Neighborhoods and Networks - Campus Compact



Neighborhoods and Networks

gary daynes

19 January 2005

“If we insist on argument as the essence of education, we will defend democracy not as the most efficient but as the most educational form of government.”

--Christopher Lasch, Revolt of the Elites, 171

Introduction

In this essay, a consideration of how the schools might better enculturate the young in American democracy, I aim to do four things. First, I will lay out definitions of social and political democracy that fit the structure and goals of schools, not political parties or government institutions. Second, I will connect these definitions to metaphors—the neighborhood and the network—to uncover the analogies that exist between learning and democracy. Third, I will tell a story of educators who, inspired by the educational power of these metaphors, have helped others learn democratically. Fourth, I will draw out of these stories a set of suggestions that might be applicable to our current efforts to fulfill the public purposes of education. Taken together these four efforts suggest an approach, tied to American traditions and the central goals of schools, that may be a profitable way to understand the inter-relationship between learning and democracy.

1. Schooling as the basis for defining social and political democracy

All of the moral dimensions of teaching are beautiful in their intention and vexing in their implementation. But none is more complicated than “enculturating the young in a social and political democracy.”(Goodlad, Soder, and Sirotnik, 1990) There are many reasons that this is so. The verb “to enculturate” calls for an indirect approach to the task, not the sort of straightforward transfer of information at which schools excel. The task of enculturating the young does not make clear who does what to whom, or in what way. The terms “social” and “political” democracy are troublesome, for there is little consensus about what they may mean, or how a school would know if a student, especially one not old enough to vote, had come to understand their importance. (Edgar, 1998) Hand-wringing about young peoples’ understanding of democracy is epidemic, with dozens of surveys (and an on-going skit on The Tonight Show) documenting the civic illiteracy of Americans. Schools, it is true, are generally urged to respond to gaps in civic knowledge. But while the public schools have always claimed some sort of role in strengthening America’s civic life, calls for improving math education, or literacy, or science skills far outweigh those seeking heightened civic learning. The No Child Left Behind legislation, to cite only the most obvious example, sets performance standards for reading/language arts, mathematics, and science, but not civic knowledge. (Department of Education, 2003)

Given these difficulties it is worth asking why schools should care about enculturating the young in a social and political democracy at all. There are, after all, many parts of human life in which the public schools happily play only a peripheral role. Doctors, not teachers, care for the ill. Engineers, not 6th graders, build bridges. And food appears in grocery stores thanks to farmers, not school boards. Even if we narrow our focus to civic life, it is still not clear that schools should play a leading role. The nation’s political system has spawned an enormous civic apparatus—millions of bureaucrats work for one governmental agency or another, the political parties raise and spend billions of dollars on elections, laws and lawsuits are our central way of responding to problems—that trudges along without respect to the work of the schools (Schudson, 1998). And many school-based efforts to increase the civic engagement of students meet with opposition from parents, churches, political parties, interest groups, and attorneys, all of whom worry that the schools are out to bias the young in favor of one or another political view.

One might respond that these political and civic practices are of such a widespread or questionable nature that only an institution as large as the public schools could possibly fix them. Or one may argue that schools are the places where things are taught, and if young people need to learn the skills of democracy, they should be taught those skills at school. That may be true. But I want to suggest that the schools must do more to enculturate the young in a social and political democracy for their own good, not primarily for the overall good of the nation. I believe this because the best school-based effort can still be wrecked by trends outside the schools. I believe it because the schools’ main work, making learning happen, is improved by attending to social and political democracy. And I believe it because the public schools are home to resources—historical, intellectual, pedagogical, human—strong enough to make the change. This is not to say that the schools should ignore the needs of the broader society. It is to simply say that the schools can improve the broader society inasmuch as they create a culture that recognizes and learns from the social and political democracy in their classrooms, halls, and boardrooms.

