NOT SO FAST

This posting was advertised as being another look at critical theory – that’s what I indicated in the last posting.  And that’s true and not so true.  This posting is more about why education is not so susceptible to change.  In a previous posting, the fact that education, by its very nature, is a conservative institution was brought up.  That is true, but there are other factors at work. 

This posting will comment on the following:  the nature of the argument by those who are demanding not only change, not only transformational change, but revolutionary change (this is the critical theory part); the inability to convert knowledge about learning into effective instructional planning and the organic nature of schools – which is related to the idea of education being a conservative institution.

          When one looks at the field of education, one could ask:  is there any portion of that professional population seeking change?  Yes, there is.  And that is our friends, those arguing for the critical theory perspective.  I will not again go over their basic argument, but I will comment on their style.  They want a total overturn of society, a socialist revolution, albeit peaceful, that will, in their estimation, institute an egalitarian result. 

And what, in their eyes, is the role of education?  The role is to spearhead such a development by leading the effort to change how people see the economic and political structures, processes, and functionality of how the society is run.  Their rhetoric is dynamic – see the effect Bernie Sanders had in the 2016 presidential race – but it reflects an agenda devoid of practical strategies, at least in education.

Part of the message is that education has to dismiss this business of a competitive format, mentioned in the last posting, that is geared toward the individual ambitions of students and their parents.  These pedagogues believe that working against the common good is this assumption that everyone being exclusively concerned with number one is promoting the common good.  Of course, that is a central tenet of capitalism.

Instead, they argue that everyone striving to land on top leads to only a few being on top and that, in turn, causes the conditions that lead to eventual economic collapse.  This blog is in agreement with this portion of their argument, but it falls short of buying into the critical rhetoric.  For one thing, this writer has cautioned against arguments that promote radical solutions.

          It has been pointed out that this type of “I’m totally right” and “you’re totally wrong” lends itself to an either/or form of thinking and argumentation.  We humans tend to think that way.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, reality is not so simple.  Most of reality consists of matters of degree.  Most of one’s understandings, therefore, in order to be effective, need to be nuanced.

But that clashes against one’s intuitive sense and when it comes to thinking, most people tend to rely on the effortless – lazy – option of relying on their intuition.[1]

          Reporting on all of this, Allan Ornstein and Francis Hunkins make a pitch for reflective approaches that can find the right balance between striving to fulfill a student’s dreams and a way to impart in that student his/her legitimate responsibilities and duties to the entire community and nation.  Hopefully, the reader of this blog judges the efforts expressed in its postings attempting to do what Ornstein and Hunkins suggests.

          In terms of instruction, little has changed in approximately fifty or sixty years and this is in no way reflects efforts to implement change.  In that interim, psychologists, for example, have developed powerful insights into how the mind acquires knowledge.  Among their efforts has been the psychological approach known as constructivism.

A few postings ago, I provided a description of this approach.  Here, let me quote Ornstein and Hunkins with this short descriptive passage:  “Meaning is imposed on the world by those who reflect, those who think about the world.  Meaning does not exist in the world independent of us.  It is we who structure the world, as we construct reality so as to comprehend it.”[2]  Intuitively, this approach to learning is quite different from receiving established knowledge and “banking” the information in one’s memory.  It seems to lend itself to instruction that has students go about reflectively entertaining information and constructing its meaning and importance.

This is done against the existing understandings a student brings to the learning episode.  In other words, learning “should” be open ended in which materials are presented to students; they think about them and formulate conclusions on what the material is about and its importance.

          Yet, despite this promising turn, teachers go on engaging in direct instruction, the type that simply presents material for student consumption.  Again, is this a matter of an either/or choice or is it a matter of finding a way to incorporate what seems so promising but, to date, has not been converted into newer teaching strategies, at least not widespread teaching strategies?

I am not going to propose a solution, but I will suggest something my experience tells me is true.  The basic goal should not be a particular teaching style or instructional approach, but should be for students to reflect on what it is they are to learn.  Without reflection, there is no true learning; that is, he/she needs to think about what is being taught and how that reflection happens can take on many different forms. 

Further, teaching is a personal matter.  The idea that one can change how a teacher feels comfortable in front of a class is a misplaced idea.  What would help is a principal hiring those teachers who agree with a certain style so that the students of a school are exposed to consistency.  This very notion deserves more space and explanation than what I am providing here.

