World Order/Series2/Volume 5/Issue 1/Text
←Volume 5 Index | World Order, Series 2 Volume 5 - Issue 1 |
Issue 2→ |
Return to PDF view![]() |
World Order
FALL 1970
- INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION YEAR—
- EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION: BY ACCIDENT OR DESIGN
- Alfonso de Silva
- IN SEARCH OF THE SUPREME TALISMAN:
- A BAHÁ’Í PERSPECTIVE ON EDUCATION
- Daniel C. Jordan
- NEW LAUNCHING PADS
- FOR AMERICAN EDUCATION
- Dwight W. Allen
- HARLEM PREP: HUMOCULTURAL EDUCATION
- FOR A NEW ERA
- Edward F. Carpenter
World Order
A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 5 NUMBER 1 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
WORLD ORDER is intended to stimulate, inspire and serve thinking people in their
search to find relationships between contemporary life and contemporary religious
teachings and philosophy
- Editorial Board:
- FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH
- BETTY FISHER
- HOWARD GAREY
- ROBERT HAYDEN
- GLENFORD E. MITCHELL
- GAYLE MORRISON
- Subscriber Service:
- JEANETTE ROBBIN
WORLD ORDER is published quarterly, October, January, April, and July, at 112 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091. Subscriber and business correspondence should be sent to this address. Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to 2011 Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520.
The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts and suggestions for articles and subjects to be treated editorially will be welcomed and acknowledged by the editors.
Subscription: Regular mail USA, $3.50 (Student, $2.50); Foreign, $4.00. Single copy, $1.00.
Copyright © 1970, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
IN THIS ISSUE
- 1 Rebellious Youth: Toeing Their Elders’ Mark
- Editorial
- 4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor
- 6 International Education Year—Educational
- Revolution: By Accident or Design
- by Alfonso de Silva
- 11 An Old Couple
- a poem by Randall Holahan
- 12 In Search of the Supreme Talisman:
- A Bahá’í Perspective on Education,
- by Daniel C. Jordan
- 22 The Meaning of Futuristics
- by Billy Rojas
- 30 New Launching Pads for American Education
- by Dwight W. Allen
- 39 Harlem Prep: Homocultural Education
- for a New Era, by Edward F. Carpenter
- 46 Seasons
- a poem by Richard C. Raymond
- 47 Education for High School Dropouts
- by William H. Smith and Douglas Ruhe
- 61 On Re-Humanizing School Systems
- a book review by Darrell D. Lacock
- 64 Authors and Artists in This Issue
Rebellious Youth: Toeing Their Elders’ Mark
EDITORIAL
COLLEGE CAMPUSES are in turmoil. Hundreds of thousand of students have been demonstrating their rejection of the established values of society. Their elders are incapable of coping with rebellious youth or even of understanding the sources of the rebellion.
Blaming the young for the crisis on campuses is as useless as blaming the unthinking automobile for air pollution or the poor for the existence of poverty. The young are only reacting to the crisis of an age which has produced throughout the world violence, crime, drug addiction, obscenity, exploitation, racism, and war.
The entire civilization is dying like a mighty oak tree gone to bark: the core has long rotted away but the tree still stands—all appearance and no substance. Is it any wonder the young rebel? They sense that those in authority have no clear vision, that the leaders do not know the way. Indeed, the whole idea of authority has come into question because in the eyes of youth authority has lost its legitimacy.
The decline of civilization that we are witnessing did not begin last year. The seeds of the crisis were sown more than a century ago when the Western world, first tacitly and later explicitly, embraced a materialistic outlook which was bound to result eventually in dehumanization and catastrophe. Harassed, frightened, desperately seeking solutions, man turned away from inherited norms and, in his rebellion against old evils, tried to tear down everything, to break every tradition, and to construct a brave new world of hedonistic happiness based on economic equality, or racial purity, or national glory.
Thirty, forty, fifty years ago the youth embraced doctrines of protest and upheaval. It was the youth who spilled blood in the Russian revolution and civil war; the youth who marched with Mussolini on Rome; the youth who brawled in the streets of German cities and hailed in Hitler its savior. It was also the youth who died by the millions on the battlefields of all wars, paying the ultimate price of human folly.
Perhaps the young have been too docile; perhaps they have not
rebelled enough. Perhaps they have emulated their parents too faithfully
[Page 2] and too long. Their language, their notions, even their reliance on
drugs, they have learned from their parents. Ironically, the most radical
among them bear a strong resemblance to their elders, torn by the same
unrestrained passions that in past generations possessed the narodniki,
the anarchists, the bolsheviks, the Black Shirts, and the storm troopers
of the Right and the Left.
THE DISEASE OF OUR AGE is in essence spiritual, and the great challenge to youth is spiritual renewal. This does not imply a retreat from the realities of life, exclusive cultivation of private virtues, or selfish attempts at personal salvation amidst the holocaust. It means commitment to certain principles, among them independent investigation of truth; equality of races, which, for America, is undoubtedly the most challenging issue; equality of sexes and women’s liberation; elimination of extremes of poverty and wealth; universal peace and world government.
These principles, held with religious passion by men and women dedicated to the service of humanity and united by divinely revealed faith, would constitute the new core around which a new civilization could be constructed. The builders of that civilization have a dream, and the dream is about unity. A generation ago Shoghi Effendi brilliantly sketched in outline the implications of the unification of mankind when he wrote that:
- The unity of the human race . . . implies the establishment of a world commonwealth in which all nations, races, creeds and classes are closely and permanently united . . . .
- National rivalries, hatreds, and intrigues will cease, and racial animosity and prejudice will be replaced by racial amity, understanding and cooperation. The causes of religious strife will be permanently removed, economic barriers and restrictions will be completely abolished, and the inordinate distinction between classes will be obliterated. . . .
- A world federal system, ruling the whole earth and exercising unchallengeable authority over its unimaginably vast resources, blending and embodying the ideals of both the East and the West, liberated from the curse of war and its miseries, and bent on the exploitation of all the available sources of energy on the surface of the planet, a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice, whose life is sustained by its universal recognition of one God and by its allegiance to one common Revelation—such is the goal towards which humanity, impelled by the unifying forces of life, is moving.
Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR
DR. MAX HABICHT, a distinguished international lawyer living and practicing in Geneva, has sent us some notes from a speech on world law and world government. Dr. Habicht has been active for half a century in behalf of these principles. He has been a supporter of the League of Nations and is a supporter of the United Nations. He points out in his speech, however, that, as valuable as the United Nations and the World Court are, these instruments as they exist at present cannot bring peace to the world. Many people, he states, “think that the United Nations is a world government, that the U.N. ‘blue helmets’ are a world police, and that the World Court at The Hague is a world tribunal before which parties can be summoned. This is not so. The United Nations is a marketplace where national interests are bargained for, but where agreement is often not attained and the particular injustice cannot be eradicated.” Although our present international institutions are useful and desirable, he adds, “If mankind really wishes peace, it must create machinery which can make laws for the entire world, binding upon every individual: a World Parliament which creates world law, a World Government which enforces world law, and a World Judiciary which interprets world law.”
Under such a system universal consent would not be a prerequisite to resolving conflicts; instead disputes would be submitted to an honest and intelligent “Third Party”, whose judgment would be binding. Interestingly enough, Dr. Habicht stresses that world law, unlike the present international law which applies only to nations, must be addressed to individuals. Thus lawbreakers would be punished— not through use of bombs raining upon the innocent as well as the guilty, but “through a world police force in a disarmed world.”
“National disarmament,” he continues, “is a prerequisite to world police action. Disarmament has never been achieved, however, through treaties, but only by means of statutory law made by a parliament. If the League of Nations and the United Nations have not accomplished disarmament, this simply shows that treaties for total disarmament cannot be concluded. National disarming will only be possible following the establishment of a world machinery which can create and enforce statutory laws by a World Parliament.”
The price nation-states must pay to obtain world order is the relinquishment of some of their authority. “If this transfer is realized,” Dr. Habicht concludes, “some people might lose power but mankind would acquire what it has always been longing for—peace on earth.” The common man who fights wars, who sees his loved ones die of violence or famine, would have everything to gain in a world where energies are devoted “to the welfare of mankind rather than to the preparation for its destruction.”
* * *
The last two issues of WORLD ORDER
(Spring and Summer 1970) have included
excerpts from The Mountain of
God, a novel of special appeal to those
interested in Bahá’í history. In our introduction
we called it “a forgotten novel by
a forgotten author” whose name could not
be found in standard reference works on
English writers. Happily, it turns out that
several of our readers are better library
[Page 5] sleuths than we have proved to be. With a
touch of embarrassment, but also with
pleasure at the responsiveness of our readers,
we would like to offer some belated
biographical information about E. S.
Stevens and to thank those who have
helped to illuminate her identity.
Paul Eugene Pelchat of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Nick Border of San Jose, California, and Ruth E. La Quier of St. Cloud, Minnesota, led us to a number of books and articles written by Ethel Stefana Stevens, who is now known by her married name, Lady Drower. Franz Rosenthal, Sterling Professor of Near Eastern Languages at Yale University, provided further details: “I wonder . . . about the aspersion cast . . . on Yale and its Library. E. S. Stevens is Ethel Stefana Stevens, now Lady Drower, and a famous Mandaean scholar. The holdings in the Library are listed under Drower (with an appropriate cross-reference). She is still alive . . . and lives in Oxford. In 1960 she received the International Lidzbarski Gold Medal as an outstanding scholar in Semitic languages, given jointly by the four Semitics societies of Germany, France, England, and the United States.”
Lady Drower, according to Who’s Who, 1969, resided for many years in the Middle East. During this time she apparently met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and a number of Bahá’ís residing in Palestine. In addition to The Mountain of God, she wrote about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in an article entitled “The Light in the Lantern”, published in Everybody’s Magazine in December 1911, and in “Abbas Effendi, His Personality, Work, and Followers”, published in the Fortnightly Review in June 1911. As a young woman, Lady Drower wrote novels and travel books. Since the 1930’s, however, her work has focused on Middle Eastern religions and cultures, and especially on the Mandaeans, about whom she was writing as recently as 1963. Thus, although her reputation does not rest primarily on her novels, she is hardly a “forgotten author”. Indeed, her lengthy and serious acquaintance with the Middle East adds another dimension to our appreciation of her descriptions of the small Bahá’í community on the slopes of Mount Carmel in the early twentieth century.
* * *
To the Editor
THE ARTS
I had the good surprise of receiving the WORLD ORDER with my article [“The Bahá’í Faith and the Arts,” Spring 1970]; your translation is so good that I am very proud of it . . . . Thanks also for the illustrations—were they made for the article? They are so good in their tone and so beautiful.
Oh, concerning the little note about my antecedents. I was born in the south of France, but I was raised and educated in Paris (College Edgar Quinet). I was nine years old when we moved . . . .
- ELIANE A. HOPSON
- New York, N. Y.
INDIANS
I would like to tell you how much I love the articles about the Indians [Fall 1969]. We have lovely Indians around here—Guaymis. I wish you could know them. They are just now coming out of the mountains a little. I am so peaceful when I am there. An interesting example is, I tried to play monopoly with one friend. He couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. He kept trying to help me win. Then I began to realize something important—that it was better if he didn’t learn how to play monopoly.
- DONNA LOU KISER
- Changuinola, Panama
International Education Year
Educational Revolution: By Accident or Design
By ALFONSO DE SILVA
AT THE BEGINNING of 1970, Mr. René Maheu, the Director-General of UNESCO issued a special message to launch International Education Year, which had been designated by the General Assembly of the United Nations at the suggestion of the General Conference of UNESCO. He declared the year open “in the name of the right of every human being to education as a right to progress and renewal” and appealed to peoples and governments to make it as constructive an endeavor as possible.
Educational Progress in the Sixties
OVER THE LAST DECADE there has been an unprecedented quantitative expansion in the education systems of almost all countries. This occurred in response to a number of factors, including the population explosion, the accession of many states to independence, the move in the direction of the democratization of education, and the recognition in planning development that education is a factor making for economic growth and social stability.
The educational growth in the last decade presents a striking contrast to the stagnant situation revealed earlier by UNESCO’s historic survey “World Illiteracy at Mid-Century”. This study, which is the most comprehensive worldview of the status of education or the lack of it, ever undertaken in 198 countries and territories, showed that two out of every four adults over fifteen were totally illiterate, that is, unable to read and write a third grade statement. Furthermore, it was estimated that at mid-century 65 percent of the world’s adults were functionally illiterate, if we consider literacy to be the ability to play an active role in today’s industrialized society. In addition, 250 million children were not attending school.
Published three years before the launching of the first development decade, this survey focused world attention on the educational situation and led to a series of efforts by concerned governments, national and international organizations, and individuals. For example, expenditure on education by governments increased both in absolute terms and in relation to total national spending. The increase was most pronounced between 1960 and 1965, when for a group of ninety countries the proportion of national incomes spent on education rose from 3.6 percent in 1960 to 4.5 percent in 1965. Translated into human terms, this increase represents a very considerable achievement. The total world school enrollment grew from 324 million pupils for the school year 1960-61 to 428 million in 1966-67, an increase of 104 million, or 32 percent in six years. For the first time in history, the rate of increase of school enrollments in the world was catching up with the rate of population increase.
Why an International Education Year?
THAT IEY was designated when the international
community had achieved a certain
progress in education development shows
[Page 7] that this year was not chosen as an occasion
to redress past failures, nor to make up the
delay in educational development, but to
make a bold attempt to understand and
grapple with “the world crisis in education”,
many aspects of which had arisen from the
very progress made in education in recent
years.
In the developing parts of the world, the issues are by now fairly well known and are keenly felt by the governments directly concerned. But in spite of heavy state expenditures on education and brave efforts by those involved in the process, the gap between goals and achievement, although narrowing, is not narrowing rapidly enough.
For example, while the world percentage of illiteracy has dropped, the absolute numbers have increased by seventy million in the last ten years due to the rapid growth in population. Similarly, in spite of the unprecedented growth in enrollment rate in primary schools throughout the world, only about half of the children between the ages of five and fourteen are in school. Some sixty-two countries have an enrollment rate of less than 50 percent. Six African countries have school enrollments of under 10 percent. Yet this school age population will increase by more than one hundred million during the next decade.
It should be stressed, however, that priorities for the developing countries are not in any way different from those for developed ones. Lest you sit back in your easy chairs and feel that these problems are “theirs” and not “ours”, let me recall the prevalence of widespread student unrest in many of the most highly developed countries like the United States, France, and Japan, with which we are all familiar.
No country can claim today that its educational system is perfect. It is imperative that a new definition of the real purpose of education be found. What forms, structures, content, and end-product should the educational process have in the decade to come? Change in education is not only a question of more of the same, or more money: it is also a question of more imagination and courage in thinking of the aims, quality, and content of education.
Why The Year 1970?
EDUCATION IS a large and continuing enterprise.
Its process in schools, colleges, and less
formal situations goes on all the time without
interruption. Why then was the year
[Page 8] 1970 selected as International Education
Year? The answer will have to show clearly
in what way 1970 is different from 1969 or
1971 or any other given year.
The year coincides with the surging to the fore of a number of challenges to the established order of things. In some cases, the challenge has come from the students themselves, notably students in universities, who feel that the patterns of organization and teaching, as well as the adequacy of preparation for professional life, leave a great deal to be desired. The challenge has also come from parents who are not satisfied with the education given to their children. In other cases the challenge has come from employers, organized professional groups, or from the teachers themselves. Finally, it has become increasingly evident that in many countries the existing system—and particularly the curriculum—is not geared to the present needs of the society.
As life in the industrial societies becomes more and more complex, the relevance of existing arrangements for the education and training of young people is questioned. Or rather, what is called into doubt is the policy of continuing on established lines, of providing more schooling for more students and making it last longer, without redefining its purpose and renewing its content. A view common throughout the world is that we need to pause for a moment in this vast and continuing enterprise of education and see what we are doing, how fast we are going, and where we think we want to go.
A conference held at Williamsburg, Virginia, in October 1967 on the theme “The World Crisis in Education”[1] revealed that deep-seated maladjustments in most educational systems are bringing us fast to the verge of a crisis. In other words, we have been facing a twentieth or twenty-first century world with institutions and methods which date back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—“old wine in new bottles”, as it is said. And it was on the occasion of the Williamsburg Conference that the President of the United States presented the idea of an International Education Year. The year 1970 was recommended by the General Conference of UNESCO and chosen by the General Assembly of the United Nations as a prelude to the second UN Development Decade.
Indeed, three important themes proposed for IEY are directly concerned with development, if it is taken in a strictly economic sense. These include functional literacy for adults, the training of middle level and higher level personnel, and the adaptation of education (both general and technical) to the needs of the modern world, especially in rural areas. But the remaining themes also affect or even precondition development, if taken in its broader economic and social context, which is the only valid one.[2]
Most of the newly independent countries
have attempted to provide a modest level of
education for all of their citizens, for this is a
basic human right; they have also attempted
to develop education beyond the primary
stage in order to train sufficient middle and
high level people to speed up national development.
Yet, both quantitatively and
qualitatively, their goals seem to be no nearer
now than they were a decade ago. One of the
reasons for these difficulties is that the structures
[Page 9] of the educational systems—forms of
schooling, curricula, and teaching methods
based upon patterns introduced in former
times—are themselves charged with the
possibility of a great deal of waste and
inefficiency. Another reason is the rapid
growth of population.
For example, up to now, whether in Europe, the United States, or the Soviet Union, industrialization has always preceded education. For a long time there were more factories than schools, and industry financially supported the education which was to provide it with urgently needed office staff and in more recent years qualified workers. Yet, even so, it took Europe more than a century to provide primary education for all of its children.
In most of the developing countries, however, schools are opening before factories in a period when man’s knowledge—particularly in the fields of science and technology—is growing at a phenomenal rate. Difficulties are bound to follow in launching such an ambitious program as the introduction of universal education within twenty years.
Should the developing countries base their approach on the Western or European model and wait another century before their children can find their place in school? The question can be summed up: When you have limited resources, is it better to educate a few to a higher level or have general education at a lower level?
Recent experience of developing and developed countries alike put the question into a new perspective. They all need educational systems to meet their own needs in today’s world. In fact, what they are all facing— whatever they may call it—is no less than an educational revolution. Will this be done by accident or design? The year 1970 should provide a breakthrough for all countries—an opportunity to take stock, to be critical, and to build anew.
What Is IEY?
WHAT THEN IS IEY? It could be described as a combined effort by all the countries of the world to do something extra or special about their educational problems in order “to mobilize energies and inspire initiatives in education and training”. In other words, it is an international year on education, or, even, it is a combination of 126 national education years.
IEY is therefore basically a national affair. Possible types of action comprise any or all of a logical sequence of operations: study and reflection about education across the nation; identification of outstanding problems; experiments to find solutions to such problems; involvement of the public in the discussion of educational issues—all of these leading finally to changes in educational policies.
Such a national exercise should of course be focused primarily on the country itself. However, each country will find inevitably that it can learn from the experience of others and in turn make a contribution to them. In some cases, this could take the shape of increased educational aid from developed to developing countries.
What Are Individual Countries Doing?
AS A RESULT of the United Nations’ decision and of UNESCO’s appeal to Member States to prepare programs for the International Year, an increasing number of national programs are being set in motion. Two or three brief examples may be given.
