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Changing Our Thinking About Educational Change
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11199 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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3 / 1986 |
5,759 Words |
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J. Myron Atkin
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The education reform fervor triggered in early 1983 by the report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education. A Nation at Risk, was greeted with trepidation by teachers and school administrators. Given its indictment of the quality of public education and its focus on the "rising tide of mediocrity" in the nations' schools, it was not clear whether the report was a prelude to educational improvement or the beginning of a new wave of attacks on schools and teachers. Judging from the polls, the public seemed to be in a mood to take constructive steps to improve the quality of public education, but teachers and school administrators had become gun-shy over a period of three decades as a result of previous reform efforts that assigned blame recklessly, raised expectations unrealistically, and led to legislative and other initiatives that sometimes had effects on teaching exactly the opposite of what had been intended.
As reports continued to be issued on the state of American secondary education in the months following A Nation at Risk, it became clear that an extraordinary phenomenon in the history of American education was taking place. Each new statement--Ernest Boyer's, John Goodlad's, Mortimer Adler's, the College Board's, the Twentieth Century Fund's, the National Science Foundation's--captured front-page attention, editorial comment (usually favorable), and even significant time on the television network evening news. Public interest in the quality of education clearly was deep. The mood for change was strong. It even began to appear that legislators were willing to appropriate more money for education if they could be convinced that the additional funds would produce higher quality.
The theme of the reports, taken as a group, was that the school curriculum had become soft, particularly for children with strong academic ability; that standards were poorly defined and low; that the quality of teachers seemed to be declining; that teacher education programs were weak; and that schools were not meeting the needs of business and industry as well as they should. Most of the recommendations for improving schools were couched in general terms, but the reports converged on the remedy that a common curriculum for all children should be reinstated and that clear goals and expectations for pupils in the subjects of English, history, science, and mathematics should be formulated. Teachers at the secondary school level should major in the subjects they were to teach. Some of the reports suggested that schools should be less preoccupied with training youngsters for specific occupations than with making sure they possess basic skills, especially in written communication.
The suggested educational reforms may not have seemed particularly startling, even if the public appetite for them was; but in addition to the extraordinary publicity attendant to release of the reports, the lineup of those who were pressing for change in the educational system was different and noteworthy. In the period immediately after the launching of Sputnik I, in 1957, those who exerted maximum influence on the tone and substance of education reform were university professors who were experts in the subjects taught in secondary and elementary schools. They provided the driving force and conceptual leadership for new programs in the teaching of biology, physics, mathematics, social science, and language. It was a major feature of the education reform scene ushered in 1983 that for the first time in recent memory major business leaders were identifying education as a key national problem and priority. Chief executive officers of
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