In his chapter, “What Does It Mean to Say a School is Doing Well?” from The Curriculum Studies Reader, Elliot Eisner proposes a move away from traditional education, by means of evaluating and rejecting the rationalism thought processes that led to the system’s development. I have brought together three questions he proposes and given an answer to them. These answers are essentially objections to his thought processes, and though they do not represent how I personally feel about education, I am not making absurd claims. I believe these are common perspectives need to be carefully considered by progressive educators.
Lazy Selfish Artists?
In the third full paragraph on page 301, Eisner states that “The most significant intellectual achievement is not so much in problem solving, but in question posing.” This is a significant thing to state as face. He then asks, “What if we took that idea seriously and concluded units of study by looking for the sorts of questions that youngsters are able to raise as a result of being immersed in a domain of study?” Eisner states his assumptions is a positive manner, implying that his unanswered question holds much hope. However, in my experience working with low-income communities, and having come from a low-income background, I have observed that motivating individuals to solve problems is an immense achievement, particularly when the answers are known but disliked. Posing questions versus solving problems – these do not need to be measured against each other.
Compassion for others, an awareness of community building, and the ability of self-control are focuses often seen in rural communities. In these communities, traditional education is tolerated as a means to an end, with the end being an escape from poverty for not only the individual but the community. China, who has been experiencing great economic growth, found great success while schools focused students towards managerial and vocational trades (Rothman, 2018).
To answer Eisner’s question, if everyone took his ideas seriously, we may end up in a world of creative individuals who lack discipline and don’t act compassionately, even though they are very intellectually aware of compassion. To propose the situation even more moderately, Eisner’s students may be looked upon as prodigal sons and daughters, even though they themselves and their teachers disagree with the assessment.
Though I do not know how to rectify this issue, I suggest that Eisner’s suggestion could be improved by codifying a system of listening to communities and responding to their specific needs.
Short-Term Losses
In the sixth full paragraph on page 310, Eisner asks, “What if we used that kind of structure to promote various forms of thinking?”, in reference to a proposition by a psychologist that detailed 130 different forms of thought. Eisner goes on to promote a concept that this will create better people. He goes beyond promoting that education can be improved, into saying that people can be improved by education, and that his system will lead to these improvements. However, I feel that he does not acknowledge, in this essay, the larger field of debate that he is entering: What makes people good? Eisner lays out his ideas from the perspective of a parent or teacher who wants to see their child or student become a confident and successful person.
To answer Eisner’s question, if we moved the goal of schooling away from rationalism towards the systems he proposes in this essay, we would be making an implicit statement that we know what’s best for people, and that traditional education is not what’s best. This act may inspire resentment and disagreement because it shifts the goalposts of meritocracy. If the act was successful, and it is indeed proposing a shift in thinking for millions of people, then shifts in power would accompany periods of time where people lose desirable benefits that they have earned and have not yet gained the desirable benefits of this new system. The same thing happens when technology deflates the value of specific types of labor.
I do not propose a solution for this issue, but I do suggest that teachers and students be made ready for the negative outcomes as well as the positive, in following this line of thinking.
Looking Outwards
In the last paragraph of page 301, Eisner asks, “What connections are students helped to make between what they study in class and the world outside of school?” I believe that the connections that are made by traditional education refer to timeless works of art and science and are indeed outside of school. However, I feel that because these timeless elements have been present in academics for many decades if not longer, many people feel that the works are only academic. If a particular topic or community is addressed by school content for a long enough amount of time, it becomes a part of the school, so this question, in my opinion, could be improved to be less circular.
I believe it is instead worth asking, “What should the rate of change in a school’s curriculum be tied to?”, because I believe that many feel a lack of control and awareness in regard to the change of curriculum and that this feeds into a disdain of traditional education. The awareness of what curriculum means also needs to be updated, as it can be less of a book and more of a process of learning, as Oh and Rozycki (2017) discuss in “What exactly is Curriculum?”.
Conclusion
This chapter, “What Does It Mean to Say a School is Doing Well?” from The Curriculum Studies Reader, is thought provoking an excellent basis for discourse. Elliot Eisner’s proposals seem to be meant for an audience ready and eager to gain vocabulary and experience in discussing ideas that they already agree with. This is a useful tool for those people. In my essay, I have objected to his queries. It may be that he answers my queries in earlier chapters of this same book (and I intend to find out), but they are worthy of consideration throughout the reading of his works. To use a term new to me, we must always avoid being in an “echo chamber” where our ideas are promoted and discussed in exclusion of outside perspectives, even when the very concept presented in gaining perspectives.
References
Eisner, E. What does it mean to say a school is doing well?. In Flinders, D. J., & Thornton, S. J. (Eds.), The Curriculum Studies Reader, Fourth Edition (pp.297-305). New York, NY: Routledge. Retrieved January 30 from: https://chrisdavidcampbell.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/eisener-2001.pdf
Rothman, R. (Ed.). (2018, March 14). Shanghai-China: Instructional Systems. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://ncee.org/what-we-do/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/shanghai-china/shanghai-china-instructional-systems/
Lindsey Oh & Ray Rozycki (2017). What is Exactly Curriculum. Education Elements. Retrieved January 30, 2020 from https://www.edelements.com/blog/exactly/what-is-curriculum
APA Citation
Simpson, Benjamin James. (2018). Empathy in Curriculum: Disenfranchised Perspectives. SteamHead Productions. Retrieved from https://steamhead.space/curriculum_empathy/ (Simpson, 2018)