But to provide principals that ability would require drastic changes in how school districts are run – perhaps efforts along those lines could prove advantageous.  Short of that, teachers who use direct instruction should be encouraged to broaden their aims and be trained in incremental change.

That would call on teachers to bring in materials that express diverse opinions a bit, in small doses.  They can gear their direct instruction to point out how any knowledge has been the product of practitioners arguing over what is best, be it literature, sciences, mathematics, technology, and the rest.  Perhaps their direct instruction, while introducing their students to such a fact, can further encourage them to engage in those discussions as observers or participants.

          And the last area of obstruction to change is the very human quality that schools possess.  They are compilations of humans in differing roles, backgrounds, personal challenges, ambitions and hopes.  That grouping inherits the traditions that schools have formulated through the years.  The place, that is, has its own culture with its own established values, mores, norms, and ways of doing things.  As such, it is inherently resistant to change. 

And so it should be, for only through these qualities does the place exhibit its integrity and its reason for being.  It is just a condition of organizational life that proposed change has to deal with these factors.  It is the position of this blog that such an environment is best served with a federalist disposition among its members.  If so, those entities that make up its people could elevate it from an organization to an association – a federated whole.

          Those are the conditions that lead to things remaining as they are; at least, a portion of the things obstructing efforts at change.  The sociological stew of education can be so conceptualized.  In writing this, it is not to state that that’s all there is.  There are the issues of diversity, race, class, gender, and sexual orientation still to review.  Schools are complex places.

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[1] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast, and Slow, (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011).

[2] Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues, (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2004), p. 117.

MOSTLY, STEADY AS IT GOES

This blog has presented a somewhat contradictory message.  On the one hand, it has reported that education is a conservative institution and yet it has also reported that one of its core subjects, social studies (particularly civics education) went through a transformational change in the late forties/early fifties.  That is, it shifted from a curriculum led by traditional federalism to one guided by the natural rights construct.

This had, in my estimation, profound effects on how our schools taught government and politics.  It changed from one that emphasized the problems we faced as a democracy to a much more structural-functional approach.  The concern became to teach students the overall structure of government as an institution, created to meet and solve or ameliorate those desires expressed by citizens.  That expression is funneled through institutionalized competitive processes using established means and structures – interest groups, lobbyists, political parties. 

While this is transformational, this blog has deemed the change as unwelcome.  Why?  Because certain consequences have been derived and they are seen as not good.  One, the change has taken out a lot of the government being “of and by the people” and has left only the “for the people” attribute in place.  In other words, the change has helped institutionalize a segregated cleavage between the citizen and its government. 

Two, it has encouraged a systems view of government which seriously encourages an objectified perspective of government and politics.  Or stated another way, it has taken a lot of the humanness out of the study of politics.  Politics in this form becomes reductionist and forces become factors or variables as when measuring voting and non-voting, legitimacy or lack of legitimacy, surpluses or deficits; that is, things that can be measured, not understood and appreciated.

And three, in doing so, value questions are short-changed.  Despite several attempts at introducing values education into the study of civics, they have not been successful.  The reason is that they, in an attempt to be value neutral, have not been totally truthful in containing political biases.  As such, those who have implemented such efforts, mostly unintentionally, have engaged in subtle political messaging. 

This is unavoidable, but the proper thing to do is be forthright and provide a thoughtful rationale for what is being presented.  For these and other reasons, the change of the last fifty to sixty years needs another transformation.  This blog is dedicated to proposing and justifying such a change.  To be blunt, it is the position of this blog that American schools should adopt a liberated federalist approach to the study of civics and government.

          But in this, the change described in civics education and social studies is the exception – at least that I am aware of – and the rest of education is pretty much unchanged.  Oh, as compared to about a century or so ago, chalk boards were introduced to be later changed to white boards and to computer imagery being able to be projected for the class to see.  Computers have made a difference; hopefully, teachers are more apt to assign inquiry styled lessons since students have a virtual library at their fingertips.  But as for basic lesson structure and attitudes and norms, schools are the same.

          Of course, the nation’s project at desegregating schools has been an enormous effort.  In some cases, desegregation has led to integration, but given the racial tensions that have boiled over this summer, not enough.  But our efforts continue and our efforts have resulted in many more African-Americans filling prominent positions in our economy – things do seem to be getting better.

