NO-NONSENCE EDUCATION

As I mentioned in my last posting, there are two conservative philosophies of education:  perennialism and essentialism.  I reviewed the basic beliefs comprising the perennialist philosophy in that posting and in this one I want to describe essentialism.  Before beginning this description, I will point out that in my experience, I would say of the numerous teachers and administrators I encountered over my career that the vast majority were essentialists.  I base that observation not so much on what they espoused but by how they conducted their professional responsibilities.  Again, most of them had no vocabulary to express this allegiance; most had never heard or had long forgotten the term essentialism.  During the eighties though, there was a dose of popular interest in this philosophy with an upsurge of essentialist commentators and books.  Coinciding with the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, a significant reaction to the more liberal days of the sixties and somewhat the seventies, the nation took a definite conservative turn.   In education, the popularity of such books as Cultural Literacy:  What Every American Needs to Know by E. D. Hirsch exemplifies this trend.  But essentialism did not begin in the eighties; it began in the 1920s and 1930s and basically for the same reasons.

During that earlier time, the nation was trying to “recover” from another liberal time.  During the years leading up to and including the turn of the century, the nation experienced a great deal of change.  The successive movements of the Populists, the labor movement and the Progressive movement, introduced a great deal of social, political, and economic changes.  This is not the place to review that history (readers of the blog know that I have presented my understanding of these times in previous postings), but an obvious general description is that in the course of three decades or so, the basic understanding of what it meant to be an American or the essence of America as an idea experienced extensive revisions.  Education did not escape this turmoil.

Along with the ratification of three constitutional amendments, a slew of labor and consumer laws, and the rise of industrialization, the nation saw that its local schools were being threatened by new-fangled ideas.  The leading figure was John Dewey.  I will review some of his ideas when I describe progressivism, but the scholarly philosopher was writing and implementing, first at the University of Chicago and then at Columbia University, ideas about student centered education.  The opinion this type of talk stirred among many Americans was that change equals permissiveness.  I will, in my next posting, write about how much of the reaction against progressivism was based on misunderstandings but, be that as it may, part of that reaction resulted in the development of essentialism.  Perhaps a lot of essentialism consisted of attempts to put a more scholarly image on what had and was being practiced in schools.  In any case, many of the tenets comprising this philosophy are in direct opposition to what the progressives were promoting.

So, what do essentialists believe?  These educators begin with a simple observation that any civilization at any given time has a common core of knowledge.  The primary responsibility of education – its schools – is to transmit to the next generation that knowledge.  Beyond that, the charge includes that this material be transmitted in an organized – in a logically broken down sequence – clear, and disciplined way.  This latter quality has the added benefit of promoting a disciplined disposition toward education and life in general.  After being exposed to such an atmosphere for many years, the student will be “encouraged” to adopt not only a disciplined mode of life, but one that finds benefit in the intellectual and moral standards such schooling will provide.  But this intellectual concern is not that of the perennialists – that of the great enduring ideas of Western Civilization – but of what is deemed to be essential knowledge and skills.  The essentialists saw this quality as relative; what is essential to a student from a professional family is different from what is essential to a student from a working class family.  Therefore, the curriculum is, unlike for the perennialists, changeable as it needs to be practical for the student body being serviced.  Instruction does not focus on ideas but on factual content.  Educators should ask:  what are the useful and objective aspects of reality that these students before us need to know?  Implemented, this approach emphasized “the basics.”  All students need to know how to read, write, speak, and compute clearly and logically.  Students also need to be instilled with a work ethic that accepts hard work.  Along with this disposition, students need to be respectful of authority, so a large portion of teachers’ efforts is geared toward having a no-nonsense approach to attitudes and dispositions students might have concerning counterproductive instincts – laziness, mischievousness, aggression, salaciousness, and the like.

The popularity of this view has ebbed and flowed through the subsequent years.  As I mentioned above, there is always a level of support for this pedagogy – most teachers are essentialists – but as one that attracts a heightened level of interest among the populous, that seems to coincide with conservative periods.  In addition to the twenties and eighties, the fifties were also a time of such popularity.  This mirrors when its most noted spokespersons took on some level of fame:  William Bagley (1920s-1930s), James D. Koerner (1959), H. G. Rickover (1959), Paul Copperman (1978), Theodore Sizer (1985), and E. D. Hirsch (1987).

Some long lasting effects of essentialism have been the incorporation of vocational education, ability grouping and tracking (placing students in classrooms with students who demonstrate the same levels of ability usually determined by I. Q. testing and past school performance), 3-Rs curriculum (“back to basics”), incorporation of behavioral psychological strategies (manipulation of rewards and punishments), programmed instruction, behavioral objectives, and high stakes testing.  Usually, advocates of this philosophy use a no-nonsense language to describe and tackle prevailing educational shortcomings.

In terms of how essentialism relates to federation theory, federation theory is mostly antagonistic toward hierarchical views of social arrangements which essentialists favor.  With its focus on discipline and respect for authority, essentialism takes on an emphasis that shies away from values that promote a shared partnership in collective efforts.  Some might say that the main objective of federation theory is good citizenship and the main objective of essentialism is a good worker.  Goodness here is equated with being compliant.  The school is seen as a dispenser of services and not a communal place which is an outgrowth of the community.  Lasting effects of essentialism include the model of schools where desks are arranged in rows and student progression is organized around the ringing of bells, similar to a factory.  Initially, the factory model was used to arrange these structural features.  A lot of this has maintained its presence in schools due to their large size and the practicalities involved.  But the question remains:  how much of a school’s “heart” should be devoted to such arrangements?