The last posting made a connection between dialogue and
action. Simply stated, the connection is
that talking leads to collective action.
But one needs to be careful.
Talking does not necessarily lead to action and, if it does, it does not
necessarily lead to the action one would judge beneficial or logically derived
from such talk. In other words, talking
is usually a precondition, but other factors are involved in getting people to
act in ways the collective says they should.
In its
treatment of change, this blog reviewed many of these factors from mental
domains (the real, the ideal, the physiological) to the sociological/political
environment of a family, an organization, a community, or a nation. The one message that one can derive from that
review is that change or social action can be very complex. In terms of change, those who are dedicated
to facilitating change need to be conscious of that complexity and understand
that there is no sure recipe for success.
What a debate does, in a competitive
format, is to allow a person to voice concerns over obstacles standing in the
way of implementing a plan. Students, in
determining in what action they want to participate, can review their own
feelings, those of their fellow students, and those of the community or other
significant people who would be involved in such an effort.
With that warning, this posting
shares some ideas of what kinds of actions students can initiate and work to
accomplish. The reader is reminded, that
the unit under development calls on students to study an international issue,
that of foreign trade.[1] A challenge with such an effort is how does
such a unit get students to meaningfully act on an issue that does not
immediately make itself known locally.
Yes, some of the consequences can be locally felt, but the actual
trading processes do not.
This challenge will be addressed in
an upcoming posting. This posting will
look at the types of issues or topics over which secondary students can address
and act. Based on the work of Jerome
Bruner and others, the argument for students being actively involved in
developing and implementing political-action plans has been made.[2]
Examples that have been given are
political issues such as poverty and racial relations. Bruner described this type of learning as
having student investigate, first hand, the “occupations” or ways of life of
those who live in their communities.
This is in the tradition laid down by John Dewey and described earlier
in this blog. To summarize the
philosopher’s concern, most of what schools usually do – exposition and “book
learning” – isolates students from real life and lacks the ability of
instilling “the spirit of service.”[3]
In the literature of educational
studies, such action-learning is generally called experiential education. There is empirical evidence to suggest that
experiential education succeeds in many of the aims that federation theory
highlights. That is, by students going
out and dealing with the people affected by social and governmental policy and
practice, they more readily engage emotionally and develop a sense of self in
relation to the concerns they are investigating and upon which they are acting.
That would be a sound foundation to
instill social capital. An insightful
description of this effect, of overcoming a more self-centered view, is offered
by Pamela J. Conover and Donald D. Searing:
“while
most students identify themselves as citizens, their grasp of what it means to
act as citizens is rudimentary and dominated by a focus on rights, thus
creating a privately oriented, passive understanding.”[4] To usher them out of this self-serving and unengaged
view, nothing is more effective than political participation, especially when
it is focused on relevant, local concerns.
That insight can be
traced to the writings of Tocqueville in the eighteen-hundreds, a favorite writer
of this blog. More specifically, voting
and giving money is not enough; what is called for is political action. William Damon further concludes that nothing
is more effective in terms of moral education than programs “that engage
students directly in action, with subsequent opportunities for reflection.”[5]
More to the point, these actions can include the following:
·
showing up for and taking part in political meetings;
·
scheduling and putting on political meetings which can be
platforms to express political opinions or demands;
·
organizing and carrying out fund drives;
·
canvasing an area to gather signatures in support or against
bills or other initiatives;
·
seeking to attain membership on political boards;
·
joining or starting a political club;
·
participating in debates or other deliberations over a social
and/or political issue relevant to student lives; and
·
starting an educational plan that leads to an occupation that has
public value.
This writer is aware of a couple of
organizations that are dedicated to advance students in the pursuit of these
types of activities. They are The
National Action Civics Collaborative (NACC) and SOS Outreach.[6]
But what about the school itself? Can it be a more accessible and perhaps a
more realistic environment by which experiential learning can take place? When one considers a school in these terms,
the name John Dewey again pops up. His writing
included a vision which characterized a potential role for schools; i.e., one
cannot think of a better location to encourage students to engage. They attend this place 180 days a year. It is where their friends are. It is where political decisions affect them
directly. This is how Dewey saw a school
site or, better stated, a school community.
He, therefore, thought of it as the ideal place to encourage and
facilitate students being involved and creating a more democratic site. And more importantly, if it is democratic
enough, it can create a democratic culture – a way of doing things that reflect
the values of those who attend that school.
As such it can be the site for political, experiential learning to take
place. As Theodore Sizer points out, the
school site and how it is run can do more to teach democratic values than any
other source.
There have been several writers who have addressed this
potential source of experiential learning.
For example, Sizer writes: “Students
learn much more from the way a school is run,” … “and the best way to teach
values is when the school is a living example of the values to be taught.”[7]
This quote hints at the type of concerns over which students could investigate
and deliberate.
This can include every day concerns such as student discipline,
school physical maintenance, social problems among students like bullying,
instances of sexism or racism, or, with deference for expert input, questions
concerning curriculum. In choosing
actual policies in which students could have a say, a teacher needs to give
that choice some reflection. Schools are
not experiments, they are places where public business is conducted with real
consequences. So, the areas of operation
that students should be invited to express their input, perhaps given a degree
of decision-making discretion, deserves serious thought.
This writer was at one time the faculty advisor for student
government at a middle school. He and
another teacher wrote a plan, called “Brainstormers,” that created a new model
for student government. Part of the
innovation was to get administration to hand over “authority” over one aspect
of school life.
That aspect was extracurricular activities. The central student body council determined
what extracurricular activities could be scheduled and where they could take
place. Of course, any decisions were
subject to oversight by administration, but, on a day-to-day basis, that
oversight was not felt. The aim was to
identify that segment of campus life that students could handle and was age-appropriate
for them to determine with real consequences.
Hopefully, the reader can find such a potential opportunity to
socialize students to democratic life as a viable way to teach civics. At this point, the writer, unlike many of his
prior colleagues, does not see this as being “the way” for all schools or all
teachers. He has previously written
about how a teacher needs to be of a certain type of teacher who feels
comfortable with such experiential teaching techniques.
Further, when one talks of a school-wide effort, the supportive
philosophy needs to be widely shared among that school’s faculty and
staff. If a teacher, who wants to engage
in experiential learning strategies, stands alone in terms of these ideas in a
faculty, he/she needs to be conscious of that fact and plan accordingly.
But, if he/she is committed to apply this experiential learning
approach, with a bit of creativity, this writer believes the opportunities are
there in most schools. He/she should
begin by contacting supportive organizations that can provide supportive ideas
and resources. Perhaps this blog can be
but one such source.
[1] That development has been the topic of the past
various postings; if the reader is new to this blog, he/she might review a few
of those postings.
[2] “Civic Education,” Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013/2007, accessed on October 1, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civic-education/ .
[4] Pamela J. Conover and Donald D. Searing, “A Political
Socialization Perspective,” in Rediscovering
the Democratic Purposes of Education, eds. Lorraine M. McDonnell, P.
Michael Timpane, and Roger Benjamin (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press,
2000), 91-124, 108.
[5] “Civic Education,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[6] The
writer is not recommending membership in these organizations. His knowledge of them is limited to his
awareness that they exist and is mentioned in related sources of
information. One such source is “Civic Education,” Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[7] Thomas
R. Sizer, Horace’s Compromise: The
Dilemma of the American High School (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
1984), 120, 122.
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