          Beyond these areas, Americans seem satisfied with their schools; at least, there is no concerted effort to change them.  Oh, they wish the schools were more successful in teaching, but they seem very pleased that schools mirror their biases in terms of profound value orientations.  And again, this blog has reported what they are.  Along with the above change in civics, a natural rights bias has Americans augmenting their belief in an ideology of growth, achievement, success, and individualism.[1]

          These general aims translate into more specific goals:  individual accomplishment, competition, and coming out on top.  Some – I would say most – Americans see this as advancing the interests not only of the individual student, but also of the community and nation.  This is the assumption derived from Adam Smith economics. 

History has not, in the overall, disproved such a notion; these capitalist values have proven very successful in leading to untold riches.  But the riches have been punctuated by dire economic collapses – see:  2008 collapse or the Great Depression of the 1930s.  On the other hand, even in times of success, there is the social consequence in which certain unsavory qualities seem to emerge.

Currently, and this blog has documented, high levels of narcissism, selfishness, incivility, and even criminality seem to characterize American social order.  One can attribute these qualities to these very biases American education promotes; it at least can be said to enable them.  My next posting will review – again – the main answer that the educational establishment has offered as an alternative, critical theory.

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[1] Allan Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues, (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2004).

IT AIN’T WHAT IT USE TO BE

In the last posting, I wrote about two important aspects of the American sociological landscape that have had an enormous influence on the nation’s educational efforts:  a strong work ethic and a belief in balance between equity and liberty.  This posting will add a third: the strong dynamic quality of American society, the rate of change.  As Allan Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins state, the rate (the speed of change) is more important than the direction.  Let me share how Ornstein and Hunkins introduce this topic:

Curricula appropriate for various groups cannot be determined with certainty because groups are changing, ethnic demands are emerging, information is exploding, philosophical views of the nature of knowledge are becoming more diverse, views of what it means to learn are expanding, new frontiers on the nature of the brain are being discovered, behaviors of students and teachers are being modified, and attitudes and values are being altered … the particulars of society are shifting.[1]

So, for a potential change agent, this rapidity of change and the change itself are both good and bad.

It is good to the degree that change is not so dissimilar from what people expect.  But the bad is multidimensional.  For one thing, a singular change effort is seen as just another disruption, something to tolerate, not embrace.  The second, more serious consequence is that people in such an environment find it more difficult to form and keep meaningful value commitments and that includes values associated with work-related concerns. 

When the ground is shifting under one’s feet, it is difficult to latch on to a steady sense of what is morally good and morally bad.  And this includes making such determinations concerning education.

          In this, the work of David Purple is important.  He points out the need for moral standards and frameworks.  These are important when one speaks about the social, political, and economic arrangements with which one is engaged.  Without them, it is nearly impossible for people to have a mode of behavior one can consider just as immediate demands steer people to those options that provide immediate rewards with little to no concern for long term consequences.[2]

          All this hoopla, when it is directed to education, has built-in tension.  Education, by its very nature, is a conservative institution.  As the critical theorists point out, a primary function for education is “reproduction” or, as mainstream sociologists describe, “system maintenance.” 

That is, in order for a social system to operate with any viability, it needs to go about insuring that its basic values and norms, its processes and structures, its very sense of itself, be passed on and kept within certain parameters.  That social system, in our case the society itself, needs to make sure that each new generation is sufficiently taught what all that entails for that given society.

Perhaps that is why in the field of education, as we have seen in previous postings, most teachers and administrators tend to choose the more conservative philosophies, approaches, and psychological views; at the same time, why the rate of change is seen as threatening and mostly fought against.  Schools are noted for their cultural lag.

And yet in a stroll through any school, one will see many of the trappings one associates with the changes we are experiencing, especially when it comes to technological change.  The computer has changed many schools, and determining their full impact will take some more years to determine and that might be blurred by further change.  One is reminded of the warning of the late futurist Alvin Toffler who proclaimed we were in for a future shock.

And in no aspect of life is this change more evident than in the number of choices we have from the very personal dimensions of life to every consumer option one encounters.  We have choices over things we didn’t know we would have choices.  We have “needs” today about which we didn’t know we would have “needs.” 

