The Trouble with Ed Schools

by David F. Labaree

American schools of education get little respect. They are portrayed as intellectual wastelands, as impractical and irrelevant, as the root cause of bad teaching and inadequate learning. In this book a sociologist and historian of education examines the historical developments and contemporary factors that have resulted in the unenviable status of ed schools, offering valuable insights into the problems of these beleaguered institutions.
David F. Labaree explains how the poor reputation of the ed school has had important repercussions, shaping the quality of its programs, its recruitment, and the public response to the knowledge it offers. He notes the special problems faced by ed schools as they prepare teachers and produce research and researchers. And he looks at the consequences of the ed school’s attachment to educational progressivism. Throughout these discussions, Labaree maintains an ambivalent position about education schools—admiring their dedication and critiquing their mediocrity, their romantic rhetoric, and their compliant attitudes.

Genres: Education, Grad School

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 11, 2004

Reviews

[Shifting Phases · Rating 4 out of 5]

p. 5: quoting Judith Lanier: "research, in general, suggests that education professors differ from their academic counterparts in that they have less scholarly production and lower social class origins.' Such faculty members demonstrate 'conformist orientations and utilitarian views of knowledge,' which helps 'explain why teacher educators, as some researchers have observed, 'have difficulty in adjusting to and accepting the norms and expectations of academe.' '"

p. 8 "it is interesting to note that most of the other academic units in the university maintain their high social standing by studiously avoiding this kind of commitment to problem-solving, which would put to th test their claims of educational effectiveness."

p. 19 "...I suggest that the focus within American teacher education on practical knowledge over high-status liberal learning has had a negative effect on the exchange value of the credentials of its graduates. Further, I argue that concerns about exchange value have had a powerful effect in transforming the formal setting within which teacher education takes place (from the normal school to the university) and also in diluting the professional content of its curriculum."

(concreteness makes things worth-less in trade for status)

p. 19 "... early in its history the high school emerged as a valued commodity that gave some consumers the means to enhance or reinforce their social position. As a result of this market pressure, high schools became stratified -- across programs within individual schools and across different schools within a community -- according to the exchange value of the credentials offered by each program or school."

p. 20 "The aim of the common school movement, which swept out of New England and across the country in the years before the Civil War, was to have each community establish a publicly funded system of elementary schooling that would provide a common educational experience for all of the young people in that community. In keeping with the American suspicion of centralized state power, the responsibility for paying for the new schools and hiring the new teachers that were required by this expansion fell primarily on local government."

p. 21 "By many accounts, the first public normal school opened in 1839 in Lexington, Massachusetts, under the leadership of Cyrus Peirce... 'it was my aim... to make better teachers; teachers who would understand, and do their business better; teachers who should know more of the nature of children, of youthful developments, more of the subject to be taught, and more of the true methods of teaching; who would teach more philosophically, more in harmony with the natural development of the young mind, with a truer regard to the order and connection in which the different branches of knowledge should be presented to it, and, of course, more successfully.'"

(previous to normal schools, teachers were recruited from among high schools grads (p. 21); "High schools frequently offered a short course in pedagogy..." (p. 22)

p. 22 High status requires monopoly and selectivity. The huge demand for teachers in the lat 19th century meant that "... normal school leaders faced a choice between selectivity and monopoly. They could remain as elite institutions providing an idealized form of professional preparation for a small number of aspiring teachers... and allow other routes to teaching to remain dominant. Or they could expand the system to meet the demand for teachers, establishing an eventual monopoly over access to the profession while risking the dilution of the normal school ideal in the process. They chose expansion."

p. 26 in the late 19c, students "didn't want to be trapped in a single-purpose school that provided them with a narrow vocational education and then channeled them into a single occupational slot. Instead they wanted an advanced educational setting that would, in the classic American fashion, provide them with the maximum degree of individual choice of programs and with access to the wides array of attractive occupational possibilities. In short, they wanted to pursue social mobility and wanted educational institutions to facilitate their pursuit." (students from outside the elite classes see normal schools as unusually accessible places to buy status-granting degrees. Normal schools expand into universities to attract dollars.)

