[ Education in Massachusetts from the Old Deluder to the MCAS]
[[link removed]]

THE PATH TO ‘AN EXCESS OF DEMOCRACY’  
[[link removed]]


 

Doug Selwyn
January 6, 2024
Greenfield Recorder [[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Education in Massachusetts from the Old Deluder to the MCAS _

,

 

Ibegan this series of columns by sharing three questions I would pose
to each entering class of teacher candidates: Why do we have school,
what should happen at school and who should decide those questions.
When I reviewed reader responses to the questions, it was obvious that
those are still questions without clear answers.

It’s not surprising considering that each one of us is a unique
learner, even those of us growing up in the same household. Consider a
classroom full of children, each of whom comes from their own mix of
parents/guardians, culture, values and beliefs, economic realities,
race, gender, politics, religion, individual learning strengths and
challenges, and their own internal makeup. It is impossible to imagine
any one educational program that will be most effective and engaging
for all of them. The reality of our diversity is both a strength and
an immense challenge for public education and has been throughout our
history.

The earliest education in Massachusetts was focused on helping
children to learn to read the Bible. The Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647
required towns of 50 or more families to hire and maintain a teacher,
helping children to read the Bible so they could resist temptation
from the “old deluder.”

Since that time, education has gone through many changes. Horace Mann,
the first secretary of education in Massachusetts, developed a system
of universal education, open to all (white) children regardless of
whether their families could pay. Mann hoped that a universal
education with a common curriculum would enhance democracy, minimize
class resentment and make it less likely that the poor would attack
the rich.

Near the beginning of the 20th century, a group of 10 men —
presidents of colleges and principals of high schools — made
recommendations for our educational system that is still in place
today. Elementary school should be grades K-8, high school 9-12. There
should be separate courses for each subject (English, math, science,
etc.) with an emphasis on academics, meaning arts, physical education
and vocational training was not encouraged. Each class should last the
same number of minutes. Those decisions reflected their values and
beliefs, from their perspectives as white men who headed educational
institutions around 1900.

In the early 1900s, with the rise of factories and the influx of
immigrants coming to work in them, the schools expanded to become
social service agencies. They helped the new arrivals learn how to
survive in this new (to them) environment, learn how to work on
assembly lines and learn how to become American citizens. In the
mid-1960s and early ‘70s, while the country was in the midst of
several movements to expand equity and social justice, schools were
focusing more on meeting the needs of each student, on social and
emotional health, and on respect for the wide range of cultures and
histories that students were bringing into their classrooms.
Approaches to teaching changed to place the children at the center of
the classroom experience.

Teachers were still teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, but they
were also paying attention to building a cooperative and collaborative
learning community. There was also more of an emphasis on connecting
what happened in school to the outside world, and both teachers and
students became more active in the movements for justice going on
outside of school.

Not everyone was pleased by this. Many of those in power noticed and
were highly critical of the role the schools were playing in
encouraging and supporting activism, including members of the
Trilateral Commission, a private organization that represented
political and economic interests from North America, Europe and Asia.

The organization issued a report in 1975 titled “The Crisis of
Democracy.” The report said that “The effective operation of a
democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy
and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups.” The
report says the problems of governance in the U.S. “stem from an
excess of democracy ” and thus calls for actions “to restore the
prestige and authority of central government institutions.”

Samuel Huntington, one of the authors of the report, said “Truman
had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a
relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers,” but
activism made this much more difficult by the mid-1960s. The
population was much less governable because they were less willing to
be submissive. Huntington noted that “previously passive or
unorganized groups in the population” that “became organized and
mobilized in new ways to achieve what they considered to be their
appropriate share of the action and of the rewards” were a threat to
the smooth functioning of our democracy, which depended on “some
measure of apathy and noninvolvement.” Huntington faulted the
schools for not pacifying those groups.

What followed was the “back to basics” movement.

Teachers and the public schools were targeted, blamed for many of the
problems the country was facing, and a concerted effort was made to
undermine the public’s trust in public education. Educators were
told what to teach and students were told what to learn.

There was no longer interest in placing students at the center of the
classroom experience; they were there to meet the requirements of the
state, and the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2002 codified this
switch. The only thing that now mattered was passing a high stakes
test — in the case of Massachusetts, the MCAS (Massachusetts
Comprehensive Assessment System). This is where we remain today.

James Baldwin, in his talk to teachers in 1963, laid out the
contradiction.

“The paradox of education is precisely this — that as one begins
to become conscious, one begins to examine society, the society in
which he is being educated.

The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the
ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.
... But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person
around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will
simply obey the rules of society.”

That’s it, in a nutshell.

People who think for themselves, who can see through the smoke screens
that politicians and governments and media outlets and history
textbooks produce, to see the “men behind the curtain,” are much
more difficult to control. They are more likely to challenge the
injustice that serves those in power at the expense of those most
distant from power. We may want it for our own children, but the
thought of everyone’s children thinking for themselves and acting in
their own interests, and in the interests of communities that are not
ours, seems to be perceived as a danger, a threat. It might produce
“an excess of democracy.”

Which brings us to the question facing us today.

What education do we want for our children, for their futures and for
ours? What education can we offer our children that will best prepare
them to meet the challenges of our present and future?

It’s not a simple question and there is no one simple answer. I’ll
explore some examples of approaches to education that might help us
think more deeply about this question in my next column.

_Doug Selwyn taught at K-12 public schools from 1985 until 2000 and
then at university as a professor of education until he retired in
2017._

_He is the chair of the Franklin County Continuing the Political
Revolution education task force. You can reach him at dougselwyn12@__
gmail.com._

* Education
[[link removed]]
* Education Reform
[[link removed]]
* Standardized Tests
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]