For example, we are currently considering a world where labor will no longer be needed; where, between robots and artificial intelligence, Marx’s warning about labor saving machinery will “be on steroids” (a saying that had no meaning in my early adult years).  How will we handle such a change and then what will be the role of schools?

This topic of societal change will be front and center in this blog over the upcoming postings.  This one posting serves as an introduction.

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[1] Allan Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues, (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2004), 140.

[2] David E. Purple, Moral Outrage in Education (New York:  Peter Lang, 1999).

WORKING HARD AND BEING ME

When speaking of the sociological factors that affect American education, there are two overarching cultural commitments that serve as social backdrops to any study of such factors; those two commitments are our countrymen/women partiality for the work ethic and an equality/liberty balance which are broadly felt and acted upon.

So say Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins.[1]  In their text on curriculum, they highlight these values.  They also claim that, although there might not be total adherence to them, the American citizenry by and large lives by and believes in these cultural dispositions and further, that the implications of such value commitments are found to be strong in all segments and regions of the nation. 

One can safely say that one does not hear of any opposing messages that attack the core meaning of these values, at least not on public communication outlets.  Oh, there might be a comedic work or two that pokes fun at the work ethic bias (the films Animal House and Fast Times at Richmond High come to mind).  Usually, those efforts are aimed at a youth audience. 

And there is a history of downright bigotry that undermines the nation’s commitment to equality (as depicted, for example, in the film, Gangs of New York).  But current common discourse holds those incidents to be despicable.  Oh, there is racism and bigotry against ethnic groups, but generally such expressions are kept to private conversations.  At times, behaviors indicating these feelings come to the surface, but usually those incidents flare up in times of stress.

Even then, such examples are held by the population as being generally illegitimate and not being American.  That is, generally, bigotry and unequal treatment are seen as less than stellar behavior.  Therefore, if you ask the vast majority of Americans whether the work ethic, liberty, or equality is important, the answer would be unequivocally yes.  One point should be remembered: liberty and equality can be at odds with each other from time to time. 

As for the work ethic, Americans like to believe that they are the hardest working people on the face of the earth.  And this is almost true.  Compared with European countries, where month long vacations and shorter work weeks are the norm, yes, Americans do work harder. 

But Malcolm Gladwell’s book tells about the work ethic exhibited by rice-growing countries such as China and Japan and how they put everyone else to shame by how hard they work (an interesting account, I can heartily recommend).[2]  But short of them, Americans seem to take the prize.

The implications of this bias are many.  Of course, if you put a hard-working people on a continent rich in resources, you are bound to have a successful economy.  Hence, the US has the richest economy even with nations like China and India dwarfing its population.  Add to this the equality/liberty mixture Americans enjoy and you have a system where everyone has an individual, vested interest in doing his/her part to add value to the overall economic riches.

Yes, China is bound to eventually surpass the US in total numbers, but on a per capita basis, there is no comparison of how much better off Americans are.

This work ethic manifests itself in many ways.  For example, as a people, Ornstein and Hunkins point out that Americans are very time-conscious and that can be attributed to this belief in a strong work ethic.  “Time is money” and other idioms betray our obsession with time and work.  We are a punctual people and it is rare that one runs into a person without a watch. 

As for the liberty/equality balance, I have, in this blog, identified certain perceptions of this balance in our nation’s history.  Under the concern for equality, I have written about five different orientations.  What is prominent today are two orientations:  what is generally called equal condition and what I call regulated condition. 

In both of these orientations, Americans express a deep belief that everyone is entitled to an equal opportunity to succeed and to develop his/her natural talents.  The difference between these two is the extent to which the government should have a role in guaranteeing that equality. 

The equal condition orientation, with its emphasis on liberty, sees that role as limited.  Perhaps the government can have a public school system, but with strong competition being provided by charter schools – both publicly and privately funded – vouchers, and the like.  But other than that, government should stay out of the competitive markets in which opportunities are provided and simply make it certain that everyone is equal before the law.

On the other hand, regulated condition sees a strong role for government in both regulating markets – so that the large corporations and other businesses are prohibited from taking unfair advantage due to their abundance of assets and resources – or providing other laws such as minimum wage, public health facilities, subsidized insurance programs (Medicare), or outright individual subsidies (Medicaid). 