In France, six important journals in the field of education are devoting special issues to the IEY themes; a seminar is to be organized on the mechanisms of the learning process; and late in 1970 the French National Commission for UNESCO intends to arrange a research conference on the evaluation of projects in functional literacy.
Japan has launched an ambitious program,
which includes national events (such as the
issuance of a special IEY postage stamp), the
creation of new institutions (a university and
an institute for in-service teacher training),
and the increase of contacts between Japanese
educators and those abroad. Expanded
educational aid to developing countries will
[Page 10] form an important part of the Japanese
contributions to IEY.
In Tanzania, plans are being made to hold courses at the University College, Dar-Es-Salam, in the theory and practice of educational administration, in educational supervision, and in public policy and development of human resources. Various other courses, such as educational research, educational psychology, and evaluation techniques, are proposed as part of a long-term post-graduate program of study. Also interesting is Tanzania’s emphasis on adult education. In his New Year’s message broadcast to the nation on radio networks, President Julius K. Nyerere declared that the coming twelve months must be “Adult Education Year” because “education is not just something which happens in the class-room”, but “is learning about anything at all which can help us to understand the environment we live in, and the manner in which we can change and use this environment in order to improve”.
In the United States, President Nixon issued a special proclamation on February 13, designating 1970 as IEY in the United States, and called upon all Americans to join their fellow citizens of the world in making this year one of reflection on the state of education as it exists and of action directed toward making education what it should be. The U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, in cooperation with the UNA/USA and the National Education Association of the United States, has put out a publication entitled “A World to Gain”. This booklet not only explains what IEY is but also gives information about the plans and projects of non-governmental organizations in the United States on the occasion of IEY. It even includes a chapter entitled “What we can do”, which indicates that there will be action, not just words.
The enthusiasm shown at the non-governmental level in this country is indicated by the active participation of the National Education Association, among other groups, in IEY. The NEA and its affiliated organizations are planning a large program of meetings, publications, and other activities in connection with IEY. Among the meetings scheduled are a conference on bilingual education, and educational conferences in Ecuador, Central America, and West Africa on how teachers’ associations can help improve education. Several NEA publications will be given a wide distribution during IEY. NEA has also proposed a joint project of the US National Commission for UNESCO, UNESCO, and NEA for a special insert on UNESCO and education in the October issue of their journal Education Today. And they have donated a three-dimensional exhibit on education for display at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Who Will Participate in IEY?
IT SHOULD BE MADE CLEAR that national programs are not merely a matter for a small group of officials in a central ministry. Action at the local level is essential in any country. The role of teachers and students is obvious, since they are the people most directly involved in the educational process. The other groups and institutions in the nation—parents, employers, churches, professional associations—need also to be engaged in study, experimentation, discussion, and proposals for policy changes.
Since this is an “International” Education Year, all the UN organizations will provide the means of communication between countries, offer a framework for action, and make it possible to add an international dimension to a great deal of what is undertaken nationally. This will make it something more than an aggregate of separate national programs.
A notable example of international action
was a symposium to examine “Education and
the Development of Man” held at UNESCO
Headquarters in Paris on February 18. Experts
from twenty-three countries examined
the nature of the present educational system
and agreed that today’s education is not
[Page 11] meeting modern demands. They concluded
that the ideal education in the future should
be a life-long education, or in other words, a
cradle-to-grave process no longer concentrated
on early years—“as if you could eat
enough at breakfast to last the day”, as one
expert put it. They also predicted that the
universities, no longer the only powerhouses
of knowledge, might not survive at all in
their present form, but if they did, they
would not represent the terminal stage. Furthermore,
participants asserted that education
would cease to be neutral, presenting information
and avoiding moral judgments, but
would seek to be an ethical force, the strongest
of its principles being social justice.
Conclusion
NOBODY would argue that development is a factor decisive to the future of mankind. But what is development? A short but profound definition was given by Secretary-General U Thant: “It is growth plus change.”
The Director-General of UNESCO, Mr. René Maheu, believes that development involves more change than growth. So let us not shrink from change. The choice is not between change and stability; it is between changes which must be borne because they have not been foreseen and those which we ourselves determine because we have thought them out.
That is why the crisis in education lies at the heart of the crisis of our society, for education is exactly this—molding minds and characters of men in accordance with the designed change. That is why the crisis in education today is even more fundamental, since it is not only educational methods and techniques but also this design for the future itself, or the lack of it, that are being called into question. We should initiate a massive effort to find out the answer. In less than a generation, it might be too late.
- ↑ See Philip H. Coombs, The World Educational Crisis (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968).
- ↑ Other IEY themes proposed to Member States, the International Organizations of the UN system, and the other governmental and nongovernmental international organizations concerned with the year were:
(1) equal access of girls and women to education; (2) democratization of secondary and higher education; (3) transition from selection to guided choice in secondary and higher education; (4) development of educational research; (5) pre-service and in-service training of teachers; (6) educational technology—the new methods and media; (7) life-long integrated education; (8) reconciliation in education of a spirit of tradition and of preservation of an intellectual and moral heritage with a spirit of renewal; and (9) promotion of ethical principles in education, especially through the moral and civic education of youth, with a view to promoting international understanding and peace.
An Old Couple
- The two well-worn
- and clinging to
- each other.
- Have shipped in life
- for fifty years
- together
- Old rose and blue serge
- rise and fall
- waiting out the waves—
- returning home
—Randall Holahan
In Search of the Supreme Talisman
A Bahá’í Perspective on Education
By DANIEL C. JORDAN
CULTURE IS THE UBIQUITOUS EDUCATOR of man. Over long periods of time human groups have accumulated vast bodies of experience which have been distilled into particular patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. These patterns constitute the culture of any given group and are reflected in its basic institutions, such as family, school, or economic system. Functioning as mediators of educative experience, these institutions transmit from generation to generation the culture which sustains them.
It is possible to accomplish the transmission of culture to the oncoming generation only because man is a creature with extraordinary capacity for learning. It is the process of learning in all its multifarious forms to which education in its broadest sense refers. Since man is endowed with few instincts, he has to rely almost entirely on what he learns—his culture—for survival. Thus, the kind of education available to man at any given point in time has direct implications for both the probability and quality of his survival.
The Crisis in Culture and Education
THE RELATIONSHIP of man to his environment is not static. It is dynamic and therefore always changing. His interaction with the environment changes it, and those changes have reactive effects on him. If patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting—man’s culture—are not modified to reflect a constructive accommodation to those changes, the culture may easily become nonprogressive, eventually maladaptive, and ultimately genocidal.
For instance, we have succeeded in polluting the air and our water resources to such an extent that we now face ecological problems serious enough that our survival may depend on their solution. This is a good example of how culturally sustained patterns of behavior, when continued beyond a certain point, become dysfunctional and even dangerous. Whenever this happens, the culture enters a period of crisis. In the past, if new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting could not be found and accepted by the majority of people comprising the society facing such a crisis, the culture died out along with the people who clung to it; or a neighboring group that was more progressive absorbed it and in the process changed it. Such crises in themselves are usually educative experiences and may be regarded as extracultural in the sense that they force a search for new patterns of acting that are outside of those sanctioned by the culture that has become maladaptive.
At the present time the world of humanity and the different cultures it
represents are in the midst of the most extensive crises ever known to man. The
ways we have learned to feel, think, and act in relationship to both our physical
and social environments are no longer functional. Instead of bringing us peace
[Page 13] and tranquillity, they cause us to be destructive of each other through
internecine riots and wars; of our own selves through drugs, alcohol, and a
variety of psychological disorders; and of our physical environment through
pollution, uncontrolled erosion, and ruthless exploitation of natural resources.
These crises are forcing humanity to seek a new culture—one that is universal and therefore functional for all men everywhere; one that can create a new race of men, new social institutions, and new physical environments. To survive these crises, we must learn new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Man must be re-educated.
But what will the re-education of mankind consist of? What new patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting have a reasonable hope of success in delivering us from these crises? No answer can be fully appreciated without understanding how a shift in values has brought us to our present condition.
Changes in Value Priorities—An Analytical Perspective on the Crises
WE ARE TAUGHT by our culture how to feel about everything in our environment—ideas, events, people, and objects. It is the culturally sanctioned pattern of positive and negative feelings about these things which constitutes the value system of any society. Every value system can be understood in terms of three subsystems organized around the way man defines his relationship to three different types of environments: physical, social, and supernatural.[1] The function of these value systems is to bring some kind of order and structure into those relationships. A certain kind of balance must be maintained among the subsystems if the whole society is to have an order that is functional, adaptive, and progressive. Understanding the changes in relationships which have occurred over the last century and a half among these three subsystems not only sheds light on the present crises but also establishes the indispensable nature of the Bahá’í perspective on education.
Values organized around man’s relationship to the physical environment.— Man’s struggle to relate himself to the physical environment in ways that increase the probability of his survival has led to a progressively more detailed knowledge of the nature of matter. The accumulation of this knowledge and its application to the environment gave rise to a subsystem of scientific values which now supports a technological order of vast proportions. This order has been so effective in giving man extensive control over the physical environment that few people would even consider questioning its “rightness”.
Values organized around man’s relationship to the social environment.—The experience and wisdom man has accumulated concerning how to live with others and function in groups are formally expressed through patterns of law and government and informally expressed through custom and tradition. Both expressions are sanctioned by a system of social values which sustains the moral order. The stability of community life depends upon members of the community sharing the social values which support the moral order. When the moral order disintegrates, there is no basis for community life.
[Page 14]
Values organized around man’s relationship to ultimate unknowns—Man’s
capacity for consciousness has impelled him to strive continually for an
understanding of his relationship to everything which exists, including the
unknown in himself and the mysteries underlying the infinitude and order of
the universe. From time to time, down through history, prophets and
visionaries have appeared and articulated man’s relationship to these unknowns.
The events transpiring in the wake of their appearances have
generated subsystems of spiritual values which sustain the religious orders of
the communities in which they appeared.
Type of Environment | Related Value System | Type of Order Sustained by the Value System |
---|---|---|
physical | scientific | technological |
human beings | social | moral |
supernatural (ultimate unknowns) | spiritual | religious |
The scientific, social, and spiritual values that maintain respectively the technological, moral, and religious orders of society are all interrelated. Changes in one have effects on the others. The three subsystems and the values they represent are not held to be equally important or significant. Different societies at different times accorded them different priorities depending upon their past history and the exigencies they happened to be facing at any given moment. Whatever the priorities were or are, the values that are dominant determine the goals of a society and how its resources will be used—in effect, its destiny.
For most of man’s history, spiritual values have generally been dominant over social values, which in turn have usually been considered more important than values which related man to his physical environment. However, when science, as a method of discovering and verifying truths about our physical environment, began to develop, conflicts among the subsystems of values also developed and the dominant position of spiritual values was challenged. Since that time, scientific values have been accorded an increasingly more powerful position in the total value system. It is partly for this reason that we have seen in the last 130 years the emergence of a portentous secularism accompanied by a de-emphasis of spiritual values and a disintegration of the religious order.[2] The major institutions which stood as the bulwarks of the religious order have either crumbled or joined the rising tide of secularism and in both cases have lost their potency.
Any chronicle of the outstanding events of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries would disclose the collapse of the most prestigious and seemingly
invulnerable ecclesiastical institutions and religious systems of the world. This
includes, for instance, the dissolution of the caliphate and the consequent
[Page 15] secularization of Turkey; the crumbling of the Shí’ih hierarchy in Persia and
the rapid decline of its fortunes; the evaporation of the temporal sovereignty of
the Pope; the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire; and the accelerating
fragmentation of Christianity in general. That traditional religions are dying
out in almost every land is so well documented that it can no longer be
questioned.
As religion fades, the sanctions which sustain the structure of the moral order lose their force and result in a confusion of social values. In the midst of such confusion, secular theories of morality become popular. This gives rise to an increase in moral laxity, a disregard for manners, a weakening of self-discipline, and the abandonment of self to excessive indulgence and pleasures, all of which are concomitants of the incapacity to assume a variety of important social responsibilities, particularly those related to marriage and the family. Yet marriages continue to be contracted and dissolved while children are conceived and born, bereft of the growth-fostering atmosphere and stability of a home life characterized by the watchful care of mature and loving parents. Personalities formed under such adverse conditions are almost certain to be unstable. The increase in crime, the expanding rate of divorce, mental illness, and alcoholism, the dependence upon tranquilizers, the escape from reality into the drug experience, the breakdown of law and order, the corruption of political institutions, and the unethical practices of modern business and industry are all symptomatic of the decomposition of the moral order.
The conflict in value systems has created many basic uncertainties, and, as
the moral order has decomposed, feelings of personal anxiety and social
insecurity have increased. It is therefore not surprising to find that trying to
deal with insecurity has become a pervasive concern of modern society. On the
personal level this concern is formally expressed in the development of the
“helping professions” such as counseling and psychiatry (a development which
is basically secular and replaces the support and guidance formerly available
through the religious order). On the social level one of the basic reactions to
insecurity has been mistrust and the consequent build-up of elaborate and
costly defense systems and tenuous alliances. Rather than identify the
fundamental causes of insecurity and deal with them, we have created
institutions to deal with the symptoms: mental hospitals to help those who can
no longer cope with anxiety; prisons for those who react to anxiety by
threatening the security of others; foreign aid to help those who cannot remove
social insecurities because war has ruined their means of obtaining adequate
resources; armed forces to deal with those who are regarded as enemies and a
threat to our own security. People who are conflict-ridden or suppressed by
injustice can either withdraw (create a fantasy world to escape anxiety and
finally become institutionalized) or strike out (pursue the route of crime and
end up in prison or join violent political movements). Nations which are
conflict-ridden internally by injustice and in conflict with other nations or
externally oppressed can also withdraw or attack. Without a sharing of
universal values, however, both withdrawal and attack are dysfunctional and
only create further disunity and therefore more insecurity. The size of the
institutions created to deal with the symptoms and the staggering amount of
resources required to maintain them reflect the magnitude of the problem; their
[Page 16] strangely contradictory nature betrays the conflicts in our value system.
One of the most effective antidotes to insecurity and anxiety is meaning. A primary source of meaning for man is the perception of sense-making relationships and an emotional acceptance of them. As history shows, traditional religion was unable to make sense out of its relationship to the emergence of science. It failed to arrive at a distinction between faith and superstition, went on to deny the truth of science, and drove a wedge between reason and faith—between science and religion. Instead of facilitating the perception of sense-making relationships by adjusting to the truths of science, religious leaders insisted upon ignorance or intellectual dishonesty and thereby increased man’s insecurity. The effect was to abandon to science the responsibility of making sense out of things. Science took the responsibility seriously. During the last half-century there has been an almost frantic investment of time, energy, and material resources in all of the enterprises of science. It is no wonder that man has delivered to himself an awesome technology that has brought him on the one hand a measure of security because of the increased predictability of events in the material world, but on the other hand has provided him with a power of almost incalculable dimensions which, because he has lost his moral bearings, is a constant threat to his survival.
The crisis humanity presently faces can be simply stated: because true religion is dying out, the moral order is collapsing while science and technology, guided by a profusion of materialistic and secular philosophies, have been permitted to concentrate too many of their powers on developing more efficient ways of destroying man. In other words, the priorities in values are being reversed and are causing widespread disorder in man’s relationship to his environment. He has thus entered a period of crises fraught with many dangers.
Teetering on the edge of oblivion, what can man do to face this crisis of incomprehensible proportions? If the foregoing analysis is correct, we have only one hope—a renaissance of religion based on spiritual values that do not deny the truth of science but which can direct the awesome power of modern technology into constructive channels of service to a mankind that is unified by the power of a new moral order derived from those values.
Rebirth of Religion and the Re-education of Humanity
IN THE MIDST of the accumulating wreckage of the old order, a new faith—the
Bahá’í Faith—has appeared. The wellspring of this faith, the revelation of
Bahá’u’lláh, bountifully showered upon humanity a little over a century ago,
has demonstrated to an ever-growing circle of concerned human beings its
power to prevent the crisis from extinguishing the human race. The tangible
manifestation of this power is a rapidly expanding world-wide Bahá’í Community
which thrives upon a new culture—a culture which educates the
children born into it and re-educates the adults who join it. It is the creation
and spreading of this new culture—new ways of thinking, feeling, and
acting—that constitute the most powerfully constructive educational force at
work on the planet today. Placing this process of enculturation in a broad but
simple educational context, we can regard the whole world as the classroom, all
of humanity as the class, Bahá’u’lláh as the teacher, and His revelation as the
[Page 17] curriculum.[3]
The objective of this divine curriculum is to unify man through the creation of a universal culture, the ultimate concern of which is man’s relationship to God. In this culture the religious order determines the moral order in a way that enables the technological order to be controlled and utilized for the benefit of all mankind. In other words, its purpose is to educate man to his spiritual reality, establish a world order which reflects that reality, replace materialism as the motivating force behind human conduct, and restore technology to a position of service. It makes clear the order of priority among the value systems, removes the conflicts among them, and therefore deals with the causes of social and personal insecurity.
Turning away from materialism is a prerequisite to the attainment of social unity precisely for the reason that material things taken as an ultimate concern draw out of man characteristics which work against the achievement of unity: greed, avarice, covetousness, reckless ambition to dominate, and injustice in dealing with those who are weak or belong to minority groups.[4] What the new moral order requires are the opposites of these characteristics. We cannot rely upon science and scientific values to develop such characteristics in man because they do not, by themselves, create the kind of motivation needed. Scientific inference can only confer probability upon its conclusions. As important as this is, the transformation of humanity will nonetheless depend upon a power and dynamic born of certitude and affirmation rather than probability. Religion, because of the spiritual values it can generate, confers certitude upon altruistic aspirations and makes selfless action possible. These, in turn, help to create and maintain the bonds of unity on which the new moral order must depend for its structural durability. For these reasons, the reeducation— the transformation—of man is contingent upon the emergence of a culture in which universal spiritual values are dominant. In essence, this is the basic rationale underlying the Bahá’í perspective on education.
It should be noted that the Bahá’í Faith, in establishing a value system which
rejects materialism as a basis for community life, does not teach that science
and technology are in themselves bad. It is only when technology and science
are directed by a materialistic philosophy rather than by a highly developed
religious sense that they no longer serve mankind and, in fact, may destroy it.
