Teachers as Agents of Social Change - Coursework Example

Teachers as Agents of Social Change: Apple's Tribute to Education Submitted by: Submitted] "Schools convey meaning and conditions that shape our lives and take control over us. The dominant social and economic system pervades in all critical aspects of the curriculum. Just as there is 'unequal distribution of economic capital in society, so, too, is there a similar system of distribution surrounding cultural capital." Michael Apple Culture is a learned aspect of the society. It is a social asset and all members of society share its elements. These cultural elements are preserved and disseminated through education from one individual to another and also from one generation to another. In this manner, there is a direct relationship between culture and education. While culture gives identity to a society, education sustains it. Education also plays a dynamic role in society. It performs the function of an initiator of social change. It not only generates new ideas and values but also transmits them to the younger generation. In this chapter, our attempt will be to examine the relationship between education and social change. Education emerges out of the needs of society. An individual member passes away in course of time, but society continues to exist and new members are added to it by birth. Every society, thus, tries to stay together as a unit and develops a way of life. The group members have to train children to carry on the customs, knowledge and skills of the group to preserve and perpetuate their way of life. This function is performed by education. Education also trains people to develop new ideas and adjust to a changing environment. Parents and family play an informal role in education. A more formal part comes from education provided by social groups and community agencies. School, which is especially established for the purpose, conducts the most formal education. School has, thus, become a social necessity for providing special learning. It makes possible the accumulation and transmission of knowledge on a large scale which were impossible before. Education, thus, performs several social functions. Starting from the socializing role in a family, its tasks cover areas like economic organization, social stratification and political ideas. This is the essence of Apple's statement: that teachers as well as the whole education system should be the agents of change. More than a century ago, Emile Durkheim rejected the idea that education could be the force to transform society and resolve social ills. Instead, Durkheim concluded that education "can be reformed only if society itself is reformed." He argued that education "is only the image and reflection of society. It imitates and reproduces the latterit does not create it" (Durkheim 1951: 372-373). Most mainstream proposals for improving education assume that our society is fundamentally sound, but that for some reason, our schools are failing. Different critics target different villains: poor quality teachers, pampered, disruptive or ill-prepared students, the culture of their families, unions, bureaucrats, university schools of education, tests that are too easy, or inadequate curriculum. But if Durkheim was correct, a society has the school system it deserves. Denouncing the poor quality of education is like blaming a mirror because you do not like your reflection. The first step in improving education is to recognize that the problems plaguing our schools are rooted in the way our society is organized. We live in a competitive economy where businesses and individuals continually seek advantage and higher profits, and where people on the bottom rung of the economic ladder are stigmatized as failures and blamed for their condition. Our culture glorifies violence in sports, movies, video games, and on evening news broadcasts that celebrate the death of others through hygienic strategic bombings. It is a society where no one feels obligated to pay taxes for the broader social good and where welfare "reform" means denying benefits to children if their parents cannot find work; a society that promotes the need for instant gratification and uses youthful alienation to sell products; a society where those who do not fit in are shunned (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that our school system is designed to sort children out and leave many uneducated. To legitimize the way our society is organized, its schools teach competitive behavior and social inequality as if they were fundamental law of nature. Just as with the economy, some are rewarded in school, others are punished, and both groups are taught that rewards and punishment are the result of their own efforts (Kohn, 1999). As a teacher educator and a public high school teacher, we try to avoid being overwhelmed by pessimism during debates over school reform. Even though we believe that education will not be changed in isolation, we recognize that efforts to improve schools can be part of a long term struggle to create a more equitable society in the United States. We also believe that students, especially high school students, must be part of this struggle and that an important part of our job as teachers is to help prepare them to participate as active citizens in a democratic society. Should teachers encourage high school students to work for social change Thomas Jefferson believed that, in