Teaching and Schooling in America: Pre- And Post-September 11

Ornstein's recent and rushed publication in response to the tragedies of September 11, 2001 is a sweeping and messy business--perfect for a senior or graduate seminar in foundations of education for teacher candidates or professional development electives. It assumes some familiarity with American public education, and uses prior knowledge of the trends in policy as a scaffold for challenging complacency. He clearly indicates in the Preface that his purpose is to force readers to think and rethink their assumptions, and to stretch educators to be more aware of global issues and the subtle implicatons of the 'hidden curriculum' of daily interaction. To that end he succeeds, because he drives the traditional student nuts. He does not present neat textbook chapters of canonical wisdom, but rather raises issues, dives in with his own interpretation and feeling, follows tangents to current issues and well-known controversies, and returns to basic issues of teachers' decision-making.... every single chapter. It is brutal, iconoclastic, conciliatory, and ultimately refreshing; this is the concensus of more than three dozen senior students in our teacher preparation program. The course was structured with much interaction both in class sessions and via online discussion threads, and culminated in the production of personal philosophies and their applications to common classroom decisions. Short papers required throughout the course were on topics inspired by reactions to the Ornstein text, and many students found themselves able to articulate their own personal ideology rather than spew back lecture notes. To that end, the Ornstein text was a stellar vehicle for metacognition.But it cannot be used in the traditional manner of textbooks, i.e., as a convenient reference for factoids and reliable methods. It is not a methods book nor a repository for received wisdom. It is a battle cry for vision and risk-taking and backbone among the educators too long accustomed to servility, incivility, incompetence, and helplessness, let alone isolationist distortion. Many students found it ironic that he actually supports many tenets of standardized testing, and many were outraged that they might be included in his sweeping generalizations of American isolationist ignorance and arrogance. But the conversations generated by his rhetoric were rich and meaningful, and to a person the students agreed that this was the first textbook to require them to examine their own personal connections to world events in the context of their classrooms, and to set visionary goals of revising the world order. Ornstein, you've done George Counts proud. But it was exhausting to use this, for me as the instructor and for them as graduating students. One analogy: strip naked and weigh yourself in front of a jeering mob.