Bahá’u’lláh has stated: “Your sciences shall not profit you in this day, nor your
arts, nor your treusures, nor your glory. Cast them all behind your backs, and
set your faces towards the Most Sublime Word. . . .”[5] ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of
[Page 18] Bahá’u’lláh, even goes so far as to say that the sciences, which are accepted and
beloved when operating under the influence of the love of God, are not only
fruitless without it, but are the cause of insanity.[6] He pleads for us to “turn our
hearts away from the world of matter and live in the spiritual world,” for “It
alone can give us freedom!”[7] and asserts that if “the spiritual nature of the soul
has been so strengthened that it holds the material side in subjection, then does
man approach the divine; his humanity becomes so glorified that the virtues of
the celestial assembly are manifested in him; he radiates the mercy of God, he
stimulates the spiritual progress of mankind, for he becomes a lamp to show
light on their path.”[8]
The Supreme Talisman—Man Spiritually Educated
BAHÁ’U’LLÁH, the Educator of the new era, characterized man as a treasury of potentialities which could be drawn out through education:
- Man is the supreme Talisman. Lack of a proper education hath, however, deprived him of that which he doth inherently possess. Through a word proceeding out of the mouth of God he was called into being; by one word more he was guided to recognize the Source of his education; by yet another word his station and destiny were safeguarded. The Great Being saith: Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom. If any man were to meditate on that which the Scriptures, sent down from the heaven of God’s holy Will, have revealed, he will readily recognize that their purpose is that all men shall be regarded as one soul, so that the seal bearing the words, “The Kingdom shall be God’s,” may be stamped on every heart, and the light of Divine bounty, of grace, and mercy may envelop all mankind.[9]
Man’s only hope of becoming the supreme talisman, of developing his potentialities, is to have a “proper education”. The meaning of “talisman” points to the spiritual nature of those “gems of inestimable value”—the potentialities of man—and confirms the thesis that a proper education must therefore be based upon his spiritual realities. A talisman is an object which is cut or engraved with a sign “that attracts power from the heavens” and is thought to act as a charm which averts evil and brings good fortune. In the statement quoted above, Bahá’u’lláh specifies the nature of the seal or engraving (which signifies the spiritual quality of man’s identity because of the Source of his being and his education), assures him protection from evil (safeguards his station and destiny), and brings him good fortune (envelops him with “the light of Divine bounty, of grace, and mercy”).
The “engraving” on the supreme talisman is a spiritual one. It is synonymous
with the image of God.[10] That image represents all the attributes of God
[Page 19] which are inherently possessed by man and can be expressed in the form of
virtues.[11] It is these virtues, latent within us as potentialities, that are the
“gems of inestimable value” which “proper education” can reveal.
The criterion for determining whether or not any educative experience is “proper” is whether or not it furthers God’s purpose for man. Bahá’u’lláh affirmed knowing and loving God as the “generating impulse and the primary purpose” underlying man’s creation.[12] Any experience which reflects that purpose will have the power to release human potential—to reveal those gems of inestimable value which we inherently possess. It is imperative that we be aware of this verity, because it is consciousness of that purpose which keeps us in touch with our spiritual reality, inhibits self-alienation, and safeguards our destiny. Being out of touch with that purpose will always create an identity problem, for one cannot become his true self—find his true identity—if his capacities for knowing and loving are impaired or suppressed. When formal systems of education become attuned to God’s purpose for man, they will function as institutionalized means of assisting every student to become his true self.[13]
Formal Means of Education in the New World Order
WHILE MOST SOCIETIES have both formal and informal means of educating
the young, the formal means, represented by such institutions as schools,
universities, or other training agencies, make up only a small, although
important, part of the total educative force present within any given culture.
The detailed specifications of educational institutions that will be produced by a
Bahá’í culture cannot be made with any certainty so early in the development
of the Faith. However, Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made numerous statements
about education which provide basic guidelines for the development of
educational institutions. In the new world order education will be compulsory.[14]
It will consist in part of a standard curriculum for the whole world[15]
and will include, at least, all sciences,[16] agriculture,[17] art,[18] music,[19]
literature and speech,[20] and a universal auxiliary language.[21] Training will
emphasize the development of “good manners”, “praiseworthy virtues and
[Page 20] qualities”, and spirituality.[22] Science and religion will exist as complementary
areas in the curriculum, rather than as conflicting systems of thought and
action.[23] Particular care will be given to promote the understanding and
acceptance of the oneness of mankind as essential to world peace.[24] Special
attention will be given to the education of very young children,[25] of parents,[26]
of both girls and boys with a preference given to girls if the education of both
cannot be managed (since mothers usually have more responsibility for
training children),[27] and of members of minority groups.[28] In the new order
the process of becoming educated will be in itself regarded as an act of worship[29]
and will therefore be a spiritual activity motivated by religious conviction
rather than a secular activity motivated by purely economic considerations.
The above list is far from complete, but, whatever the specifications and functions of Bahá’í educational institutions of the future, they will fully reflect the essentials of the culture created by Bahá’u’lláh, for if culture—that ubiquitous educator of man—is to provide a “proper” education, it must reflect a scale of values which places spiritual values in a dominant position among all others. It is only that kind of culture which has the power to release the potentialities of man and create the supreme talisman that man is longing to become. Nothing short of a Manifestation of God—a Moses, a Christ, a Buddha, a Muḥammad—has the power to generate a new culture in which spiritual values are dominant.
In this age a new culture has been generated by Bahá’u’lláh. It is based on His revelation and is promulgated by the Bahá’í institutions which He fashioned. This new culture, which is being spread from country to country and transmitted to the oncoming generation, brings to mankind the great promise of becoming spiritually re-educated and insures a quality of survival that is both purposeful and munificent.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá uses similar categories to classify types of education: “. . . education is of three kinds: material, human, and spiritual.” See Some Answered Questions (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1964), p. 9.
- ↑ For a lengthy discussion of this issue, see The Secular City Debate, ed. Daniel J. Callahan (New York: Macmillan Co., 1966). The book contains a series of discourses on the basic issues of secularism: how to grapple with “religionless Christianity,” “sanctionless morality,” “religion without God,” “religion in the time of the ‘death of God’,” etc.
- ↑ “The prophets of God are the first educators. They bestow universal education upon man and cause him to rise from lowest levels of savagery to the highest pinnacles of spiritual development.”—‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Bahá’í World Faith (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1943), p. 249. “From the heaven of God’s Will, and for the purpose of ennobling the world of being and of elevating the minds and souls of men, hath been sent down that which is the most effective instrument for the education of the whole human race.”—Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1956), p. 95.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Reality of Man (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1966), p. 51.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1953), pp. 97-8.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, III (Chicago: Bahai Publishing Society, 1909-16), 687-8.
- ↑ The Reality of Man, p. 16.
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 13-4.
- ↑ Gleanings, pp. 259-60.
- ↑ In The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1963), p. 4, Bahá’u’lláh writes: “Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.”
- ↑ “Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath been singled out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty.”—Gleanings, p. 65.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ “Through the Teachings of this Day Star of Truth every man will advance and develop until he attaineth the station at which he can manifest all the potential forces with which his inmost true self hath been endowed.”—Ibid., p. 68.
- ↑ Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1938), p. xi.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation of Universal Peace (Chicago: Executive Board of Bahai Temple Unity, 1921-22), I, 177.
- ↑ Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, II, 448-9.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Bahá’í World Faith, p. 377.
- ↑ Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, II, 449-50.
- ↑ Ibid., III, p. 512.
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 501-2.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í Peace Program (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1930), p. 16.
- ↑ Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, I, 87. See also II, 373. It should be noted here that Bahá’u’lláh’s Writings mention over 1400 virtues to be acquired by man.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted in J. E. Esslemont, Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, 3rd rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1970), p. 202.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Star of the West, IX, 9, p. 98. See also Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1963), p. 30.
- ↑ Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, III, 606.
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 578-9.
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 579-80.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, America’s Spiritual Mission (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1948), p. 10.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Bahá’í World Faith, pp. 377-8.
The Meaning of Futuristics
By BILLY ROJAS
HERE IS SOMETHING decidedly unacademic about the subject of futuristics. Trying to see into tomorrow is an activity that, until recently, has been consigned to the periphery of scholarship. Indeed, before 1967 future forecasting was not taken seriously by intellectuals. As far as teachers were concerned futuristics was best consigned to science-fiction writers and “eccentric” designers like R. Buckminster Fuller. There was no place in college curricula for prognostication. One can, of course, point to the work of a scholar like William F. Ogburn, a future-oriented sociologist at the University of Chicago during the 1930’s and 1940’s, but his career was clearly exceptional in the strict sense of the term. There was virtually no one else to point to. Now all this has changed.
Since 1967—the year in which the World Future Society was founded—various educational institutions have been adding courses in future forecasting to their catalogues. Today, while there is no bandwagon, perhaps fifty colleges offer some kind of learning experience that focuses on futuristic interests. The nucleus for future studies curricula is beginning to take form; it will not be too many years before men and women can earn bachelor’s degrees in the subject. Already the first doctors of futuristics are about to make their appearance.
What accounts for the new respectability of futuristics in the academic world? Among other reasons, there is an entire literature in the field. Since Sputnik many persons have begun to worry about the future. Scholars and scientists have attempted to develop a style of thinking which would facilitate looking ahead— anticipating problems. Between 1957 and 1967 close to a thousand books and essays which dealt with the theme of predicting the future were written. The authors included Robert L. Heilbroner, Bertrand de Jouvenal, and Lancelot Law White. It simply was difficult for teachers to ignore the writings of these men. Then, too, some non-academic material was becoming known to scholars. The federal government, it turns out, had been sponsoring a number of futuristic-minded businesses for several years. Best known are the RAND Corporation of Santa Monica, California, and the Hudson Institute, a “think-tank” located in Hudson-on-Croton in New York. Both firms attempted to assess some rather weighty problems for Washington: What is the likelihood of thermonuclear war? What would happen if the bombs started exploding? What would a post-World War III society look like?
Herman Kahn, the central figure at the
Hudson Institute, tried to give the answers
in Thinking About the Unthinkable, a
volume published in 1962. And while
there was considerable disagreement about
Mr. Kahn’s sense of values, there was
nothing but respect for his intellectual
capability. Herman Kahn had succeeded in
creating a methodology that enabled one to
predict—with some scientific sophistication
—not the future—but alternative futures.
The most famous of his techniques is
scenario writing: weighing current trends
by means of narration. Kahn wrote the
history or, more accurately, different versions
of the history of the future. It was
[Page 23] possible to peer into the next age merely
by extending the methods used by historians.
Nobody had ever thought of that
before.
In rapid succession other techniques were developed. RAND’s contribution was the Delphic method of rationalizing intuitive speculation. Experts are constantly asked their opinions anyway—when do you think men will land on the planet Mars; when will computerized language-translating machines become available; etc.? Olaf Helmer and his associates asked themselves: Why not ask a number of experts instead of relying on one man’s speculation? The statistical mode of the answers of, say, one hundred scientists should be a more accurate prediction than any that could be supplied by one man. In the 1966 book Social Technology the results of the first Delphic exploration of the future were published. Then, in the summer of 1967, Daedalus quarterly published “Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress”. There are only a few thousand readers of that journal, and they are drawn almost entirely from the academic world. But suddenly these Daedalus readers— teachers and scholars—were confronted with more serious futuristic thinking by important schoolmen: David Riesman, Erik H. Erikson, and Daniel Bell.
But literary output was the effect, not
the cause, of a deeper reason for the
present interest in futuristics. Modern industry,
modern government, modern communications,
modern education are inconceivable
without (1) planning for the
future, and (2) basing those plans on
realistic appraisals of tomorrow’s world.
Do we want to limit population? Then we
must think ahead twenty years—to the
time when babies now born reach childbearing
age. Do we want to introduce a
change in American education? Then we
must think ahead ten years—the lead time
[Page 24] for many innovations in the nation’s
schools. Do we want to build a school?
Then we will need to think in terms of
five years from now—to a time when
bond-issues will have been passed, plans
drawn, contracts let for bids, and actual
construction completed.
Just as significant a reason as economic necessity for the current appreciation of futuristics, however, is a shift in the perception system of people. The science-fiction of the cold war era is having its greatest impact now. Children ten years old in 1940 were exposed to The Martian Chronicles and I, Robot during their impressionable years. The thought of automated houses or intelligent machines was never ridiculous to today’s forty-year-olds. Teachers who read Asimov or Bradbury as students have seen their most daring hopes materialize. Do today’s futurists seem eccentric to those who have witnessed dozens of astronauts rocket into outer space? Another reason, then, for the rise of academic futuristics is the fact that many people no longer see things through parochial eyes. And not only are perceptions changing but expectations are undergoing a massive overhaul as well. Access to a computer terminal in every home is not a ludicrous reverie—it is an expectation. Enactment of guaranteed income statutes is not a fantasy—it is an expectation. In short, we expect the future to be drastically different from the present. Our perceptions will not allow us to entertain another possibility.
The rate of change since Kennedy’s inauguration has been incredible by any past standards. And certainly the schools of the United States have felt the impact of the last decade. Berkeley, 1964. Columbia, 1968. Cornell and San Francisco State, 1969. Santa Barbara and Harvard, 1970. In case you have missed the news, a revolution is going on in this country, and it looks as if it is getting more intense, not less, each year. There is, then, not only the expectation of change but—from students especially—a clamor for change, a demand for a different kind of future world.
Against this background it should be understandable that there is genuine interest in futuristics and that futuristics as an academic discipline is developing in ways that are not typical of traditional curricula. In a paper called “Social Implications of Futures Research” John McHale makes clear why this is so. Non-futurists tend to look into tomorrow through pre-modern stereotypes. The tendency is to see the future in terms of tradeoffs. We can have this but not that. We can create either X or Y. In actuality— and this is McHale’s point—we can do nearly everything that we want to do. At least in the industrialized nations there is no deficit in resources; the problems of twentieth-century societies are problems of distribution. Moreover, the existence of problems of distribution, of insuring that the poor and the minorities are not treated unfairly, reflects widespread public acceptance of obsolete values and attitudes. Racial prejudice can be converted into an economic fact: black people, Indians, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans earn less than half as much money in the United States as their middleclass white counterparts. What makes this so appalling is that American industry is operating at far less than capacity. Scarcity, in other words, is artificial.
Established academic disciplines are
most often uncritical in one respect: history,
philosophy, anthropology, psychology
are predicated on the assumption
that the student should concern himself
with the way things are, not the way
things should be. Teachers spend enormous
amounts of energy in investigating
social phenomena but almost no energy in
[Page 25] doing anything about the problems they
discover. But, then, this is understandable.
They have been conditioned by their disciplines
to accept a deterministic view of
the world. Poverty and hardship are accepted
as givens of the human condition.
True, many people with such an outlook
are philanthropic, but they see charity as a
redistribution of existing wealth by “taking
some off the top” to make life more
bearable to those “on the bottom.” Thinking
in terms of creating enough wealth so
that charity becomes unnecessary rarely
enters their minds.
All of this is reinforced by the myth of academic objectivity. A traditional social scientist, for example, feels that he should be detached from his subject. It is desirable to study a group of people—a religious community, perhaps—but it is verboten to adopt their beliefs yourself or to use your voice to share your ideas with them. And should a teacher nonetheless find himself being mentally changed by his reading or observations, he is probably still prevented from acting differently by the prevailing liberal philosophy of mainstream America. We are taught not to get involved. We are taught that reason is a virtue, that we should reason everything out before acting. This means, of course, that we seldom act because we seldom have all the evidence we need, and the promptings of our hearts do little more than give us a bad conscience. What this means in academia is that generations of teachers have been unable to escape from inertia. While knowledge has been exploding and classroom technology has been expanding into every field, the predominant form of instruction in every field is still the lecture method. Media, field trips, creativity sessions are still seen as secondary learning modes. Innovation is viewed as a departure from educational norms rather than as the very essence of what education is all about. But this entire system is undergoing increasing attack from many fronts. The T-group (or encounter group) movement in psychology challenges traditional behavioristic (let’s experiment with rats) psychology. Ecologists challenge biologists and engineers to question what they are doing. And now futurists are beginning to challenge tradition-oriented social studies scholars.
FUTURISTICS means something different to a futurist teacher than what history means to a historian or sociology means to a sociologist. Futuristics is not merely a body of knowledge to a futurist, since it is not possible to draw a line between predicting the future and prophesying the future. To talk dispassionately and objectively about the ineffectiveness of contemporary education is equivalent to disregarding the problem; for what is needed to overcome the difficulty is passionate, subjective involvement. One hundred footnotes in a research paper is nothing compared to one hour in a classroom trying to find the best learning experiences for the mix of people before you.
Futurists know that there is not one path
into tomorrow, but many. This approach
to forecasting is, in fact, one of the chief
distinctions between today’s futurists and
earlier future speculators. Nostradamus
attempted to predict the occurrence of
hundreds of events—and by inference the
social and political movements leading up
to them. For him the future was an object
of foreknowledge. One could know the
future because the future was preordained
by God, by the position of the stars at
one’s birth, and by the direction of supernatural
forces in nature. The one flaw in
this procedure is the fact that it did not
work. Nostradamus seems to have made
some remarkable guesses about the future
and, if we are generous in our estimation,
[Page 26] it is possible to see about five or six percent
of his forecasts as coming true in the
last five hundred years. To put it mildly,
however, that is a rather poor batting
average; random guesswork should give
one about the same degree of accuracy—
or inaccuracy. Modern futurists realize
that today can lead to hundreds of different
tomorrows. That makes the task of
forecasting more difficult, but it also
makes it more worthwhile.
It is in the power of people who are alive at this moment to choose the kind of future they want. Fate has decreed only the boundaries of our world; it has not decided what should occur within those boundaries. That is our decision to make. Futurists, it turns out, need to be concerned with the very things that other academicians ignore: the hopes and desires of the people of this globe, the spiritual longings of humanity.
But perhaps I am waxing romantic. Not all futurists agree with the preceding diagnosis of the discipline. There are those who argue that futuristics should be “scientific” in content and procedure and that projections should be constructed from pure data: population indexes, economic trend information, production figures, morphological charts, and the like. They feel that futuristics should be analytical in approach and consist primarily of predictions rather than diagnoses. Yet I think that the existence of futurists of that persuasion is a result of one simple fact: to date, nobody has been trained in futures research; there are a number of doctoral candidates in the field, but it is so new that, as of this writing, none has graduated. All practicing futurists were originally something else—philosophers, economists, historians. It is the contention of this writer that people schooled in futures research will create a discipline quite unlike current academic specialties. As it is, the content of futuristics is compelling enough to have turned a number of average teachers into teaching activists. To use contemporary idiom: futuristics blows your mind.
When I started crystal-ball gazing in 1968, it seemed perfectly reasonable to forecast developments at various target dates in the future. By 1975, for example, it is possible to foresee the functioning of traveling campuses. Friends World College might be a prototype for such an institution. Students at that school spend only the first “semester” of their four-year program at a more-or-less traditional campus. The balance of the program takes them around the world—to Africa for black studies, to India to learn about Hindu and Buddhist religious thought, to Japan to investigate a growing technological country, to Mexico to learn Spanish. And the students tour America, exposing themselves directly to the many life styles of our pluralistic society. But modifications to the Friends’ system can well be imagined. A traveling college, for example, could take its buildings with it—because inflatable plastic structures can be designed to suit almost any need, and they are portable. As Buckminster Fuller once said, the college of the future may more closely resemble a traveling circus than anything that is called a college today.
By 1980 other wonders will no doubt
come to pass. Extensive curricular reforms
are likely at all levels of education. Some
present subjects will cease to be required
and become terminal cases under a voluntary
system. In this category one can
include history, English, biology, and
foreign languages. In their place we will
see subjects like contemporary studies,
communications skills, ecology, and computer
programming. And totally new, non-replacement
courses will make their appearance:
classes in memory, creativity,
[Page 27] and judgment. However, courses, per se,
will be on the way out by 1980. Students
will be able to learn skills discretely, in
one-hour modular sessions without being
obligated to a semester at a time, and in
intensive classes that might meet every
day for several hours, so that a skill would
be learned within a month.
