Title: Chapter 12: Perspectives on the Pedagogy of Democracy
Abstract: It is a challenging pleasure to respond to Carl Glickman's 2007 AATC keynote address, The Pedagogy of Democracy: Toggling between Education and Community. I have known Carl since he interviewed me for a University of Georgia professorship which I was offered in 1988. A few years later we spoke together at a John Dewey lecture (symposium) at the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. I have been impressed, over the years, with Carl's writings and overall work in educational reform. He is an exemplar of toggling among academe, policy, and general public sectors (Glickman, 2003). Such work requires that one be a public intellectual. Carl's editorship of Letters to the Next President (2004, 2007) is a principal illustration of such efforts. I commend this. Surely, the discussion it engenders builds community around educational issues. I recall giving an earlier AATC keynote address in Tulsa in 2002, in which my central message was to keep curriculum questions alive, not just among scholars in the curriculum field or among curriculum leaders in schools, but in the population at large (Schubert, 2003). Furthermore, I was intrigued that early in Carl's address, he referred to a 1974 paper he did on the topic of open education, a term given to progressive practices in the 1960s and 1970s. This sparked my memory of having written about the historical roots of open education in a paper in graduate school that I revised, after receiving my PhD in 1975, and submitted to the American Educational Research Association journal, Review of Educational Research. I recall checking with the editor in 1978 and learning that one review of the manuscript was yet to arrive. Apparently, it has not arrived yet, since I still have not heard. If it does arrive, I suspect that it would substantially affect the averages that one finds appended to each published article about dates manuscripts were received, revisions received, and acceptances! However, it would likely be rejected for not having any citations since 1974! There are glitches in even the best of publications. In any case, my thoughts of open education, prompted by Carl, reminded me of an earlier era of concern for the topic of his address, as it did for him, quite obviously. I had hoped that he might have said a bit more about the connections among re-invigoration of concern for pedagogy and education, education and community in different eras--especially in response to today's reactionary domination of education as represented in Marshall, Sears, Allen, Roberts, and Schubert (2007). As I know, however, from my own after-dinner keynote 5 years ago, one must make decisions to say less and maximize impact for a late evening audience. Derived from the open education era, and from progressive education in the 1920s-1940s, I see clearly a consistency of emphasis on what Virgil Herrick (Herrick, Goodlad, Estvan, & Everman, 1956) called the organizing center of the curriculum. In Carl's address, the progressive heritage is renewed with its emphasis on learner concerns, interests, and crafting a life as an organizing center. Creating a perhaps the most neglected and most important, is the heart of education (Willis & Schubert, 1991/ 2000). It deals directly with what Mary Catherine Bateson (1990) called composing a life, a process that many today refer to as shaping identity. It is my contention that this is what, deep down, the public wants. It has been called human interests by Jurgen Habermas (1971). My own work with schools and their publics in Chicago illustrates this point. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Illinois State Legislature created Local School Councils (LSCs) for each of the Chicago public schools (approximately 500 elementary schools and 50 secondary schools), to be elected publicly, I was involved in the training efforts for these mini school boards. Much that constituted this training consisted of telling newly elected LSC members about how schools work--legally, administratively, and financially. …
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 1
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot