Class Notes - 4/21/09

EDUC 600 Class Notes
4/21/09

Tuesday night’s class began with getting in groups and discussing:

Elements Carried Throughout Tyack and Cuban Text

1. What goes on inside the classroom needs to influence policy talk.
- “Inside Out” approach
- Implementation of Technology- Teachers were resistant, not
knowledgeable about technology, ended up not using it at all or used it half heartedly.
- Most reforms suffered and were not successful because of “top down”
approach where policy elites just told them what to do.
- Tyack and Cuban conclude that reforms from specific classrooms were more likely to be successful.

2. Improve learning (rich development & growth) instead of focusing on test scores.

3. Schooling has come to be seen as a commodity rather than a public good.
- Seen as a service such as getting your car washed.

4. Adaptability at multiple levels.
- Historically teachers had to be adaptable
- Teachers must remain adaptable but reformers must also be adaptable
- Reforms are not going to work in every classroom and school
- Each school will have to change elements in order for it to work

5. Cautious optimism, not radical utopianism.
- Optimistic reform will happen but be cautious
- “Utopian Thinking”
- Schools have embodied Utopian Thinking
- Schools have always been used to pursue some version of how America ought to be
- Best changes are done by “Tinkering”
- Slowly modifying that gradually turns into substantive change
- Using schools as the only way to solve problems will lead to inevitable
dissolution
- Thinking schools will change in two weeks will result in disappointment
- We build them up to solve racial and economic problems and when they do not we are disappointed.


Consequences for Buying Into Tyack and Cuban Argument (Tinkering Toward Utopia)

- Does T&C “tinkering” approach enhance student learning more than the “blanket approach”?
- Schools will benefit more from reform if they were able to regulate it in some way

- Historically there has been tension between local control and the federal involvement in schools.
- Local control was not doing a great job of creating equality
- Federal government got involved and pushed for equity such as desegregation and students with disabilities.
- If they did not get involved, equity would have taken much longer.

- Teacher driven reform efforts
- Teacher à Student à Parent interactions
- Help implementation in the classroom

- Some teachers do not have time to be involved in policy talk
- Between writing lesson plans and grading papers they do not have time to be as involved as they would like to be
- Can be overwhelming

- Political and Historical analysis is that schools will change.
- Who will drive that change?




Curren(60): Maxine Greene - The Artistic-Aesthetic Curriculum

- Spiritual side of education
- We (teachers) are all here to make people’s (children) lives better
- Greene speaks to that through art

- Many people think that art education is not important.
- Music helps with other subjects
- Interpretation of songs base on poems
- Reading music, learning beats and rhythm
- Music enhances memory
- Mnemonic devices used to learn things are often songs (ABC’s, State Song)

- Do we think that putting academic focus on art education is the right approach at a young age?
- Do not want to overwhelm them
- Not all will want to go that route
- But, academic focus is put on other subjects so why not “related arts” subjects?

- Why is artistic aesthetic curriculum important?
- Importance of creativity
- Has a wide application
- Allows for exchange of opinions
- How they view art, literature
- Everyone will have different views because of their experiences
- Medium used to learn about each other

- Reader Response
- Text isn’t complete until they have a reader to interpret it
- Stemmed from old belief that there was a right and wrong way to interpret text
- Individual experience and what they bring to text

- Criticism on Reader Response
- Could pull something out of this air that has no relevance
- Doesn’t relate to it at all
- Should be a mixture of reader response and actual researched meaning
- Students should get more out of art than just their own interpretation
- Greene: Be reflective and critical in whatever “text” they approach (Madonna Songs, Billboards, etc.)

- How does it tie into purpose of art?
- Interaction with art (participation)
- Not taking things for face value- being creative
- Actively searching for alternatives
- Greene: Art is the vehicle to provoke those general patterns of thought
- Art makes you respond
- * Art enables you to imagine and participate in construction of your own life*
- Imagine the possibilities that exist for yourself
- Art should be the core of education
- Awaken the possibilities
- Art exposes us to possibilities

- Page 562: Emily Dickinson quote: “Possible’s slow fuse is lit/By the Imagination”

- Seeing ourselves as individual agents to how we turn out
- Helps figure out who we are and who we are going to be
- Enables individual growth
- As teachers, we want to enable the possibilities