By 1990 it is feasible to expect that continuing education will have become as important a component in institutionalized learning as high school is today. Lifelong education will be expected as the right of every citizen of the United States. And schools will facilitate this expectation. They will become “learning centers” used by adults and young people as resources —much like public libraries or park field houses. Those who need additional job skills, various kinds of expertise ranging from architectural illustrating to industrial management, will come to the schools of 1990 to learn. New certification requirements will have come into effect by that time; practicing teachers will be learning specialists. They will be licensed; they will be competent to teach people— whatever it is they want to learn—in an effective and non-demeaning manner. Like medical doctors today, teachers will be held liable for their services; malpractice suits against instructors will be possible should a teacher’s methods damage someone’s ability to read or do mathematics. Teaching clinics will be available, however, where teachers can go to correct professional deficiencies. Degree-holders will need to renew their certificates; every decade teachers will be required to return to the university for six months so they can be exposed to new ideas and new information. A license to teach will assure the student that his mentor has fresh knowledge and is a skilled professional.
In the year 2000 A.D. educational technology will have advanced to the point at which customized learning experiences will be available for an enormous number of purposes. For example, machine programs will be operational not only to provide materials to be studied but also to detect the exact source of any difficulty in the personality of the student. Computers will create learning environments through the use of holography and direct brain stimulation. Synthetic experiences will be created by transmitting information directly into one’s mind. And chemically induced learning will complement electronic technology. Someone wanting to learn, say, engineering calculus will be able to take a pill that will render regions of the brain receptive to abstract concept formation. Then, by sitting at a computer instructional console, a student will be able to use calculus skills in the supposed construction of rocket parts; the machine will then simulate the performance of the vehicle. The student will have instantaneous feedback about his mastery of the calculus and his understanding of the rocket problem. And the computer will draw upon its perceptions (input) and memory to suggest to the learner fruitful approaches for studying calculus. All this, in three decades. Tomorrow’s world will surely be incredible—and desirable. Many things that people want and need will finally become available.
1975. 1980. 1990. 2000. It is easy to
collect data, draw lines on graphs, and
extrapolate results. It is easy to talk glibly
about the scene five years from now, ten
years from now, twenty or thirty years
from now, to click off dates in the future
as you would click off dates from the past.
But then the thought inevitably dawns:
why not now? Why should we wait five
years for traveling colleges that would be
feasible today? Why should we wait ten
years for curricular reform that is needed
at this moment? Why should we wait
[Page 28] twenty years for teachers to become learning
specialists or thirty years for the
development of an effective learning technology?
Nothing is gained by waiting; so
why should we heed counsels of patience?
Possible solutions to many of the problems
facing us can be obtained, if present
trends hold true, in a matter of decades.
But why should we let those trends hold
true? Is it not our moral duty to do
whatever we can to accelerate those
trends? What right do we have to withhold
the future from the present? If we
can conceive of a better way of doing
something, something that will alleviate
the suffering of our brothers, should we
not start working to bring that tomorrow-something
into existence?
No, it is not possible for a futurist to be neutral or objective or liberal in his views. Think about it for a moment: how can a person listen “impartially” to the oppressed and the oppressor? It is not adequate to be an observer, a speculator about future history: one must become a change agent to bring the desired future into existence. One must become an activist, one must put his body where his mouth is and his mouth where his mind is and his mind where his heart is. There is no other way to live that is not ethically reprehensible. Bahá’u’lláh, the Persian Prophet, said it best: “The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds; he wbose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than his life . . .”[1] Ultimately this is what futuristics is all about.
Considerable futures research work is currently under way at various institutions in the United States and also in the Soviet Union, Japan, and Western Europe. Educational futuristics is the subject of projects funded by the federal government at the Stanford Research Institute and at the Syracuse University Research Corporation. Efforts at present are directed toward identifying future needs and collecting demographic information. Ninety percent of the people who will be alive in 1980 are alive now. Such work only goes back to 1967, but it is only preparatory. Conferences for idea exchanges are being planned, and futuristic literature is being disseminated. Lines of communication between future-thinkers in various schools and universities are now being formed.
Teachers are in contact with each other. Most helpful in this regard is the Washington-based World Future Society, an organization that publishes a journal— The Futurist—and a periodic bulletin that keeps readers informed about developments in the field and provides advance information about workshops, conferences, and seminars. The society is a medium for communication among teachers of futures studies. Another medium that fulfills a similar purpose is one that the author is helping to create at the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts. The Program for the Study of the Future is developing for release a series of materials of particular value to teaching futurists: a bibliography listing futuristic publications and available media current through 1970; a syllabus describing the many teaching programs available at selected universities; and the written results of original research—several Program Papers. All these new materials mean that ammunition is being sent to people in the front lines of today’s educational revolution. This, too, is one of the things futuristics is about.
Futuristics is not a panacea, but it is one
more contribution to the new climate of
opinion that is taking form in the university.
[Page 29] New values are appearing: economic
man is dying an agonizing death; ethical
man, eclectic man, electric man is taking
his place. An educated man is finding his
place in the midst of a headlong rush into
tomorrow. But neither he nor any of us
has to run blind; it is entirely possible to
map out the alternative futures before us.
The light is beginning to dawn—we can
create whatever future we want.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1956), p. 141.
New Launching Pads for American Education
By DWIGHT W. ALLEN
ONE HEARS very few accolades these days for either the efficiency or the success of our welfare programs, environmental control projects, anti-poverty programs, our military weapons systems, or, most particularly, for the successful performance of our educational system as a whole. Thus, at a time when our educational institutions are being assailed as perhaps never before, it may be well worth our while to consider some of our problems, options, and resources with one eye focused on our space programs, which in little more than a decade have progressed from their early launching-pad failures to the virtually flawless landing of astronauts on the moon.
The need for new directions in American education—and at all levels—is being made more obvious with every passing day. As events during the past few years have all too clearly demonstrated, our schools and colleges are reaching a state of crisis and impending explosion. Be they right or wrong, our children are no longer willing to sit politely in their assigned seats taking lecture notes; our teachers, be they right or wrong, are spending as much time on picket lines as in faculty meetings; school administrators and university presidents are resigning their positions in alarming numbers; confused parents and outraged taxpayers are venting their frustrations by voting down school-bond proposals with increasing gusto; and legislative bodies are enacting far-reaching measures aimed at curtailing and punishing student and faculty dissent, measures which in fact punish entire campuses and abridge their normal activities. As we ought to have learned by now, overreaction to symptoms does not necessarily eradicate their causes. It is also a fact that the students in our schools and on our campuses are our children; they are not our enemies.
I do not think there is any longer much point in bemoaning the confused and
unhappy state of American education. The time has come—and let us hope it has not
already passed—when all of us who are seriously concerned with the problems
facing our schools ought to be making and implementing some very basic and far-reaching
decisions about what we want our schools to become. Every June we deliver
commencement addresses to our young telling them that they constitute our nation’s
future; yet we seem oddly content to let that future develop in antiquated, colorless,
and overcrowded buildings, presided over by a group of sometimes bored, occasionally
brutal, often well-meaning, but always harried individuals who are charged with
the impossible task of educating space-age children with a methodology based almost
entirely on seventeenth-century Puritan assumptions about human nature and correct
social behavior. What has thwarted our attempts thus far at educational innovation,
and at social remediation generally, has been the simple and unavoidable fact that
our problems are far more complex and interdependent than our proposed solution
[Page 31] mechanisms have been. Unless and until we can generate the kind of coordinated
response our problems require, we will not be able to do much more than palliate
their symptoms.
It is precisely at this point, I think, that an appreciation of the success of our space programs can be instrumental in our efforts to reach beyond the symptoms of our educational dilemmas to deal with their causes. The space program, first of all, was initiated through a publicly-declared commitment to a specific goal: the landing of an American on the moon by 1970. When President Kennedy committed the nation to the attainment of this goal, there was no assurance in his or anyone else’s mind that the goal was in fact attainable, though the technology was promising; what mattered was the commitment toward a maximum effort. As the commitment hardened, the possibility of reaching the goal increased correspondingly. From the initial commitment came several instruments which were crucial in the achievement of the objective: substantial sums of money which were guaranteed over a period of time and were not contingent upon early success, an officially mandated task force with authority to order its priorities independently, the confidence of everyone in the program that maximum effort would be sustained over an extended period of time, and, as important as the rest, a sense of assurance that the commitment to a distant goal would override the embarrassment of predictable early failures of judgment and execution.
In contrast to the NASA model, it is enlightening to consider that the failures of our other national programs, particularly those dealing with social problems, are in large part attributable to the absence of any similarly independent and officially authorized administrative body which could order its own priorities and coordinate those activities which it felt were integral to its efforts. Of course much of NASA’s freedom is derived from the fact that few people are presumptuous enough to be self-styled space experts and fewer still have been to the moon. But everyone has been to school and familiarity breeds expertise. We have many federal agencies and programs which attempt social remediation, but all too often they have become pawns in state and local political power-plays, precisely because they have lacked the authority to carry their efforts through as they have seen fit. In the particular case of programs regarding education, we have emasculated our professional agencies and administrative bodies by specifically and deliberately removing them from the political arena in the name of upholding our educational ideals, which seem to hold that truth, in order to be inviolable, must be apolitical. As a functional result, our schools lack the authority they need in order to deal with their problems. What is perhaps worse and certainly more pathetic is that, in order to deal with their critical problems at all, school officials are forced in the end to enter the political arena without much hope of success. It is an impossible situation, for the educators are rarely good politicians, and even good politicians are rarely effective without political leverage.
I am not arguing for the politicization of our educational institutions or of their
leaders, but I think we all ought to recognize what is perfectly plain: our schools
have been politicized, not from within by revolutionary subversives but rather from
without by the existing and legitimate political powers-that-be. Following the
launching of Sputnik in 1957, a great cry went up in Congress for the modernization
of our science and engineering programs. Despite its partial usefulness, this sudden
renovation of part of our educational program can hardly be termed an example of
[Page 32] valid educational renewal—rather it was an educational implementation of an
essentially political decision, made for essentially political reasons. The New York
City teachers’ strike during 1968, and the uneasy truce which temporarily ended it,
constitute another example of decisions regarding educational issues which were
made for political motives. In the same category is the sudden creation of black
studies departments at various colleges and universities. Basically, the universities
were fearful of what black students would do if such departments were not created,
just as the political powers in New York were afraid of what the teachers and their
union might do if the power of the community school boards was not curtailed. The
educational factors in these situations were not the foci of the eventual decisions
which were made in their names.
I SUBMIT that if we are serious about educating our children in a manner which will help to produce healthy, responsive, intelligent, and responsible adults capable of living humanely in a rapidly changing environment and a complex social milieu, then it ought to be clear to us—and especially to those of us who are professionally involved in education—that we simply cannot go on as we have been. To state the issue as bluntly as I can, the present administrative apparatus within our educational framework of systems and subsystems is not sufficiently powerful to initiate or to coordinate the kinds of remedial and innovative thrusts we are going to have to make if our problems are not to overwhelm us in an anarchistic orgy of hatred, blame, and violence. We have some excruciatingly critical problems in our schools: hungry children, angry children, bored children, underpaid teachers, incompetent teachers, restricted teachers, outdated curricula, irrelevant curricula, rigid expectations, useless evaluative typologies, wasteful staffing patterns, impossible scheduling procedures. Bad enough in themselves, these problems become the raw material for even larger conundrums as educators try to deal with them within the mazes of fragmented authority—which retain their philosophical legitimacy as sterling examples of local democracy, though far too often they do not act except to obstruct. The challenge before us is very clear. It is whether, in the name of abstract and traditional ideals, we have the right to condemn our young to bad education and miseducation.
I submit that our educational crises are not going to be met successfully by educators who have insufficient authority to do what needs doing, nor will they be met by governors, mayors, and state senators in their spare time. If we are serious about confronting the tragedy in our schools, we will need the kind of administrative leadership which landed men on the moon: a national educational administration with the authority to set major goals, conduct large-scale experimentation, and initiate new educational alternatives, with the funds necessary to implement its programs, and with a public commitment to its active existence for at least a decade. NASA launched men to the moon in less than a decade, but I doubt very seriously if Neil Armstrong would have stepped on the lunar surface before 1970 if various senators, governors, mayors, and police chiefs were constantly convening to decide what the flight fuel was to be, how the astronauts were to be selected, and so on.
I am not suggesting—let me be understood about this—that the present system of
local control be supplanted by a monolithic federal agency which would direct the
people without finally being responsible to them. What I am proposing is that a
monolithic federal agency be established to reach new goals, to attain present ones
more completely, and to offer to the people and their schools workable alternative
[Page 33] educational strategies. I do not propose to have power taken from the people, but
rather to have their range of options expanded. The Educational Reform Administration
I am proposing would not require the participation of any school system which
would not want to involve itself. By presenting a pretested and planned program—
with the funds necessary to operate it—ERA might well find receptive and responsive
audiences among school boards which had been interested in innovations but which
did not previously have the funding resources necessary for their implementation. In
addition, school systems which agreed to adopt particular programs might be given
separate nonrestrictive ERA grants to spend on other projects. School systems might
in time initiate contact with ERA, perhaps countering the destructive notion that
federal programs mean federal control. Properly administered, federal programs
might also mean local success. Local successes might stimulate the local will to
succeed further, and that in turn might instigate a viable local control.
An Educational Reform Administration would not be able to guarantee significant steps toward its objectives. Even if it were authorized by a Congress and an existing federal bureaucracy not famous for their willingness to relinquish power, there is still the strong possibility that its efforts would be stymied by the various other interests which might profit from its demise. But the lack of certainty ought not to dissuade us from doing what the facts indicate needs to be done. In the case of our educational system the situation requires a new set of responses, many no doubt based on ideas which were advanced years ago, all still untested and untried only because to have attempted them would have been, and will be, to move beyond the pale of established practice—even though that practice has produced far less than we have expected of it. Allow me the dream, then, and hopefully the serious consideration, of one educator’s equivalent of a trip to the moon.
The primary goal of ERA, as I see it, would be the development of individuals who can live constructively in a post-industrial global society. Such an objective embraces a number of more specific goals: the development of ecologically knowledgeable adults; the development of personal and interpersonal awareness; communication and cooperation; the development of technologically sophisticated people; the development of individuals who are ethically bound to a global future as well as to a national past; and finally the development of self-confident persons with the capacity to act in a complex social environment.
In order to initiate movement toward these objectives, ERA might undertake the
planning and pretesting of a number of educational alternatives which it could later
offer to school systems, fully funded, on a pilot basis. Although these projects would
be expensive, there are possibilities for major programs which would in fact save
enormous sums of tax money. For example, ERA might conduct a study on the
feasibility of compressing the present twelve-year precollegiate educational program
into eleven years. An estimated cost for a three-year feasibility study focusing on the
elimination of one year of precollegiate education and strategies for its implementation
would be from ten to fifty million dollars. Yet the elimination of the twelfth
precollegiate year on a national basis would result in a potential saving of almost
three billion dollars per year of implementation. Not only would the compression of
our public education timetable save money, land, and classroom space, it would also
provide us opportunities to use the resulting surplus of teachers and professional staff
members in a variety of new ways; in team teaching, in the offering of new courses
and curricula, in individual tutoring and counseling, in the planning of entirely new
[Page 34] programs, in fuller in-service training programs, in the evaluation of existing and
experimental programs, and in the education of local adults who could later serve as
paraprofessionals within the local schools. All of this is possible, and the program
would more than pay for itself.
Another strategy which ERA might consider testing is the use of performance criteria as an alternative to the crude and Procrustean time-in-grade system of evaluation and advancement we now employ. The alternative of requiring students to meet, and perhaps to negotiate, performance criteria in terms of various skills and areas of knowledge seeks to accomplish several objectives which the present time-in-grade system clearly does not: it individualizes the students’ education, since no penalty is attached to learning slowly—or rapidly, for that matter; since the goal is identified as being the mastery of clearly specified skills and data, grade levels become fictional rubrics (which in fact they have always been); by focusing on a delineated area of competence, teachers are freed to deal with the particular learning situation of individual students, rather than having to feel, as many do now, that they must ignore or silence the “trouble-makers” (who are often bright but bored or students with severe learning disabilities) for the sake of keeping the class group together on its slow but certain course toward a group final examination. By setting performance criteria for students, we would encourage those who are brighter to accomplish as much as they care to, as quickly as they choose, while at the same time allowing those who learn more slowly to proceed at a pace natural to them without having to pay a penalty in feelings of guilt or shame.
If a student has not learned to spell “town” in the second grade, there is even less chance of his learning in the third; yet within the present arrangement all the pressures conspire toward placing him in that grade for fear of marking him as an outcast and a failure so early in his school “career”. Within a system based upon performance criteria, some students might proceed very rapidly in some areas and competencies while requiring special assistance in others, thus allowing students to recognize themselves and others for what in fact they are—individuals. Can we stop worrying about classifying our children and begin to teach them? The goal, after all, is their education, not their graduation.
Performance criteria would also make it possible for students and teachers to explore their interests and curiosity in areas which were not designated as part of the performance curriculum. In fact, judicious use of educational technology might create a situation wherein machines could be used to teach those skills which require repetition and slow incremental learning, while the professional staff would feel free to develop and expand genuine student interests and attend to individual learning problems. It would be a pleasant change to see students competing for their teachers’ attention, and it might prove a revelation to teachers whose years of frustration have confirmed their opinion that students are unworthy of their best efforts and attention.
Again, there is no guarantee that the use of performance criteria would prove in
any way superior to our present time-in-grade system of student progression. Yet
there appears to be enough logic in such a method to suggest that we ought at least
to offer it as one alternative to a system whose limitations are already painfully clear.
It would be unrealistic, however, to expect that such a major innovation would be
instituted in enough schools over a long enough period of time to examine its
strengths and weaknesses within the existing organization of responsibility, authority,
[Page 35] and resources. One hardly expects the city of Detroit to initiate such a program in its
schools, even on a pilot basis, and certainly not if it must act alone to do so. The fear
of public reaction to such a display of daring would be too overwhelming. Perhaps
this example brings into clearer focus the need for a nationally supported
Educational Reform Administration which could assume the responsibility for
having perpetrated such a break with tradition.
Another key alternative which ERA might explore is the use of differentiated staffing models for schools and school sysrems. Rather than requiring all teachers, whatever their peculiar talents and limitations, to perform the same tasks in the same way, perhaps we can maximize their strengths and minimize their inevitable weaknesses by asking teachers to do primarily what they do best, which is probably what they enjoy doing most. Some teachers function most effectively as facilitators of learning, sensing students’ needs and guiding them to appropriate resources. Other teachers are dramatic and inspiring presenters of information. Horizontal differentiation of the professional staff would enable teachers to be hired as specialists who are valued for their particular skills in contributing to a total educational program of individualizing learning. Teachers could be hired as specialists in specific subject areas, as specialists in different teaching styles, or in new roles that cut across academic disciplines, such as diagnosticians, researchers, facilitators, and evaluators. Horizontal differentiation of staff would also help us to end the wasteful practice of paying teachers to perform nonprofessional tasks. Jobs of a non-instructional nature (playground supervision, record keeping, hall monitoring) could be filled by individuals with different training. Horizontal staffing also lends itself readily to the use of nonprofessionals within the local community: athletes, artists, carpenters, lawyers, and doctors would now be available as legitimate and valuable parts of an institutional staff which does not require every member to know everything every other member knows.
Differentiated staffing could also develop vertically by allowing teachers to
advance professionally without having to forsake the classroom. Such a model would
recognize that many teaching functions require every bit as much skill and specific
training as many administrative functions, and would reward teachers accordingly.