This view might diminish liberty a bit, but in the eyes of those who adhere to it, concern over liberty takes on a different angle.  The belief here is that if one’s income and wealth are below certain levels, there are qualitative realities in play that prohibit that person from having a meaningful, equal opportunity and, therefore, a truncated liberty.

And besides that, there is the “there but for the Grace of God go I” view that should give everyone an interest in supporting government action to provide and support equal opportunity, or so these advocates believe.

But under either of these orientations, equal condition or regulated condition, one can sense a view that sees life as a “construction” process that ends only with death.  That is, Americans, by and large, believe that one can always improve one’s condition in whatever way he/she believes is best. 

Almost all Americans have a strong commitment to this notion that it is we, individually, who determine what our values and life goals should be and that, in addition, we determine what the best mode or strategy should be to acquire fulfillment of those goals. 

This train of thought is bolstered by the prominent political orientation the nation adheres to:  the natural rights perspective.  But even when the nation was more in line with the federalist sense of political thought, there was always a strong commitment to one’s responsibility to fulfill one’s part in the grand partnership under our national compact, the US Constitution.

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[1] Allan Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues, (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2004).

[2] Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, (New York, NY:  Little, Brown and Company, 2008).

GOING AHEAD OR VIGOROUSLY GOING BACK

To date, this blog has posted a series of entries that have been aimed at providing information that would be useful for anyone, short of being an expert, who is willing to work toward curricular change at a school or, perhaps, a school district.  In that effort, the blog has presented short accounts of the various curricular philosophies, approaches, and psychological views that are prominent in the field of curricular work.

That material began with the posting entitled, “A Functional Philosophy of Education.”  That entry was posted on February 16, 2016 (access can be obtained by using the archival feature found to the right on this page).  I wish to continue with that general theme by next looking at the sociological perspectives scholars have put forward in regard to curriculum and the different views curricular workers have proffered.

With this posting, I want to share some general concerns that these workers bring to their efforts so as to provide context for what will follow.  The first sociological concern is the function of the educational institution in our society.  All societies have institutions – established ways of dealing with built-in challenges.  All societies have to deal with the personal needs for security and safety, with emotional needs of individuals, with threats from the outside world, with health issues, with production and distribution of things and services, with power and leadership, and with dealing with the unknown (such as why we are here and who or what is ultimately responsible for us being here). 

And more associated with education, every society has to deal with ignorance; we are not born with the knowledge or beliefs we need in order to survive or to live in comfort and in a self-fulfilling manner.  For all of these, every society develops institutions, the accepted and established ways for handling these challenges.  The universal categories of institutions are family, religion, economy, governance and, to meet ignorance, education. 

While every society has its values and mores, processes, and structures – defined by that society’s culture – the overall needs or functions just listed are shared by all of them.  The health of a society can be gauged by how healthy and well-defined its institutions are.  For example, many are concerned with the health of the US society today given the nature of the presidential campaigns during this election cycle.

Education, as an institution, reflects whatever comprises the other institutions.  For some, the overall function education plays is to transmit, to a younger generation, the values and mores, the accumulated knowledge and beliefs, and even the biases and proclivities that characterize the culture of the society.  This is a very conservative view of what education should be about doing.  On the other hand, there are those who see education as an institution that should function as an instrument of change, as a vanguard of transformation.  This is a radical view.  And of course, there are those who see education being both, selectively preserving what is perceived as good and wholesome and helping to change what is seen as not so good.

Speaking of this presidential election cycle, we have had candidates who are portrayed as protectors of the status quo; it would be odd if a candidate actually depicted him/herself as such an agent.  Somehow, to say one is for what is, one is seen as promoting the problems of the day and not the assets of what makes the society or nation admirable. 

At the same time, we had and have candidates who claim they are revolutionary in instituting a movement.  Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are/were so described by their respective campaigns.  One promised a more egalitarian future and the other a revival of a more glorious past.  Since many citizens voiced their approval through voting for these two candidates, one can surmise the educational system has not been too successful in transmitting very well the cultural elements that now exist.  After all, these voters want drastic change.

Or it can be more of a reactive posture to what is currently going on.  Often, such views for change are shared among those who are not faring so well under the current economic conditions.

There are two groups of people who are almost guaranteed to vote on election day:  ideologues and angry people.  Satisfied people are more likely to stay home.  Of course, staying home will very likely help lead them to becoming a future angry person.  But all of this is what the educational institution either addresses successfully or doesn’t.  Given some of the opinions being currently expressed, one fears the latter to be the case.