a democratic society, teachers do not really have a choice. According to Jefferson, freedom and republican government rest on two basic principles: "the diffusion of knowledge among the people" and the idea that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing." Jefferson supported the right to rebel because he recognized that the world was constantly changing. The crucial question was not whether it would change, but the direction of change. Education was essential so that ordinary citizens could participate in this process, defending and enhancing their liberties. There has frequently been a close connection between advocacy for mass public education and demands for expanding democracy, social equity, and political reform. For example, in the mid-19th century, Horace Mann championed public education because he believed that the success of the country depended on "intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people." He argued that, "If we do not prepare children to become good citizen...then our republic must go down to destruction" (The New York Times, 1953). John Dewey (1939) saw himself within this intellectual tradition. He believed that democratic movements for human liberation were necessary to achieve a fair distribution of political power and an "equitable system of human liberties." However, criticisms have been raised about limitations in Deweyan approaches to education, especially the way they are practiced in many elite private schools. Frequently, these schools are racially, ethnically, and economically segregated, and therefore efforts to develop classroom community ignore the spectrum of human difference and the continuing impact of society's attitudes about race, class, ethnicity, gender, social conflict, and inequality on both teachers and students. In addition, because of pressure on students to achieve high academic scores,teachers maintain an undemocratic level of control over the classroom. Both of these issues are addressed by Paulo Freire, who calls on educators to aggressively challenge both injustice and unequal power arrangements in the classroom and society. Paulo Freire was born in Recife in northeastern Brazil, where his ideas about education developed in response to military dictatorship, enormous social inequality, and widespread adult illiteracy. As a result, his primary pedagogical goal was to provide the world's poor and oppressed with educational experiences that make it possible for them to take control over their own lives. Freire (1970; 1995) shared Dewey's desire to stimulate students to become "agents of curiosity" in a "quest for...the 'why' of things," and his belief that education provides possibility and hope for the future of society. But he believes that these can only be achieved when students are engaged in explicitly critiquing social injustice and actively organizing to challenge oppression. For Freire, education is a process of continuous group discussion (dialogue) that enables people to acquire collective knowledge they can use to change society. The role of the teacher includes asking questions that help students identify problems facing their community (problem posing), working with students to discover ideas or create symbols (representations) that explain their life experiences (codification), and encouraging analysis of prior experiences and of society as the basis for new academic understanding and social action (conscientization) (Shor, 1987). In a Deweyan classroom, the teacher is an expert who is responsible for organizing experiences so that students learn content, social and academic skills, and an appreciation for democratic living. Freire is concerned that this arrangement reproduces the unequal power relationships that exist in society. In a Freirean classroom, everyone has a recognized area of expertise that includes, but is not limited to, understanding and explaining their own life, and sharing this expertise becomes an essential element in the classroom curriculum. In these classrooms, teachers have their areas of expertise, but they are only one part of the community. The responsibility for organizing experiences and struggles for social change belongs to the entire community; as groups exercise this responsibility, they are empowered to take control over their lives. We agree with Freire's concern that teachers address social inequality and the powerlessness experienced by many of our students. We also recognize that it is difficult to imagine secondary school social studies classrooms where teachers are responsible for covering specified subject matter organized directly on Freirean principles. Maxine Greene (1993a; 1993b;1993c), an educational philosopher who advocates a "curriculum for human beings" integrating aspects of Freire, Dewey, and feminist thinking, offers ways for teachers to introduce Freire's pedagogical ideas into the classroom. Greene believes that, to create democratic classrooms, teachers must learn to listen to student voices. Listening allows teachers to discover what students are thinking, what concerns them, and what has meaning to them. When teachers learn to listen, it is possible for teachers and students to collectively search for historical, literary, and artistic metaphors that make knowledge of the world accessible to us. In addition, the act of listening creates possibilities for human empowerment; it counters the marginalization experienced by students