wrappedlives, to that extent will our conscious-ness be deprived of the kind of life we

might have lead. I am suggesting, there-fore, that attention to the sensibilities isnot, as many seem to believe, a diver-sion from what is important in school-ing, but rather one of its central func-tions. Working out the ways throughwhich we can consciously and purpose-ly develop students' sensibilities is, tomy way of thinking, one of the impor-tant prorties for American education.

5. Affection for SubjectMatterA fifth characteristic of the kind ofschools we need deals with developingin the young a deep affection for thesubject matters they study. In this sense.we are trying to teach the young to love-one might even say that the teacher'srole is like Cupid's.

The need to create schools that canturn students on to the intellectualworld is particularly great in a period inwhich so much discussion concerningeducation has been devoted to the de-velopment of technologies of instructionand the shaping of goal-oriented behav-ior. There is nothing wrong with beinggoal oriented, except for the fict thatactivities that are intrinsically satisfyingtend to place a premium on the qualityof the process, on how it fees to beengaged in the act itself: sex and play aretwo of the most notable of such activi-ties. What I am suggesting is that thesatisfactions one receives when one hasan affection for what one does is not atall a peripheral aspect of educationallife. Without it schooling does indeedbecome academic, a matter of wrkingtoward the achievement of goals thalexcept for extrinsic reasons, one doesn'treally care much about.

We need to develop more amateursthrough schooling. An amateur is some-one who does something for the love ofit. Perhaps Alfred North Whitehead putit best when he said, "Most people thinkthat scientists inquire in order to know.just the opposite is the case. Scientistsknow in order to inquire " The journey,rather than the destination, is the dri-ing motive for their work. Another En-glishman, Richard Peters, Professor ofPhilosophy of Education at the Univer-sity of London, argues that educatorsdon't even need to have aims. Thefunction of education, he argues, is notto arrive at some destination, but ratherto travel with a new view. 1"

OcroaER 1983

III

· I

I realize when I argue the importanceof cultivating an affection in students forwhat they study that I am playing atheme that runs counter to those wchear at present. We seem to be recoilingfrom a period in which people believedthat schools were too soft, too permis-sive, too child-centered. The remcdy isto maintain standards, to tighten disci-pline, to develop backbone, to reducethe number of high grades. The majormelodic line is to return to more Spar-tan values. Yet I doubt that at any timein our nation's educational history, in-cluding the 1960s, schools in generalwere child-centered or romantic. Theseideas had much greater visibility in thepress than in the classroom.

Providing the kind of teaching andschool climate I am calling for requiresa great deal more than the application ofteacher-proof curricula or the latest sci-entifically tested method of instructionIt takes teachers who can deliberate andreflect upon the art and craft of teachingand who work in a school climate wherethe press for achievement does not leadto the kind of pedagogical shortcuts thathave short-term benefits but long-termcosts. Mark Lepper' - and his colleaguesfound that the use of extrinsic rewardsfor children creates forms of behaviorthat lead them not to want to engage intasks in which they are rewarded whenrewards are not offered. The use oftoken economies in the classroom andreliance on grades as the primary moti-vation for managing student interest areexamples of pedagogical shortcuts.Again, the more important the payoff isfor the student, the more compliant heor she is likely to be. But is suchsuperficial compliance the best we cando? I am suggesting that in our anxietyabout having loose schools and lowlevels of achievement, we do not suc-cumb to such short-term "easy" solu-tions.

How would we go about assessing theextent to which a field had captured ourstudents' affection? How might we findout if what we were teaching was reallybecoming a part of their lives? Howabout these indicators to start with. Dostudents come early to school? Howmany would like to stay late to work onprojects they have started? How manyhigh school students ask about pursuingtheir work during their free time? Whatkinds of books do students read volun-tarily? To what extent do the issues and

concepts discussed in class crop up indiscussions outside of class Tlo whatextent has the absentee rate in yourschool declined? How many studentsare exploring what you are teaching as apossible career option? What do thestudents' comportment and level of ani-mation in vour class tell you about theirlevel of interest?l'

To use such criteria for appraising thequality of schooling is not to ask for toolittle. On the contrary, if there is anerror in what I am suggesting, it is that Iam asking for too much. I am notsuggesting that we become vaudevillansin order to keep students engaged. I amnot suggesting that we relinquish atten-tion to the quality of student work sothat all can receive A's. I am not sug-gesting schooling become one big warm"cuddlyv," a cocoon that is insulatedfrom the world.

