This is where we will blog. Do some good thinking — write about what is interesting to you in the area of school reform. Don’t forget to link it back to the course.
Abbreviated Example:
David Labaree’s chapter “From Citizens to Consumers” in his 2010 book about the history of school reform makes an interesting argument about the relationship between individuals and the public schools. Labaree suggests that this relationship has always been complex, but that in the late 19th and early 20th century there was a broadly shared understanding that the purpose of public schools was to build and educated citizenry capable of democratic self-governance. He then argues that this public understanding of the purpose of education no longer holds and that individuals now understand public schools as institutions designed to provide children with the knowledge and skills necessary to compete successfully for jobs in a increasingly competitive society. Thus the relationship of the individuals and families to public education has shifted from the public purpose of creating citizens to the private purpose of social mobility. Labaree believes that this turning point occurred in the 1950s and, paradoxically, was associated with the civil rights movement and the court case which banned segregation in public schools Brown v. Board. I say paradoxically, because the Brown decision is often pointed to as a victory in the quest to greater equality and full citizenship rights for black Americans. At the same time, however, Labaree notes that the arguments in the Brown case did not focus on the practice of democracy or expanded citizenship but rather on the negative impact of segregation on the individual rather than on the society as a whole. Labaree believes that this was an important shift in our thinking about public education. By focusing on the individual rather than societal impact of poor schooling, education started to be understood as something that had benefits which accrued primarily to individuals rather than society as a whole. Labaree goes on to discuss the impact that such a shift has had on our system of public education.
This change has manifested itself in the language used to discuss public education today. This language tends to focus on knowledge and skills and the role of teachers in imparting these to individual students so that they might better compete in our market economy. Very little time is spent discussing the role of public education in supporting democratic institutions or ways of life. A primary example of the influence of this type of thinking is the push for greater student and family choice in public education.
In general, I believe that Labaree’s captures and important shift in our thinking about public education and one that is useful in explaining current educational debates about school choice, standards, and teacher effectiveness. At the same time, I don’t think that the distance between citizen and consumer is a as great as Labaree believe it to be. We have always been both citizens and consumers and the current emphasis on consumerism does not necessarily mean that we value citizenship less.