p. 29 "During most of the 19c, normal schools had been operating at the same level as high schools, taking in grammar school graduates and sending them out with something like a high school diploma. But by 1900 these schools were beginning to look mroe like junior colleges, and 'after 1920 two- and three -year normal schools evolved to four-year teachers (sic) colleges.' "

p. 30 "Through the mechanism of the expanding and rising normal school, citizens received access to higher education far beyond what was available through state universities and land grant schools... the upward movement meant that [students] could gain the advantages of both a normal school education (accessibility, low cost, and teacher certification) and a college education (bachelor's degree, institutional prestige and access to a wide range of white-collar jobs beyond teaching). For teachers, the change meant a symbolic elevation, as a college diploma came to represent the minimum educational requirement for entry in the occupation. Teacher educators found themselves evolving from trade schools instructors into college professors, a heady increase in occupational status. And universities found in teacher education a lucrative cash cow..."

p. 38 The "high professions" avoid the stigma of the public purse (and play into the market ideology that public employees are "drones") by styling themselves as "mini-entrepreneurs operating under the fee-for-service model. Teachers cannot make this same claim."

p. 40 "One reason that teaching is such a difficult profession is that its aim is to change the behavior of the client, and thus its success depends on the willingness of the client to cooperate in that enterprise. This effort is complicated by the fact that the client is brought to the classroom under compulsion... in part for these reasons, teachers must live with an extraordinary degree of chronic uncertainty about the effectiveness of their efforts to teach."

p. 42 "Most of the incentives to go to school, legal and otherwise, have to do with encouraging students to attend rather than to learn."

"Motivating volunteers to engage in human improvement is very difficult, as any psychotherapist can attest, but motivating conscripts is quite another thing altogether." (for the consequences of involuntary learning on both teacher and student, read Willard Waller, The Sociology of Teaching.)

P. 45 Lots of stuff about how a teacher constructs their role, why it's not clear which parts of the job are the primary role and which are not, the problem of being liked

p. 71. Ed research as "rural and divergent": "Researchers cannot build towers on the foundations laid by others because these foundations are always being reconstructed. As a result, research work is spread thinly over a wide area, as individuals and groups continually work at rethinking the most basic issues in the field..."

p. 81 "Unfortunately, the newly relaxed philosophical position toward the softness of educational knowledge... can... lead to rather cavalier attitudes by educational researchers toward methodological rigor. ... For many educational researchers, apparently, the successful attack on the validity of the hard sciences in recent years has led to the position that softness is not a problem to be dealt with but a virtue to be celebrated. Frequently the result is that qualitative methods are treated less as a cluster of alternative methodologies than as a license to say what one wants without regard to rules of evidence or forms of validation."

p. 93, on consent and professionalism: "Unlike most professionals, teachers do not apply their expertise toward tends that are set by the client." (compare lawyer doctor or accountant "helps clients pursue goals that they themselves establish.."

p. 95 "In my experience, ... students in education doctoral programs [shift] from what is to what should be, looking for practical solutions before explaining the problem... This often leads to an approach to scholarship ... that is relentlessly, unrealistically, sometimes comically optimistic -- one that suggests that there is an implementable answer to every educational problem and that help is always on the way."

p. 97, critically examining a text: "What's the point? (... what is the author's angle?) What's new? (... what does the author contribute that we don't already know) Who says? (on what data/literature are the claims based?) Who cares? (... why is this important?)

p. 104. Ralph Turner "argues that American education is structured around... giving students wide access to schooling in order to support the open competition for social position... Through the metric of the credit hour, which uses seat time as a proxy for educational accomplishment, the system guarantees not that students know something about a particular subject but only that he or she might have had the opportunity to learn it. This encourages students to focus on the tokens of learning (grades, credits, and degrees) rather than the substance."

p. 114 "As nonrandom and unrepresentative as his sample is, the data are nonetheless devastating because of the relentlessly negative evidence they provide of the lack of professionalism, purpose, and intellectual commitment of the subjects. But Ducharme is still able to see the up-side, drawing conclusions that contradict his own evidence: 'I remain struck with the decency, integrity, and the values of these faculty.' "

p. 115 in Harry Judge's forward to Ducharme: "The real satisfactions [for these professors] lie in working in gentle and hassle-free environments where colleagues are uncritical of one another, and in experiencing a warm good sense of doing some good."

