Thursday, July 28, 2011
Free Schools Free People: Education and Democracy by Ron Miller
If Kozol’s Free Schools were to be considered Free Schools 101, this book would be Free Schools 102. The material is more dense and political. It was a great way to end this portion of my studies on Democratic schools. In the future, I will study Sudbury schools, because they are the most common and the longest lasting type of Free School in America. The book is a historical account of the free school movement of the 1960’s. It looks at influences such as the Civil Rights Movement, Free Speech Movement, and over all transformation of consciousness that occurred in the sixties. I, like Miller, find this decade fascinating. I also share his viewpoint that, “…one of the serious flaws of the free school movement was its excessive emphasis on freedom at the expense of other educational, cultural, and even psychological values.” (32). This is why Kozol said we must find a balance between giving students freedom and what they need in order to make it in this world. Miller feels those running free schools should be realistic and reasonable rather than romantic and irrational
In addition to giving me a sound understanding of the historical context of the free school movement, the book helped me to understand what a technocracy is and how it relates to American society and education. Miller states, “The counter culture of the 1960’s, including the free school movement, was essentially a rebellion against the triumph of technocracy over the ideals of a democracy.” (10). A democracy is holistic and all-inclusive, while a technocracy breaks shatters a society by breaking it into individual units. The same holds true curriculum in technocratic education. Just as an assembly line breaks down work into small parts, technocratic schools separate subjects such as Math and English from one another. This sort of system promotes “existentially deadening conformity and a repressive intellectual and political discipline”. (11). It also values materialism over ideals such as cooperation and civic responsibility. Miller explains that many scholars believe American schools are organized to serve the interests of corporations and the elite who run this nation.
It goes without saying that Miller’s chapter on Education and Democracy was of particular interest to me. However, what stands out about the chapter was his attention to John Dewey. He credited Dewey, author of Democracy and Education, for having a profound influence on free schools, and pondered why no one involved in the movement had credited him before, when it was so obvious he had affected their reasoning. Miller writes, “It is not clear how many free school writers had read Democracy an Education, so the direct influence is hard to determine, but it seems legitimate to claim that Dewey provided a serious philosophical voice to the normally ‘romantic’ critique of technocracy, giving free school ideology an intellectual heritage it that would otherwise have lacked.” (144). To me, Dewey is the godfather of curriculum and instruction. It frustrates me that Democracy in Education has been around for so long, and we still have the problems we do. The same could be said about the free school movement. Perhaps the problem is those who care about education need to get the word out. At least I can say I’ve done my part.
The School Without Walls by John Bremmer and Michael von Moschzisker
This book is about a school unlike any I’ve ever heard of. It was written in 1971 about Philadelphia’s Parkway Program. Rather than confine themselves to one location, the students and staff at this school made the entire city of Philadelphia their campus, and curriculum. They gained first-hand experience studying the city. The founders saw education and politics as inseparable from one another. The book begins with the following statement, “America has never had an educational system worthy of itself after pioneering a continent, developing new forms of social and political organization, absorbing countless immigrants and bringing technology into a close relationship with human life, it is nevertheless true that Americans have adopted principles and practices of education belonging to another age and imported from another society. The Parkway Program tries to provide a mode of education in keeping with the major traditions of American life.” (xi). While I do not think a program such as this would work everywhere, I learned a lot from this book. I consider it a worthwhile read as part of my independent study on democratic schools.
From the authors’ viewpoint, school is a process not a place. They see the current system as obsolete and inefficient. Bremer and Moschzisker criticize the belief that students learn inside the school and not outside in the real world. The Parkway Program was a bridge between students and the community they lived in. The authors state, “Everyone has a stake in education, everyone has a right and a duty to be involved, to participate.” (279) More than once I have bemoaned the community’s lack of involvement in education. I especially feel that those who have retired from working should be involved. However, as a teacher it is my job to reach out to others and ask for help. That is precisely what the Parkway Program did. It involved members from various organizations throughout Philadelphia in educating its youth.
Besides involving the community, the school had other desirable features. It allowed high school age students to take responsibility for their own education. They were permitted to make choices from a wide variety of course offerings based on their individual interests and face the consequences of those choices. The Appendix contains a statement made by the program’s director. In this he says, “We are not the private preserve of any racial, social, economic, or professional group, and, if we were, it would be impossible for us to be an educational program at all simply because the students would then be instruments of somebody else’s purposes, that is, of the purposes of that special group. But in education, the student is always the end, never a means.” (283.) This rings true with everything I’ve learned of free schools thus far. The Parkway Program didn’t indoctrinate or oppress students; rather, it allowed them freedom of choice and responsibility for their own learning. While the program is not a Free School in the strictest sense, it embodies many of the movement’s core values.
On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited by William Ayers
I chose this book because I wanted a current viewpoint on the work of A.S. Neill, founder of Summerhill school in England. Ayers explains the title of this book in chapter one when he says, “What captured me then, and what has the power to move me now was Neill’s seemingly bottomless commitment to children, his steadfastness and emotional generosity, and his willingness to take the side of the child even, or especially, when doing so seemed more than a little loony.” (4) It is no shock that a character such as Neill would inspire Ayers. His involvement in the Weathermen Underground is testament to Ayer’s attitude that there are times when one must go to extreme measures to rectify the injustices in a society. While Ayers is not perfect, I think he is an outstanding citizen. His work at the University of Illinois Chicago has made up for any past mistakes in my eyes. To call someone who helped blow up government buildings an outstanding citizen may make me a bit “loony”. I feel that way because Ayers, Like A.S. Neill, has moved many teachers (myself included). His work as a teacher educator has inspired those of us “in the trenches” to think seriously about what and how we teach, and despite all odds to not give up.
Having said that, I’ll do my best to sum up what Summerhill school is all about. Neill’s school was a place of love and freedom. He made the school to fit the child. His primary objective was to ensure that the children were happy. Neill believed that discipline problems in a school were the result of unhappy students. He also thought schools should have no form of adult authority. Ayers explains this in saying, “By adult authority, I take him to mean arbitrary or formal authority; moral authority is another matter, and it doesn’t rely on structure for its power…Neill saw Summerhill as a resistance to the sit-down-and-learn crowd and an affirmation of the natural instinct and disposition to learn that is every person’s birthright.” (10, 18) Neill understood that a love of learning is ingrained in all of us. If we trust children to learn on their own they will! At Summerhill teachers are guides, mentors, coaches, and conductors. They take on the role of the student as they try to understand each individual. In contrast to the hierarchy of traditional schools, Summerhill does not follow a top down approach. It is democratically run, which means students preside over their own social lives. It should be noted that Neill wasn’t for spoiling children, but he did think they should be treated as equals to adults.
The last thing I’d like to mention about this book was I appreciated Ayer’s focus on the role of education in making the world a better place. He describes schools as mirrors and windows into society as a whole. If we live in a democracy, then our schools should be democratic. Ayers explained that the goal of schools is to guide children towards restoring a common world. I think I speak for most teachers when I say we are in it to create responsible and charitable citizens, not mindless drones. The time for schools that produce compliant unquestioning factory workers is over. American education needs a makeover, and I’ve got just the outfit: democratic schools.
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