Christopher Schroeder

Tag: education

  • Once Again

    Once Again

    Yoni Appelbaum, an Atlantic editor, asks in a recent article about American history in terms of its past and future.

    In it, Appelbaum highlights the need for a “coherent national story” as a way of surviving our politically polarized times. He explains that a more mainstream work-in-progress narrative he reports is contested by a “settler-colonial,” and white supremacy account, which appeals to the left, and a timeless American values version, which appeals to the right. He concludes by reporting that some consider this lack of a shared story as the beginning of the end while others hope that such a possibility will motivate Americans to renew its commitment to a more perfect union.

    Appelbaum’s survey of competing narratives might be a useful way of understanding contemporary political conflicts, but its central insight about the need for a shared perspective isn’t news, or new. Similar observations were offered in the middle of the 1980s culture wars by E. D. Hirsch Jr., who used his literacy research to challenge American education.

    Hirsch, who was alarmed by the state of literacy, confirmed conclusions about comprehension and context. These led him to challenge both educational pluralism, or the common belief that locally-relevant content should be taught in schools, and educational formalism, or the widespread belief that reading, writing, and presumably thinking are skills that can be separated from content.

    Schools instead should teach cultural literacy, or a shared cultural context, especially in English and history that like math and science need a canonical curriculum. Such an approach, which would challenge cultural fragmentation, would also increase students’ reading and writing abilities and even potentially their social participation.

    Hirsch’s perspective has problems. He oversimplifies both the politics of cultural literacy for example and differences among ways of reading, writing, and thinking (i.e., his “linguistic literacy”), which are better understood as cultural practices.

    Nonetheless, Hirsch seems genuinely concerned about a more equitable society. He both recognizes the value of cultural diversity and acknowledges the existence dominant culture without defending it. He also argues that a cultural literacy approach is especially useful to ethnic and economic minorities, who are less likely to be exposed to this dominant culture outside of schools and as a result are more likely to be marginalized and excluded if not introduced to it within schools.

    Hirsch in other words argues for a shared perspective, which he calls cultural literacy and what every American needs to know, as the basis for understanding each other and participating in society. In doing so, he suggests that this perspective, which goes beyond a shared historical narrative, is a challenge he was confronting in the 1980s culture wars that we’re still apparently debating today.

    Hirsch’s account also alludes to a bigger issue. Both Appelbaum and he frame their concerns as American, but Hirsch’s account of his and others’ research suggest that these could quite possibly be human concerns, ones that might be more evident in culturally diverse communities and societies but nonetheless are relevant to human comprehension and communication.

    Shared cultural contexts might be necessary for humans to understand each other and collaborate together, in which case these challenges could be much older, and at the same time ones that our ancestors have managed for millennia.

  • The Rest of Us

    I wonder what Stacy Davis Gates thinks of us.

    Gates, who is president of both the Chicago Teachers Union and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, recently argued that CPS is transforming into a “sustainable community school district” of community “anchors” as a result of the recent Chicago Board of Education approved five-year equity plan and four-year union contract. These will produce “the schools our students deserve” and “true community hubs” that reflect local neighborhoods and are “responsible to students and families” within these.

    The CTU and the Board in rejecting previous privatization of education posit schools as spaces of “stability, access and care” that also address larger social problems, such as food deserts and health care gaps. Such schools both “educate young people” and “reflect and uplift entire communities” by extending support beyond classrooms and integrating local needs with learning.

    This Sustainable Community Schools approach, which according to Gates originated in Chicago, has been embraced by other cities. At its center is a concern for students and their families that supports both “personal agency” and community development.

    I’m not surprised that a teachers union president would advocate for schools as central to society. I sometimes wondered as a professor and a parent why what happened in universities where I worked and schools where my kids learned often seemed separate from what happened beyond these institutions.

    I just never assumed that public schools were the only, or even best, ways to care for Chicago students and their families. I knew that private schools do so too as do other initiatives and institutions, such as After School Matters and the Chicago Park District.

    I realized in other words that schools exist within a larger social context. In other words, education while important isn’t everything, and certainly cannot matter more than reliable roads for example or public safety, which also matter, and must be supported, by those of us who call Chicago home.

    Gates in her defense recognized this economic element in acknowledging the need for additional revenue. At the same time, she misrepresents this situation, and denies its difficulty, by describing it as a need for “a fairer tax system” as if such a perception is a citywide consensus even though it clearly is not.

    In fact, the Chicago City Council members (and Illinois legislators) seem unconvinced of the need for a corporate head tax, a property tax increase, and other self-styled “progressive” taxes proposed by the Chicago mayor, a former CPS teacher and CTU-organizer whose election was the result of the CTU support. Moreover, this failure and other challenges to this mayor’s fiscal policies, governing approach, ethical standards, and even political competence could demonstrate the danger of putting educators in charge.