There are those education workers who are generally satisfied with the social conditions of the day and they tend to be those who, at least in the moment, can be considered “transmitters” of the cultural elements and the culture in general.  There are those not so happy with the status quo and they tend to lean toward the radical end of the continuum. 

These latter workers tend to be those who have been upset with the inequalities within society.  These folks hold reconstructionist philosophical beliefs and work toward “reforming” the educational establishment by introducing curricular changes that inform and encourage students to work toward furthering social justice.  But perhaps this election will usher in a newer view of curriculum as an instrument to reestablish a culture that once existed – let us say, a reestablishment of the culture that existed in the 1950s with all its beliefs and prejudices.

Are there signs of this retrograde?  I believe some of the decisions of certain state educational officials, as in Texas, seem to be so inclined.  How can education assist in retracing cultural steps?  One way is to mandate that history, for example, emphasize certain aspects that glorify the prior mindset – perhaps glorify Confederate images and calls for states’ rights, as those earlier views defined states’ rights.  That history can downplay or even ignore other events and figures that ushered in the contemporary biases that now exist – the stories of the anti-Vietnam War movement, for example. 

Listen to the rhetoric of Trump: “You see, in the good old days, law enforcement acted a lot quicker than this … A lot quicker. In the good old days, they’d rip him out of that seat so fast.”  It is this and other messages – “Make America Great Again” – that smack of this “let’s get back to the way it was” view.  What is it about this earlier time that seems so appealing to so many?

Central to this role of education is how learning is viewed.  This blog reviewed various psychological approaches to this study of curriculum.  One basic distinction is whether learning is seen as merely presenting the external world and the student absorbing that presentation or of a student constructing in his/her mind what that world is and should be. 

The latter view can better explain why there is such a difference between what appears to be believed by the average Trump rally participant and a person who attends a Clinton rally.  And in that difference, one might ask, what was the curriculum each of these rally goers experienced that makes each have such a differing view of what is important:  improving on what is or going back to the ‘50s?

The upcoming postings will look at the different elements of this sociological nature of curriculum.  One can, I believe, already tell from this posting that there is a strong political flavor to this concern over sociological factors affecting education, generally, and curriculum, more specifically.

“THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN ITS PARTS” (cont.)

[Note:  this essay began with the last posting (9/6/16).  In order to understand the context for what follows, I suggest that if you have not read that posting, click on that entry by using the archival feature found on the right side of this page.]

As a holistic approach, humanist psychology focuses on the whole instructional setting when its study turns to instruction.  Part of that concern is what a person, a student or a teacher, naturally contends to be his/her felt needs.  And this leads us to look at the first of two influential theorists of this psychology, Abraham Maslow.[1] 

I have, in this blog, referred to Maslow’s model on the hierarchy of needs.  As with Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s models (described in the 9/2/16 posting), Maslow’s model has a developmental dimension to it.  Basically, this model claims that from birth, humans have needs and those needs can be categorized as types which follow a progression. 

That progression is as follows:  physiological needs (food, water, etc.), safety/security needs, belongingness and love needs (friendship, intimacy, etc.), esteem needs (prestige and feelings of accomplishment), and self-actualization needs (achieving one’s full potential).  A summarized way of describing this progression can be from basic to psychological to self-actualizing. 

The more basic needs need to be sufficiently satisfied before the psychological needs become stridently felt and, in turn, the psychological needs need to be sufficiently satisfied before self-actualizing needs become stridently felt.   As with Kohlberg’s model of moral development, not all individuals arrive at the highest levels indicated by this model. 

As with the other developmental models, I sense there is a progression from the concrete and parochial to the abstract and universal.  One can define maturation by these progressions.  And whether one is concerned with cognitive ability, moral reasoning, or motivational needs, teachers and curriculum developers need to know about these changes and account for them in their plans and actual teaching practices. 

Throughout, the dignity of the person, the experiences the person has had, and the person’s march toward knowing and understanding who he/she is provide the focal concerns upon which this particular development of needs is fixed.  Accounting for the dynamic nature of the development can be challenging to a teacher as he/she prepares lessons and interacts with students.