Thus, teachers who have heavy outside commitments could choose (rather than get
away with) a modest level of responsibility within the school. Other teachers,
desiring more responsibility than that of conducting basic classroom activities, could
choose additional responsibilities—for in-service training, curriculum study, research
and publication, and the evaluation of existing and new programs. In both of these
cases, the level of responsibility chosen by the teacher would be recognized contractually
in terms of professional rank and salary. As one consequence, the entire teaching staff of
a school or school district would have the chance to act in unison on matters requiring
leadership, for the school’s teaching staff would have its leadership responsibilities
already legitimized. Thus, teachers would be able to deal with their administrative
colleagues on a coequal basis. In short, differentiated staffing could individualize
instruction in much the same way that the use of performance criteria could
personalize learning: by reaching through the time-in-grade patterns of efforts and
rewards to recognize individual differences of talent and initiative, to legitimize them
professionally, and hopefully to capitalize on their potential usefulness. Whatever its
advantages, however, it is obvious that such a major overhaul of existing practices is
not likely to be attempted on a large enough basis to test its strengths and faults,
[Page 36] given the inertia of our present administrative organization vis-a-vis education. The
leadership vacuum within the educational community is now filled by a random
population of irate taxpayers, politicians looking for issues, reporters looking for
stories, and groups of teachers and students looking for power which is not always
germane to educational reform.
The high school dropout rate in the Cambridge area is close to 20 percent, yet Cambridge is one of the most education-oriented communities in the nation. Perhaps part of the reason for the truly alarming dropout rates in Cambridge and elsewhere lies in the peculiar irrelevance of most high school curricula. With few additions and few deletions, our four-unit curricular model of language, social studies, science, and mathematics is essentially the classical model of Greek and Latin education. While we have tried to bring the subject areas up to date, we have not questioned seriously their integrity as constructs of knowledge. Here, too, an Educational Reform Administration could take a longer, harder, and hopefully more dispassionate look at a vital component of our educational system than could members of that system whose loyalty is likely to be given to the system as it exists rather than to the goals for which it presumably exists. At a time when so much communication occurs apart from the printed page, it seems a bit precious to regard literacy in nonlinear media as an elective; at a time when pollution poses a major threat to our health, it seems a bit shortsighted to be still dissecting frogs and worms instead of relating them ecologically to their environments; in an age when people seem to be starving for personal contact, it seems foolish and even cruel not to recognize students’ emotions as legitimate areas of study and development; and in a time when so many of our sensory and psychological responses are virtually programmed into us, it would seem that a sensible investment in a national culture would be a systematic and persistent program of aesthetic development. Instead of constantly tinkering with the curricular disciplines which we have inherited, we may be able to construct a viable set of alternatives by basing our thinking upon present data rather than past expectations.
One such model which ERA might consider, test, develop, and then offer to
schools willing to try it, would embrace the four- or five-unit structure suggested
above, and might be termed a liberal or humane science curriculum. It would entail
work in the areas of communications, human relations, aesthetics, technology, and
ecology. The major difference between these curricular categories and those we now
employ is that the skills taught and learned in the present model—reading, writing,
arithmetic, a knowledge of science and history—would be put to use in an attempt to
explore and comprehend the nature of the world which our young find themselves
having to make sense of and inhabit. Our present curricula stress the absorption and
memorization of facts and bodies of knowledge. However, as Marshall McLuhan,
among others, has pointed out, we now have available to us so much information
that it is impossible for any individual to master what there is to know. In addition,
the increasing use of information retrieval systems raises the serious question of
whether the learning of data qua data ought to be a high priority task for students at
all. McLuhan suggests that it is more crucial that we learn and teach our young to
recognize patterns of change and interface. Since events move so rapidly and
information is both discovered and created at an increasing rate of speed, much of
our information is continually becoming outdated before it is either taught or
learned. Patterns, on the other hand, tend to retain their usefulness over a longer
period, since they can be used to process, interpret, and evaluate new data. And more
[Page 37] important than knowledge of particular patterns is the general ability to recognize,
use, and discard patterns. A liberal science curriculum, stressing the ecology of
information through an emphasis upon the ecology of man and his total environment,
might well prove useful to space-age students simply in terms of its ability to
provide meaningful patterns of data perception and challenging problems in pattern
recognition.
Performance criteria, differentiated staffing patterns, entirely new curricular designs, the elimination of one year of precollegiate public education—an Educational Reform Administration could plan, test, and implement an excitingly wide range of options. Certainly the range of options it could consider and then present to interested school systems is far more adventurous and perhaps more fruitful than the kinds of alternatives which schools now find themselves able to consider. As an educator, I feel that there ought to be a way to widen our spectrum of choice. As an American who follows newspaper headlines, I am tempted to say that there had better be a way.
I do not think it is unreasonable or unfair to state that our existing educational administrative structures are inadequate to meet the challenges facing them. Certainly it is no condemnation of our administrators to say so. They have not caused our problems—but neither have they been empowered to solve them. The establishment of an Educational Reform Administration would move us a giant step closer to a position of strength from which we could begin confidently to involve ourselves with the root causes and the basic dynamics of some of our problems. At the very least, the establishment of ERA would indicate that we are serious about the possibility of creating a twentieth-centuty school system—in its own time.
Harlem Prep: Homocultural Education for a New Era[1]
By EDWARD F. CARPENTER
AS a Bahá’í and a servant of Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet-Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, my life as an educator is completely guided and influenced by Bahá’í precepts.[2] I could not be involved in my present educational endeavor —Harlem Preparatory School—without constant reference to these principles in establishing the model for the school’s organization, administration, supervision, and employment of faculty and ancillary staff, in evaluating the model, and in reacting with every soul associated with Harlem Prep. The pedagogical elements concerned with methods of teaching, curriculum materials, classroom management, and the myriad concomitant factors necessary to a school are all a subset of the universal Bahá’í principles.
As Bahá’ís, we know that we are to
immerse ourselves in the ocean of Bahá’u’lláh’s
words, to deepen ourselves to the
point where these revealed principles are
incorporated into our personalities, and then
to translate these spiritual qualities into conscious
behavior. We are to refer to them as
the wellspring of all knowledge. With such a
divinely given model, we teachers can release
constrictive psychological devices, thereby
bringing to the fore the creative energies that
heighten our awareness and sharpen our
perceptions so that we are able to deal with
our fears, petty prejudices, and other “old
world” frailties, no matter how personally
painful this may be. We should not dwell
upon personal weaknesses, however, to the
extent that we are rendered impotent by the
paralysis of analysis. As teachers, we must
learn to become daring in designing newer
and more creative educational models that
prepare today’s youth not just for coping
with the problems of the Seventies, but for
living in a new era. To accomplish this we
must depend and draw upon all of the
spiritual strength we can muster from the
Bahá’í Writings. With a sincere belief in our
mission we will eliminate all doubts and
fears of failure. Educators are to become as
giants that walk the earth. Through their
efforts the realization of a new race of men
will be achieved. The word “race” used in
this context is neither defined nor delineated
by skin pigmentation nor by ethnic culture,
but rather by the individual’s inclusion in a
multiracial society whose members are dedicated
to the concept of service to mankind. In
brief, this new man will minimize materialism
[Page 40] and maximize service. These concepts
must be inculcated through teacher attitude,
curriculum, and specific primary objectives of
the educational institution. The derivative
experiences of the children must impel them
to observe that any society that persists in
overvaluing its technology to the extent that
it either ignores or devalues spiritual attributes
will continue to rear savages and
spawn monsters.[3]
Langston Hughes, a black poet, with prophetic and poignant simplicity asks:
- What happens to a dream deferred?
- Does it dry up
- like a raisin in the sun?
- Or fester like a sore—
- And then run?
- Does it stink like rotten meat?
- Or crust and sugar over—
- like a syrupy sweet?
- Maybe it just sags
- like a heavy load.
- Or does it explode?[4]
Langston Hughes speaks of a dream, but he does not place a finger on the societal causes. The Bahá’í Faith answers the question by defining and boldly exposing the causes of society’s ills. Shoghi Effendi, in the The Promised Day Is Come, points out with scalding pen that:
- The chief idols in the desecrated temple of mankind are none other than the triple gods of Nationalism, Racialism and Communism, at whose altars governments and peoples, whether democratic or totalitarian, at peace or at war, of the East or of the West, Christian or Islamic, are, in various forms and in different degrees, now worshipping. Their high priests are the politicians and the worldly-wise, the so-called sages of the age; their sacrifice, the flesh and blood of the slaughtered multitudes; their incantations outworn shibboleths and insidious and irreverent formulas; their incense, the smoke of anguish that ascends from the lacerated hearts of the bereaved, the maimed, and the homeless.[5]
The moral imperatives are clear. Teachers must become the expediters of the dream— not its destroyers. Teachers must help each child to release his God-given creativeness and promote the child’s potential intellectual development. Teachers must through their daily living display behavior that clearly demonstrates to the child that they place more value on spiritual attributes than on material ones. Teachers by personal example must destroy the evil myths of all forms of prejudice and bigotry by consorting with diverse peoples. We can approach these goals through prayer, education, consultation, faith, and scientific investigation. We must keep this concept viable and ever before us: we are developing youths for the important task of functioning in a new era. Futuristic planning of this nature is mind-expanding. The teacher must have faith to participate in such a program. These are the goals I am attempting to develop and to impart to all of the people associated with Harlem Prep.
In April 1967, the Reverend Eugene Callender,
then the Executive Director of the
New York Urban League, asked me to leave
the sterile safety and questionable sanctity of
Queens College to assume the role of first
Headmaster of a “paper school” called Harlem
Preparatory School, Incorporated. This
was to be the first of many decisions made
regarding the school. Tests were heaped upon
me and seemed to increase proportionately as
the school grew. The tasks in setting up the
school encompassed the elements of novelty
and pioneering in a ferro-concrete jungle
called Harlem, as well as the frustration of
beginning the new venture without the benefit
of a budget. Armed, however, with innocence
[Page 41] and faith, I accepted the job.
The rate of high school dropouts in the ghetto communities of New York City is said to number more than one thousand youths per month. These young people are black, Spanish-speaking, Mohawk Indian from Brooklyn, and a few poor whites. This great waste of human potential is depressing and inexcusable. Bahá’ís believe that the purpose of man is to know God and to serve Him. With this insight we are to utilize our God-given talents to contribute to an ever-advancing civilization. Our reason for being is revealed in Bahá’u’lláh’s words: “O Son of Man! I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore, do thou love Me, that I may name thy name and fill thy soul with the spirit of life.”[6] This universal statement eliminated a major problem for me. I knew that no child, no teacher, no human being involved with the building of Harlem Prep need harbor any feelings of rejection. For people at Harlem Prep are not tolerated, but loved. I felt deeply that love for everyone would have to be the major element in the success of Harlem Prep. As Headmaster, and as a Bahá’í, I attempted to establish an atmosphere amenable to attitudinal change.
Bahá’ís are also taught that the equality of man and woman must be honored and respected; that there are no essential differences between the races; that it is our individual duty to investigate the truth; that religion and science can exist harmoniously; that economic problems must some day be solved by moral means; that a universal language must be established so all mankind may communicate; and that a world tribunal needs to be established and maintained to insure political peace. These principles served as the collective elements for the development of curriculum materials, of teaching methodology, of program evolution, and of the primary goals for Harlem Prep.
Bahá’u’lláh wrote that “The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice . . . .”[7] This attribute was the basic criterion for the evolution of the faculty and the student body. As Headmaster, I proceeded with a deliberate plan for the employment of Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Muslims, agnostics, and Bahá’ís as faculty members. An orientation program was instituted for the faculty to sharpen individual perceptions, to deal with faulty thinking regarding people from diverse religions, races, and political backgrounds, and to provide studies in cross-cultural differences, cultural anthropology, and comparative religion to highlight the cultural similarities between all people. The secondary goal of this program was to expedite the enrollment and instruction of students who presented diverse backgrounds. Harlem Prep has black, white, and racially mixed students, Five Percenters, Black Panthers, Garveyites, believers in the doctrines of Malcolm X, Castro, Che Guevara, and Mao, political activists, fiery militants, and the politically neutral, as well as Bahá’í students.
In brief, we were attempting to demonstrate that we could achieve unity in diversity. We have partly achieved this goal, but not without pain and personal suffering. Visitors, however, experience a feeling of warmth upon entering the doors of the Prep and being greeted by a cheery, “Peace, Brother. Are you looking for Carp?”
Shoghi Effendi warned us of the “recurrent
crises” that would threaten the “equilibrium
of organized society, throwing into chaos and
confusion political systems, racial doctrines,
social conceptions, cultural standards, religious
associations . . . .”[8] On the topic “The
Most Challenging Issue” he stated: “As to
racial prejudice, the corrosion of which, for
well nigh a century, has bitten into the fibre,
and attacked the whole social structure of
American society, it should be regarded as
constituting the most vital and challenging
[Page 42] issue confronting the Bahá’í community at
the present stage of its evolution.”[9]
Harlem Prep exists partially because of the racial problem. It is heartrending to observe so many of our black students manifesting problems of racial identity. They become confused and angry attempting to define whether they are Negro, Afro-American, or Black. They seem to be asking, “Who am I?” As Headmaster, I have no simple answer. As a Bahá’í, I attempt to ease their pain and still their fears by recalling the beautiful utterances revealed by Bahá’u’lláh:
- O Son of Spirit! I created thee rich, why dost thou bring thyself down to poverty? Noble I made thee, wherewith dost thou abase thyself? Out of the essence of knowledge I gave thee being, why seekest thou enlightenment from anyone beside Me? Out of the clay of love I molded thee, how dost thou busy thyself with another? Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.[10]
For some these words bring peace and a degree of sanity. For others they seem to have no manifest effect. This leaves me saddened, but I know that once the seed has been planted, Bahá’u’lláh will nurture the garden of that unhappy soul. As for me, I have no problem concerning my color, race, or background. If another has a problem concerning my color, then he must contend with it in the best manner that he can. Bahá’u’lláh recreated me; Bahá’u’lláh gave me new life; Bahá’u’lláh redefined me. The Bahá’í Faith was the midwife that brought me, happy and joyous, into a new realm of being. I have no time to become sidetracked or bogged down in self-destructive racial hate. My “thing” is love.
After a hectic, undignified, and inauspicious opening in October 1967, in an antiseptic, echoing, cavernous armory, the school obtained funds to move into its present quarters, a renovated supermarket. This took place in September 1968. We decided against building separate classrooms, for walls do more than separate people; one cannot predetermine what is being walled out or walled in. Instead, we provided an open area of ten thousand square feet, carpeted in soft green, paneled in warm oak, and covered with sound-absorbing ceiling tile. Colorful lounge furniture provides an atmosphere of serenity. Our students learn, work, and interact in several educational clusters.
At first view this scene is sometimes startling. One’s eyes are delighted by the brightly colored garb of the students, the multiplicity of colors of skin and textures of hair. It is indeed a panoramic human rose garden. Moreover, one finds it difficult to discover who are the instructors and who are the students since most of the learning areas are arranged in circular fashion. We find the circle to be practical, democratic, directive, and symbolic. We are happy when a visitor asks where the instructors are. This question tells us that our teachers are participant-observers, catalytic agents, and servants. The Headmaster is a servant, the faculty are servants, and all connected with the operation of the Prep are servants. Our teachers are also students; it is my belief that the instructor who cannot view himself as a servant and a pupil will find it difficult to become an inspiring, creative teacher. The instructor is but an element in the totality of learning inputs that are to be translated into outputs, newly acquired skills, by students and teachers.
Since we believe that the earth is but one
country and all men its citizens, we attempt
to provide our students with a global or
universal experience through subject matter
as well as through daily living experiences.
We try to approach subject matter through
problem solving methods, to integrate as
many subjects as reasonable, and to provide
the student with the opportunity of testing
his skills through participation in the life of
[Page 43] his community.
The faculty, students, parents, and interested community people are still attempting to define and redefine the school’s philosophy. What is our motto to be? What are the criteria for selecting personnel? How can the school be relevant within the community? For me all of these questions and a thousand more are made clear and simple through referring to Bahá’í sacred Writings, and through prayer and meditation. For all of us consultation is vital.[11]
Staff meetings are held with all students present and participating in the decision-making process. Consultation and student participation may be traumatic to the novice because of his ego involvement. With practice and patience we have learned truly to listen to one another. This results in a minimizing of official memorandums and a maximizing of individuals as well as of group participation. We have not perfected this process, but we are developing more skill daily. One other result that emerges is the sensitizing effect of open consultation upon students, teachers, and the administration. We learn to reflect before speaking; attempt to phrase our thoughts in language that will not offend or hurt others; and discover that one thinks with his intelligence, but “feels” with his emotions. The learning of this skill of consultation enhances productive thinking, creative thinking, and group interaction.
Dr. Stanwood Cobb, famed educator and Orientalist, coined the word homoculture to express his understanding of the implications of Bahá’í principles of education. A simple analogy will assist in defining and clarifying the term. When a scientist is involved in the texture and food producing value of the soil, he is called an agriculturist; when a man is concerned with the development and production of good fruits, herbs, and flowers, he is usually referred to as a horticulturist; and when the educator becomes concerned with the scientific development of youth who will minimize concern for materialism and maximize an interest in service, he is creating a new race of men. The educator involved in such a program may be defined as a homoculturist.[12] The root homo pertains to the species Homo sapiens; the compound ending culturist refers to preparation for the institutions, the mores, and the moral thrust of the new world order of which the youths will be a part.
The subjects to be taught will not change
appreciably. Mathematics, science, arts and
crafts, philosophy, and history will still be
valuable. Foreign languages will become less
important as the sole satisfactory means for
penetrating foreign cultures since all children
will be taught, in addition to their own
language, a single universal language. The
curriculum will address itself to the ultimate
needs of this new age: the unity of mankind,
and the building of universal peace. All
courses will be designed to draw existing
knowledge into a meaningful integrated
package and to permit the solution of the
[Page 44] social and scientific problems that plague
mankind today. The unified curriculum will
reflect the needs of this age:
- 1. The oneness of mankind;
- 2. The cooperation and interdependence of all nations;
- 3. The moral use of science and technology;
- 4. The spiritualization of our materialistic values.
Courses such as American Studies, Asian Studies, European Studies, African Studies, and Caribbean Studies will be directed toward the promotion of the unity of mankind, because we are all waves of one sea and flowers of one garden. Areas of learning will be interrelated within broad historical periods, with strong dependence on cross-cultural understanding. Educational materials, hardware or software, may be utilized to motivate, fix, reinforce, and speed up the learning process. This aspect of the program is eclectic in that the teacher is free to create and use any educational media desired and needed without slavish fixation upon sterile lesson plans. In brief, the teacher can be honest in attempting novel approaches within the learning-teaching situation. He will not have to be subversive to survive. The skills and knowledge learned by the student will be utilized to enhance his understanding of these principles:
- 1. The oneness of mankind;
- 2. The oneness of God;
- 3. The essential unity of all religions;
- 4. The independent investigation of truth;
- 5. The elimination of all forms of prejudice and superstition;
- 6. The agreement of science and religion;
- 7. The equality of men and women;
- 8. The abolition of extremes of wealth and poverty;
- 9. The moral solution to economic problems;
- 10. The adoption of a universal auxiliary language;
- 11. The establishment of universal peace based upon world government and consultation.
