Sunday, September 23, 2007

I’ve been doing some reading lately about a trend called ‘character education.” Ignoring the fact that as an English teacher I spent many years teaching literature that scrutinized the behaviour of individuals and examined both the positive and negative aspects of human nature, I can’t get past the feeling that by encasing it in an official program, as many boards seem to be doing, once more the message being given to the public is that schools can solve society’s ills.

For much of my career, I felt that educational institutions took on far more than they could realistically handle. Whether talking about mediation, conflict resolution, bullying, drug use or almost anything else you can imagine, boards and administrators gave the public a reassuring, politically expedient and entirely misleading view of what teachers can do with their students. This is not to say that such attempts at social engineering shouldn’t be made, but the problems arise with the inevitable large-scale failures of such initiatives. Ultimately, because no one at the top ever offers a realistic view of the limitations of the educational institutions, these failures inevitably have to be borne by the teachers. In other words, it becomes just one more thing that they have failed at. There seems to be an intentional blindness to the fact that our influence over students is not nearly as great as we might wish, and that parents and peer groups are major determinants of the values that children eventually adopt. But the later is a harsh reality that senior administrators and boards are loathe to tell parents. To my knowledge, no education official ever advanced his/her career by telling unpleasant truths.

For an example of what I am talking about, please take a look here: www.hwdsb.on.ca/characterbuildshamilton/documents/bulletins/september_2007.pdf">
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2 comments:

Redkudu said...

"There seems to be an intentional blindness to the fact that our influence over students is not nearly as great as we might wish, and that parents and peer groups are major determinants of the values that children eventually adopt."

A very interesting post.

I have often felt, as a teacher, that schools are too often seen as pseudo-parenting - that because students spend so much time away from parents and in schools, some aspects of parenting have been fostered off onto schools, and this is a shame.

As a teacher, I can teach students study skills, but I cannot teach them to study. I can teach them to speak well, but I cannot teach them to speak up. These are lessons that must come from home and peer influence, as noted.

Perhaps it is the length of time away from home and parental influence which leads to the idea that schools are like developmental mega-malls - there's something for every need in each little store. I tend to think schools should be more like the small corner grocery - you get your meat, bread, veg, dairy. How you cook it up at home is up to you.

September 29, 2007 at 9:45 PM
Lorne said...

Redkudu said...

I have often felt, as a teacher, that schools are too often seen as pseudo-parenting - that because students spend so much time away from parents and in schools, some aspects of parenting have been fostered off onto schools, and this is a shame.
Perhaps it is the length of time away from home and parental influence which leads to the idea that schools are like developmental mega-malls - there's something for every need in each little store. I tend to think schools should be more like the small corner grocery - you get your meat, bread, veg, dairy. How you cook it up at home is up to you.

Thank you for your comments, redkudu. I like your analogy of the mall and the small corner grocery; the mega mall idea fits beautifully with the increasing use of the language of business that has crept into educational philosophy at the board level; we are no longer teachers, but rather service providers; parents have become stakeholder, and our students have become our clients or our customers. The only problem with that model is that teaching is not a business - it is an art, a passion, a vocation whose outcomes depend not only on the skills of the educator but also on the willingness of the students to accept what we offer, and as you know, we have many "difficult to serve clients."

The small corner store is a far more realistic way of looking at what teachers do. It's a shame that the powers in charge are instead intent on building the largest edifices possible, perhaps to reflect the size of their egos?

Thanks again for writing

September 30, 2007 at 11:49 AM

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