    I would suggest that this this risk can also be seen in Gates herself, and the way she models a progressive hypocrisy that has been convincingly documented by Musa al-Gharbi (2024) among educators and other social elites. For example, Gates has defended her decision to send her son to a private school in what seems like a classic case of public-schools-for-thee-but-not-for-me.

    I’m perhaps as concerned in the end about the effects upon public perceptions of the CTU and unions generally. Gates might be an effective at obtaining results for union members but by overreaching in both this equity plan and union contract risks alienating those who might otherwise be sympathetic to unions.

    The only thing worse than a union, I’ve said, is no union. The better ones I believe recognize their purview and purpose, collaborate with comparable communities, and create coalitions with other constituencies to support shared goals and similar ends, which require a humility that seems scarce in the CTU and its president.

    Reasonable people can disagree on the distribution of funding across public and social services for example or the proper role of schools and education. As a result, these debates need to be ongoing, and relitigated each time budgets are prepared.

    Budgets obviously reflect values, and Chicago, and Illinois, might need to value education more. Neither however can afford to prioritize education over everything else, especially without a citywide consensus, and not just one within CTU.

    These discussions and decisions are difficult, and must be made by those whom all of us have elected, and not educators who have been elected (or bankrolled) by CTU members.

  • From Bad to Worse

    Current educational challenges are bad enough without the Chicago Tribune making these worse, which it did with its recent editorial.

    In it, its editorial board admonishes “emboldened” teachers who are pressuring students to accept teachers’ politics or be excluded from classroom communities, which it argues deprives these students of their rights. It argues that such teachers are doing a “disservice” to their students’ learning, that schools must consider how their employees “present” present themselves, and that classrooms cannot become “perfect captive audience[s]” for teachers or anyone considers “politics as the highest social calling.”

    The editorial board is right to remind educators to remember the power that they hold but wrong to ignore pre-existing pressure beyond classrooms, which existed long before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. For example, I stopped challenging college students and started self-censoring classroom comments upon learning that he had been encouraging them to record and report professors.

    I wondered if I were overreacting but was later relieved to have done so. Campus colleagues were cited in a 2023 Fox News report, and others across Chicago have been threatened after appearing on Kirk’s watch list.

    I discovered that this pressure could be institutional when for example my hapa, or mixed, kid was excluded from a high school assembling that was restricted to African-American students. I similarly had an August Wilson new course proposal returned because it insufficiently explained I was informed how this course would serve diversity, equity, and inclusion goals as if any explanation could be necessary.

    The bigger problem however is that the Tribune constructs a caricature of teachers. Some teachers I’m sure suggest to students that their political opponents are “bad, evil and wrong,” but not all do, and none would consider such statements as smart pedagogical strategies.

    Such a caricature in other words misunderstands the essence of education, at least in the humanities where I spent my academic career. In contrast, I considered my obligation to be challenging students to develop their thinking abilities in addition to imparting whatever knowledge central to each course.

    As a result, I would deliberately describe the best challenge to students’ arguments regardless of whether it was liberal, conservative, or something else, and regardless of whether I personally believed it. In fact, I often reminded students that they shouldn’t assume every argument I offered reflected my professional or personal beliefs, and that I had done my job if they were unsure of these at the end of the semester.

    I’m not suggesting that such an approach is apolitical. I unlike the Tribune editorial board believe that politics are inescapable and that choices reflect these. At the same time, it and I seem to agree on the purpose of education, which is perhaps more central than ever.

    Nonetheless, I concede that such an approach has to be used within the context of intellectual freedom. Moreover, I would define that not as the ability to articulate any thought but rather as I learned from another Chicago colleague a balance of freedom of thought and expression and a right of inclusion, or a space where students can both offer their observations and are welcome to do so.

    I wasn’t trying to reinforce some students’ preconceived perspectives and changing others’ minds but rather trying to push every student’s ability to think, and to do so for all students, or at least as many as I could convince to respond. I hoped even those whose perspectives hadn’t shifted at least learned to develop rebuttals, and an ability to consider the limitations of any position they might advocate.

    At least I did until I learned about Kirk’s professor-watch list, and would have continued doing if I had greater confidence in campus administrators and professional and social support, including from the Tribune editorial board.

    I agree that classrooms offer “captive” audiences, that students needn’t know their teachers’ politics, and that schools should be “the freest places” for curiosity and critical thinking. I just think that these insights aren’t news to good teachers, who are already aware of these.

    I experienced educational challenges from liberals. I just was, and am, much more concerned about conservative challenges, which seemed emboldened in the current president’s first term and even more so in his second one.