ANAC Commentary

• President Hal Wilde on Campus Responsibility to Debate War Issues
  
• Ellen Condliffe Lagemann on the American Tradition of Practical Liberal Learning and Vocational Development
  
• Terry Hudson on ANACTE and Teacher Education Issues

"How can No Child Left Behind be proposed as a solution to the education crisis when the reality is funding cuts, salary cuts or freezes, increased class sizes, and cuts in program support?"

—Terry Hudson,
   President of the Associated New American Colleges of    Teacher Education (ANACTE)

President Hal Wilde on Campus Responsibility to Debate War Issues

"In a democratic society, there needs to be a 'commons,' a place where heated yet civil discussion can occur that educates and engages the citizenry. For much of American history, that place was the university." — President Hal Wilde

In the March 2003 issue of the College's North Central Now magazine, President Hal Wilde invokes the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., in underscoring the importance of prophetic witnesses in our lives. He calls for such prophetic witnessing on campus now regarding the War in Iraq, a particular responsibility of the academy to debate contemporary issues of great moral and philosophical importance in shaping the consciousness and civic responsibility of our students. For Wilde, the issue was triggered by speakers at the College's observance of King's life who asked in reference to impending Iraq hostilities, "Where are today's witnesses for peace?"

"A thoughtful email from a faculty member wondered why there has been so little campus-wide discussion of 'the impending war, its causes or possible justification,' arguing that 'there is no single, more important topic in leadership or ethics than the justification of war by those in authority.'

As the president of North Central College, I never forget that whatever I say on a controversial issue will reflect in some fashion on the institution, and may be perceived as an expression of the College's 'position.' Moreover, a president's taking of public positions may have the tendency to preempt or distort dialogue and debate within the institution … the dialogue and debate that, in a very real sense, are our reason for existence.

Still, like my faculty colleague, I wish there were more of that debate on campus. I do not believe that the most important public questions of our time, with all their political and moral implications, should be 'privatized.' In a democratic society, there needs to be a 'commons,' a place where heated yet civil discussion can occur that educates and engages the citizenry. For much of American history, that place was the university.

In this regard, one of my goals in the coming months is to convince some articulate public servants with conservative and liberal convictions to consider a series of debates on college campuses, focused on a single issue of immense national significance - such as affirmative action or war in Iraq - modeled on the Lincoln-Douglas debates …. This generation of students, born long after the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., distant from politics and cynical about politicians in an era of sound bites, deserves nothing less."

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann on the American Tradition of Practical Liberal Learning and Vocational Development

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann is dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Formerly, she was president of the Spencer Foundation in Chicago. She has also served as a faculty member and administrator at Columbia University. A historian of higher education with a particular focus on John Dewey and pragmatism, she delivered the keynote address at the January 2003 AACU annual meeting in Seattle. What follows are a summary and several quotations from her remarks that were entitled, "The Challenge of Liberal Education: Questioning the Past, the Present, and the Future."

Most students today want career preparation, but most graduates of elite liberal arts colleges and universities have no clear sense of career direction. We have a problem of thinking about vocational development as part of the higher education liberal learning experience. Making vocational choices, however, is both responding to a calling and a lifelong process, ideas that do resonate with traditional notions of liberal learning. Moreover, vocational development is also civic preparation and gaining respect for democratic dialogue. Most of all it is an "internal quest."

Lagemann described this lifelong internal quest as imbedded in an American tradition that she illustrated through biographical sketches of Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jane Addams, and W.E.B. DuBois--with doses of the educational philosophies of John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead thrown in for good measure. Franklin experienced multiple distinguished careers--printer, author, educator, politician, inventor, diplomat, to name a few. At an early age he framed a personal plan for self-improvement, later expanded to a plan for the education of youth that shaped the founding of the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin believed that knowledge of the classics should be blended with contemporary experience in guiding one's vocational development.

Following his formal education, finding and living a vocation became Emerson's driving force, his education a lifelong discovery of self and nature he once characterized, "Only so much do I know as I have lived." In this quest, he saw himself as an "American Scholar," whose focus was on action, "Without action, thought can never ripen into truth."