What I am suggesting is that we takeintellectual life seriously. That we stopconfusing the academic with the intel-lectual. That we begin to refuse to usethe easy management mechanisms-the extrinsic reward systems-as the ma-jor means of managing attention andperformance. Performance itself is notenough, we need also to pay attention tothe nature of the experience that stu-dents are having. Far from asking teach-ers to loosen up, I am asking them tothink more deeply about the purpose ofschooling so that we are better able toresist the well-meant but simplistic pan-aceas to school improvement in order tocreate, in their own school and class-room, genuinely effective ones.

6. Critical ThinkingFinally, the schools we need will devcl-op in the young the ability to thinkcritically about what they read, whatthey see, and what they hear The casefor the importance of being able to thinkcritically was reported by the late HaroldMacmillan, former Prime Minister ofEngland, when he entered Oxford Uni-versity as a student. Speaking to the newclass, the master of Macmillan's collegeoffered the following admonition:Gentlemen, you are now about to embarkupon the course of studies which will occupyyou for four years. Together they form anoble adventure. But I would like to remindyou of an important point. Some of you,when you go from Oxford will go either tothe church or to the bar, or to the House ofCommons, or into the professions . A

p rnfew, and I hope very few, will becometeachers Let me make this clear to vou,except for the last category. nothing that vouwill learn in the course of vour studies willbe of the slightest use to sou . sa\e onlythis, that if you work hard arnd intclligentlhyou should be able to detect when a man istalking rot, and that, in ms \ice, is the solepIrpose of education 'iu

Whether or not the ability to detectrot is the sole purpose of education isopen to debate, hut the usefulness ofbeing able to do so surely cannot be.Indeed, to be able to sort things out, todistinguish between rhetoric and evi-deuce, to recognize when the facts arenot enough-and they seldom arcenough-to distinguish quality from theersatz, is particularly important in aculture in which being bomilardcd bhadvertising oiu every side has become away of life.

How can a school foster such abili-tics? How can a teacher help studentshone the skills of critical rationality? Letme suggest that these skills can be devecl-oped by providing occasions in class forstudents to read and discuss materialthat presents subtly different views of thesame situation, that gives them an op-portunlity to formulate and defend theirown judgments on matters that are con-tingent in character, that gives specialpremium to dialectics, debate, and dis-cussion. The kinds of schools we needwould extend the student's responsetime from the three-second average thatnow exists2" in most classrooms to op-portunities for much more extendeddialogue. How does argument proceed?In what ways do the images that bearupon us shape our views of the world,influence our values, and provide uswith ideals and aversions? The recogni-tion of such devices requires practice inanalysis. Criticism as done in the arts isone of the primary modes of analysis,yet criticism is rare in an educationalclimate in which the mechanics of writ-ing have overtaken the logic and ap-praisal of expression. I would call uponevery teacher to right that imbalance.Clearly in different fields the criteria tobe applied will differ. Yet what all suchefforts have in common is a commit-ment to critical rationality A disposi-tion to cherish reflective argument, tojustify by providing reasons, to valueskepticism, and to consider alternativeviews.

At a time when the true believer andthe absolutist have mounted the politi-

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP54

-I I I _

cal rostrum and are affecting the com-plexion of our legislature, we needschools that can prepare students topuncture specious arguments and tounderstand the politics of the image.Attention to the devices of persuasion,rhetoric, and innuendo and to the im-pact of visual forms of communicationcan develop attitudes and skills Ameri-cans seem to increasingly need. Thecontent for such analysis is available ontelevision daily-clips can be easily re-corded and played back in schools.Magazine ads can be studied and news-paper editorials scrutinized, as well asthe more typical curricular resourcesused in schools. The content for criticalreflection is readily available; we needonly to have the will to use it.

7. And Excellence inTeachingVirtually all that I have said thus farfocuses on schools as they pertain tostudents. But schools cannot be betterthan the teachers who work in them,and the teachers who work in themcannot be better than school conditionsallow. The schools we need would rec-ognize excellence in teaching. This ex-cellence would be recognized financial-ly as well as through increasedprofessional opportunity for leadershipand for the assistance of young teachers.We desperately need schools that pro-vide the incentives and the life space toattract and retain in the field of educa-tion the very best of the college popula-tion. Indeed, I would not mind one bitif the salaries paid to the very bestteachers in a school or school districtexceeded the salary for the superinten-dent.

We need schools that will give teach-ers opportunities to sit together to dis-cuss what shall be taught, how what istaught can be related to each other andto the world outside of the school. Weneed to provide the time and fiscalresources for teachers to develop materi-als and methods that can be used toenhance what they teach. In short, weneed to break away from the traditionalassumptions that teachers must spendall of their professional lives within aclassroom and that progress within theprofession requires nothing more or lessthan racking up years teaching. Theschool must be a place for the growthand recognition of the teacher if it is to

be a place that provides for the growthand recognition of the student.

