"Dehumanized" --by Mark Slouka, in Harper's

[Connie Weber]

"Dehumanized" --by Mark Slouka, in Harper's

I've been wanting to post this since late August but had to wait until permissions were granted for online linking. Thanks to Kathy Park Price over at Harper's for being patient with (and responsive to) my regular requests that the magazine put this paper online.

"Dehumanized" by Mark Slouka is one of the best articles I've read this entire year. It may be the single best.

First of all, the writing is superb. It's worth reading if all you were doing is looking at the craft, the art, of writing.

Second, it makes us think. Really think. For me, it's everything I want: from reading the article, I am "reframed," my eyes are focused differently. We're going to have to look square-on at the culture, examine the zeitgeist we're immersed in but forget to see. We're going to have to examine everything we think about what we're doing with education at this time. How did we get here? Where are we going?

It's not that I agree with all the points that Slouka is making, in fact, I think there are many comments within the paper that need to be debated. Certainly the article is worthy of discussion. Very, very worthy. I wish it could be with a bunch of us around the fire in the firepit, out on my farm, with wine and hot chocolate, maybe a meal of Michigan corn on the cob, and chili. Sound good? That would be a calming setting for what I presume would be a rollicking and sometimes contentious discussion.

There's a lot here. I hope you'll take the time to read "Dehumanized." Print it off, read it at your leisure. Store up some energy to come back and continue this conversation, ok?

Enjoy--

[Stephen Lafer]

I sent this article out to many and I did so because I thought it was right on target, even though there are passages that, when decontextualized, may lead to annoying conclusions. A friend who is a physics professor was put off by what he understood to be an anti-science bent. I saw no anti-science, but a call to humanize the discussion that takes place about and around science. In no way, I think, does the author even hint at dilusion of science in the name of humanization, but rather, he advocates for the understanding of science as it is an aspect of human endeavor and, therefore, in need of critique within a humanistic framework. Such a critique would lead to understanding of why too many resist science and turn to religion as the source of information regarding life and its meaning. I am most concerned these days with the issue of belief versus validation in evidence and reason, in faith versus understanding with bases in fact. I know that over the years I have contributed to the questioning of fact as fact in the spirit of individualism and relativism. While doing so, I always retained the understanding that not all that is thought is equal in value and that not all that is believed is equally attached to something resembling good hard fact and good hard reasoning with fact. I think this article points to the need for balance in a world that is some what out of wack and becoming wackier by the moment. I offer the following quote from my mentor, James Moffett.

James Moffett in Harmonic Learning: "One generation of teachers has somehow got to bring through one generations of students who will have thoughts we have not had before. It is clear that the nation’s and the planet’s problems cannot be solved by just thinking along the lines we do now according to our heritage. Societies relying on conventional wisdom are doomed. They need instead some breathtakingly new ideas that will never come from a cookie-cutter curriculum designed just relay what is known and thought now. The next generation must have an education creative enough to survive its inheritance. No country still ransoming its education to nationalistic competition and ethnocentricity will survive. If we don’t enable the young to transform the culture, we won’t have one to transmit. If we construed public education as personal liberation, it would hardly mean more than fulfilling the already professed goal of teaching the young to think for themselves. Truly free inquiry has conflicted so much with the old goal of transmission and Identity maintenance that we have sabotaged our own I1oble aim. This is unnecessary and unwise. If we educate youngsters to transcend their heritage, they will be able to transform it and lead other cultures to do the same. The American way is to pioneer. And the practical way is the spiritual way.

But education can be spiritual without manipulating minds, without teaching Spirituality 101 replete with textbooks, lectures, and midterms (open to qualified juniors and seniors only). In fact, I think schools will become spiritual only in the measure they reduce manipulation. some of it--the overcontrolling of texts and topics and the situations in which reading and writing occur -- is designed to direct thought where adults think it should go. Some of the manipulation--the obsessive testing and the military-industrial managerial systems--is just bureaucratic self-accommodation. Some is state control over both teachers and students. One way or another, in the name of “structure,” youngsters are infantilized. We can’t expect them to understand democracy when most of what they have seen is tyranny. The first step toward spiritual education is to put students in a stance of responsible decision-making and in an unprogrammed interaction with other people and the environment…"

I will also say that, as Moffett has written, that school needs to be harder, but more fun. This, in a way, can be read into the following discussion of education for a democratic society offered by Henry Trueba:

