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Preface

Since the publication of the last edition of this anthology, Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush as president of the United States. They both promised a better education “deal” for children and their families. Bush promised to close the “achievement gap” with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), euphemistically referred to as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Eight years later, Barack Obama was elected president in the midst of a recession. As part of a nationwide stimulus package, Obama created a competitive grant incentive program for the states called Race to the Top. States could be granted money if they complied with the prescribed reform and or “school turnaround” interventions set forth in the administration’s educational vision. Did much change for children and their families?

Diane Ravitch, a former undersecretary of education in the Bush administration, once a supporter of the conservative educational agenda, has since become an outspoken critic of Bush’s “Texas deal” and Obama’s “deal.” In an interview about her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, she told about her dramatic about-face and remarked, “The Obama administration, although it promised change when it came to office, in effect [has] picked up precisely the same themes as the George W. Bush administration, which are testing and choice—and I think we’re on the wrong track.”

It is now 2020 and we have a new president who boasts of his “deal” artistry. Is education on the right track now? Does the “Trump Education Deal” signal any real departure from the two previous administrations? If Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education is any indication, then the answer is . . . no. DeVos, a leading school-choice advocate, has been criticized for her lack of experience as a public school education administrator, a public school backer, or a public school parent for that matter. Her positions are clear. She opposes teachers’ unions and collective bargaining, supports the deregulation of charter schools, and favors the expansion of vouchers and continued testing. Status quo preserved.

More than ever, educational decisions are based on political calculations. As you soon will discover, important questions about what schools should look like, about curriculum, and about assessment are being answered, increasingly, by people furthest removed from schools, teachers, and young people. Remarkably, there is broad consensus among those in the political class and agreement too among membership of the nation’s corporate elite about how best to answer these questions. Indeed, when it comes to education policy, there is no longer an ideological clash between Democrats and Republicans.

Since our first edition, the neo-liberal reform agenda has come to dominate American public education. Its “at-risk” mind-set, characterized by an almost singular focus on how our schools are failing, has resulted in narrow directives now firmly embedded within public education. What once appeared as isolated news stories and cause for local embarrassment—teaching to the test, scripted curricula, mindless repetition of facts—is now openly advocated without chagrin by local and state school officials. Yearly test results have emerged as the most important measure of the worth of our schools despite the fact that such assessments obfuscate the complexity of schooling and serve to short-circuit deeper understanding of student learning and high-quality teaching.

Can such an at-risk educational vision serve to renew and sustain our nation, our democracy, and our schools? Does the current model of accountability serve the public interest? Is there another way to frame reform?

Fortunately, there are still many thoughtful, progressive administrators, teachers, and parents. You will read their words in the pages that follow. In different ways, and at different times, they have refused to blindly accept an “at-risk” perspective, questioned uncritical compliance, and challenged the notion that there is, of necessity, a singular path to learning that requires rigid adherence to state directives. We have chosen these authors because, like Thoreau, they worry that public education is in jeopardy of making “a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”

But how does one begin to walk down an alternative path? Why aren’t teachers at the forefront of the debate? How can we prepare beginning teachers to move purposefully in another direction, to ask questions, to challenge assumptions . . . to be involved? What questions should teachers ask? What answers should teachers accept?

We hope that new teachers will consider asking whether their instruction promotes the status quo. How deliberate are their efforts to promote equality and to include the experiences of traditionally marginalized groups in the curriculum? Is their instruction implemented at a transformational, social action level? New teachers need models of critical reflection (and even dissent) to help them develop their own critical questions and voices.

Like the previous editions, the major purpose of this fourth edition is to help teachers develop habits of critical reflection about schools and schooling before entering the classroom. It is for this reason that we continue to select authors with strong views that reflect these particular biases. We hope that these readings will offer a platform for discussion and debate that may be used by instructors to increase student knowledge of pedagogy and to provide authentic opportunities for potential teachers to think critically about teaching and learning. For example, we are very concerned about the current trend toward standardization of curriculum and instruction, a trend we believe devalues teaching and increases the distrust of teachers. We believe, like Deborah Meier, that this trend has manifested itself in schools organized around testing and that it is imperative for teachers to actively critique such events and recapture some of the control and power over their work.