In sum, the message I am trying toconvey is this. I believe that in ourdesire to improve our schools we haveconfused the academic with the intel-lectual. We have tried to assess theeducational value of programs by exam-ining test scores, but in doing so wehave neglected the process of education-al life. I suggest that the schools we needwill develop in the young multipleforms of literacy so that the varieties ofmeaning potentially available will bereal options for them. I suggest thatinstead of aiming at control, we ought todevelop in the young intellectual auton-omy so that they can become architectsof their own intellectual journey. I sug-gest that the ability to deal with theambiguous and the problematic is morelikely to occur in an environment wherethe ambiguous and problematic arepresent and where students have theopportunity to formulate the questionsas well as to work out the answers. Isuggest that the refinement of the sensi-bilities is a prime requisite for the for-mulation of concepts that are less thanobvious and that the dualism betweenfeeling and thinking, mind and body ispsychologically faulty. Finally, I suggestthat our schools need to give studentsthe opportunity to develop their owncritical capacities by examining matenalin the culture at large, that reason andjudgment are critically important pro-cesses in the conduct of education. AndI suggest that developing an affection forthe life I have described is the only wayto ensure its durability.

There have been many bureaucraticefforts to improve the schools: mandatesfrom the states, requirements from theuniversities, headlines in the newspa-pers. Yet the source of genuine im-provement is in the school itself andeven more particularly in the classroom.I suggest that it is primarily teachers andschool administrators who will give usthe kind of schools we need, for it isonly through what they create that anyview of the schools we need will haveany chance, whatsoever, of realiza-tion.E

'Annegret Hamischfeger and David Wi-ley, Achievement Test Score Decline: Do WeNeed to Worry? (Chicago: CEMREL, 1975).

2See, for example, Qualifications ofFreshmen Entering the University of Califor-

nia (Beeley: Chancelos Ofice. Univei-ty ofCalifomia. 1981).

'The Dade County. Florida. School Dis-ict employs the folowing incentives "Th-

ing to reduce the high absentee ra in theDade Public Schools, oicials have come upwith a plan to entice truants into clasmrnwith gifts of frisbees. T-shirts. hambupchicken dinners. and vo-vos ... Teacheswith the best attendance records... will berewarded with free goodies. record albuns.and crab dinners." Miami Heald. Ocaober24. 1977.

qThis procedure is being employed in theSan Francisco Unified School District.

'Hamischfeger and Wiley. AchfvemeiTest Score Decline.

Ilbid.-Elliot W. Eisner and Elizabeth Val-

lance. Conflicting Coneptis of Cumcu-lurm (Berkeley: McCutchan PtublidngCompany. 1973).

SElliot W Eimer. Cognition and Currc-ulum: A Basis for Deciding What to Teach(New York: Longman. Inc.. 1982).

,Ibid.'°Elliot W. Eisner. bThe Impverhided

Mind." Educational Leaderhi 3 (Mavt978): 615-623.

"Paolo Freire. The Pdqgogy of the Oppreed. trans. Myra Bergman Ramo (iNeYork Herder and Herder. 19701

2:Herbert Thelen, Education and the Hu-man Qust (News York: Harper, 1970).

"See especially Jacob W. Cetsk andMihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Creative Vi-sion: A Longitudinal Study of Pmbl FiRd-ing in Art (New York John Wiley and Son.1976).

i41ndeed. a special term has been fomu-lated to describe this problem It's calledABD-all but dissertation.

'Adam Shaaf, Language and CAnitia.ed. Robert S. Cohen (New York: McGrCw-Hill, 1973).

'6Richard Peters, "Must an EducerHave an Aim?" in Authority. Reipoebiityand Education (London: Ceorg Allen andUnwin, Ltd., 1959). pp. 83-95.

:'Mark R. Lepper, ed., The Hidden Calof Reward (Hillsdale. N..: Erlhburn A -ciates, 1978).

'"Tom Barone. "Inquiry into ClasimExperiences: A Qualitative Hoistic Approach" (doctoral dissertation. Sbnad Uni-versity School of Education, 1978).

"T'his descriptio of Macmillan's recol-lection was provided to me by the Presidentof Pitzer College, Claremont California.

2°fThe brevity of student response to teach-ers' questions has been reported in nunasousstudies of classroom process. See. for exan-pie, John D. McNeil and W. James Pop-ham, "'Te Assessment of Teher Cope-tence," in The Second Handbook fReme:Ron Teaching, ed. Robert Trivers (Chica .Rand McNally Co., 1973), pp. 218-244.

OCT~~~~~~~~flER 1983 55~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I

OcrTOER 1983 55

Copyright © 1983 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. All rights reserved.