“American philosophers and historians, such as Crevecoeur, Jefferson, Martineau, Toqueville, von Hubner, and Turner deal, in the interpretation of George and Louise Spindler, with the crux of cultural transmission, conflict and accommodation, religious affiliation and of children’s in roles to be played at home in the family, as well as in public life. The Spindlers view American culture as a dialogue between individuals and collectivities, but a dialogue that leads people to rediscover and restructure democratic concepts, behaviors, values and the historical interpretation of such concepts. To recognize the cultural transmission does not occur in a historical vacuum, but that is continuiously shaped by the historical present of Americans as they live their collective conflicts, and find appropriate adaptive strategies that lead them to success, is to recognize the dynamics of American democracy. If conflict is at the essence of democracy, a successful democracy must include the mechanics for conflict resolution. American cultural values, as opposite and polarized as they may seem in history, must be instrumental to resolve conflict. Cultural transmission must reflect the inherent conflicts of democratic processes, the polarization in movements that mirror antagonism, or advocacy for values that are seemingly opposite: conformity or individualism, cooperation or competitio0n, resistance to law and order or submission to law, continuity or discontinuity, religiousness or secularism, adherence to strict moral codes or liberal social mores. Americans’ ability to respect people with opposite views allows them to reach a critical balance of forces; it permits development of cultural movements and cultural discourse in opposite directions. This is American democracy. In the end, cultural continuity or discontinuity, change or resistance to change, conformity or individualism, high moral standards or liberal attitudes, are all emphasized during the cycles of tolerance and intolerance for diversity; cycles that repeat themselves through history, as new comers arrive with new contrasting characteristics but a new commitment to define (or redefine) democracy. These cycles affect mainstream people’s views of newcomers, ethnic cultures and the role of home languages.”

Tougher but truly more humane in that it recognizes the "problems" that arise when people are required to think for themselves.

[Connie Weber]

Well, Stephen, you opened this conversation up with a "hard act to follow"!

Guess I can't just say I really liked the article; it has had a big impact on me? After your beautiful essay, my words are going to fall far short. Especially since I don't have the time to write something so deep and far-reaching at the moment.

But what I remember is after having read the article (twice through) I went through a kind of cosmic shift in my brain. It was an awakening. I had a stack of reading to do to catch up with current periodicals, and Edweek was next. Oh, I was doomed. From my new frame of mind, the one stirred up by Slouka, EVERYTHING--or nearly everything--in Edweek seemed to be illustrating exactly his point. Just for an exercise I marked up the issue with anything relating to business, economics, quantification of learning, competition, "human capital" issues, "mathandscience"... And there it was, I saw it. Evidence.

A giant part of the discussion of teaching and learning has been missing in our current discourse. A sign of the times? What kind of sign?

And just to make it clear: I am a BIG science fan. I study economics as a hobby. I am not someone who at all devalues these subjects.

As I said, my eyes are refocused. I'm seeing through a new lens now. This article was my tipping point.

Has anyone read it yet, besides the two of in the discussion so far?

[Stephen Lafer]

I really had others write major portions of the piece for me. I too am a fan of science, economics too, and just about everything else that I can lay my hands on that helps me to better understand it all. And there should be no need for figuring out proper balance IF we would only think more about interdisciplinary modes of teaching, a problem-solving approach that would allow students to see how useful the different disciplines are in getting meaningful things done. In our school district, we are posting a 56% graduation rate, and below 40% for those still deemed members of minority groups. Our district's solution? A gateway curriculum that increases the number of credits required for graduation in the "hard disciplines." More will not lead to retention and more will not lead to a better store of knowledge or more highly developed reasoning abilities. Relevance could be a factor and so could a higher degree of rigor in the courses, rigor that would compel rather than repel if linked to ends of worth to students. Many years ago I co-authored a book with Stephen Tchudi titled The Interdisciplinary Teachers' Handbook and we taught a summer institute for teachers where we practiced localized interdisciplinary explorations and discussed how those explorations could serve as models for units of study in the classroom. We were on something of a roll until NCLB hit. Maybe we are ready to roll again?

[Connie Weber]

Hi Stephen,

I like your point about not having to figure out a balance if only we could become more broadly interdisciplinary.

Regarding the "ready to roll" question, I think not. It's true that the people who know the most about learning (Howard Gardner and David Perkins would be high on my list) recognize that interdisciplinary studies--if done well--lead to much deeper understanding as well as retention and extension of knowledge. However, this time of extreme emphasis on testing, the "NCLB-era," orients our schooling around a piecemeal approach to learning. Knowledge-bits, that's what we're after. Disconnected, easily acquired and forgotten. But it doesn't have to be that way.

I'm taking advantage of my freedom (as an independent school teacher) to launch my students on Problem-based learning activities. We're previewing, sorting, and selecting problems to explore right now. Every problem is absolutely interdisciplinary, multivariate, complex, and unsolved. Oh, those lucky kids. Doesn't the very idea of exploring things like that make you chomp at the bit?

