Posts com a Tag ‘Falmer Press (E)’
Democratic Social Education: Social Studies for Social Change – HURSH; ROSS (CSS)
HURSH, David W.; ROSS, E. Wayne. Eds. Democratic Social Education: Social Studies for Social Change. New York: Falmer Press, 2000. 263p. Resenha de: BRADLEY, Jon G. Bradley Canadian Social Studies, v.38, n.2, p., 2004.
Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. Belief in the Common Man is a familiar article in the democratic creed. That belief is without basis and significance save as it means faith in the potentialities of human nature as that nature is exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth, and family, of material or cultural wealth. This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life (Dewey, 1940, p. 226).
Democratic Social Education: Social Studies for Social Change is the third volume to be released within the Garland Reference Library of Social Science series. This is a timely publication, not only in that it nicely balances the first two books that dealt with the dramatic arts and art education, but more importantly in that the whole issue of democratic/citizenship education is coming to the fore in many differing and varied societies. Taking their cue from George S. Counts’ (1932) professional admonishment to educators to develop a new democratic society within a new social order, Hursh and Ross have compiled an extremely interesting array of articles that attempt to rise to this long-ago issued challenge.
The authors clearly note that they feel that Counts’ seventy-year old challenge still needs to be met, albeit within a revised world framework that takes into account the modern realities that currently confront the educational landscape. Additionally, they state the essays in this collection respond to Counts’ question with theoretical analyses of education and society, historical analyses of efforts since Counts’ challenge, and practical analyses of classroom pedagogy and school organization (p. 1).
Without wishing to wander too far from the centrality of this book review, it is necessary to take a small side step in order to quickly review Counts’ 1932 tome. Readers are asked to bear in mind that the Great Depression was in full swing and that both Europe and Asia were experiencing the rise of various forms of autocratic regimes. It is within this somewhat unsettling world situation that Counts issued his famous educational challenge.
For those of us who have an interest in the history of philosophical ideas, George Sylvester Counts can be ranked along with John Dewey, Charles Beard and Harold Rugg (to name but a few) as notable and vocal American philosophers who were actively engaged in confronting the realities that [North] America was experiencing during this time frame. To some, the collective and empowering ideals of socialism were an attractive carrot that appeared to mute the harshness of the loss of individuality promulgated by other more strident forms of governmental control.
In many ways, Dare the School Build a New Social Order? is a timeless document. Counts opens his epistle by noting that we are convinced that education is the one unfailing remedy for every ill to which man is subject (page 3). While his views must be tempered by his times and his own heritage, Counts nonetheless raises some of the age-old issues that surround the place and purpose of public education within a democratic society. He criticizes, to be sure, but also holds out the hope that it is this general education adventure which will eventually triumph and permit democracies to overcome, not only current ills, but to potentially make the future a better place for all citizens. In particular, Counts notes that it is the classroom teacher (see particularly pages 27 – 31) that might well wield the most significant power and influence such that meaningful societal transformations might occur.
Hursh and Ross recognize that Counts’ long-forgotten call to teachers to become meaningful agents of social change still resonates today. While the historical times of the mid-thirties are clearly not applicable to the beginning of the twenty-first century, some of the same general ailments still persist. The call for teachers to become democratic leaders within their own small communities drives this volume and provides, at the same time, a framework upon which to construct an active (or, to use Counts’ phrase ‘progressive’) model of education.
The fourteen chapters that make up Democratic Social Education offer the reader a wide-ranging overview of contemporary views. While the Hursh and Ross opening chapter is a tad staid and preachy in its introductory comments, and although this is too often the case with overview chapters, this reviewer was nonetheless captivated by the remaining entries. The following thirteen offerings are wonderfully varied and stimulating intellectual forays into the domain. One grounding feature that resonates time and time again, regardless of individual chapter author or topic, is the centrality of the classroom practitioner to affect and effect change. Honouring Counts, the individual authors have each in their own diverse way placed teachers and teaching at the core of the landscape. They have anchored this social democratic process solidly within the contemporary realities of the classroom.
The editors are to be congratulated for allowing all of the contributors to authenticate the voice of elementary and secondary teachers. After all, it is in the privacy of individual classrooms that great things are wrought and it was to individual practitioners that Counts issued his seminal challenge. Hursh and Ross have compiled a scintillating collection of material that must be read by anyone who has even the most passing interest in citizenship education within a democratic framework.
References
Counts, G. S. (1932). Dare the School Build a New Social Order? New York: The John Day Company.
Dewey, J. (1940/1991). Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953, Volume 14 (pp. 224-30). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
John G. Bradley – Faculty of Education. McGill University. Montreal, Quebec.
[IF]Curriculum: Construction and Critique – ROSS (CSS)
ROSS, Alistair. Curriculum: Construction and Critique. London & New York: Falmer Press, 2000. 187p. Resenha de: TRYSSENAAR, Laura. Canadian Social Studies, v.37, n.2, 2003.
