CIG 760 Paper Presentation

The Influence of the Purpose of Education and the Needs of Society on Teacher Education

One can trace the path of the modern American educational system from the Massachusetts Bay School Law Act and the Massachusetts Law of 1647, or the Old Deluder Satan Act, through Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, the creation of the Department of Education in 1867, the Great Depression, various Supreme Court decisions, the effects of Sputnik, the “War on Poverty”, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the creation of Title I, the Higher Education Act, Project Head Start, the Civil Rights movement, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, A Nation at Risk, Teach for America, online education, No Child Left Behind, Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act, the introduction of the Common Core, to most recently the “too-much-testing” movement (American Educational History Timeline, 2016).

While the people and events listed are by no means exhaustive, the point is to illustrate the various loci of influence that are exerted on the modern perceptions and conception of education along with subsequent education reform. These “loci of influence” are comprised of economic, global, moral, political, social, and societal imperatives. All of the imperatives culminate into what will further be called the “needs” of society.

What is the purpose of education?

• Alfred Whitehead (1929)
• Jerome Bruner (1960)
• Mortimer Adler (1982)
• Diane Ravitch (2000 and 2010)
• Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum (2011),
• Fareed Zakaria (2015)

John Dewey (1938) wrote: What we need is education pure and simple, and we shall make surerer progress when we devote ourselves to finding out what education is and what conditions have to be satisfied in order that education may be a reality and not a name or a slogan. (p. 91)

“In many respects, the struggle for educational excellence in teacher education is a struggle of changing societal values, needs, and dispositions” (Lasley, 1986, p. 3).

Ravitch (2000):
Large social organizations cannot succeed unless they focus on what they do best. The same is true for schools. They cannot be successful unless nearly all of their pupils gain literacy and numeracy, as well as a good understanding of history and the sciences, literature and a foreign language. They cannot be successful unless they teach children the importance of honesty, personal responsibility, intellectual curiosity, industry, kindness, empathy, and courage. (p. 465)

“Wake up! Pay attention! The world you are living in has fundamentally changed. It is not the world you think it is. You need to adapt, because the health, security, and future of the country depends on it. (Friedman and Mandelbaum, 2011, p. 15).

“we need our education system not only to strengthen everyone’s basics—reading, writing, and arithmetic—but to teach and inspire all Americans to start something new, to add something extra, to adapt something old in whatever job they are doing. (Friedman and Mandelbaum, 2011, p. 111).

Because of the times we live in, all of us, young and old, do not spend enough time and effort thinking about the meaning of life. We do not look inside of ourselves enough to understand our strengths and weaknesses, we do nor look around enough –at the world, in history—to ask the deepest and broadest questions. (Zakaria, 2015, p. 166)

“a liberal education should give people the skills ‘that will help them get ready for their sixth job, not their first job” (p. 75).

In all cases it was obvious, clear, and redundant that the 19th century programs of teacher training were devoted primarily to upgrading the academic knowledge of teachers; whatever pedagogy was offered was merely a means of highlighting connecting, or teaching subject matter to the would-be teachers themselves” (Lasley, 1986, p. 8).

When the impact of the Great Society legislation began to be felt in the mid-1960s, the shift was once again back to serving the masses with a variety of programs that emphasized goals other than excellence, intellectual discipline, and preparation for college…practically anything that any organized constituency supported became ensconced as a legitimate responsibility of public education. And teacher education programs responded with an equally broad array of professional courses and experiences” (Lasley, 1986, p. 13).

Without the Progressive-era public-spiritedness that gave ride to the creation of common schools, the creation of normal school curriculum probably never would have occurred. Moreover, as the demand for public education increased, the need for teachers, obviously increased as well. A reasonable conclusion to draw from this phenomenon is that a strong connection exists between concerns for the common good within a society as a whole and the extent to which institutions emphasize teacher education curriculum. Stated another way, increased individualism, privatization , and the destruction of public education, as well as public institutions generally, only can produce a negative affect on curricula for the education of teachers. If education is not viewed as a public good, then the establishment and perpetuation of teacher education curriculum is seriously troubled” (p. 22)

Taylor (1983) talks specifically about Harry Broudy and the simple paradox of educational theory being such that there is “theories in education are rarely, if ever rejected because they have been proven false…literally there is no conception of teaching that is false” (p. 449).

Gregory Merchant (1993) when interviewing Lee Shulman wrote, “the reason that it (reform of teacher education) is an endless activity is because teacher education is pulled on one hand by the norms and commitments of the academy of universities, pulled by the demands of preparing a group of people whole will be teaching on Monday mornings, and pulled by the demands of school reformers who are not the as either one of those, but are people who have a vision of what schools might be” (p. 27).

Taylor (1983) believes that the answer to that question starts with addressing the idea that “teachers were urged, explicitly and implicitly, to accept responsibilities for pupils’ health and welfare and for parental and community liaison functions as well as an all around concern for every aspect of personal development—cognitive, affective, and interpersonal” (p.45).

“Teaching as a moral enterprise as much as an exchange of knowledge, and who therefore advocated a kind of teacher education including attention to the teacher’s ethical commitment to ‘teach every child,’ a commitment that in any generation could be met wit a mix of knowledge, skill, and moral fervor” (Fraser, 2007, p. 241).

“All the variables under a school’s control the single most decisive factor in student achievement is excellent teaching” (Friedman AND Mandelbaum, 2011, p. 118).

By understanding all of the external and internal pressures on the profession of education, one can begin to make adjustments and changes on a site level that can begin to address the growing concerns of educational inadequacies. This research will serve as a first step to understanding the dilemmas and problems facing education and educators. From this research, one can build on the historical knowledge on context it brings.

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