“Democracy,” “Social democracy,” and “political democracy” are phrases in wide and contradictory use. This should be of no surprise given that the American intellectual tradition is a messy mix of republicanism, liberalism, and religion, while the American public is a hybrid of most of the world’s peoples. As a result, “democracy” can simultaneously evoke liberty, equality, and Truth; a “social democracy” can at once refer to a widely diverse people and a people who share core beliefs and a standard of living; and a “political democracy” can suggest a formal system of government where decisions are made by a handful of people and a system of government where the voice of the people is heard. None of these definitions consider schools—they are based in visions of nations or of ideals. No school could possibly enculturate students in (as opposed to teaching them about) such a complicated blend of ideas.

This complexity suggests that schools would be wise to put forward definitions of social and political democracy that promote their core commitment—to make learning happen. If schools are going to enculturate the young in a social and political democracy, and the meaning of those terms varies widely, then working definitions of them should be flexible enough to meet the needs of schools and their constituents. Definitions must also contain processes that allow those needs to be debated and defined in public. Those processes must be broadly useful--in the classrooms, the halls, and the boardrooms of the schools. And those processes should bring about good learning, not just in civics, but in any content area.

I’d like to propose a way of defining social and political democracy that can meet these constraints, that is, definitions that are friendly to schools and to democracy. Social democracy is the set of conditions that result when unrelated people choose to regularly put themselves in public contact with each other for mutual benefit. Political democracy is the set of conditions that result when unrelated people choose to jointly and publicly make decisions about issues that bear on the intersection of their lives. There are several points worth noting about these definitions. First, they are based in the relationships of people to each other, not to laws or abstract principles. Second, social and political democracy are themselves related. Political democracy cannot exist without social democracy; political democracy is the way in which people in social democracies get things done. Third, these definitions describe environments or settings, not outcomes. One might reasonably expect that the conditions resulting from social democracy in Philadelphia will be different from those in Payson, and that those in Payson this year will differ from those in Payson in 2050. Fourth, they are local. The relationships that matter are voluntary and person-to-person if not face-to-face. Fifth, they demand publicity and are hostile to anonymity and secrecy. Sixth, they include many of the practices and environments that are common in the public schools.

2. Neighborhoods and networks as metaphors for democracy and for learning

The definitions I’ve proposed above are abstract and, as such, probably not of much use. So allow me to attach them to metaphors to give them more vitality and to show how they are related to learning.

Social democracy grows out of a setting that looks like a healthy neighborhood. By “healthy neighborhood” I do not mean subdivisions with lush lawns and plentiful amenities. Instead, I mean the sort of neighborhoods that make great cities flourish. Jane Jacobs, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, noted that American cities began to die in the 1950s when governments embraced urban renewal, knocking down architecturally, economically, and demographically diverse neighborhoods and replacing them with predictable, homogeneous developments. Those older neighborhoods, like the one Jacobs inhabited in Greenwich Village in New York City, shared several characteristics: their parks and wide sidewalks invited people outside, and by so doing put enough “eyes on the street” to make streets safe. Those people sought goods and services locally, ensuring that the economy stayed vital. The vital local economy ensured that relationships between members of the neighborhood were reciprocal and beneficial. And those relationships allowed the neighborhood to watch out for itself. Jacobs wrote, “We shall have something solid to chew on if we think of city neighborhoods as mundane organs of self-government….I am using self-government in its broadest sense, meaning both the informal and formal self-management of society.” (Jacobs, 1993, 149) For Jacobs, then, the processes that grew out of neighborhoods led to people who were able to live meaningful, interconnected lives.

Political democracy emerges from a network of neighborhoods. Jacobs understood that neighborhoods alone could not ensure their own success. After all, one small New York City neighborhood would be unable to provide every service that its residents needed. Nor would it be able to protect itself from decisions made by the government of the entire city. But she noted that neighborhoods were often connected to each other in districts—collections of neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods, though, were not necessarily contiguous. Instead, they were connected by interest, and by people whom Jacobs called “hop-skip people,” that is, people whose predilections connect them and their home neighborhoods with other neighborhoods in the city. Jacobs’ prototypical hop-skip person was Eleanor Roosevelt—a woman who knew “unlikely people” all over the place, making communication between neighborhoods possible. (Jacobs, 175-176; See also Gladwell, 2002, 34-38) If neighborhoods had similar interests, were connected by hop-skip people, and communicated between themselves, then they could form a relationship that would allow them to work together in a political democracy.

Sociologists, physicists, and computer scientists have noted that the development of major new social systems follows much the same process. The internet, for example, emerges out of the connection of nodes of information. Influential websites develop neighborhoods among themselves—tightly linked groups of sites with similar themes or concerns. Those neighborhoods are then connected to other neighborhoods by the efforts of people who devote themselves to building connections. The greater the number of connections, the greater the influence of the neighborhood. (Barabasi, 2002) The result is a network that without central leadership manages to do a good job of providing information to people seeking it. (Weinberger, 2002; Watts, 2003) Global democracy movements have had the same set of characteristics. The protests in Tienanmin Square, the Velvet Revolutions, and the anti-globalization movement were all peopled by collections of small groups, united in a network. None had a single identifiable leader or an overarching plan, but each made substantial steps towards a more democratic world by connecting neighborhoods of activists into a network of action. (Zhao, 1998; Notes from Nowhere, 2003) Now, one might say that all sorts of unpleasant groups—Al-Qaeda, for example—share the same organizational model. That is true. But while Al-Qaeda does all of its work in secrecy, the examples I have mentioned—the internet and democracy movements--do their work in public, inviting all who wish to join with them to be part of the planning. Their public work is announced in advance, and their assessments of their strengths and weaknesses are collaborative as well.

Good schools look like the internet and democracy movements. Successful classrooms are learning neighborhoods of students, teachers, and parents. Those neighborhoods, in turn, connect in a way that allows the school to govern itself, to share information about successes and failures, and to innovate in a way that helps the neighborhoods (at school and in the surrounding community) become healthier. Such definitions of social and political democracy would be interesting but useless to schools unless they had something to do with learning. Fortunately, they do. Steven Johnson, a close reader of Jacobs’ work, has pointed out similarities between the ways that (healthy) cities work and the way that complex, self-organizing networks, like the brain, function. (Johnson, 2001, 118) In the brain, neurons send out axons that seek to make connections with other neurons. A good connection leads to the creation of a synapse or junction between those cells. Recent studies in cognitive science show that learning takes place when the brain so regularly makes connections between the correct neurons that they form a permanent relationship. Robert Leamnson, a professor of biology and a frequent teacher of college freshman, has gone so far as to argue that the way we structure learning should pay attention to the function of the brain. He notes that synapses can only develop and stay strong through repeated experiences. The task of the teacher is to put the learner in situations where her brain is forced to make the right connections—to form networks of neurons. (Leamnson, 1999, 11-13) The task of the learner is to train herself to think in ways that make these connections. That is, the teacher enculturates the student in learning.

3. Neighborhoods, networks, democracy, and learning: a case study

I have suggested that democracy, learning, and schooling are similar, in that each results from the development of healthy neighborhoods connected into networks. If this is indeed true, there must be some evidence of it beyond the existence of an analogy. After all, showing a metaphorical resemblance is not the same thing as showing a meaningful relationship. Pizzas look like wheels but no bicycle travels on a pepperoni pie. And so it is not enough to simply argue that because they look alike they are similar. My argument does not open itself up to empirical study either, since the way that I’ve defined social and political democracy means that two similar efforts to enculturate the young might have opposite outcomes, or that dissimilar efforts might produce similar results. So rather than offer a set of proofs, I will tell a story, one that describes the relationships between specific neighborhoods and networks, democracy and learning in hopes that such a story will spark more thinking about this moral dimension of teaching. In particular I want to suggest through this story that there are certain practices that support the development of social and political democracy.

The story ends up in Marne Isakson’s classroom at Independence High School where she and her students have compiled a remarkable record of life in Provo. That record contains the voices of many of Provo’s least known, most marginalized residents—the poor, the elderly, immigrants. The students who have compiled it are, by traditional measures, unlikely to succeed. But their efforts to document life in Provo have turned their classroom into a neighborhood of learning—a social democracy—and helped improve the likelihood that Provo will become a political democracy. It begins in the blocks surrounding Chicago’s meatpacking district in the late 19th century, a rougher place than Provo to be sure. The availability of work in the slaughterhouses drew immigrants from across the world. Slavs, Greeks, Lithuanians, Italians, and Jews clustered in the area, working long hours in deplorable conditions, then returning to the disease-ridden tenements that lined to city’s garbage-packed streets.

Chicago in the 1880s was neither a political nor a social democracy. Ethnic and linguistic differences kept immigrant groups isolated from each other except when they clashed over jobs or territory. The city itself was governed by a notorious political machine, one that made little effort to listen to the concerns of the aliens who inhabited the city. Women, regardless of their citizenship, had no vote.

When Jane Addams arrived in the city, fresh from a trip to London’s impoverished East End and anxious to improve the lot of the immigrant poor, she had no overarching plan to reform Chicago. Instead, she hoped to create a social settlement, a place like London’s Toynbee Hall, where university faculty, students, and community members would work in common to improve urban life. Toynbee Hall was founded by Oxford University students who were intent on living out their religious convictions by working with the poor, not fixing them from afar. Addams’ social settlement, Hull House, had the same goal. Addams moved into the building, a mansion in its former days but rundown since, in September 1889.

Though its original conception was to provide uplift for the poor, Hull House soon turned its attention to education. Addams, her fellow Hull House residents, and people from the neighborhood found common cause in learning. In short succession they opened a daycare facility for the children of working women, a kindergarten, a hall for public debate, a gymnasium, and a coffee house. All of these places were public, and as such drew a widely diverse set of people together, in much the same way that parks and wide sidewalks did in Jacobs’ New York. The creation of public places made the creation of learning experiences possible. Hull House hosted the first citizenship training courses in the US, a series of college extension classes, a community theatre, a living history museum, and a civic research effort that studied, among other things, truancy, disease, sanitation, drug abuse, infant mortality, labor conditions, housing conditions, and children’s reading habits. (Elshtain, 2002, p. xix) Hull House was also the site where dozens of clubs and several unions were birthed, and where a resolution to at least one major labor dispute—the Pullman Strike of 1894—was negotiated.

All of these efforts shared two characteristics: they emerged from the common wishes of Hull House’s founders and people from the community, and they used learning as a way to knit disparate people together into a neighborhood that could make decisions about its own well-being and that of its citizens. An example will perhaps make this point clearer. In the 1890s Chicago was governed by a corrupt political machine. As a result many municipal employees owed their jobs to corruption, not competence. In the neighborhood surrounding Hull House garbage collectors were the most corrupt of city employees. Addams and her neighborhood took on the city administration, both through protest and study. Some neighborhood women tracked trash collection while others measured the health effects of mounds of garbage on the street. (On one local road eighteen inches of compacted trash covered the pavement). The combined educational and political efforts paid important dividends. It gave women and children a real experience with learning, it improved the well-being of the neighborhood, and it connected them to other women intent on reforming the city. (Elshtain, 168-173) Jane Addams sometimes called Hull House a “protest against a restricted view of education.” This is what she had in mind; that Hull House would become a place where learning helped create right relationships between people, who in turn worked together for mutual benefit. (Addams, 1910/1998)

If Jane Addams is renowned today it is as the “mother of social work” or the woman who nominated Teddy Roosevelt as the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate in 1912, or as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. But Addams’ renown during her lifetime sprang from two other sources—her prolific speaking and writing schedule which exposed her to hundreds of thousands of people, and her ability to make those people feel that she was their friend. Over 100 social settlements sprang up in the US in the decades following Hull House’s establishment. Many of those settlements were staffed by former residents of Hull House and inspired by Hull House’s story. Addams’ network of friends spread around the world, connecting educators and reformers interested in democracy, peace, and education.

One of Addams’ friends was John Dewey, the educator and philosopher. Dewey came to know Addams before he moved to Chicago from Michigan, and their friendship continued through the rest of her life. Dewey stayed at Hull House in 1891, later writing to Addams that “I cannot tell you how much good I got from the stay at Hull House. My indebtedness to you for giving me an insight into matters there is great….Every day I stayed there only added to my conviction that you had taken the right way.” (Dewey, 1892) Addams’ work at Hull House inspired much of Dewey’s thinking about education and democracy. Dewey’s two major works of educational philosophy, “The School as a Social Center” and Democracy and Education, bore the imprints of Hull House as did his argument in “The School as a Social Settlement” that “Closer contact with neighborhood conditions not only enriches school work and strengthens motive force in the pupils, but it increases the service rendered to the community.” (Cited in Daynes and Longo, 2004, 9)

Dewey’s theories of democratic education have been tremendously influential (and not without controversy). I do not mean to examine the broad scope of his influence here. I only wish to note that Dewey and his ideas played a key role in the history of education in Utah. In 1901 Dewey visited Brigham Young Academy at the invitation of Benjamin Cluff, the President of the Academy and one of Dewey’s former students. Dewey delivered a series of lectures to the faculty and students. He told his listeners on the first afternoon that he would speak on “psychological topics in their bearing upon education.” (Dewey, 1901, 1) But for Dewey psychology and education were never far from society and community. Throughout his lectures he emphasized the importance of social experience in learning not just for the well-being of the child, but also for the well-being of society. Dewey put it this way: “We should not, for instance, give much for the education which did not impart to the individual a sense of loyalty and devotion, an enthusiasm for the country and state and community to which he belonged. We should regard such education as very defective morally. We should regard it as practically inculcating selfishness, if this complete development we talk about of all the powers, did not lead to a better ability to serve the community and a greater interest in serving it.” (Dewey, 1901, 33)

Dewey’s lectures at BYA, and a subsequent visit to the University of Utah had the practical effect of drawing dozens of Utah educators east to study either at the University of Chicago or at Columbia University, where Dewey moved in 1904. One who chose to enter the University of Chicago was Henry Aldous Dixon who studied at Chicago from 1914 to 1917. (Isakson, 2001, 14)[1] Dixon was born in Provo in 1890 and graduated from the Academy just prior to leaving for Chicago. While little is know of Dixon’s experience in Chicago it is certain that his training was heavily influenced by Dewey’s legacy, and that he would have known about Addams, both because Hull House continued to attract the best University of Chicago students and because Addams’ Carnegie Hall speech opposing the First World War made her a figure of great controversy in the city at exactly the time he was there. (Elshtain, 226-235)

When Dixon returned to Utah he began an illustrious career as an educator and public servant. Dixon taught at Weber College and BYU, served as the President of Weber College and Utah State University, represented Utah in the US House of Representatives, and, as superintendent, led Provo School District from 1920 to 1924 and 1932 to 1937. (Isakson, 14)

Dixon’s leadership and his teaching bore the mark of a deep commitment to democracy in education. He wrote in his 1937 Superintendent’s report that “Democratic [school] administration…dictates that it should be just as easy for administrative policies to start with the teachers and go to the top as it is for these policies to start at the top and go to the bottom, providing the proper respect is given to each individual in his office.” (Dixon, 1936-7, 5) He used this philosophy to guide the work of the Provo School District and of Weber College. While at Weber, Dixon, the faculty, and citizens from Ogden collaborated to create a strategic plan for the college, with Dixon noting that “In order for the college to remain sensitive to community needs it is necessary to seek community opinion and community facts.” (Dixon, 1944, 42). Teachers in the Provo School District created a “Map of Values” laying out their core educational commitments. These maps then formed the philosophical basis of the curriculum. (Isakson, 14-16)

One example of the connection between Dixon’s leadership and democratic education will perhaps suggest how this story pertains to enculturating the young in a democracy. The social studies faculty of the district created a shared vision for social studies education. That vision, reminiscent of Addams and Dewey, suggested that the social studies should, among other things:

• “Bring teachers and pupils to realize that the problems of life are not entirely problems pertaining to one subject matter field but problems that draw upon experiences in many fields.”

