What’s Worth Fighting For Out There
Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan
Published by The Ontario Public School Teachers’ Federation 1998
Morality
Pg. 40 Service to others should be one of the most basic purposes of family life and schooling.
Morality does not emerge by itself. It “does not soar on its own wings” (Etzioni, 1993:31) We get our moral bearings and develop our moral commitment through the communities we join and belong to. The family is the first of these.
When they function well as moral communities, families are not only places where children are loved and learn to love but also places where they learn the virtues (and the satisfactions) of duty, service, obligation and commitment to people and purposes beyond themselves. Negotiation, patience, settling conflicts, sharing out chores, and serving others’ needs as well as (and sometimes before) one’s own are some of the moral virtues that children pick up when families work well as communities.
Pg. 42 After the family, most children’s next meaningful community is the school. In the previous chapter, we argued that schools are one of our last hopes for rebuilding a sense of community, and that a civic-minded public school system is essential for democracy. (future link to: Peter Berger)
Purpose of Education
One of the primary purposes of education in a democracy is “to develop a broader sense of community and indeed in the world at large” (Saul, 1995:138.) Everywhere in education this purpose is weak or under threat. The official and “hidden” curriculum – not just social studies, but the entire way the school population lives on a daily basis – must model values and practices that build a strong sense of community. Self respect, caring for others, helping friends, respecting the views of others, being involved in the community are all values in danger of erosion, but fundamental to the moral purpose of our schools.
Service to others should be one of the most basic purposes of family life and schooling. Too often these days, time for volunteerism has to give way to official “curriculum” or to individualistic pursuits.
Politics of Education
Pg. 44 Mobilized properly, politics can be used to support and advance student learning, instead of being a distraction from it.
The school culture, like that of any other major social institution is political . . . Introducing, sustaining and assessing an education change are political processes because they inevitably alter or threaten to alter existing power relationships, especially if that process implies, and always does, a reallocation of resources. Few myths have been as resistant to change as that which assumes that the culture of the school is a nonpolitical one (pp. 70-71) The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change. Seymour Sarason (1982)
Many teachers want little to do with educational politics. Like people generally, they see politics as the domain of those who are cynical, self-seeking, opportunistic and manipulative. Most teachers don’t see their work like this. For them, it is a virtuous calling, untainted by politics.
Pg. 45 Empowerment must begin in the classroom, Sarason (1990) has said that most educational reforms fail because they simply do not address the existing power relationships of the classroom. This is the place where democratic community must start.
Pg. 49 The current situation in teaching is somewhat analogous to a lawyer who spends all of his or her time in the courtroom, and little time ‘preparing the case’. Teachers have little daily time outside ‘the courtroom’ and what they have is often not closely related to preparing their case. It is time dedicated to meetings, workshops and courses that are often disconnected from the refinements needed to improve their own teaching on an ongoing basis.
Importance of Emotions
Pg. 52 New research and insights on the role of emotions are destroying popular assumptions that emotions cloud logic. Damasio (1994) observes that “an important [and erroneous] aspect of the rationalist conception is that to obtain the best result, emotions must be kept out. Rational processing must be unencumbered by passion.” Emotions, says Damasio, are actually indispensable to rational decision-making. People who are emotionally flat might be able to perform abstract intellectual tasks, but they can’t make practical judgments of human value: (future link to: Molecules of Emotion)
In real life, a purely logical search through all possibilities is not possible (because of limitation of resources, multiple goals, and problems of coordination with others). Nevertheless, we must act . . . despite our limitations we must take responsibility for our actions, and suffer their effects. This is why emotions or something like them are necessary to bridge across the unexpected and the unknown, to guide reason, and to give priorities among multiple goals. (Oatley & Jenkins, 1996:123) (future links to trusting your instincts)
Pg. 54 There are times when it is important to speak up passionately about what’s wrong in our schools and in government policies that affect them.
Effect of Social Isolation
Pg. 55 Studies done over two decades involving more than 37,000 people show that social isolation – the sense that you have nobody with whom you can share your private feelings, have close contact – doubles the chances of sickness or death. (Goleman, 1995:226)
Passionate teachers need interaction with, and support from others to avoid becoming exhausted. All teachers need to inspire each other through collaborative work, to take advantage of the power of emotional resources, and to provide the interpersonal safety nets when the going gets rough.
Importance of Faith and Hope
Pg. 57 Yet, as Cszikzentmihalyi (1990:7) observes, “frustration is deeply woven into the fabric of life.” This is especially true for teachers. The more they care, the more anxious they get. The more they emotionally detach themselves, the poorer decisions they make. Hope can extricate people from this paradox. (future link: faith, stronger than hope)
Pg. 58 All is lost if teachers succumb to pessimism and cynicism. Cszikzentmihalyi (1996:19-20) interviewed the Canadian novelist Robertson Davies who said it best:
Pessimism is a very easy way out when you’re considering what life really is because pessimism is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today and what has happened since you were born you can’t help but feel tha life is a terrible complexity of problems and elusiveness of one sort or another . . It is very much easier to be tragic that it is to be comic. I have known people to embrace the tragic view of life, and it is a cop-out. They simply feel rotten about everything, and that is terribly easy. (Cszikzentmihalyi 1996:19-20)
Pg. 72 The road to hell is paved with reform strategies that attempt to extract compliance from reluctant and alienated implementers. Success is built with people, not pieces.