p. 133 "...the ed school's romance with progressivism, like a high school crush, is at best superficial. As I will show in this and the following chapter, the main thrust of educational research and of teacher education in the United States is not progressive but instrumentalist, aimed at serving the administrative needs of the existing school system, whose teaching and curriculum are largely traditional. But, although the practice of educational researchers and the practice of teacher educators is shaped by the traditional structure of education, the language of both is almost uniformly progressive, so the conceptual framing and linguistic patina of research papers and TE programs carry a persistent progressive gloss."

p. 134 "Because of the strong link between ed schools and progressive rhetoric, most insiders to the ed school culture are lacking in either the incentive to examine that culture's attachment to progressivism or the perspective required to analyze that attachments in light of possible alternatives." (which is why, if we want a thorough critique, we must read conservative pundits)

p. 137 "Hirsch calls the progressive approach to curriculum 'formalism,' on the grounds that it concentrates on the form more than the substance of learning... in the words of INTASC Principle #4... Instead of having students accumulate substantive knowledge, the focus is on having them accumulate learning skills that they can apply to knowledge acquisition in the future as needed; in short, the goal is learning to learn... This is the approach that Diane Ravitch was complaining about in a recent exchange in Daedalus, where she argued that progressivism has produced 'the contentless curriculum.'"

Does the "progressive patina" make the majority (of teachers immersed in constructivist philosophy) feel like the minority (since "no one's doing it"?)

p. 139 "What progressives refer to as formalism is the way in which traditional education adheres rigidly to formal patterns of instruction: seeking to transmit highly structured knowledge by means of lecture and textbook directly to passive students, without taking into account the natural learning styles and interests of these students. Thus in the passage quoted above, Dewey equates the 'formal with the 'dead' and the 'mechanical' in schools."

So, both sides are actually more concerned with form than with function?

p. 143 How the patina of progressivism was born: " the union between progressivism and the ed school is not the result of mutual attraction but of something more enduring: mutual need. ... child-centered progressivism lost out in the struggle for control of American school, and the education school lost out in the struggle for respect in American higher education."

p. 146 "The organizing principle of the diverse reform efforts that arose from [turn of the c administrative progressives] was social efficiency. In one sense, this meant restructuring the governance and organization of schooling in order to make it run more efficiently, in line with business management practices (this was the era of the efficiency expert) and with demand for the prudent investment of public funds. A major thrust along these lines was to buffer the administration of schools from political pressures, which they proposed to do by having school boards elected at large rather than by district, and to centralize control in the hands of a small number of professional administrators.

p. 151 The administrative progressive curriculum "introduced tracking and ability grouping into American schools; it introduced ability testing and guidance as ways of sorting students into the appropriate classes.."

p. 153 "Dewey lost the battle for the schools in part because he retired early from the field. His direct involvement in schools lasted only eight years, from the founding of the Laboratory School in 1996 until the time he left Chicago in 1904 and entered the philosophy department at Columbia. After that, his work on education was spun out of memory and woven into theory, giving it an abstract and academic air, and these qualities became an enduring legacy for the pedagogical progressives. IN contrast, the administrative progressives were deeply involved in the schools as administrators, policymakers, curr9iculum developers, educational researchers, and teacher educators. Empirically grounded, personally engaged, and resolutely practical, they enjoyed enormous credibility in promoting their reform agenda. Under these circumstances, ti should be no surprise that Dewey's main effect was on educational rhetoric while Thorndike's main effect was on educational practice."

p. 166 "Progressivism, then, fills an important need for education professors by providing us with a rationale for focusing on the process we know rather than the content we don't."

p. 167 "What consumers were seeking and universities were selling was the exchange value of education more than its use value. Students wanted a degree that would open the doors of social opportunity, which they could cash in for a good job and a comfortable life and the kind of degree that accomplished this for them came from the institutions with the highest reputation. In market terms, it was the relative scarcity of the credential that gave it value more than the quality of learning that was required to obtain it."

p. 174 Hirsch on critical thinking " '...paradoxically, adequate attention to the transmission of broad general knowledge actually does lead to general intellectual skills... Our emphasis on formal skills has resulted in students who are deficient in formal skills, whereas an appropriate emphasis on transmitting knowledge results in students who actually posses the skills that are sought by American educations -- skills such as critical thinking and learning to learn.' " Really? I see an awful lot of zombie grads. On naturalistic pedagogy: "Hirsch argues that there is nothing necessarily natural about the kind of learning we need children to carry out in school. Children learn spoken language on their own through informal interaction with family and friends, he acknowledges, but learning to read is something quite different, since it requires systematic instruction in order to accomplish it effectively and efficiently." (not really. or at least, no more than speaking.)