• “Have the pupils’ environment form the base of the course of study.”

• “Favor the inclusion of controversial issues in the social studies.”

• “Take the school into the community to visit its historic spots, industries, civic enterprises, institutions, and community resources.”

• “Include for consideration those life problems that require the use of vital aspects of various subject matter fields for their solution. Emphasize contemporary real problems.”

• “Develop a core curriculum consisting of English, social studies, and science which is developed as a unity and proposes to develop desirable citizenship.” (Cited in Isakson, 16)

The practical impact of this view of learning was a study of the Deer Creek Dam Project, then under way in Provo Canyon. Students and teachers collaborated with the workers and engineers building the dam to study its potential impact on Provo’s water supply and economy. In so doing the students developed their understanding of several disciplines—social studies, math, and art among them—and of the interconnections of human beings in a democracy. (Isakson, 27)

The story of Henry Aldous Dixon, his students, and the Deer Creek Project disappeared from local memory over the succeeding decades, only to be uncovered by Marne Isakson when she worked as an administrator in the Provo School District in the late 1990s. She came across copies of Dixon’s report, interviewed some of his former students, and wrote a paper laying out the implications of the Deer Creek Dam Project for literacy education. And then she took the story a step further, using it as inspiration for her work with at-risk students at Independence High School. During the 2003-2004 school year her students (with her considerable support) devised projects that simultaneously improved their literacy skills, their understanding of their community, and the working of democracy in education. One unit, Teen Power, will give some sense of the quality and scope of their work. Marne’s students first sought examples in literature of young people contributing to the world. They read Rose Blanche, a story of children surviving concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and Out of the Dust, a tale of survival in the Dust Bowl. They studied the efforts of other young people to reduce pollution and end racism. Then they turned their attention to their school, finding several ways to contribute to the well-being of others. One group lobbied their fellow students in favor of limiting the passing period to three minutes in order to reduce passing-period fights. A second researched desk sizes before winning support from the school administration for the purchase of tables and free-standing chairs in order to accommodate larger students. A third group, disgusted by the odor escaping from a sewer vent outside their classroom, worked their way through the district administration, finally winning the superintendent’s support for ending the sewer smell. (Isakson, 2004, n.p.)

I came to know of Marne’s work when we spoke about her research on Dixon. Then, a year ago, some of my history students worked with her students on a study of graffiti and teen life in Provo. I cannot “prove” that Marne’s approach to literacy caused her students to be better readers. But I know that it made them, and my students, members of a community of learners, citizens of this place, part of a network stretching back to Jane Addams and the neighbors of Hull House, participants in a social and political democracy.

4. Implications for education, implications for democracy

I have told this story, in this way, for two reasons. First, the story itself is an example of the ways that neighborhoods and networks work together for education and democracy. Three key neighborhoods fill the story—the 19th Ward in Chicago’s meatpacking district, home to Hull House, the catchment area of Provo High School in the 1930s, and Marne Isakson’s classroom at Independence High School today. And they are connected by the actions of four key people—Jane Addams, John Dewey, Henry Aldous Dixon, and Marne Isakson. The format of this story is a familiar one, I am sure. And so it should be, if learning really takes place the way I have argued. Too often we consider learning to be solely about acquiring knowledge. But when my students tell stories about their learning they almost always describe information in a context of connections. And the means of connection is almost always a person, a teacher.

The second purpose behind this story is to suggest what it might mean to enculturate the young in a social and political democracy. The episodes in this story suggest a set of six lessons about how to bring about social and political democracy.

• Put learning first. This is perhaps an obvious point, but it is one we have not learned well. Think, for example, of the recent election cycle. The most visible civic efforts on BYUs campus took place outside of the classroom. Voter registration drives and candidate speeches are valuable efforts to be sure. But if they are not connected to learning they do not advance the work of schools. Or think of the standard way that we teach civics. Courses in government focus largely on national political institutions and processes, not on local issues. And, the concern for social and political democracy tend to be isolated to those classes. (Levine and Lopez, 2004; Torney-Purta and Barber, 2004) If learning is a matter of connecting then it is as important to attend to democracy in the biology as it is in civics.

• See the neighborhoods. As I have argued throughout, schools are full of social democracies. Classrooms take the form of a social democracy. They are groups of unrelated people who have chosen to put themselves in public contact for mutual benefit. But we too rarely take advantage of this social democracy. We teach classes as if the students in them do not matter—the curriculum, not the learning reigns. If we do acknowledge the existence of neighborhoods in our classrooms it is to try and reduce their influence. We separate students who know each other, we expect silence. When we do these things we push the relationships between students underground, where they are much more likely to impede than promote learning.

• Attend to networks. If learning and democracy take place when people connect ideas or themselves to others, then the building of connections should be a central concern of education. Many local public schools do a good job of this, using faculty meetings wisely and making on-going, concerted efforts to connect with parents and local businesses. (It is among the ironies of NCLB that in an effort to improve education it is making it more difficult for the public schools to retain teachers conversant in more than one discipline.) But attention to networks is almost nowhere to be seen at the university. Universities hire faculty members for their research expertise and then bemoan the lack of collegiality in departments. We say we value general education yet fail to provide a coherent curriculum or an intentional effort to help students make connections across disciplines. Both the public schools and universities would be wise to hire more “hop-skip people”—the sorts of people who can tie together neighborhoods of learners into a richer, more connected whole and do more to provide hop-skip experiences for their students.

• Value diversity for learning’s sake. We provide much rhetorical support for diversity, and, in many of our public schools, have ethnically diverse student bodies. But the story at the core of this presentation suggests that diversity is valuable for learning inasmuch as it becomes part of the public conversation about learning. We do too little to draw out the differences in experience and perspective of our students, and we make too little of them in learning. James Suroweiki’s recent book, The Wisdom of Crowds, notes that groups of people are much better at making decisions than are “experts” if those groups include people with divergent views, not people whose experience ensures that they will agree from the outset. (Surowieki, 2004).

• Work in public. Hull House, the Deer Creek Project, and the work of Marne Isakson’s students were public efforts in three ways. First, they took place in public spaces, not in secrecy. Second, they included a public beyond those who were officially responsible for the project. Third, their decisions were made after long public deliberation. Much of the public’s cynicism about democracy is due to a sense that decisions are made behind closed doors or are heavily influenced by insiders. And much of the cynicism about education stems from a belief that educators have their own agendas, separate from those in the community. In both cases I believe the cynicism is overstated. But we would be wise to learn from it, and to find ways to create more public spaces where more on-going public conversations were being held.

• Be explicit about democracy. Hundreds of teachers have taught in ways similar to those used at Hull House or Independence High but without declaring the educational and democratic intentions of their pedagogy. There is no evidence that students unknowingly learn the lessons of democracy. In fact there is much counter evidence that if students don’t understand the educational purposes of social and political democracy that they will fail to learn the skills of democracy. (Daynes and Wygant, 2003)

5. Conclusion

I do not mean to suggest, by providing a list of lessons, either that I have “solved” the problem of democracy and education or that there is a simple program which, if implemented, can solve that problem. I believe neither thing. I do believe, though, that schools will do a better job of enculturating the young in a democracy if our definitions of democracy are more amenable to education. Fortunately, there are ways to think of democracy that, in theory and practice, promote learning. And, we are surrounded by examples of people whose orientation to learning was democratic, who worked in public to bring about learning for the public good. In our curricula, our teaching, our hiring, and our deliberations we must seek for such public-minded people. To do any less is to underestimate our ability to improve education, and to underestimate education’s ability to improve the democracy in which we live.

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[1] For nearly all of this story I am indebted to Marne Isakson and I retell it with her permission.

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