Curriculum is a complex and compelling subject for both students and practitioners in education. Curriculum: Construction and Critique is an important book in the Masters Classes in Education Series. It is suitably written for the Masters level and would be an excellent text for graduate courses in the curriculum field. It would also be a useful reference book, helping professors and students alike to steer a course through the complexity of curriculum concepts and constructs. It is a highly readable and coherent text with a depth of scholarly perception that will encourage debate and conjecture.
The intent of the book is to raise questions regarding the purpose and design of curriculum and to examine the ideologies that shape curriculum. Alistair Ross aptly introduces the book, and the idea of curriculum, by choosing a culturally significant metaphor. Curriculum as garden takes its meaning from the English concept of garden, in which gardens have identifiable designs, purposes, and philosophies. Ross notes, the different ideas about the form and purposes of gardens are part of the same cultural movements that expressed different ideas about the structure and objectives of the school curriculum (p. 3). He consequently extends the metaphor into an examination of The Baroque Curriculum, the Naturally Landscaped Curriculum, the Dig for Victory Curriculum, and the Cottage Curriculum. The connection between curriculum and culture is firmly established and carries through the entire text.
The curriculum construction context addressed in this book is that of the curriculum in England and Wales, yet it has great relevance for students of curriculum in other nations in that it provides a point of comparison for a global inquiry into curriculum. Ross conceptualizes curriculum using universal definitions, and examines global trends in school curricula. Citing a study done by John Meyer at Stanford University, he points out the extraordinary similarities in curricula worldwide indicating that local national variations have been ironed out as a pattern of international conformity has prevailed (p. 15). Ross acknowledges that there are many local variations in curriculum, but suggests that the international trends in education reflect many of the same forces that have shaped the curriculum in England and Wales and thus offers his critique of curriculum in his culture as a template for global comparison.
Ross, like many others, perceives curriculum as a social construct that has responded to diverse influences over more than a century. He provides an interesting historical perspective of some of the great controversies and conflicting ideologies brought to bear on curriculum from 1860 to the present. Conflict and turmoil over the years are examined in light of tradition, politics, and ideology. Students of curriculum will find this book useful as a historical reference and as a basis for identifying the similarities among curriculum histories.
Another advantage of choosing a text based on a study and critique of the national curriculum in England and Wales, is its deliberate analysis of government involvement in shaping and imposing curriculum. What is particularly revealing in this text is the overwhelming connection between government ideology and the curriculum. The Thatcher government’s position on education and neo-conservative pressures of the recent past are particularly revealing. Students interested in examining the possibilities and pitfalls of a national curriculum will find this text offers much substance for the debate of central versus local control of the curriculum.
This text also has value as a model for research and scholarship. Ross presents a comprehensive compilation of curriculum scholarship and theorizing throughout the book, but most distinctively in the chapter on curriculum and reproduction. He examines the relationship between an educational system, particularly its curriculum, and the wider society within which the system is located (p. 81) from the theoretical standpoints of theorists such as Emile Durkheim, John Dewey, Michael Apple, Antonio Gramsci, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Pierre Bordeaux, and Basil Bernstein among others. These theorists place curriculum in a social context, and provide a variety of interpretations of the role of curriculum in social reproduction.
Ross then moves from a theoretical perspective to meeting the need of many curriculum scholars for a concrete or technical depiction of curriculum. The remaining chapters of the text focus on the forms or traditions that written curriculum takes, and a critique thereof. Various approaches to curriculum are scrutinized. The reader is introduced to the discourse and ideology of content-based curriculum, objectives-based curriculum, and process-driven curricula. This is where a number of visuals add clarity to the book. Graphs, charts, and diagrams serve to illustrate and illuminate curriculum types, and the relationships between teachers, students, and the curriculum in various contexts. Diagrams are clear, flow charts easy to follow, and graphs are relevant to the content of the chapters. The connection is made between the various forms that curriculum takes and what curriculum becomes for the students for whom it is intended in these chapters and supports Ross’s argument that curriculum has a role in shaping future identities (p. 149).
The text comes full circle in the concluding chapter with another cultural metaphor, this time equating the Englishness of roast beef to the national identity forged by the curriculum, and warning of the dangers of believing both concepts. The final chapter offers a critical analysis of the symbols of nationality embedded in the curriculum which present some problems in terms of values and equality (p. 150). Ross raises questions about whose identity is being transmitted through the curriculum, and wonders about the regional, class, gender, and ethnic identities that are being denied when one national identity is created and promoted. That curriculum is important and powerful cannot be denied.
The book successfully addresses the historical, cultural, and political influences on curriculum, and provides insight into the complexity of curriculum substance and theory. Students who engage with this text may find they have as many questions as they are given answers. Alistair Ross achieves his goal and is able to both distinguish some of the competing traditions in curriculum design and purpose, and to analyse some of the ideologies that drive its construction (p. 160). The strength of this book is in its very Englishness which offers an honest perspective for curriculum critique.
Laura Tryssenaar – Faculty of Education. University of Western Ontario. London, Ontario.
[IF]