What is Learned in School

What is Learned in School Dreeben

Think about my idea of a school as a cultural center Schoolmaster in the Great City — social role of school School’s role in democratic society

Connect this to EF development? 

Schooling seen as transitional, linking phase      -> Like Dewey

(29) Questions relevance of cognitive neuroscience 

Teachers teach to groups, hence they teach norms

Ch 2: Independence, Achievement, Universalism, Specificity      Literary writing: abstracts and concretes

Cheating a violation of independence; school’s demands in tension with friendship, kinship relationships      (Cheating as theft?) -> schooling as private good, sorting mechanism

Achievement -> Symbolic skill      Teaches students to approach their work in a frame of mind conducive to achievement      Athletics as struggles between groups (maybe success worth just as much, but defeat is not carried as singularly by individual)

Universalism, Specificity       categorization -> dehumanization (42) [ but also connection to fairness]      defines “scope of interest” people have in one another      boundary-crossing (between grades, etc) solidifies category definitions

45 challenge tracking argument as creating kinship relationships (I prefer Freirian analysis: oppressor/oppressed)

persons and positions -> See Waller reading      Lots of people can occupy the ‘teacher’ role (I agree! Interesting how students have to learn so frequently different fits. (46)           Freire again; they learn how to please. (Even in ‘democratic classrooms’) (46)           Specificity: Relationships where you bring part of yourself -> Like moving into city life (Do urbanites learn their fit better than rural livers?)           Equity: Still, students are in the role of accepting what’s given. Not giving out. (normalizing equity sensitivity in school, combined with schools as mirroring job pyramid, may tend to reinforce a dismepowering belief in the fairness of one not having gotten much in the way of economic rewards.)                Then, once in the job market, ruthlessness is rewarded and those who believe in just rewards are seen as chumps. Trump.                What’s happening with age in our society today? (49)

Schooling and Citizenship      What role does social media play in socializing us? Do we need schools for this?      Core feature of modernity is separation of occupational roles from domestic life      Employment is important in identity      Challenge 65’s claim that uniform status hierarchy suggests “broad similarity in the kinds of demands occupational tasks make on men”. Or the children of privilege seek out the jobs that have high status. We all know which those are, just as we rank colleges very precisely. It’s less interesting that US News and World report ranks colleges—someone would do it, and there’s nothing special about how they do it—than that the ranking has found such an established niche in our media culture.       “the presence of a large middle-class sector” (where?)      ——> We are becoming pre-industrial, by his standards      68-69 crazy talk. “To the extent that primordial groups maintain their sentiments of exclusivity and social cleavages remain unresolved, there is little chance of developing a national polity in which major groups within the populace hold allegiance to the regime over the moderately long run."      -> But what about Zinn’s point about Southern antebellum oligarchy driving a wedge between poor whites and poor blacks, or Nixon’s Southern Strategy? I think there’s as good a view on this of maintaining control over the oppressed.       -> Think about Arendt’s public sphere. This is a good goal for schools.       70: representation in a unified national body of legislators           -> I think maybe most peoples’ most direct participation in public life has become the like, or the signing of a petition.       71: Toqueville’s warning about a network of bargaining taking over the state. Prescient! **     72: Literacy and empathy crucial for the state: “industrial, urban, literate, participant” Cool!** How can you say “Citizens are persons who are psychologically competent to participate in the various social settings organized within public institutional areas”? Citizenship is a marker of status, highly contentious. I don’t think we would be so willing to let undocumented students into our schools if they were eligible to work. (This shows what we really value school for.)

75 What??? How can you say this?

I want to disagree with some of this paper’s perspectives on the structure of society that schools prepare people for. This means reinterpreting the way schools work.

I want to engage with the question of literacy and democratic society. Literacy, distance, empathy. 

I want to claim that digital media changes the way society works       -> See 

I want to write about methodology: What do we mean by educational research?       -> This paper challenges the role of cognitive neuroscience (the curriculum isn’t where it’s at. So technological improvements to pedagogy are largely irrelevant)      -> This paper also makes tons of unsubstantiated claims.