Since the theory of homoculture in education is directed toward the individual development of the spiritual attributes of our youths, it is humanistic. The educator’s primary goal is that his charges be concerned and involved in creating a happier, more viable and stable society. Such an educator must sincerely believe that man is the supreme talisman.
Under the homocultural principle of education, words are most important. In the Gospel According to Saint John 1:1-2, was it not said that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning With God.” Words and therefore language are important. It is through words and language that ideas, wishes, directions, abstractions, and progress in the human sense are promulgated. But as educators, we must also be alert and aware of the plethora of sounds and jargon that bombards us from all media, the purpose of which is not the enhancement of man, but the stimulation of dormant secondary drives in order to impel us to purchase items of questionable value. In brief, we must be aware that words, whose power can inspire us to loftiness, can also hurt, debase, and become merely raucous rhetoric. Words are the necessary means for transmitting knowledge. Knowledge, in turn, motivates our youth toward contributing to an ever-advancing civilization. Knowledge can make for progress, for “Knowledge is like unto wings for the being [of man], and is as a ladder for ascending. To acquire knowledge is incumbent on all, but of those sciences which may profit the people of the earth, and not such sciences as begin in mere words, and end in mere words.”[13]
The theory that is to be put into practice
here is that words put together into some
[Page 45] coherent pattern form the basis for a language;
through speech or the written word
ideas are transmitted. The ideas that the
homocultural educator wishes to promote are
all directed toward the establishment of
world peace, the reduction of social distance
between people, the furtherance of knowledge,
the enhancement of individual enjoyment
for the student, and the elimination of
anxiety and faulty perceptions that lead to
the formation of prejudice and hate. Thus
poetry, literature, essays, novels, fiction, nonfiction,
and journalism must be responsible
elements. There is no desire for censorship.
The assumption underlying the theory is that
the individual student who is educated to use
words in the aforementioned context will
have progressively developed the skills of
analyzing media, reading critically, and writing
with a fair degree of beauty and fluency,
and will have learned through experience
that words have the power either to help or
to hurt. Such a student will be concerned
with “we-go” rather than “ego”. Through his
training in science, mathematics, manual arts
and crafts, the fine arts, language arts, comparative
studies in anthropology, and other
subjects, the student will know that man is
very different from the animal, the vegetable,
and the mineral. He will have learned that
the major difference between man and the
animal, is that man has free will. The animal
has to follow the laws of nature. The animal
cannot choose to do anything else. When the
animal builds his home, he can only build
the same home. He does not have the
repertoire possessed by the architect. When
the animal goes to different places, he can
only go to places in that part of the land
where his kind can live. He can live only the
way his kind lives. The animal does not have
the choice of free will. Man can select what
he wants to, make what he wants to make, go
where he wants to go. He can even choose
between telling the truth and telling lies.
Simply stated, man can elect to live in light
or in darkness.
The teacher who uses the homocultural method will discover that he is building character. The student will know that the greatest challenge to this age is the recognition of the oneness of mankind. The painful but inevitable broadening of each man’s allegiance from his own ethnic, racial, religious, national, cultural, and economic group to the wider embrace of all mankind constitutes the central revolution of our time. Every person is affected by this revolution, which calls for changes in the provincial attitudes and behavior of all the people in the world. The recognition that mankind belongs to one family under one universal spirit brings with it the responsibility to respect and to help one another in every way. The student will have learned that equal opportunities for developing their unique capacities are the right of all individuals. Variety, not conformity, is the basic characteristic of a progressive society. Therefore, through an eclectic approach, utilizing the homocultural principle, we will all learn that an equal standard of human rights must be upheld throughout the world.
To many of my friends, my thoughts probably sound idealistic, futuristic, and impractical. Idealistic—yes, futuristic—yes. Impractical —no. For we are carrying out such a program right now at Harlem Prep.
Let me share a story with you. Harlem
Prep has been a creature of controversy since
its inception. We exist from one week to the
next because all of our financial support
comes from a few industries, a few foundations,
and from the public at large: We find
it a struggle to obtain equipment, books,
materials, etc., but we succeed. We have
gathered the most diverse racial, religious,
political, and cultural groups possible; yet
from this diversity we obtain unity. Early in
September 1968, when we had just moved
into our present quarters, a former supermarket,
there was a rainstorm. When we
returned to the building the following day
the roof had caved in, wetting and destroying
the few precious items that we had managed
to obtain. For the first time in many years, I
[Page 46] actually cried in public. I was not sorry for
myself, but for my beautiful students and
teachers. Without a word, as though some
secret command had been given, our nuns
tied up their habits, took off their shoes,
grabbed mops, and began to wipe up the
water. Every teacher and student pitched in.
Soon a line was formed, and a bucket brigade
began to pass the filled pails one to another
until they had reached the last student standing
outside on the curb in the rain. Soon they
began to sing. This so deeply touched me
that I began to help. Within two hours the
school was in some order, the teachers were
teaching, the students were learning. Now
we had become a school. We had been
brought together by a fortuitous situation.
But there was more involved than just a
wrecked building. Our teachers had been
using homocultural principles without consciously
knowing it. I shall always remember
how one young man, who is now in college
and who used to drink wine profusely, reacted.
While the group was working and
singing, he stood up, dragged a blackboard
into the center of the room, stared at it for a
time and then wrote:
- I’m bringing out of the strain of the doing,
- Into the peace of the done,
- For I’ve done so much
- with so little for so long
- That now—I can do anything
- with nothing at all.
This poem may jar the grammarian a little. But if language is to be used to motivate man for good, I think that you might agree with me that these words are a poignant expression of love. Love is the key to any human endeavor. Love is the key to the success of any theory. Love is the key to the concept of homocultural education for a new era.
- ↑ Too frequently kudos are heaped upon the head of the dear departed. It is seldom that we give fragrances and bouquets to inspire the efforts of the living. I have been guilty of this. My personal deepening within the Bahá’í Faith, my spiritual development, and my personal happiness were deeply enhanced by my spiritual father and brother Curtis Kelsey. For whatever this article is worth, I dedicate it with deep love and sincerity to him whom I loved deeply, Pop Kelsey.
- ↑ This article was adapted from a speech delivered at the first National Bahá’í Conference on Education, February 20-22, 1970, in Wilmette, Illinois, sponsored by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, through its North American Bahá’í Office for Human Rights, as part of the Bahá’í observances of the United Nations’ International Education Year.
- ↑ See Firuz Kazemzadeh, “Views on Education in a New World,” World Order, III, 1 (Fall 1968), 16.
- ↑ Langston Hughes, “Lenox Avenue Mural,” in American Negro Poetry, ed. Arna Bontemps (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963), pp. 67-8.
- ↑ Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day Is Come (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1961), pp.117-8.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, trans. Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1963), p. 4.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 3.
- ↑ Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1939), p. 2.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 28.
- ↑ The Hidden Words, pp. 6-7.
- ↑ Consultation, as used by Bahá’ís, designates a consultative process in which the participants, in a common effort to discover the best possible solution for a problem, leave behind their strivings of ego against ego. A proposal, once made by an individual in consultation, no longer belongs to him, but to the group, and may be adopted or rejected or modified by the whole group. Frank examination of various points of view is encouraged, for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains that “The shining spark of truth cometh forth only after the clash of differing opinions.” In consultation, participants strive for a unanimous decision, but if that is not possible, the majority prevails. Once a decision is made, minority opinions cease to be voiced, and all abide by the decision.
- ↑ Stanwood Cobb, Homoculture: New Principles of Education (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1949).
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1956), p. 189.
Seasons
- Rain-driven catkins
- stranded in yellow wavelets
- on the road’s black beach.
- Redhot disc, wedged fast in the rippling V
- of the wake from a squadron of mallards
- skirting the coast of a windless pond.
- Weighted with harvesting finches,
- ungainly stems of thistles
- dance a graceful ballet,
- yielding seed to song.
- Among chevaux-de-frise
- of grasses thrust into snow,
- with wary foot a fox
- explores an edge of moonlight.
—Richard C. Raymond
Education for High School Dropouts
A Master Plan Proposal for the Street Academy System of Springfield, Inc.
By WILLIAM H. SMITH and DOUGLAS RUHE
HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS, parents, community organizers, and Action Lab[1] have joined forces to establish Street Academies for high school dropouts in Springfield, Massachusetts. Already, without funds, volunteer staff workers from other community service programs are helping on a part-time basis to set up the first Street Academy. Dropout students want Street Academies and are working with us for their realization because they dig the idea of having their own schools and a program geared to their style and interests.
We are starting with good people, a comprehensive plan, and resolve. Now we need funds, enough to pay full-time staff, to make comfortable, well-equipped academies, and to outfit an action-education program. Our goal is to have eight Street Academies with a collective enrollment of 160, plus a Preparatory School with 80 students, by the end of 1970.
Here is our master plan for organizing, staffing, programming, perpetuating, and funding an independent educational system for high school dropouts in Springfield.
Part I: The Problem
The Shadow Generation. Today in America, much concern and fear are being voiced about the problem of high school dropouts in our cities. They have become a national crisis: the “shadow generation”. Dropouts are constantly identified as a major cause of delinquency, crime, drug addiction, dependency, unemployment, and riots. Posters across the nation urge dropouts to give schools another try or to take equivalency exams for a diploma. Most of these appeals fall on hostile ears.
We understand the problem differently.
While accepting the facts about the destructive
and criminal actions committed by some
high school dropouts, we do not view these
deeds as causes in the cycle. On the contrary,
we see dropping out as a reaction to bad
schools, personal pressures, and the absence
of a valuable reward for staying in school
until graduation. Many dropouts are highly
gifted students who are simply turned off by
the system, youth whose potential is being
squandered in idleness and menial employment.
We think that the central cause of the
[Page 48] dropout problem is not the youth but the
schools that fail to educate and encourage
them.
If a solution is to be found in the creation of Street Academies for high school dropouts, we should first analytically state the shortcomings of the high schools. Then Street Academies, if they are to engage the interest of dropouts, must be consciously structured so that they are profoundly different from ordinary high schools.
The High Schools. Youth who have reached the age of discretion are almost never consulted about the process of “education” which they are required to experience.
Mass teaching is virtually the sole method of instruction available, and thus diversity among the students in character, learning speed, and interest is not recognized, honored, and encouraged to flourish. The standard is the mean. Good teachers are overwhelmed by jammed classrooms and total scheduling.
Required studies are often sterile, outdated, and irrelevant. Few if any useful skills and little information are offered. Indeed the teachers are frequently as bored with the material as are their pupils.
Many teachers, particularly in the inner-city schools, treat students like a herd of wild animals who respond only to threats and punishment and who are fundamentally dumb and ineducable.
Schools are, more often than not, physically and spiritually isolated from the surrounding human community where real events occur. “Professional” educators and administrators try to purge their programs of “squalid”, ambiguous topics, such as war, politics, religion, human beings and their feelings, morals, and beliefs. “Learning” is supposed to take place in regimented, silent, sanitary classrooms. People who actually do “controversial” things on the outside are almost never invited to enter the sanctuary.
Facts that are systematically and redundantly imparted in the teaching ritual are generally not integrated with concepts and principles that could give them meaning. That is one reason why students forget most of the material immediately and permanently after it has been regurgitated for exams.
Students who have difficulty with the rote game of reading and memorizing the pasteurized formulas of civics, English, math, etc., are identified as “failures” and “drags” in relation to the other students. (The mean again.) They are repeatedly and consistently humiliated by threats, punishments, ridicule, and segregation into lower “tracks”, “remedial” programs, and “vocational” schools. They drop out.
Many of those who can pass or even excel at the academic game drop out also because they accurately observe that a high school diploma in the city today is a passport to nowhere. Dropouts and graduates fare about equally in the unskilled job market.
Teachers, for the most part, do not serve as exemplars of integrity, enlightenment, and compassion. Neither do they appear to know very much. Removed from the possibilities of true friendship by their positions of authority and the mass-teaching situation, and often defensively posturing as “detached” professionals, many teachers appear to the students as stuffed shirts deserving only contempt. And the minority of teachers who become power perverts are hated by the students as oppressors and enemies. Students see the teachers fall into the mold of bland conformism and watch them tremble when administrators enter their classes to “check up”.
Teachers often manifest prejudice, superstition, and ignorance as much as or more than the majority of our confused people, so the students know they are getting hypocrisy and bombast instead of truth and substance. Moreover, the teachers’ conformity with the mean in cultural attitudes and emotions casts suspicion on the entire process of “education” that they have undergone.
Consequently, many students in high
schools feel as though they were in jail. The
buildings are divided into neat little cubes
called classrooms, time is divided into neat
[Page 49] little cubes called periods, knowledge is divided
into neat little cubes called units, and
achievement is divided into neat little cubes
called grades. Power is in the hands of the
bureaucrats and not the teachers.
The development of aesthetic expression and sensibility, which requires loudness, individuality, and exuberant experimentation, is sapped of its life force and reduced to units.
The reward for ultimate success in education customarily held up by the educators is more education and lucrative jobs. They rarely talk about enlightenment, fulfillment in work, service, and creativity except in the hollowest of clichés. In their view, human aspiration ends at the trough.
Competition among students is cultivated instead of cooperation and joint endeavor. Pitting students against each other for gold stars, grades, and recognition fosters selfishness instead of self-reliance.
Bogus Solutions. After-school and night-school “back to the books” projects are no more appealing to dropouts than TV education, computer programming, or rhetorical trickery. They see the familiar hated face through the cosmetics.
An Independent Educational System for Dropouts. In several major American cities —New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, to name a few—alternative educational systems for high school dropouts have been established. These institutions are attracting large numbers of street kids to informal and formal learning programs that speak to their condition, honor their individuality, encourage the growth of their powers, and prepare them for matriculation and competition in the nation’s universities for skilled employment training.
The most famous and sophisticated of these programs is in New York City. Fourteen Street Academies, most of them established by the Urban League and now funded by major corporations, attract dropouts by means of almost entirely unstructured learning situations that foster a “family” spirit of acceptance. For highly motivated Street Academy graduates, the next step is to one of the four Academies of Transition, where the educational discipline is stiffer and more conventional material is presented in areas such as reading, math, and literature. Finally, the student who has attained a tenth grade reading level and basic math proficiency can apply for admission to the Harlem Preparatory School or the Newark Preparatory School for a rigorous college-directed course of study. (See Appendices A and B for a statement about Harlem Prep through a student’s eyes and for an outline of its program.)
So fruitful has this kind of program been in New York and elsewhere that the Nixon administration is now in the process of trying to nationalize the Street Academy concept through the Postal Department.
Need in Springfield. According to the School Board, 19 percent of the students—or nearly one out of every five—in Springfield’s public high schools either drop out or are forced out before graduation. Eighteen percent of the white students enrolled drop out, 25 percent of the blacks, and 45 percent of the Puerto Ricans. This means in raw numbers that more than 430 kids end up in the street each year—from the public high schools alone.
HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF ’70 DROPOUT RATE:
SPRINGFIELD SCHOOL SYSTEM
Note that the precipitous downward lines end at mid-year twelfth grade.
HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF ’70
High School Class of 1970—White enrollees
1966 | 9th | 1920 | 100.00% |
1967 | 10th | 1907 | 99.32% |
1968 | 11th | 1784 | 92.91% |
1969 | 12th | 1590 | 82.81% — 18% |
High School Class of 1970—Puerto Rican enrollees
1966 | 9th | 27 | 100.00% |
1967 | 10th | 19 | 70.37% |
1968 | 11th | 15 | 55.55% |
1969 | 12th | 15 | 55.55% — 45% |
High School Class of 1970—Black enrollees
1966 | 9th | 357 | 100.00% |
1967 | 10th | 357 | 100.00% |
1968 | 11th | 320 | 86.63% |
1969 | 12th | 268 | 75.07% — 25% |
Thus there are at least five thousand high
school dropouts between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-five in Springfield at present.
They are the shadow generation, surviving
between idleness, unskilled work, and crime.
Five thousand young adults are an enormous waste of human potential. Many of them have the capacity and desire to complete high school work and either enter a university or take skilled job training. Yet, virtually nothing is being done to offer them alternatives in education. Our answer is Street Academies and Preparatory Schools for dropouts.
Part II: Street Academy Profile
Street Academy Education. A Street Academy is what the words say: it is an educational and recreational meeting place for high school dropouts that is literally one step away from the street in a storefront or house and which deliberately cultivates an atmosphere of freedom from adult and “educational” coercion. More than just a center of activity, an Academy is a family of black, Puerto Rican, and white people united by the desire to learn together and share understanding. Two full-time co-directors work with twenty to twenty-five students for small group and individual study.
Concept. A Street Academy is based on the recognition that dropping out of high school is a legitimate and often necessary response by human beings to a situation they find intolerably cold, oppressive, and frustrating. Thus a Street Academy is not a place where slick “instructors” or con-men “social workers” try to psych high school dropouts into regaining respect for or belief in the system they have rejected. A Street Academy is not an appendage of the public school system; its educational program is controlled by the staff and students who are the Academy. Yet neither is a Street Academy merely an “indoor corner” where high school dropouts congregate to “do their thing”. It is a true educational institution that offers the powers of knowledge and understanding to the participants. It also serves as an example and catalyst for institutional change in the conventional high school systems.
Program. The educational program created
[Page 51] in Street Academies is generally aimed at liberating
human potential and encouraging each
individual student to strengthen his own character.
Loud talk, uproarious laughter, smoking
cigarettes, leaving rooms without passes or
paddles, and passionate disagreement are expected
activities. (See a student’s statement on
Harlem Prep, Appendix A.)
The people of the Academy—students and staff—pursue understanding through free discussions and learn from each other’s experiences and thoughts. But rapping is not enough. A “hard core” of learning is also essential to the success of a Street Academy. The following list is a catalogue of basic study areas:
a) specific techniques of survival in the game of conventional school education: learning skills, testmanship, note-taking, study skills, etc.;
b) general powers of comprehension and skill in reading, math, rhetoric, and reasoning;
c) development of aesthetic sensibilities and talents: poetry, sculpting, dancing, creative writing, making music, photography, crafts, painting, and study of the artistic impulse;
d) morality and philosophy examined on the basis of their usefulness and validity for men in their present condition;
e) essential scientific principles, discoveries, and methods;
f) cultural, social, political, and historical aspects of human civilization in theory and reality;
g) experiences outside the academy: students may choose to become involved in a community service project or venture into universities;
h) prejudices of all kinds, superstitions, pernicious institutions, and ideas that have been the sources of misunderstanding, division, and murder among mankind, considered and analyzed.
Action Education. Instead of remaining in the Academy building for fixed periods of time to listen to canned presentations, the students and co-directors learn about subjects firsthand. Administration of justice, for example, can be studied by going to courts and counseling with judges and lawyers. Universities, professions, and institutions are observed, questioned, and understood through direct involvement, as in the Parkway Program of Philadelphia. The Academy System maintains a “resource pool” of artists, scientists, and professionals who are willing to serve as instructors and hosts. Universities and colleges in the Springfield area are prime sources for academic lectures.
The resource pool is organized as a master list of subjects and activities the students can choose from, for collective or individual study. Thus the students have an opportunity to learn from people who are using knowledge for many purposes and to watch them at work. Students can also request instruction in subjects not listed. Seminar and study time is divided into period lengths that are appropriate for particular presentations, trips, or discussions.