[Ellen Pham]

ok, I'll try a little...

I wish Slouka hadn't titled his paper "...When math and science rule the school" He spends the first half of his essay talking about how capitalist industrialists are ruling our schools, to the exclusion of any other viable interests/ human activities. I guess if he had named his essay something closer to that, he would have been written off from the start?

He chooses to focus on the deleterious effect this obsession with financial standing has on our civic education, but that is just one area that is suffering. All human values, how we are with each other, our sense of responsibility to grow the good and kind, that there is some greater value to human experience than how much money you can or cannot make- in short, how to go through life without wanting to blow your head off unless you have "X" amount of dollars- it's all being trashed as useless.

What he is saying about the funding of mathandscience is not the crux of the problem; I think he points that out, while at the same time wanting to nurse some wounds his discipline has suffered, and that weakens his argument. That said, I think it is a wonderful, insightful essay- I just think the mathandscience funding is a bit of a bugaboo- the real culprit is this deep economic greed, without values to contain it, and the god that financial standing has become.

We don't live to work, we work to live, right? And if we're lucky, we find joy and direction and fulfillment for our creative and intellectual abilities through our work. But if that isn't to be, we have hobbies, outside interests, families, friends, good works in our communities, nature, everything else that gives us meaning and joy. We also educate for these things... for most of us, most of the time, these are the areas that get us through, that help us be good and bring good into the world.

I put my children through the education system because I want them to be lucky. I want them to find fulfillment in their work lives- it makes happy living so much easier that way.

But more than that, I put my children through the educational system my children because I want them to see more than I see, to understand more than I understand, to imagine and pursue more ways to be happy and fulfilled than I have imagined- I don't want them to inherit my limitations.

I think this is what most parents want, what most children want for themselves. But there is this fear that runs parallel to these aspirations, and that is give our children protection from becoming entrenched in the United States underclass. Non-white and working class parents feel this most sharply, because it's only a step away, and we know how difficult life is there, and how hard it is to get out from underneath.

I was watching Bill Moyers last night interviewing David Simon, the creator of the TV show "The Wire". Simon was sooo smart in what he was saying about the state of our society, I found myself wishing out loud that I could say it as well as he was saying it.

Here he is talking about not thinking our society is going to change or reform soon:

Again, we would have to ask ourselves a lot of hard questions. The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It's the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. And we don't, as we said before, economically, we don't need those people. The American economy doesn't need them. So, as long as they stay in their ghettos, and they only kill each other, we're willing to pay a police presence to keep them out of our America. And to let them fight over scraps, which is what the drug war, effectively, is. I don't think-- since we basically have become a market-based culture and it's what we know, and it's what's led us to this sad d&eaccent;nouement, I think we're going to follow market-based logic, right to the bitter end...

If you don't need 'em, why extend yourself? Why seriously assess what you're doing to your poorest and most vulnerable citizens? There's no profit to be had in doing anything other than marginalizing them and discarding them.

...Listen, capitalism is the only engine credible enough to generate mass wealth. I think it's imperfect, but we're stuck with it. And thank God we have that in the toolbox. But if you don't manage it in some way that you incorporate all of society, maybe not to the same degree, but if everybody's not benefiting on some level and if you don't have a sense of shared purpose, national purpose, then all it is a pyramid scheme. All it is, is-- who's standing on top of whose throat?

----

It's the fear of this happening to your child that is manipulated for political is monetary gain. It keeps the capitalist engine, which at this point in America is more about putting your hand in someone else's pocket than even about making stuff (words taken from the Simon interview), humming along with barely a ripple of dissent.

As a parent, this is not what I have prepared my children for, it is beneath their humanity. And as a teacher, I will not prepare my beloved students for this system, either.

BTW, education in the arts is becoming more and more a privilege for the upper class. Upper class parents don't want their kids learning out of "leveled" readers, doing worksheets, and spending daily or weekly class time preparing for multiple choice tests. Why is that kind of education ok for the rest of our kids?

[Connie Weber]

Ellen,
Thank you for this thoughtful reply. You are saying so much here; you're presenting crucial points for us to keep in mind as parents, teachers, and citizens.
I'm going to check out the David Simon/Bill Moyers reference. Very pertinent. Really happy that you've joined this discussion.

[Ellen Pham]

Oh Connie, it is disheartening to glance back through my reply and notice all the typos where I edited/cut/pasted - why didn't I proofread a little better??!

Oh well : ) I ran across a quote by Howard Gardner that seems to say what I am saying about why we educate our children, but more succinctly:

I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do...

