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Common Schools, Uncommon Futures: A Working Consensus for School

Renewal by Barry S. Kogan, editor

Albert Shanker says we should beef up teacher preparation.

Larry Cuban discusses the changes in schools during the past two decades. Jerome Bruner should take a refresher course on contradictions, and not from Gerald Bracey. In the best essay of the the bunch Kern Alexander says give us liberty

and give death to educational funding inequality. Liberty and educational advantages are intertwined.

Little is new or surprising in “Learning, Teaching, and Existential Meaning” by Nel Noddings, except the skill with which she weaves her ideas. Reading like a neoprogressive existentialist’s dream, Noddings does not see how much

of what it taught fits into the lives of students. They cram and forget because what it taught serves, for most students, almost no purposes beyond the current classroom. “Has the study of mathematics nothing to do with self-awareness, eternity, gods, creation, politics, beauty and reality? If it does not require it, why study it?” Instead, adults propagandize. They tell

students that if they don’t learn algebra, computers and foreign languages, they will be left behind, joining the world of homeless people pushing around shopping carts.

She writes that existential meaning is important for motivation and that memory is affected by personal significance. Existential meaning is created when teachers tell inspiring stories about ideas, themselves or others. The “Who Am I?” and “What should I do?” questions should be discussed. One thing adults should do, she suggests, is discuss the dignity

of work. The jobs done by those who have not gone to college should not be denigrated. The work they do is valuable and often must be done. Noddings favors multiple career tracks in edcation. Some see vocational education as a

trap, but for many who should be doing something else, the college path is a trap. She argues that if students are successful at one thing and learn how to learn, they can switch paths later.

No matter what subject is taught, she holds that unintended lessons are much of what is learned and unintended lessons spring from the full characters of adults. Worth browsing.

—Book reviews by J.T. Fournier

My Main Page with Links to My Other Book Reviews