Reading, writing, and mathematics are not presented as discrete areas of study unless the students want them. Power in the three R’s becomes necessary when the students see them as useful for understanding problems (e.g., mathematics—to study how a landlord can buy dilapidated apartment buildings and make the venture profitable without upkeep; to learn how a computer simplifies functions in numerical correlations).
Ends. The central problems of most high school dropouts are that they are bored and discouraged by learning; they lack self-confidence and a good judgment of themselves; they are crippled learners because they do not know the skills of learning; and, finally, they do not have negotiable credentials which they can use to get good employment and to move ahead in formal education. The purpose of Street Academy education is to overcome these specific obstacles.
Motivation. Street Academy education is
[Page 52] by and for the students and directors; it is
theirs. The process is active and natural, takes
place in comfortable surroundings, and is
without formal constraints. Street Academy
education is designed to arouse and sustain
genuine interest in learning among the students
and directors by means of direct involvement
and mutual effort.
Self-confidence. Equality and total encouragement in the learning process are aspects of the Street Academy educational environment which are intended to foster individual respect and self-confidence. Focus on personal and cultural diversity as sources of strength and beauty is consciously directed toward the development of self-understanding and awareness.
Competent learners. The co-directors are able to identify and explain the learning skills that are implicit in the learning process and demonstrate how they work so that students can become conscious of them and master them. (Directors receive in-service training in these techniques at the University of Massachusetts School of Education.)
Professor Daniel C. Jordan, in his Blueprint for Action: A Summary of Recommendations for Improving Compensatory Education in Massachusetts (March 1970), says:
- How to learn is itself a learned process . . . . disadvantaged students who are simply given information in subject matter areas (math, science, biology, etc.) as remedial work, and perhaps a variety of cultural enrichment experiences to supplement it, but no information and experience that will enable them to master the learning process itself—such students have no hope of “catching up” and staying “caught up.” Although temporary gains may be made through remedial efforts, there is no efficient way of consolidating those gains and converting them into permanent assets without mastering the fundamentals of the learning process itself.
Credentials. A Street Academy offers its own credentials, based on its own standards, to members it considers to have received its full benefit, who have decided to move on, either for more education or for skilled-employment training or job placement. (CCEBS, the recruitment program for black students at the University of Massachusetts, has expressed willingness to accept Springfield Street Academy students, as they are presently accepting graduates of Harlem Prep.)
Employment. Many Street Academy students contribute to the support of their families. Since they must give up part- or full-time employment to attend the program, the Academy attempts to provide part-time work for those needing it. The part-time Street Academy work program is geared to learning skills that will be valuable—not menial labor. (A number of businessmen in Springfield who represent major firms and corporations have already said that they can provide such meaningful employment.)
Location and Design. A Street Academy is naturally located in a neighborhood with a high percentage of dropouts and where there is racial and cultural diversity. The furnishings and decor of each Academy are arranged to suit the needs and desires of the students —needless to say, desks are not too popular.
Accountability. Consistent evaluation of the program’s effectiveness is imperative so that: 1) the students can have reinforcement for their efforts and interests according to conventional criteria; 2) the directors can study the effect of the program they are organizing and become conscious of areas that need change; and 3) the companies, foundations, organizations, and individuals who contribute money for the creation and maintenance of the Street Academy System can see tangible “results” of the program.
Realistically, the students and directors of
the Academy know that, in the end, students
must be prepared to cope with traditional
educational and working conditions when
[Page 53] they complete study in the Academy. But the
means they use to gain proficiency in the
basic learning skills and areas of study are
completely different from the rote approach.
Testing by conventional standards, however,
is necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness
of the Academy in educating competent
learners. Yet no Academy student can be
compelled to take tests. The students freely
choose, or refuse, to be accountable to themselves
and others.
Standard tests of self-image, general aptitude, comprehension, creativity, problem solving, and the like are taken and analyzed by the students. This is one of the chief techniques of making students aware of how the testing game is played, the logic behind it, and the skills necessary to succeed. Tests are not treated as things having independent value and there is no “grading” of the results. Tests can only gauge the by-products of true education.
Co-Directors. Co-directors of Street Academies believe in the intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual potential of each student. The directors recognize and praise the individual human beauties of each student and what he produces, for the director’s role is to help liberate the powers of consciousness and creativity, not coerce, “condition”, or “shape” the students according to conventional achievement and behavior patterns. Ridicule of troubled students and blocked learners, or imposing outcast status upon them, is anathema in a Street Academy.
Co-directors of Street Academies must love the family of man in all its hues, shapes, and cultures. They must be free of racial, class, religious, and cultural prejudices, because their example is pivotal in creating a spirit of unity in the Academy.
Preparation. Street Academies speak to the condition of dropouts through “hip” co-directors. Most dropouts simply will not listen to “straights”. But obviously this ability to communicate does not extend to the point of emulating the students’ life styles. Co-directors must be able to teach and lead.
Two areas of expertise—street and Academy—are reflected in the preparation and work-roles of the two co-directors: one of them is street-wise, with experience in community life as an organizer, mother/ father, worker, hustler, dropout, welfaree; the other is thoroughly familiar with college education, conventional public school education, testing/evaluating, and academic hustling. Both, however, are able to function with confidence on the street and in the Academy as a team, and they do not choose one area as an exclusive domain of competence and work.
Tasks. The co-directors have four basic task areas:
a) to lead the process of inquiry and critical study chosen by the students;
b) to demonstrate relationships between different areas of life and study with integrating concepts such as interdependency, evolution, relativity, motivation, and causality;
c) to maintain the emphasis on the study and mastery of learning skills so that the end result will be a group of competent and aware learners with continually improving levels of proficiency on conventional tests;
d) to identify students who have special learning problems which the directors are not trained to deal with and obtain expert assistance from the University of Massachusetts School of Education.
Philosophy. Creation, love, sex, right and wrong, war, politics, death, belief in God, man, or nothing, and other ultimate issues, are the forbidden fruits of discourse in the nation’s classrooms. Not so in Street Academies. Considering and judging the big moral questions is central to the learning process because it provides a framework of meaning for study in all areas. Street Academy students must confront the whole range of answers to these ultimate questions.
Racism presents an excellent example of
need for this kind of meaningful discussion.
[Page 54] Although the laws of the land, amassed
scientific evidence, and the ancient golden
rule of justice and equity together discredit
and condemn racist thought and action as
false and evil, the traditional schools of
America have done little or nothing to
expose and combat these notions in the
minds of their students. Moreover, they have
generally failed to supply alternate principles
and ideas from which students can choose to
replace the traditional tribalistic prejudices.
Consequently, as hate-filled people kill each
other in the streets over racism, the schools
of America have retreated into “reading
levels” and “achievement tests”.
Street Academy education is not a retreat; it is an advance. Thus the doctrine of racism is met head-on with concepts that can point some new direction for the Academy’s multiracial, multicultural students. The purpose of stating these principles, however, is not to present a catechism or code with which to indoctrinate Street Academy students; that would clearly violate the spirit and structure of the institutions, and it would be simply another version of authoritarianism. We include them because they are worthy of the students’ and directors’ consideration as guidelines and ideals.
The oneness of mankind. The natural differences among individuals, cultures, and races within the human family are beautiful and must be the cause of attraction and unity; unity is diversity.
Abolition of all prejudices. Prejudgment of other people without first knowing them is not only unfair but also a surrender to the misinformation and superstition of one’s peers.
Justice. The sharing among all men of human and political rights and power, the equal treatment of men and women, and equal treatment before the law must be assured.
Service. Helping other human beings to overcome their problems and satisfy their wants and needs is not only consistent with justice and the oneness of mankind but is profitable in the ultimate sense that everyone benefits from true service.
Love and respect. Loving-kindness and respect for other people and oneself rest on belief in the essential goodness of all humans and result in the virtues that attract people to each other—generosity, affection, praise, humor, idealism, honesty, and selflessness.
Freedom to investigate truth, to speak and believe. The practice of putting anybody up-against-the-wall and forcing him to accept beliefs or ideas not of his own free choosing is condemned.
Length of Student Enrollment. Street Academy students begin study with different degrees of accomplishment, ability, and motivation. Some will be ready for “graduation” sooner than others. However, we estimate, based on student performance in Street Academies elsewhere, that students on the average will stay in an Academy for nine months. Academies will run on a year-round basis.
Educational Innovation and Reform. Street Academy education will hopefully become a potent enough example of “success” that it will stimulate innovations and reforms in the public school systems of the Springfield area.
Part III: Incorporation, Administration, and Organization
Incorporation. The Street Academy System of Springfield (SASSI) was incorporated under Massachusetts law on June 5, 1970. Recognition by the federal government as a tax-deductible, non-profit organization is also being sought.
The legally constituted structure of SASSI and its governing Board of Directors was designed to correspond as closely as possible to the concept of the Academies detailed above. Following are some of the relevant portions from the papers of incorporation; community control and student participation are to be noted.
[Page 55]
Purpose. To establish and maintain a system
of Street Academies and a Preparatory
School for high school dropouts in Springfield,
Massachusetts, which is independent of
external economic or political control and
which gives the majority power in decision-making
to the community it serves: the low
income black, white, and Puerto Rican population
of Springfield and especially high
school dropouts.
Street Academies and a Preparatory School are designed to prepare dropouts either for college entrance or skilled job-training and give credentials of graduation for those ends.
Composition. Membership in this corporation shall consist of a Board of Directors made up of eleven persons. The total number of directors shall be divided as follows:
a) four representatives of the low income population of blacks, whites, and Puerto Ricans of Springfield, who are also residents of the low income neighborhoods they represent;
b) two high school or elementary school dropouts who are at least twenty-one years of age and who reside in low income neighborhoods;
c) three citizens who are either businessmen, representatives of community service organizations, or non-residents of low income neighborhoods;
d) one representative of Action Lab for the Education of High School Dropouts, which is a special program in the University of Massachusetts School of Education and a recognized student organization;
e) one representative of the University of Massachusetts School of Education faculty or staff.
Method of selecting directors. The original incorporators shall select representatives from the community to fill all the above categories of directors and, once constituted, the Board will perpetuate itself by electing with a simple majority vote representatives to fill vancancies caused by resignations. The Board may also remove members from it for any reason, including absenteeism, by a two-thirds majority—seven votes.
Committees of the Board of Directors. All committees established by the Board of Directors shall have at least one-half of their members from the student bodies of the Street Academies.
The Board of Directors functions as the legally empowered representative body of the Street Academy System. Its purpose is to oversee the planning, fund-raising, legal, and basic policy aspects of the program, and to secure and maintain state accreditation.
The Board of Directors’ purpose is not to dictate curriculum to the Academies, but rather to help to protect their independence. Street Academies can become involved in no binding relationships with the Springfield school systems, public or private.
The Street Academy System will accept financial aid and grants from all sources— from individuals, government, businesses, churches, foundations, etc. Perpetuation of the system over a period of years will eventually require almost total support from the local sources.
Administration and Organization. As the number of Street Academies increases, professional coordinators will be employed to administer the System. They will also maintain the resource pool. The Board of Directors will determine when coordinators will be hired and who they will be, as is the case with employment directors of the Academies. Secretaries and bookkeepers will also be hired as needed.
STRUCTURE
STREET ACADEMY CO-DIRECTORS
STREET
- Community organizations
- Parents of students
- Service projects
ACADEMY
- University resource pool
- Basic teaching skills
- Testing/evaluation
PROGRAM COORDINATORS
- Administration, maintenance, and expansion
- Action Education; establish and coordinate use of resource pool
- Liaison with Board of Directors
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
- Community-controlled decision-making body for Street Academy System
- Legally incorporated representation of program
- Fulfills administrative requests and plans institutional expansion
- Raises funds
- Defends and protects independence of Street Academies
- Helps obtain state accreditation to confer high school diplomas
Budget: The funding for the Street Academy
System will primarily come from the business
community of Springfield with as much
individual assistance as can be generated.
For this publication a summary budget[2] is
presented:
STREET ACADEMY PROTOTYPE:
First year operation
- Staff: ........................... $15,400
- Co-directors (2) .......... $14,000
- Fringe benefits ............ 1,400
- Physical Plant (rental) and Utilities
- ($300/month X 12): ............ 3,600
- Academy Furnishings: .............. 2,285
- Couches, lounge chairs, discussion tables,
- telephone, filing cabinets, office desk,
- chairs, draperies
- Couches, lounge chairs, discussion tables,
- Operations Equipment: .............. 4,275
- Cameras, tape recorders, typewriter,
- stereo phonograph, slide projector,
- sixteen millimeter projector, video
- tape recorder with playback
- Cameras, tape recorders, typewriter,
- Expendable Supplies: ............... 648
- Film and processing; audio and video
- tape
- Film and processing; audio and video
- Educational Supplies
- ($50 X 20 students): ............ 1,000
- Books, paper, pencils, art supplies, etc.
- Transportation: ................... 5,100
- VW bus, insurance, gas, maintenance
- Contingencies: .................... 1,000
- TOTAL $33,308
The second year operation cost for one Street
Academy will be roughly $23,000, or two-thirds
of the first year cost.
BUDGET SUMMARY
- First Year:
- Operational budget for 8 Street
- Academies .................. $265,260
- Operational budget for 8 Street
- Second Year:
- Operational budget for 8 Street
- Academies .................. $193,504
- Operational budget for 8 Street
Appendix A
“MOJA/LOGO: The Story of Harlem Preparatory School,” by James Rogers, Class of ’69.[3] MOJA and LOGO are written on the wall at Harlem Prep. These two words of African origin for unity and brotherhood have as many meanings as our school’s students have diverse experiences. But each of our lives is united for one immediate aim—to go on to college. As a family helps its members get a start in life, we students help each other toward our common goal.
Harlem Prep really is a family—and not one just in name. People at the school I formerly attended spoke of being a family, but what was projected was the coldness of an institution that paralyzed creative thinking. The difference between that school and Harlem Prep is the difference between my turning out to be a graduation statistic or a creative thinker in whatever field I might choose.
[Page 57]
The fact that everyone knows everyone
else adds to Harlem Prep’s personal character.
Even the person with the most contrasting
point of view is my friend—better yet,
my brother. Brotherhood—it’s written on the
wall, and it’s practiced by students and teachers
alike. And when you have a school where
teachers and students work together, you
have a family.
To all of us, Harlem Prep is a second chance, whether we dropped out of school or just managed to graduate. We know we are the lucky few who have this precious second chance. In order to make it, we have to meet these standards: “For graduation, students must have demonstrated the power to do college work; they must be proficient in verbal and writing skills, as well as in mathematical skills. They must have acquired a firm grounding in social studies . . . . The aim of Harlem Prep is not only a diploma, but to place a student in college. He must have a record for consistent attendance and punctuality and show his ability to live up to the spirit of the school, which presupposes self-development and service to the community.”
Located in a dreary armory near the Harlem River for its first year, Harlem Prep ushered thirty-five students into U.S. colleges and universities. The spirit of Harlem Prep was born in that armory. Now located in a remodeled supermarket that is undergoing metamorphosis into a school building, the spirit of Harlem Prep is carried on by us.
It’s not the same place for more than a week. When we first came to the building, there were no blackboards, or study tables, or even, to some extent, books. The school was one spacious room, contrasting drastically to the large, many-cubicled standard secondary school buildings. You can imagine it: a supermarket, minus the shelves and counters. But that was the first week. For a while, bookshelf partitions were erected between classroom areas, where once, only space made one class distinct from another. Now the library is shelved on lower book cases, and once again, there are no physical dividers between classes. The atmosphere of the building has been softened by a new acoustical ceiling and a black-flecked green carpet covering the entire school floor.
Many people believe that classrooms and textbooks are necessary to education, but Harlem Prep can testify that they are not. What makes a school is what goes on in the classes—and in each individual student. Our interests are so deep that outright questioning, even with anger, is common. Anger in my old school, even when it was directed at the lesson, was attacked as a lack of discipline. This made many students apathetic and kept them from taking part.
Harlem Prep, on the other hand, does not suppress response, no matter how strongly it is presented. Because we show our interest this intensely, it suggests that we are academically inclined. The teachers understand this. They react in such a way as to keep the lesson on topic, as well as to let us speak our minds. Moreover, the faculty is not just a body of teachers but a group of human beings who look at students as other human beings. This is what I think differentiates a Harlem Prep teacher—he accepts a student who questions as being involved rather than being a “disrupter of the class.”
Smoking was a major reason for being expelled at my old school. At Harlem Prep, this rule, along with a few others, has been left out of the book. Eating in class was allowed—until the students themselves voted to dispense with it because it interfered with the educational process.
We can also attend the classes we choose. If, for some reason, the teacher fails to show up, we can sit in on any other class—or sit alone and study. By not having a substitute teacher in front of the class, we are assured that Harlem Prep feels we are old enough to make independent decisions and judgments.
A project the faculty members want to
undertake is to put their work into textbook
form. Since our curriculum is so diverse,
there are no textbooks that fulfill our requirements.
[Page 58] For example, one instructor handles
algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and
computer math in the same course. To do
this, he has to hand out worksheets nearly
every day. All science classes include two or
more sciences, such as chemistry and physics,
or chemistry and biology. Clearly, the faculty
members are developing new approaches.
When I said that textbooks are not necessary for classwork, I meant it. Textbooks are nothing compared to a faculty with interesting ideas. But this isn’t all. At Harlem Prep, students themselves are encouraged to contribute ideas for improvement. It’s a good feeling to have a teacher ask, “What do you think we should do?” And this has happened to me. Unlike ordinary schools, we don’t have something pushed on us or have to fight for a say. We keep close touch with the administration.
The three administrators, including. Mr. Carpenter, the Headmaster, teach and extend themselves as people. They are looked on by everyone as individuals.
There is a tree planted in front of Harlem Prep which, in a way, symbolizes our individualism. It is dedicated to Vic Gomez, a student who died striving to fulfill his goal. Many of us did not know him, but Mr. Carpenter did. He says: “Brother Vic was slight, intense, driven. He had three wishes: to attend Harlem Prep, to visit Africa, and to enter college. He died fulfilling his second wish; he was drowned while on safari in Africa. But the honor, dignity, and pride that he possessed are carried on.”
The administration does not work alone. Along with the Board of Trustees, it works closely with the Parents’ Committee. In fact, five parents and the President of the Student Body serve on the Board. But this is not all the parents do. Since many potential college students work during the day, the Parents’ Committee of Harlem Prep decided to open a night school. They engaged the faculty and manned the registration for subjects such as Psychology, Logic, English, Math, Swahili, Typing, and Investment Banking. Classes meet from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Here are some reactions of the school’s night family: “Harlem Prep is a challenge, a pioneer, and a godsend. A challenge to the establishment which has discarded those who wish to be educated and economically better off. A pioneer in rendering educational assistance to these people. A godsend because we all ask where would we be without Harlem Prep?”
“If Harlem Prep doesn’t do anything else for me, or even if I don’t make it to college, Harlem Prep has given me self-confidence. A man won’t take the first step if he knows he is going to fall.”
Not only the parents, but also the daytime students show concern for the community, and we try to demonstrate the feeling of unity inspired by Harlem Prep. In our free periods, many of us tutor children in public schools in the neighborhood. During the teachers’ strike, we helped out with elementary school pupils. We find that tutoring is richly rewarding for both tutor and pupil.