"He argues that learning is too important to be left to the discretion of minors, that developmentalism leads to delyaing and differentiating students' access to knowledge, and that holistic, project-based instruction fails to establish a solid basis for learning in the individual disciplines." (these are serious problems. need evidence though.)

"It is true, as progressives claim, that learning how to learn enables you to acquire any knowledge you want, but Hirsch is convincing in arguing that accumulating broad forms of knowledge is essential to the acquisition of these larning skills. Also, as he notes, many of the things we want and need children to learn are not the kinds of things they can acqurie easily through informal means, and they may well not be things that children would choose to learn at this point in their lives."

p. 176 "In a review of the literature on teacher change, Richardson and Placier report that teacher education programs are more effective at moving 'students to the point of indicatingon a short-answer or multiple-choice test that they have acquired academci knowledge about teaching and learning' than at changing their fundamental views about teaching...'". "One study after another reported that 'students did not change their beliefs and assumptions about good t4eaching during the course of their teacher education programs'; instead, studies found that 'the novices' perspectives tended to solidify rather than change over the course of the student teaching experiences. ... So, contrary to Hirsch's claim, the ed school's structural position as the conduit for teacher preparation and certification has not given it the kind of power that would be required to divert schools from academic learning to the progresive focus on learning to learn."

p. 181 Jay Mathews from Class Struggle: " 'I have seen other surveys that reflect this majority commitment to the ideals of educational theorist John Dewey... It does not say much about how most of those Dewey fans confuct themselves in the classroom. I have yet to observe at eacher who is not putting ocnsiderable emphasis on specific information and skills. Just how sucessful they are is another matter, but if you know of a study that shows that Dewey's principles are actually practiced in any serious way in many American classrooms, I would like to see it, because it conflicts with what I have found.'"

p. 182 Diane Ravitch from Left BAck: '"Cirricular differentiation meant an academic education for some, a nonacademic education for others... Such policies, packagedin rhetoric about democracy and 'meeting hte needs of the individual child,' encouraged racial and social stratfication in American sschools."

p. 183 "The problem with ed school progressivism, [Ravitch] argues, is not only that it undercuts the academic curriculum in general in favor of vactioanla and student-initiated studies, but that it limits acess to this rich resource to only a few of the most privileged students in the top trakcs and at the best schools. for the less privileged students, the curriculum becomes diffused, dumbed down, vocationalized, and socially limiting."

see the end on Teaching and Learning mind map

[Mark]

This is an extremely cogent analysis of the reasons that education schools are ridiculed as lacking intellectual depth and seriousness. Teachers may want to read, in particular, chapter three, which brings to bear the tools of academic sociological analysis on the relations between teachers and their charges; this is simply one of the best explanations of the stresses teachers face in their professional practice I've yet seen, and ought to be read by demagogues, political hacks (I'm thinking of you here, Joel Klein) and others who blame teachers for our current educational malaise.

[Alisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ed schools are placed at the bottom of the academic totem poll for several reasons -- ultimately, they are the scapegoat for the failure of American Education. After reading this, I'm still certain that I will eventually enroll in one of America's "troubled" education schools.

[Connor Oswald · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for those interested in teacher education

[max]

The Trouble With Ed Schools .... talk about a euphemistic title. Ed schools are the disgrace of our educational establishment. The monstrous idiocies they have long foisted upon a supine populace are as scandalous as they are unforgivable.

This book, written by an educational historian, tells a long and sorry tale of how it all came to pass -- how the ed schools came to have such appallingly low entrance standards, and why, year after sorry year, they continue to crank out semi-literate robots from their intellectual prison camps.

Read it only if you are prepared to despise ed schools more than you already do.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very thorough analysis of all the problems and criticisms of education schools in the USA. While the author is sympathetic to teachers and educational schools in general, he avowals all the faults and threw in many that I had never considered.

Most of the systemic issues cannot be solved, but this book will at least give you an idea of how it would be done if attempted.

[AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insights on school, teaching, teacher ed programs, university culture, and the like.