Transcript The Purpose of American Public Education

The Purpose of American
Public Education
American schools serve multiple
purposes
Passing on the cultural heritage
Basic instruction
Economic Purposes
Civic purposes-
Contradictory Purposes
 The problems of American schools are
political
 Americans do not disagree so much about
how to make schools better as they do
about the purposes of schools
 What Americans have to do is to make
choices among goals about which we do not
agree
Contradictory Purposes
 Why can’t we agree on the purposes of
schooling
 Schools are political institutions and in a
democratic society politics implies conflict
 Education is a public good-The purpose of
education is to provide society with benefits
that can be collectively shared
Contradictory Purposes
Education is also a private good—the purpose
of education is to gain a competitive
advantage over others, a credential that will
distinguish one individual from others
Democratic Equality
 The task of schools is to prepare individuals
to assume their role as active and
participating citizens
 Schools must be accessible to all children
and provide them with the knowledge and
skills of citizenship
 Education is a public good
Social Efficiency
 The major role of schools is economic and
involves preparing students for their
occupational roles
 The school as a sorting agency—curriculum
differentiation
 The principal mechanism of social efficiency
is tracking or ability grouping, which serves
to stratify students and channel them to their
appropriate occupational destiny
Social Efficiency
 Education is a public good
Social Mobility
 Education is a commodity whose purpose is
to provide individual with a competitive
advantage over others
 What does the school do for my children?
 Education as a commodity to be purchased
with the intent of getting more of it than
one’s competitors
Social Mobility
 The value of education is as a credential
 Education is a private good designed to help
the individual get ahead of others
How Contradictory Goals
Operate
 These goals can work together or in
opposition
 Democratic equality requires schools that
are widely accessible so that everyone can
be equipped with the skills and knowledge
they need to be included in the political
process
Contradictory Goals
 Social mobility requires accessible schools
so that individual merit and accomplishment
can be rewarded
 The same condition, accessibility serves
different purposes. For those committed to
democratic equality, accessibility allows for
equal economic and social outcomes. For
those committed to social mobility, it allows
for unequal outcomes
Contradictory Goals Operate
in Tandem
 Social mobility and social efficiency both see
education as having a market goal of
preparing individuals for their occupational
roles
 Both goals accept the principle of unequal
outcomes
 Those committed to social mobility accept
unequal outcomes because they believe
that privileges depend on merit
Operating in Tandem
 Those committed to social efficiency also
believe in unequal outcomes. They hold to
this view because they believe that the
purpose of education is to prepare a
workforce that will promote economic growth
The Dominant Role of Social
Mobility
 Schools once sought to advance the public
interest through the training of good citizens
and the preparation of a skilled workforce
 Today schools are more likely to promote
the private interests of individual success
and advancement
 Schooling has become less about learning
and more about obtaining the correct
credential to get ahead
Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)
 The Bill for the More General Diffusion of
Knowledge
 Divide the colony into “hundreds”
(subdivision of a county) and establish
“hundreds” school to provide all free white
children—both male and female—with 3
years of free instruction in reading, writing,
arithmetic, and history (roughly 166 counties
and 10 “hundreds” in a county)
Thomas Jefferson
 Establish 20 grammar schools that would
provide instruction in Latin, Greek, English
grammar, geography higher arithmetic that
would prepare for college
 College of William and Mary
 The brightest boy in each “hundreds”
school was to be selected (girls only needed
3 years of schooling) and sent forward to the
grammar school at public expense
Thomas Jefferson
 Each year the best boy from the grammar
school would be continued at public
expense for up to six years and the residue
dismissed. “By this means twenty of the
best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish
annually” and the brightest sent forward to
the College of William and Mary
 Schools were accessible to those who could
pay
Thomas Jefferson
 Meritocracy-rule of the most able
 Aristocracy-rule of the few usually based on
nobility or wealth
 Aristocracy of talent
What Makes a Good School?
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Inputs vs. outcomes
A good school is one that has certain curricular
and pedagogical characteristics
There are many ways to educate a child with the
outcomes being the most important
Criteria of good schools: parent, teacher,
student satisfaction, degree to which school has
achieved its goals; ability of schools to produce
students who possess democratic behavior and
attitudes