Though I think very highly of Harlem Prep, it has its weaknesses. Because our building is still being modified, we lack many things that established schools have. For example, laboratory and lunchroom facilities are still in the planning stages. Obviously these have priority over a student lounge and other luxuries, so they must be built first. But the amount of construction is relative to the amount of money the school has. Many good things will not be completed by the time I graduate. If more funds appear, more construction will be undertaken.
Enough about buildings! If the spirit of
Harlem Prep could be introduced in large
[Page 59] public schools, they would be making giant
steps, not only in education, but giant steps
toward real personal relationships. And that’s
what it’s all about—unity and brotherhood.
That’s the writing on the wall!
Appendix B
“Education for a New Era: Harlem Preparatory School,” by Edward F. Carpenter, Headmaster.[4] The rate of high school dropouts in the ghetto communities of New York City is over one thousand per month. Most of these young people are of black and Spanish-speaking origin. In 1964 the document Youth in the Ghetto: A Study of Powerlessness; A Blueprint for Change written by Dr. Kenneth Clark indicated that there was high intellectual ability and therefore great human wastage among the population.
Harlem Prep was created to work with dropouts who manifested the desire, motivation, and ability to complete secondary education and be admitted to college. This term (Fall 1969) we have enrolled some 250 students, and we have 23 full-time faculty members, 3 part-time faculty members, and a host of volunteers. But when the school opened its doors in October 1967, at the 369th Armory, the student enrollment was forty-nine. The school had little money, no budget, no faculty—only our belief in the students and our belief that we all could succeed. By February 1968, the enrollment had grown to seventy-nine. In June 1968, thirty-five students were deemed ready by the faculty to enter college. This was our first graduating class. Thirty-five students were graduated and thirty-four are still in college.
In September 1968 we moved into our new quarters, a supermarket, and had it converted into a super-educational organization. Our student enrollment had increased to 181. It reflected the political, religious, and ideological spectrum of the cosmopolitan city.
Since our students had left school from grades 10 through 12, it was decided to provide a non-graded educational program in which each student could progress at his own rate. Our curriculum was designed to provide power in the areas of language, mathematics, science, and social living. It was developed to integrate subject matter so that the student could answer the question “How?” rather than “Why?” In brief, our courses were designed for problem solving. In addition to this our courses were developed to provide skills in individual research and the daily application of learned skills to everyday community and family problems.
The courses offered at Harlem Prep are: Modern Math through Calculus, Linguistics, Semantics, Analysis of Mass Media, Creative Writing, African Studies, Asian Studies, Caribbean Studies, American Studies, Comparative Economics, Sociology, Social Psychology, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Oceanography, Media, Art, The Dance, Music, Literature, Logical and Critical Thinking. Free use is made of experts from colleges, industry, and the community. Our teaching staff holds degrees ranging from the bachelors’ to the doctors’.
It is the belief of the Headmaster that education should provide students with the global experiences needed to work and function in a multiracial world. In order to implement this concept teachers of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, Bahá’í, White, Asian, Indian, and Black backgrounds were employed. The rationale for such a program was derived from the concept that from such diversity we could achieve unity. The student body reflected the same spectrum. If today’s student is to be able to communicate with diverse peoples of the world, he must be able to interact and test his biases within an unstructured milieu.
To date 196 students are attending such
colleges as Harvard, NYU, University of
Massachusetts, Hampton, Fordham, and
[Page 60] Shaw.[5] The grades range from C to A-. The
age ranges from 17 to 26. Last year a 50-year-old
grandmother graduated and is now attending
the School of Education at NYU. It
is her goal to return to Harlem Prep to teach
in the Social Studies department.
There is no tuition at Harlem Prep. Most students come from low income families, many from families receiving public assistance. Most students must hold part-time jobs to support themselves.
In its first two years of existence, Harlem Prep has been funded primarily by industry and by donations from private foundations. Standard Oil of New Jersey has contributed funds, services, and personnel. IBM has contributed funds. Major contributors (those who have given $10,000 or more) include:
1967-68 | 1968-69 | 1969-70 | |
---|---|---|---|
Carnegie Corporation | $150,000 | $150,000 | |
Astor Foundation | 75,000 | 50,000 | |
Hayden Foundation | 50,000 | ||
Sheila Mosler Foundation | 100,000 | 50,000 | $70,000 |
Arwood Foundation | 10,000 | 10,000 | |
Field Foundation | 15,000 | ||
Rockefeller Bros. Fund | 19,000 | 20,000 | |
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey | 75,000 | 75,000 | |
IBM | 55,000 | 30,000 | |
Union Carbide Company | 89,000 |
At present Harlem Prep is trying to secure
financial assistance from Metropolitan Life
Insurance Company and Consolidated Edison
Gas and Electricity, for it is our belief that
industry can play a meaningful role within
the inner city by sponsoring a program like
Harlem Prep’s.[6] Recently the Black community
(represented by 20 groups) has
begun to support the school financially.
A financial study of the salability of Harlem Prep has been completed by John Price Jones, Incorporated, and an internal administration study has been completed by Cresap, McCormick, Paget. Both studies indicate the power, thrust, and relevance of the programs at Harlem Prep.
There is a covenant—a moral contract— made among students, school, and community. Its goal is simple but explicit. Every graduate of Harlem Prep, no matter in what area he finds himself after graduation from college, will give service to his community. It is the Headmaster’s hope to put the fourth “R” back into education: Readin’, ’Ritin’, ’Rithmetic, AND nonsectarian Religion. In brief, Harlem Prep’s students are learning that we are all the flowers of one universal garden and that we are all tied to one another by a strong silver thread of love.
- ↑ Action Lab is a special program in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts and a recognized student organization. Its members study the dimensions of the high school dropout problem from statistical and social perspectives and gather information about existing educational programs for dropouts. They have provided master planning, fund raisers, and organizers for the Street Academy System of Springfield, Inc.
- ↑ Detailed budgets on operational and supportive costs can be obtained from the Street Academy System of Springfield, Inc., P.O. Box 2231, Springfield, Mass.
- ↑ This account was written for a brochure distributed by Harlem Prep.
- ↑ See also Edward F. Carpenter, “Harlem Prep: Homocultural Education for a New Era,” in this issue of World Order.
- ↑ In 1968, Harlem Prep graduated 35 students; in 1969, 79 students; and in 1970, 83 students. Only one graduate is not now attending college.
- ↑ Since the above was written, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company has contributed $20,000 and Consolidated Edison, $10,000, for the academic year 1970-71.
On Re-Humanizing School Systems
A Review of William Glasser’s School Without Failure (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 235 pages
By DARRELL D. LACOCK
MOST, if not all, commentators on American education would agree with William Glasser’s opening assertion that, “Too many students fail in school today.” And many would at least partially endorse his conclusions regarding the nature and causes of this widespread failure. But few writers on education have offered a program as compelling in its no-holds-barred analysis, its sensitivity to human values, and its pertinence and feasibility for public school systems.
Glasser’s approach is fresh. Schools Without Failure vindicates his observation that, “coming from a discipline outside of the schools, I think I can see some of the problems more clearly than those who are much closer” (p. 7). He has made imaginative use of his skills as a psychiatrist[1] to locate and deal with fundamental sources of academic failure, especially in inner-city schools. His book is based upon his intensive collaboration with educators in a few California school systems in an unconventional effort to make school a success-oriented experience for more students.
One of the commendable aspects of Glasser’s book is his firm insistence that educators accept their full share of responsibility for school failure:
- I do not accept the rationalization of failure commonly accepted today, that these young people are products of a social situation that precludes success. Blaming their failure upon their homes, their communities, their culture, their background, their race, or their poverty is a dead end for two reasons: (1) it removes personal responsibility for failure, and (2) it does not recognize that school success is potentially open to all young people. (pp. 4-5)
Glasser does not discount the impact on school life of the above-listed considerations. And he obviously supports efforts to improve social conditions wherever they are deficient. However, his timely aim is to foster a recognition by educators of the crucial need and possibility for a student to have success in school, regardless of his home and community situation.
Why do so many students fail in school and how can their number be reduced? Starting from the assumption that there are two basic (and closely related) types of failure—failure to love and failure to achieve self-worth—Glasser argues that school failure can be minimized only if (1) faculties and students are involved with each other on a personal and honest level, (2) the content of texts and discussions is relevant to the lives of students, and (3) stress is put on thinking rather than mere memorization. These three concepts form the nucleus of his analysis and provide guidelines for his specific recommendations.
It does not detract from the importance of
Glasser’s contribution to note that some of
his ideas are neither new nor radical. In
various forms, they can be found in several
critical works on education, among them the
writings of John Dewey, Paul Goodman, A.
S. Neill, Edgar Friedenberg, and John Holt.
Yet Glasser’s development of these ideas—in
the light of his unique, experience- and
[Page 62] discipline-based perspective as a psychiatrist
—is sure to spark controversy among many
members of the educational establishment.
Regarding the concept of “involvement”, Glasser argues persuasively that schools should provide regular opportunities for teachers and students to talk frankly about their feelings and about questions which seem most important to them. He claims that there is a critical need for teachers to be warm, personal, and interested in their students, and to encourage them to make value judgments about their own behavior. In such a context failure can be reduced as students learn to become responsible for themselves and for others and to overcome the loneliness which Glasser observes in failing students. A. S. Neill (see his book Summerhill) would find much to agree with in Glasser’s respectful attitude toward children, in his repudiation of preaching and moralizing about mistakes, and in his program of “social-problem-solving meetings” (regular classroom meetings designed to deal straightforwardly with students’ social behavior in school).
When Glasser talks about “relevance”, readers who are familiar with John Dewey’s writings are sure to find traces of the latter’s insistence upon a vital interaction between the child’s experience in school and out of school. Glasser underscores two aspects of the relevance issue: “1. Too much taught in school is not relevant to the world of the children. When it is relevant, the relevance is too often not taught, thus its value is missed when it does exist. 2. The children do not consider that what they learn in their world is relevant to the school” (pp. 52-3). Again, this is not a question of Glasser’s merely echoing another author; the concrete examples which he draws from his own experience and his suggested “open-ended meetings” to help ensure a relevant education are valuable increments to the theme of relevance.
The concept of “thinking” provides a striking area of agreement between Schools Without Failure and John Holt’s How Children Fail. In both works, a key distinction is made between “thinking” (problem-solving and reflection on issues for which there are no definite or right answers) and mere memorization of facts (what Holt calls the “producer” mentality).
Glasser attacks two dominant principles in education which he claims impede the process of thinking. One is the “certainty principle”, according to which “there is a right and a wrong answer to every question; the function of education is then to ensure that each student knows the right answers to a series of questions that educators have decided are important” (p. 36). The other is the “measurement principle”, which Glasser defines as “nothing is really worthwhile unless it can be measured and assigned a numerical value” (p. 38).
Both principles encourage memorization, which, Glasser says, “leads to boredom for those who are successful and to frustration and misery for those who are not” (p. 40). Moreover, he contends that the honoring of these principles is incompatible with the attainment of certain educational goals: “The goals of education are to give people the mental tools to deal effectively with new situations, to place fewer restrictions on their lives caused by fear of difficult problems, and to enable people to deal with new situations and difficult problems rationally rather than emotionally. None of these goals can be attained by the present emphasis on the certainty and measurement principles” (p. 43).
One could readily extend this comparative analysis to include Friedenberg and Goodman. Glasser’s emphasis upon a student’s feelings about himself and about his school situation is strongly reminiscent of Friedenberg’s findings as reported in The Vanishing Adolescent and in Coming of Age in America. Both writers devote a great deal of discussion to the question of student identity and both consider the cultivation of a student’s feeling of self-worth to be a prime function of the school.
[Page 63]
Like Paul Goodman (in Compulsory Miseducation),
Glasser makes a number of concrete
and sometimes off-beat suggestions for
re-humanizing educational systems. From a
revision of grading and teacher education to
a redefinition of discipline and testing,
Glasser presents a thought-provoking set of
ideas. It would be fair to say, however, that
Glasser’s ideas are on the whole more feasible
(less radical) than Goodman’s and are
likely to be given serious consideration by a
wider range of educators.
One can thus evaluate Glasser’s approach on one level in terms of the above-named authors with whom he shares some common convictions. Readers of this article who are sympathetic with the views of these authors (as this reviewer is) will welcome the addition of Glasser’s voice propounding similar educational values from his own perspective. Conversely, appreciative readers of Schools Without Failure might like to know of other works written in the same vein, especially since Glasser does not mention any of these authors by name. Hence, the largely comparative nature of this review.
On another level, however, Glasser’s book is fully capable of standing on its own as the reflections of a perceptive observer of school life. I strongly recommend it to educators as an uncommonly rich source of pertinent suggestions for improving education in all types of schools. Glasser not only possesses insight as a diagnostician; he is also imaginative (and perhaps more original and valuable) as a prescriber of techniques for implementing fundamental reforms. This is especially the case in those chapters where he discusses—in highly-detailed, operational terms—how classroom meetings can be initiated and kept going.
Glasser’s program is not costly in dollars, though it does require a large investment of teacher interest, honesty, and warmth. Crucial to the effectiveness of his program is the willingness and capability of teachers and administrators to become involved with each other (and not only with students) in a candid and continuing reappraisal of what they are doing in their schools. To foster this attitude, Glasser prescribes regular faculty meetings (at least weekly and at least two hours long) for open discussions regarding present and new approaches to learning.
Moreover, the art of conducting effective classroom meetings (alluded to above and explained fully in Chapter Ten of Schools Without Failure) must be acquired by teachers if Glasser’s educational values are to be realized. This can probably be accomplished on a large scale only if teachers become willing to engage in various forms of team teaching, which enable an experienced discussion leader to provide a model for teachers less experienced in this technique on which Glasser puts such stress. He is doubtless right when he observes that, “Instead of a working, cohesive, problem-solving faculty group, most faculties consist of teachers working alone in their classes, each doing the best she can with little knowledge or understanding of what the other teachers in the school are doing” (p. 117). Unless regular meetings can transform present staffs into cohesive teaching faculties, children will presumably continue to fail at a deplorable rate.
Glasser has faith that these changes can occur. I must admit that the appearance of his book has increased my hope that more students, through an educational experience that is characterized by involvement, relevance, and thinking, can avoid failure. Everything considered, Schools Without Failure is one of the most important recent books on educational reform. For the sake of schoolchildren everywhere, I hope it will become a much-used sourcebook for educators who are willing to make a tradition-breaking effort to reduce school failure.
- ↑ In Reality Therapy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), Glasser has made a systematic presentation of his approach to psychiatry.
Authors & Artists
DWIGHT W. ALLEN was born and raised in California and received a doctoral degree in Education from Stanford University. His bold, experimental approach to education has had an impact on elementary and secondary school systems throughout the country which has brought him to the Deanship of the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Dr. Allen’s thinking reflects a Bahá’í’s interest in education as the primary tool for the development of human potential. According to a Saturday Review educational journalist, Dr. Allen’s fresh view has “wiped clean the slate at UMass . . . . everything is being re-examined . . . in an attempt to find techniques and structures that speak to contemporary educational needs.” Dr. Allen has written two books and an impressive number of articles on education.
EDWARD F. CARPENTER, the Headmaster of Harlem Prep, holds degrees in clinical psychology and mathematics from Long Island University and an Advanced Certificate in mathematics from City College. Mr. Carpenter helped establish over one hundred counseling centers throughout the five boroughs of New York and was the first counselor-teacher in the Youth and Work Project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which was the prototype of most of the job training programs later developed for hard-core unemployed youth throughout the country. Mr. Carpenter, with Queens College and the United Federation of Teachers, established Freedom Schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia, where the public schools had been closed to black students for four years. He is now serving on the New York Governor’s Commission for the Study of the Causes of Violence and Unrest on College Campuses.
ALFONSO DE SILVA of Peru is the Director of UNESCO’s Bureau of Relations with the United Nations in New York, as well as with the United Nations Development Program, UNICEF, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, and the Organization of American States. Mr. de Silva joined UNESCO in 1952 and has served in Paris and Washington, D.C. He studied at the National School of Librarianship of Peru.
RANDALL HOLAHAN, a newcomer to the pages of WORLD ORDER, is a seminarian in the Capuchin-Franciscan order. He has studied philosophy at St. Anthony College, in Hudson, New Hampshire. His interests include communications media and the religions of the world. He is presently on a period of spiritual renewal in the metropolitan New York area.
DANIEL C. JORDAN’s life (as well as his
doctoral thesis “Metamorphosis of the Owls”
—a ballet designed as an instrument in the
diagnosis of mental illness) involves a metamorphosis:
from musician to clinical psychologist
and social anthropologist. He is
now Director of CCEBS (Committee for the
Collegiate Education of Black Students) and
Professor in the Center for Aesthetics in
Education at the University of Massachusetts
School of Education. He has served as consultant
on programs for educating disadvantaged
[Page 65] students in St. Louis and Chicago. Dr.
Jordan has also been consultant to the U.S.
Office of Education, the Office of Economic
Opportunity, and the State of Indiana, and
was Director of the Upward Bound program
at Indiana State University. Because he is a
man of incredible energy and versatility, his
activities cannot be easily summarized. He
has published in WORLD ORDER several
times, and each time we have had the opportunity
to tell our readers a little more about
him. We trust many more such occasions will
arise.
DARRELL D. LACOCK is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Education at Wesleyan University. He graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University and received a B.D. degree from the Yale Divinity School as well as an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University. His main interests are political philosophy, the philosophy of education, and ethics. Dr. Lacock is very active in the inner-city school which his children attend.
BILLY ROJAS is familiar to WORLD ORDER readers for his articles on “Ecumenical Man”, “The Saint-Simonians”, and “The Millerites”. Mr. Rojas is in the University of Massachusetts’ doctoral program in Futuristics.
RICHARD C. RAYMOND is a man of varied interests and talents. He has held an administrative position at Yale University for many years, and has published many poems in such publications as Nation, Carleton Miscellany, Arizona Quarterly, and the New York Times. A volume of poems, “A Moment of Bells”, is being published this autumn by Plowshare Press in Boston. Mr. Raymond is also active in civil rights and ecological movements.
DOUGLAS RUHE, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts School of Education, is one of the two first co-directors of the Springfield Street Academy System, Inc., which opened in July. He has been a newspaper reporter, labor organizer, Vista volunteer, and medic in Vietnam. Mr. Ruhe is now preparing for publication a collection of interviews with Vietnamese and Americans entitled “Vietnam: The Little People Talk”.
WILLIAM H. SMITH has served as co-chairman of the Afro-American Student Organization at the University of Massachusetts, where he is a senior. He is a poet and short story writer and won the Bronze Star for valor in combat while serving as a CO medic— without a weapon—in Vietnam. He taught photography at Harlem Prep, where he served as administrative assistant to the Headmaster.
ART CREDITS: P. 3, Pen and ink sketch, by Tom Kubala; all other drawings by Mark Fennessy.
MARK FENNESSY is familiar to the readers of WORLD ORDER; his drawings have adorned the pages of the magazine from issue to issue for over a year now. He was a Scholar of the House in sculpture and drawing at Yale University from which he graduated with honors.
TOM KUBALA’s work is new to the pages of WORLD ORDER. He is a student of architecture at the University of Illinois.