1_13_04 History

Look at rhetoric of the pieces first -

What constitutes evidence

What genre is it?

Who is the audience?

Character of speaker

What are the benefits/costs of adopting this rhetorical strategy?

Aristotle:

Character of speaker/author

Nature of the appeal to the audience

Nature of the argument

Almost all academic reading is rhetorical – making an argument

Rigorous methodology

Logical argument structure

Effective rhetoric doesn’t mean a valid argument, it means a persuasive argument

Aristotle: Rhetoric operates in the field where there is no such thing as absolute proof, there’s always a problem of interpretation, here there be dragons, unknown facts.

David: Tyack is the most well-respected best-known historian of ed in the US. V. persuasive style.

Phrase in terms of politics:

Presentation of character, opponent’s character

Appeal to the audience – without looking slippery when appealing to separate audiences

Rapport/community/shared approach

Broad appeal vs. closer narrow appeal that might alienate people.

Argument itself:

Research methodology

Logic – what will the nature of evidence be? What counts, what doesn’t?

Linguistic framework/vocabulary/name the baby

Characterize Tyack’s voice:

Ossa: Conversational: Small group discussion

Katie: More conversational tone might undermine authority, need to cite and have authorial expertise projected

Jerusha: eliminated personal experience background from voice

Ossa: Book was a little weak on WHY reforms failed – detailed info on reform, less info on failure

David: too many numbers, anecdotal detail can overwhelm argument

Jonathan – broad perspective, meta argument pleasant overview

Jerusha: detail helps

Mike: insight on larger issues and process – “gave them a little taste” as an introduction, effective, soothing…hopeful.

DL: Could have been with the same data a very cynical book – one long exercise in irony. They toned that down – that can be offputting.

Ossa: I read that as them trying very hard to be politically correct, not picking any group to blame

DL: It’s traditional to blamea group – not doing so can feel wishy-washy or fair and balanced.

Jonathan – I thought very fair, initial chapters say it’s all subject to interpretation, is it progress or regress. Assuming this is a teaser, this is very effective, it leaves it open to make up your own mind and pursue issues futher independently

DL: Clearly a choice to present this as an introduction, an overview, a map

Katie: They really state that up front.

Mike: They were really tapping into teachers to a large extent, to say leave them alone, they really know what they’re doing. Empowering teachers.

Amy: don’t alienate teachers, but gently critiquing the way policy conversation works, including the policy elites.

Ossa: geared towards general public, definition of real school

Nara: Lay professionals? Anyone who’s invested enough in the conversation to pick up the book

Katie: The masses, not just one or two charistmatic leaders

David: One thing I really saw in this is that there’s a very strong underlying message that’s a little defensive about progressive education, you can’t just dismiss the push towards more inclusive forms of education. If reforms didn’t work, it’s not that the idea was bad, it’s the complexity of putting them into place.

DL: Do you hear them weighing in with judgements about particular policies? Do you get a sense of what they supported and what they didn’t? Sometimes blocking reform is tragic, sometimes it’s the best thing you can do for schools.

Nara: judgements about appropriateness in context

Jerusha: I heard judgements about equity very clearly

David: They came down a little hard on top-down reforms

DL: So what’s the genre here? It’s not an empirical study…they’re not building up data and drawing conclusions. Is it a theoretical piece? Narrative?

Mike: Theoretical to the extent that it’s framed in terms of their ideas about how institutions change

Ossa: I SAW IT AS a historical narrative, what happened and how, and very little opinions and theories about how and why

DL: Self-conscious rhetorical style that puts the theory up front and the jargon. Jargon is really missing here, which is one of the ways they’re aiming at a larger audience. Argument with anecdotes attached

Amy: very gentle with their judgements/opinions, just mention things and move on. If I were writing a paper, trying to persuade someone, I would never state it that softly. Perhaps their status allows them to do that.

Katie: When a persuasive argument is presented as “fireside chat” people are more likely to take it away as fact.

Mike: I got skeptical because I couldn’t immediately see the argument

David: That might be a sign of rhetorical success – that you can’t see it as an argument, especially if you’re close to the subject

DL: For me, as a sociologist, it feels undertheorized, underexplained.

DL: Let me ask you about a broader issue about reform – why have we focused so much effort and reform on schools?

Amy: They mention, if you get the child right, the adult is taken care of, and the second is that young children is a “sexy” place to send your funds, they haven’t done anything wrong yet.

Katie: Article for Milbrae’s class – quadrants divided based on perception and power – children are positively perceived as weak, whereas HS students might be weak and negative or strong and negative – the deviant category – if you look at how policy actors approach these categories

DL: a group of people who are malleable, and a good leverage point (can actually have an impact) Warm and fuzzy – attractive to focus attention

Ossa: competitive element, global competition

Nara: only place government has contact with everyone

DL: Inescapable institution, reach is phenomenal, sense of consequentialness, schools affect everyone. Not specialized (like city hall or prisons).