We assembled this book because we believe the current textbooks written on the foundations of education are too broad and too politically cautious to engage students or help them develop their own critical voices. Such texts do a good job of providing a survey of practices but with limited reference to the social contexts of teachers and their students, without taking a strong stance in favor of one practice or another. In these texts’ attempt to cover everything in a curriculum, students have little opportunity to delve deeply into any substantive issues. Instead, they are exposed, in only the most superficial ways, to the important issues facing the field. While the scope of the typical course has become broader in the last several years, the tone has become more dispassionate. As textbook content demands expand, students become responsible for knowing less and less about more and more. The texts on the market, like the textbooks in many fields, are so cursory that they leave professors few options other than assuming highly didactic, teacher-directed approaches to instruction. The texts also tend to promote practices antithetical to meaningful instruction: lecture, memorization, and multiple-choice assessment. Finally, the texts, because of their size, scope, and neutral stance, foster acceptance of the status quo without opportunity for in-depth examination, reflection, and discussion.

What you have in your hands is a book that we hope you will find as exciting as we do, an anthology of critical readings for students about to enter the teaching profession and for students interested in carefully examining schools and schooling. We feature provocative, engaging authors whose views are politicized but whose writing and opinions matter not simply because they are gadflies but because their ideas work and because their achievements as teachers, principals, and policy shapers are so notable.

The fourth edition of the anthology is organized around the following essential questions: Why teach? Who are today’s students? What makes a good teacher? What do good schools look like? How should we assess student learning? How does one develop a critical voice? How do we move forward? Our authors’ answers continue to be bold and refreshing. They eschew the unquestioning compliance so characteristic of new teachers, and by taking a hard look at traditional educational practice, they serve as models for the kind of reflective practitioners we hope our students will become when they enter the field. We frame each chapter with an introductory vignette that provides context for the issues the authors’ essays address and serves to raise probing questions about teaching and learning.

Since our anthology was originally published in 2004, we have had plenty of feedback from our faithful adopters. While the response to our book has been overwhelmingly positive, we also received a number of specific, constructive recommendations from valued colleagues, critics, and students with whom we have had the pleasure of working. Principal among these were recommendations that essays more directly “answer” the questions posed at the outset of each chapter. To address this suggestion, we removed essays that were only tangentially related to each chapter’s opening question and substituted them with essays that more directly address the content of each chapter’s focus. In addition to the anchor essays like Herbert Kohl’s Why Teach?, Ohanian’s On Stir-and-Serve Recipes for Teaching, and Ravitch’s How, and How Not, to Improve the Schools contained in past editions, you will now also find some newly commissioned works. For example, Deanna Rochefort and Matthew Rasmussen offer their refreshing views on why one should choose to teach. Bruce Marlowe and Monisa Gardner-Page have broadened the inclusion conversation to include issues related to the LGBTQ community of learners and racism. Elsa Wiehe and Elizabeth Robinson introduce us to the notion of translangauging in their work with English Language Learners. Kerri Ullucci reminds us to consider the complexity of labels and their impact on refugee youth. Gloria-Graves Holmes informs us of the importance of leadership in reducing inequities. Alan Canestrari and Amanda Vincenti seek to reshape the discourse around the issue of school safety. Ann Winfield, Alan Canestrari and Bruce Marlowe critique data-driven instruction. We have also added a foreword by Ann Winfield that frames the historical significance of the foundations of education.

How Not to Use This Book

If you are a professor that adopted our previous editions and hold our fourth edition in your hands, rest assured that we have not changed our perspective concerning the use of this book. If you are a professor that has adopted our fourth edition and are searching for some guidance in using this book, well, here is fair warning: You won’t find any direct instruction here. Instead, we hope that you, like those who have found the anthology useful, will think critically about the most effective ways to engage your students with these readings and the issues they raise, without simply telling. Let’s once again be clear: Simply walking through the table of contents, chapter by chapter, and expounding on the views of the authors contained in these pages is not what we had in mind.

If you are a student, you hold our fourth edition in your hands for the first time; we challenge you to ensure that your professors practice what they preach about instruction. Are you sitting through long and boring lectures about why teachers should not lecture? Are you engaged in discussion? If not, perhaps it is time to ask your professor, “Why not?”