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Sunday, November 23, 2003

Prager rebroadcasts show on Social Reconstructionism

My last post, or post attempt, failed when this show was originally broadcast. Dennis exaggerates the influence of social reconstruction in the schools. Its a significant philosophy of teaching to be sure, but its not dominant. The dominant philosophy of education is progressivism. Progressives and social reconstructionists get along well, as I detail in the above link, the later emerges from the former in the same way that essentialists emerged from perennialists. The real problem, however, is not the schools. Especially after 9-11 the number of teachers displaying and encouraging patriotism clearly outnumbers the social reconstructionists. The problem is textbooks, education departments in colleges, and professional teacher organizations, especially the NEA. The professional organizations and the text books promote a social reconstructionist perspective (the professional orgs as advocates of the glorious future that awaits and the textbooks in order to avoid offending anyone). This reinforces the progressivism and social reconstruction that is promulgated by teacher education. All of this insidiously created ontological commitment from teachers who otherwise would have little interest in social justice and all the rest. It is also organizations outside the school who impose political correctness on the school. Social reconstructionists are their allies in the school, but no one imposes punitive penalties for free thought on themselves, and since teachers normally operate without observation of the work, political correctness can be said to be an externality. This is especially a problem because most teachers lack a formal intellectual training and so lack disciplinary integrity, that is to say a commitment to the teachings of their subject as revealed by a method.

So why am I not affected? First I was an Aristotelian prior to ed school. I know how to reason, I understand the primacy of metaphysics, I have a theory of society and human conduct. Second, I had formal academic training, getting a masters in history before starting teacher training, so I had further developed my reasoning ability, but specifically I studied intellectual history and my undergraduate advisor was a specialist in the conflict between the humanists and the scholastics. Hence, tracing the movement of and analyzing ideas was well developed. As a result, when I was given an idea in teacher ed, I was able to put it in an intellectual framework and make sense of its place in the history of education. Once you know what progressivism and social reconstructionism are, you can elect to embrace, reject, or dabble in their philosophies. Those who lack such a capacity are far more apt to accept the world as its described by a teacher ed program, and is then reinforced by professional organizations.

For example, teacher education wrings its hands about poorly performing students. It speaks about them at great length and with great concern. It has almost nothing to say and no concern about students who are doing well. The teacher college does not recognize the gifted, talented, or exceptional student as a problem to be addressed as though they presented no special challenge to a teacher. Certainly poorly performing students is a problem. But, its not the only problem, its just only problem teacher ed has anything to say anything about. All of its totems and fetishes concern the poorly performing student, motivationally, culturally, cognitively, and so on.

As a final note, Prager comes away looking an awful lot like a Rousseau, and Jean-Jacques is the father of all this wackiness Prager finds so offensive. I propose Prager bush up on his Aristotle and Locke.

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