The other theorist is Carl Rogers.  His main psychological model is concerned with self-perceptions.  His “perceptionalism” heightens, as a determinant force, how a person perceives him/herself and how that perception affects the manner in which that subject engages in challenging activities such as learning.  In terms of children, how they perceive they are wanted, liked, and loved are very important to their success in the classroom. 

Teachers need to develop a personal relationship with the child so that the young one feels emotionally safe in the school setting.  With this security, he/she can progress.  A student who falters is either not sufficiently prepared intellectually or is suffering from some psychological hindrance obstructing his/her growth in developing a positive self-perception.

The self-esteem movement found its origins in how Rogers’ theoretical work was received by the general public.  His message seemed to congeal with a general reaction to the more Puritanical traditions that used to characterize American educational modes of operations.  I have previously made the case,[2] that this shift coincided with the upgrading of the natural rights construct as the main perspective that guided our substantive beliefs concerning politics and, therefore, authority.

Perceptionalism, under the influence of Rogers, ushers in a softer, more student-friendly approach and discards such practices as paddling and other forms of punishments that were deemed to demean a student’s self-definition of his/her worth.  Concerns for dignity became more prominent in the strategic planning of school officials and even in laws governing teacher disciplinary practices.

Positively, humanistic psychology would emphasize the more artistic educational activities a curriculum could offer.  The arts, literature, dance, and other expressive subjects work well with this increased focus on self-defining aims.  It is through these subjects that students are assisted in learning who they are. 

I would point out, though, that with this concentration on the individual – in his or her determining life-defining values and other decisions – humanistic psychology shares an important attribute with the more behaviorally oriented perspective of the natural rights construct.  Both promote an emphasis on the individual.  This heightened individualism has been castigated, in this blog, as an enabling factor which contributes to a more narcissistic culture.

Many have pointed out that this concentration on the self is a counterproductive influence in regard to our striving to attain the common good or social capital; that is, promoting a societal quality, which is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.[3] 

The concern is one of balance:  how weighted should one’s beliefs be in terms of placing importance on oneself?  How positive does a self-image have to be in order for a person to accomplish learning objectives or succeed in other, self-defining activities?  Yes, one needs a sufficiently healthy view of oneself, but are there prudent and constructive limits?  If yes, what are they?

These questions do not seem to be asked by the adherents of humanistic psychology.  Their language speaks of authoritarian school systems that avoid humanistic relations and interactions with students.  This, I would submit, is not accurate in the main.  Are there over-oppressive teachers?  Surely, but overall my experience has been that most of the teachers I encountered were reasonable, caring people who seek positive relationships with their students.  While most teachers are not adherents to humanistic psychology – they tend to be behaviorists – they can still care for their students and want the best for them.

One can attribute many positive results from the influence humanist/phenomenological psychology has had.  And many of these results can be found in our nation’s schools.  But there have been detrimental effects as well.

One of these negative results has been a language by which a selfish and self-centered youth culture has been justified and promoted.  Perhaps what is worrisome is not so much the message this psychology communicates, but the degree to which this message is carried out by a good many teachers, a good many school officials, and in some cases, a good many school policies.  Balance is the key to achieving and maintaining sound educational practice.

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[1] Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, 2^nd ed. (New York, NY:  Van Norstrand Reinhold, 1968).

[2] As stated in the last posting:  As I described in the posting, “Formal Critique of Critical Theory,” what I named reconceptualism is a branch of critical theory, the leftist, to varying degrees, Marxist construct.  Most educators who ascribe to critical theory today adhere to this line of thought.  A quip that I believe summarizes this view is to just marry Marxian thought to natural rights biases that idolize the individual, and you have reconceptualism.  With reconceptualism and its reliance on postmodernism and post structuralism, there is a call for self-referentiality and a rejection of any grand narratives or ideologies.  It is subjectivism on “steroids.”  Adherents call for a serious approach to seeking the truth through historical interpretation that relies heavily on contextualizing the information gathered and delving into subjective forces about historical characters and the researchers themselves.

[3] A la, Robert Putnam.  See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

“THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN ITS PARTS”

[Note:  Due to the length of this material, it will be presented over two postings:  this one and the next one which will be posted on 9/9/16.]