in school and in their lives, it introduces multiple perspectives and cultural diversity into the classroom, and it encourages students to take risks and contribute their social critiques to the classroom dialogue. Greene's ideas are especially useful to social studies teachers. Just as historians discuss history as an ongoing process that extends from the past into the future, Greene sees individual and social development as processes that are "always in the making." For Greene, ideas, societies, and people are dynamic and always changing. She rejects the idea that there are universal and absolute truths and predetermined conclusions. According to Greene, learning is a search for "situated understanding" that places ideas and events in their social, historical, and cultural contexts. Greene believes that the human mind provides us with powerful tools for knowing ourselves and others. She encourages students to combine critical thinking with creative imagination in an effort to empathize with and understand the lives, minds, and consciousness of human beings from the past and of our contemporaries in the present. She sees the goal of learning as discovering new questions about ourselves and the world, and this leads her to examine events from different perspectives, to value the ideas of other people, and to champion democracy. During the Great Depression, striking Harlan County, Kentucky coal miners sang a song called "Which Side Are You On" (lyrics available on the web at www.geocities.com/Nashville/ 3448/whichsid.html). In a book he co-authored with Paulo Freire, Myles Horton (1990) of the Highlander School argued that educators cannot be neutral either. He called neutrality "a code word for the existing system. It has nothing to do with anything but agreeing to what is and will always be. It was to me a refusal to oppose injustice or to take sides that are unpopular" (p. 102). James Banks (1991; 1993), an educational theorist whose focus is on the development of social studies curriculum, shares the ideas that "knowledge is not neutral," and that "an important purpose of knowledge construction is to help people improve society." Although Banks is a strong advocate of a multicultural approach to social studies, he argues that a "transformative" curriculum depends less on the content of what is taught than on the willingness of teachers to examine their own personal and cultural values and identities, to change the ways they organize classrooms and relate to students, and to actively commit themselves to social change. The main ideas about education and society at the heart of the philosophies of Apple, Dewey, Freire, Greene, Horton, and Banks are that society is always changing and knowledge is not neutral-it either supports the status quo or a potential new direction for society; people learn primarily from what they experience; active citizens in a democratic society need to be critical and imaginative thinkers; and students learn to be active citizens by being active citizens. Education and Social Change We have examined how education influences different domains of social life. In this sense, it not only influences social change, but also acts as an agent of social change. Education engages itself in a much more positive action and can perform the function of an initiator of change. It inculcates in the younger generation whatever changes are desirable for rebuilding a society. Moreover, it cultivates necessary intellectual and emotional readiness to deal with challenges of change. Education is an important instrument of modernisation. Modern values in social, economic and political spheres have to be instilled in the minds of people to achieve the goal of modernisation. Values such as equality, liberty, scientific temper, humanism and ideas against blind faith pave the way for modernisation. This task can be effectively performed by education. References Banks, J. (1991). A curriculum for empowerment, action and change," in Sleeter, C. (Ed.), Empowerment through multicultural education (pp. 125-142). Albany, New York: SUNY Press. Banks, J. (1993). The canon debate, knowledge construction, and multicultural education. Educational Researcher, 22(5), 4-14. Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America, Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York: Basic Books. Dewey, J. (1939). Freedom and culture. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Durkheim, E. (1897/1951). Suicide, A study in sociology. New York: Free Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury. Freire, P. (1995). Pedagogy of hope. New York: Continuum. Greene, M. (1993a). Diversity and inclusion: Towards a curriculum for human beings. Teachers College Record, 95(2) 211-221. Greene, M. (1993b). Reflections on post-modernism and education. Educational Policy, 7(2), 106-111. Greene, M. (1993c). The passions of pluralism: Multiculturalism and expanding community. Educational Researcher, 22(1), 13-18. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Kohn, A. (1999). Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A's, praise, and other bribes. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. The New York Times (1953, September 15). Horace Mann. Shor, I. (1987). Educating the educators: A Freirean approach to the crisis in teacher education, in I. Shor, (Ed.s), Freire for the classroom (pp. 7-32). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Read More