Katie: small towns everyone goes to the football games

DL: like a surrogate for the entire town

Amy: it’s important that it’s so universal, people are more interested in things that they see themselves as understanding, they all feel like they’ve got a grip on what ed is about

Jerusha: going back to Ossa’s point about competition, it really speaks to American values, equity, etc. Captive audience we can try to fix social ills.

Katie: Comes back to fish adage – teaching vs. giving

Ossa: Head Start started in health and human services – should it have been moved over to USDE – what kind of a program is it?

Katie: it’s a framing issue, if you frame it as ed it’s everyone’s problem, health./human services smaller group

Nara: why not law enforcement, long term effects are on criminal behavior

DL: Driver’s ed, teen pregnancy – sex ed. Everything goes back to the schools. Whatever the problem is – crime, health, the economy, the school is the answer and you need some sort of reform effort to address it. One of the reasons that people focus on school is that it’s easier to reform schools than it is to reform society. Easier to address schools than underlying social problems – not necessarily the most effective way, but the most accessible way.

Christopher Jenks study “Equality” If you want to change equality don’t change the schools, change equality. Equality of opportunity don’t make equality of outcome

Katie: electoral process, more palatable to institute sweeping change that affects majority as well as minority population, targeted reform to minority or special needs social groups

Amy: Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country prays that someone close to the rich would be affected with the social ills

David: Whole thing rests on comforting tautology: We have education to fix the social ills, but we don’t need to fic the social ills because we have education
DL: Meritocratic rationale – individual opportunity without collective benefits to one group over another

Amy: Pepople who make those arguments want to have their cake and eat it too – because there’s also those who rise to the top are supposed to rise tot the top, so lets direct our resources toward the people who are able to utilize it most effectively

Katie: North v South Carolina – money given to states and how it was allocated by race – schools that had more resources v. less resources in two cohorts – inputs that made the difference.

DL: Another interesting factor I think is that it’s something we choose in part because it’s accessible – schools are more accessible than government in some ways, very visible, local you can walk into it. Schools are in many ways more responsive than other institutions. Principals are politicians, handling the community. Schools are vulnerable to individuals in ways that larger government is not.

Jerusha: Those who are most insistent about continuity are those who are weaker in power

DL – Let’s talk about how to increase chances for reforms

Ossa: Teacher origination, college admission requirements

DL: Hierarchical – something at one level triggers things at another level

Jerusha: Universities and professors at universities (lack of incentive to innovate) – teaching in prep schools is modeled on what students will encounter in universities

DL: Structural add-on rather than structural innovation, non-controversial (fits layperson’s conception of real school) Transformed into law, or produce strong special interest constituencies

Amy: Bilingual ed is controversial, and doesn’t have a strong constituency yet. To add to the list – policies that are easy to measure are much more likely to stick around.

DL: Bilingual ed isn’t “real school” but could create a constituency

David: Bilingual makes me think of Amy Benders – things like biligual ed eventually catch on because they are able to frame themselves are part of the larger democratic movement in schools – latch into enduring civic value – she also talks about creationism, and how it didn’t catch on because it wasn’t able to appeal to that

DL:The add-on issue is why schools look to cluttered – they were supposed to transform things, like kindergarten and jr high, and ended up getting tacked on

Katie: I think add-ons make a lot of sense because they’re easier to implement, depending on the nature of the add-on you can help customize the educational experience – option of customizing – students and teachers can self-select into certain programs

DL: Hybridizing – in some ways the incoherence is necessary? Potentially you could make that argument

Jason: Conceptualizing schools as extra societal institutions v. integral to societies

DL: They give some negative examples of add-ons, add-ons that failed…they talk about the 8-year study, the Dalton plan

Ossa: The Dalton plan teachers objected to the paperwork, didn’t fit the “real school” idea – and people weren’t attaining the way they did in the real school, and stopped short of why they couldn’t fix those three things

DL: Lack of control might be of particular concern there

Jerusha: Criticism of Dalton plan was one of the few times that students voices were mentioned – more work or more boring, students themselves as a reform barrier.

DL: Cohen’s point about traditional pedagogy reducing risks for both student and teacher – Dalton plan was not reassuring to the student, high possibility of failure, no set routine/goals/structure/norms/benchmarks. All relies on connection – very hard to reproduce something like that, to get average teachers and kids to engage in something like that.

Katie: Something in standardized education accurately reflectes “real world” experience – customized education doesn’t prepared for the homogenization of society at large

Mike: What makes the public school system so difficult is just the sheer numbers, so to try to implement these reforms, with class size and all that is just not practical in a context with these massive numbers.

DL: Next time I want to focus on the grammar of schooling, which is a great issue they bring up but don’t focus on all that much. We need to spend some time thinking about what the canonical elements of schooling are – what are the things that make up “real school” that define or identify a school. Where did structure come from and why is it persisiting? Some reforms become grammar – others become peripheral/apocryphal. How does something become fundamental, and what is it about those things?