With descriptions of behavioral and cognitive psychologies presented over the last three postings, this posting will present, in a rudimentary fashion, a “psychology” that not all in the discipline recognize as a psychology.  That would be humanist/phenomenology psychology.  Yet despite this reluctance by fellow educational psychologists, it has had an observable influence on many teachers and curriculum developers. 

Some have called it the “third force” – another way to visualize psychological factors that affect how and what a person learns.  It is criticized as being a “soft relative” of the more “scientific” approaches to educational psychology.  The practitioners who engage in this approach’s research do not depend on sophisticated experimental designs to gather their data, but on testimonials and interviews.  The information gathered by these qualitative techniques ventures into personal accounts of what the “I” experiences are in learning and/or in handling other challenges. 

Those who adhere to this psychology place great importance on self-definition – how we view ourselves.  They see this introspective determination as highly influential in how one will function in life, generally, and in the classroom, more specifically.  This is true both for students and teachers and even administrators.  And this self-awareness, or lack of it, is not a quality that is abstracted out of one’s psyche, but instead a quality that takes in the whole person and the whole environment in which that person is situated. 

Perceptions become central:  does the person perceive him/herself as a learner, a scoundrel, a lover, a hater, a leader, a follower, an actor, or a dropout?  These are various self-inflicted titles that then evolve into illustrative behavior that manifests their meanings.  An actor will act and a self-perceived dropout will, more than likely, be a dropout in real life.  This describes the phenomenological aspect of this psychology.  And these perceptions are not of a temporal nature, but instead define the whole person – a summary of who the person is through his/her own eyes.  The longer and more established these perceptions exist, the harder they are to dislodge.

Therefore, an educator, in order to be successful, needs to be conscious of this reality, be able to plan for it and, in a humanistic way, account for it as the educator interacts with the student.  The aim, of course, is to encourage and enable a person to perceive him/herself in ways that are rewarding to the person, not debilitating or self-destructive in any way or to any degree.

With this approach, the emphasis is not on how one responds to this or that stimulus or how the brain’s structure processes information.  The emphasis is on the Gestaltic aim to see and understand the total interaction between the individual and his/her environment – less analysis and more synthesis is this psychology’s orientation.  This view is particularly sensitive to the interpersonal relations that mark a person’s space.  In this, humanistic psychology leads teachers and curriculum developers to be more attuned to communication qualities such as connotations, symbolism, and configurations of interactions among subjects of a given “field” (a field being those aspects of a space that provides any effect on an interaction).

Learning, therefore, is viewed as complex.  There are mental processes that take in what a field has to offer; the elements have to be analyzed in order to identify any problem(s); the mind has to discriminate and tease out what is important from what is not and it has to see and understand the consequential relationships among the people and things present or potentially present.  Curriculum is not seen as a set plan, but an evolving concern which is better designated by the verb, currere, than the noun, curriculum.  This is the central ideal of reconceptualism which is usually associated with more recent expressions of reconstructionist philosophy.[1]

And by referring to the people and things present, the concern is not only with the physical proximity to the situation in question, but also includes those elements that can have an influence from afar.  All of this is a dynamic reality which calls on the person to accommodate to the changes that are constantly taking place.  Nothing is set in stone, making all perceived knowledge or beliefs unreliable and subject to questioning and critique.

But what is maintained, throughout the instructional interchange, is framing the teaching effort toward addressing the whole, the whole person and the whole environment.  Truth is not only in the detail, but also in the entirety of the situation, not just in external elements (rewards and/or punishments) or in internal mental elements (the structural processes of the mind and brain), but in the whole interactive reality.  All this does not lend itself to measurement or analytic diagramming, but to “gut” senses that can get a hold on the whole (see fn 1 above).

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[1] As I described in the posting, “Formal Critique of Critical Theory,” what I named reconceptualism is a branch of critical theory, the leftist, to varying degrees Marxist construct.  Most educators who ascribe to critical theory today adhere to this line of thought.  A quip that I believe summarizes this view is to just marry Marxian thought to natural rights biases that idolize the individual, and you have reconceptualism.  With reconceptualism and its reliance on postmodernism and post structuralism, there is a call for self-referentiality and a rejection of any grand narratives or ideologies.  It is subjectivism on “steroids.”  Adherents call for a serious approach to seeking the truth through historical interpretation that relies heavily on contextualizing the information gathered and delving into subjective forces about historical characters and the researchers themselves.