Quote taken from an article on Gardner at infed.org

[Connie Weber]

Don't worry about those unimportant details in your post--it's the substance that counts, and such substance it has! The Gardner quote is perfect; I'm glad to see his sentiments quoted here. Gardner is a force for "good" in the world. Have you looked into his studies on GoodWorks? Important investigations.
Ellen, you are such a good resource-sharer, finder, discussion-promoter.

[Ian Carmichael]

Thanks for the link, Connie.

I confess to only skimming the paper so far - and I think there's a strong point made. But it's not made far enough. Where I am, I don't see maths and science ruling the roost either. I see post-school commodification - where techniques are grist to the data-mongers/massagers mills.
There's lots of English, lots of Maths, lots of Science - and P.E..., and little translation into life - short on skills, short on wisdom, short on principles. A great emphasis on fitnesss peralleling an epidemic of obesity. A great emphasis on Science and a flowering of immense superstition, a great emphasis on Maths - and an economic crisis from the beancounters of El Dorado! And it's no better in the humanities - but, I suggest, it's no worse either. I just read a very cogent article on "The First R" by Kevin J Browne. Check it out in the Amazon reader. We (in general) don't love reading any more - nor problem solving - nor growth - too self-content, and with too much self-content there's no need to know, no need to find out, no need to grow, no need to make the world better..
The educator's challenge - to wake up ourselves and our charges - dreaming an instantiable future, thinking, analysing, (from a framework of disciplined minds - not drinking a vitamised slurry of factioids).
But I'm running off at the mouth now. Time to pause and reflect myself. (soon!) It does matter what we think, it does matter what we know, it does matter how we know, and it does matter what we build out these things. (And there are levels of quality - being expert in engineering is potentially more contributory to the world than being expert in Scrabble. It's also potentially more destructive to the world if the project developed by the expert engineers is rapacious and mercilessly exploitative. Scrabble is always irrelevant - the way the experts play it at least. [You must be able to spell all the words, but you don't need to know what they mean!])

[Connie Weber]

Ian,
Interesting reference to the book Philosophical Essays. Looks like I'm going to have to get that. I love how you're linking the essay by Browne to the conversation here. I only got as far as the reference to former Secretary of Education William Bennett, and that made me want to dig out my signed copy of What Works ("To Connie, may others follow your example," believe it or not--a student's parent who worked with him gave me the book.)
Ah, Ian, so much to think about, and you are such a thinker. Always bringing philosophy into the conversation; very grateful for that.
Hey, remember that summer you spent in the great libraries of England, endlessly studying, poring over the works of some of world's greatest thinkers? Are you getting enough time to read these days?
I love what you said about our challenge: "to wake up ourselves and our charges."
And I do think you're right--the issue is more accurately focused on commodification of learning and teaching.

[Ian Carmichael]

Ah, those Oxford days were super - simple, uncluttered, great people, great libraries. (and great sightseeing!!) Never enough time to read! Worse - never enough time to think!
(and so I was properly taken aside and to task for my glib comment that being too self-content is our besetting problem. Hadn't thought that through well.)

Then again - assuming education was once OK, what went wrong to feed the new visionaries that our job is primarily to skill up for economic growth? For surely back then (if ever there was a then) we were humanised, thoughful exemplars of liberal education. Yet now the beneficiaries of such humanising, thought-provoking, wide-ranging education are shaving down the scope of (formal) education and locking it down to fitting cogs to the machine.
Perhaps there never was a then. There's just a now, and the traditions of utopian education. Which leaves the open challenge - what am I doing to humanise, provoke thought and expand the horizons within my classroom? Despite all the constraints, there is still a wide scope for my rebelliousness to be expressed. But it needs to be expressed now by my flawed self, to my semi-transigent students in a rigidifying educational structure. There is, nevertheless, room to move, there is a chance to change, and my flaws don't negate my best. And so it goes - for each of us.

[Connie Weber]

Ian, you are on the mark again (are you ever not?!) with your questioning and philosophizing. I wonder... was education indeed "ok" before this? Are we making a huge assumption here? But from what I have studied, there is a new wave of extreme emphasis on "things quantified and measurable." I worry about what's getting lost as a result of that trend. (Creativity, arts, open-ended assignments, students being able to drive a significant component of their studies, deep reading, long pondering, reflective space, inventiveness, time for exploratory collaboration...)
Your questions are de best! "What am I doing to humanize, provoke thought, and expand horizons?" We have to seek out that room to move, the chance to change.
One thing, though, swimming upstream is tiring. The hopeful side is that doing so might make us more fit, increasing our capacity to continue. Especially if we have encouraging colleagues (like you).