Jane Addams mother died when she was two. Although she greatly admired her father, a major Chicago civic and professional figure, she believed women had qualities that distinguished them from men, including a capacity for independent thought. Her Rockford College education, like the educational vision of Franklin, integrated the classical and contemporary. Addams expressed her inner vocational quest in the founding of the social work profession and developing the theory and practice of ordinary women achieving their potential. She believed throughout her life that education for vocational development occurs through an integration of liberal and professional studies.

W.E.B. DuBois struggled throughout his life to discover if he could fulfill his interests and talents in an America that institutionalized an apartheid system to replace slavery. He coined the idea of "double consciousness" to describe his experience of attempting to discover his place in the world and to find a place where he could exercise his interests and talents.

Lagemann turned to Dewey and Whitehead to center her argument that vocational exploration should be made central to undergraduate education and a major function of the faculty for which they must be trained. Quoting Dewey, "It is the children we are teaching, not the subject matter." She cited Whitehead's distaste for "inert ideas" and his emphasis on the centrality of experience in testing and validating ideas, "You may not divide the seamless coat of learning." She argued that vocational exploration should begin in introductory courses and that "every course should have a practicum attached to it." In forging an essential connection between vocational and liberal learning, she declared, "There is nothing so liberating as education approached with vocational exploration in mind."

Terry Hudson on ANACTE and Teacher Education Issues

ANACTE President Terry Hudson.

Terry Hudson of Drury University is the new president of the Associated New American Colleges of Teacher Education (ANACTE). ANACTE was founded in 2001 to provide a forum and mechanism for ANAC member teacher educators to exchange ideas and best practices and collaborate on projects and activities that might advance their programs and teacher education as a profession. Terry prepared this essay, "Rhetoric into Reality: Impacting Teacher Education," especially for the ANAC Bulletin:

The theme, "Turning Rhetoric into Reality" is easy to envision, a more difficult proposition to turn into reality. Nonetheless, these words will guide the activities of the Associated New American Colleges of Teacher Education (ANACTE) for the next two years. ANACTE is dedicated to action by mobilizing the 200+ professors at the twenty ANAC teacher preparation institutions across the nation. Our actions are based on the belief that we will have a political and educational voice that is backed-up by engaging the collaborative strength of our membership.

The three educational issues that I will address are the federal "No Child Left Behind" Act, teacher shortages, and fast-tracking non-educators into the classroom. First, I'm concerned that No Child Left Behind, while popular among politicians, could lead to a mass exodus of teaching professionals. The timing is most unfortunate as the number of educators projected to leave the profession may rise to record numbers through retirement, salary dissatisfaction, lack of administrative and program support, school safety, increased class sizes (due to state budget cuts), and efforts to "de-professionalize" teaching.

How can No Child Left Behind be proposed as a solution to the education crisis when the reality is funding cuts, salary cuts or freezes, increased class sizes, and cuts in program support? Moreover, schools are threatened with meeting higher standards or face the consequences of school closings. Then, adding insult to injury, the suggestion is made that teaching professionals should be replaced by content technicians. I salute my colleagues at NCATE and AACTE whose leadership is speaking out against these proposals that could effectively eliminate teacher education programs. Now is the time to unite, collaborate, and take action by presenting practical solutions to improve Education. Teachers must contact legislators to enlighten them about new approaches to teacher education that develop higher order thinking skills through practical, hands-on, relationships-based pedagogies.

At this time of war and a soft economy, it is obvious that the states are experiencing serious funding problems. I fear that the budgetary downturn will cause a domino effect that will significantly affect many departments and schools of education. It will not matter which political side of the fence one is on, if we are unable to prepare our children and young adults to lead this great nation. Kids today must learn how to solve problems and engage higher-order thinking in order to make the serious decisions that lie ahead for our country. Legislators need to be reminded that teacher education is the foundation for building and communicating content to students. To me, preparing future teachers that possess the practical knowledge and skills inherent in teaching pedagogy is the only path that will ensure our children gain a sound content-rich knowledge base. The importance of building relationships and understanding and utilizing information from education theorists, as well as content, is the formula for success.

Please send opinions, criticisms, and suggestions regarding these comments to the ANACTE website (www.anacte.org). Through our dialogue on the critical issues we face in teacher education, we can begin to turn our rhetoric into reality, while contributing positively to the needs of our country's educational system.