By José Zapata Calderon
With the growth of a global economy, there is the need for a type ofeducational system that promotes civic engagement as a means of buildingnew models toward a democratic society. There is a trend emerging in our present educational system that wants totake us back to the days of reproducing individuals to fit a moreauthoritarian philosophy.
This trend seeks to promote a managerial"banking" system where the power of disseminating knowledge is beingtransferred to the needs of the business and political establishments. Thisshift fits into the early 20th century industrial model of schools wherestudents were socialized in assembly-like rows to be taught the status quoand not to be heard from.
With the promotion of standardized tests and quantitative methods thatevaluate the performances of both teachers and students, there is adiminishing of the space for the creation of democratic bridges betweenwhat is being learned in the classroom and the challenges of democraticdecision-making in our communities. This trend is characterized by thegrowth of for-profit charter schools and companies that are redefining themeaning of education. Rather than tapping the passionate reason as to whyso many college graduates become teachers, this trend vilifies teachers andis forcing many to turn away from the educational world as a career.
With so many problems being faced by our society, there is the opportunityfor our schools and colleges to play a role in advancing new forms ofresearch, learning and practice that can help engage our teachers, facultyand students in critical thinking and problem-solving to find solutions tothose problems. This type of learning will help develop a citizenry and aleadership in the future that is more engaged and excited aboutparticipating in making the future society. There are all types of studies that show how much students benefit fromconnecting their learning in the classroom to community engagement. Inaddition to improving their grades, these studies show that studentsdevelop principles of collectivity that go against the grain ofindividualism and enhance the skills of working with diverse populations,taking leadership, creating new knowledge, and formulating solutions toreal-world problems.
The type of teaching that is needed in this contemporary period is onewhere: there is a passion for creating spaces of equity; where students areexposed to a curriculum that does not just deal with the problems in thesociety but that looks at the systemic and structural aspects of inequity;that brings to center stage the contributions of communities who (becauseof poverty, racism, sexism, classism or homophobia) have historically beenexcluded from our textbooks; and that involves students in workingalongside excluded communities on common projects to implementtransformative social change.
Rather than a traditional monocultural education where the students learnvery little about the contributions of the diverse mosaic which comprisesthe people of this country, our educational system needs to support amulticultural learning environment in which differences are embraced (notjust tolerated). In this context, our institutions do need to appreciateour historical pluralism, but there is no getting around the reality thatU.S. pluralism had its origins in laws and ideologies which were used tojustify the stratification of different groups through conquest, slaveryand exploitation. If we don't absorb and appreciate this aspect of historyin all its manifestations, there is the danger that we will maintain asociety that blames the victim for his or her lack of social mobility.
Rather than frontally assaulting the national dilemma of restructuring theeconomy with policies that invest in education and development, energy hasbeen diverted toward seeking someone to blame. In the debate over the stateof our educational system, many taxpayers have been led to believe that theissue is only about the quality of our teachers and not about thestructural inequities that many of our underrepresented students and theirfamilies confront every day in their communities.
As we seek to develop models of civic engagement in teacher education, itis important for us to look toward new ways of carrying out democraticforms of learning and curriculum building in our classrooms that connect tonew models of building democratic participation in our communities. Ourbeginning to dialogue on these issues may help us in looking toward newways of carrying out democratic forms of learning and curriculum buildingin our classrooms - new models that can help in advancing a more democraticand socially just culture in our society.
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| José Zapata Calderon |
José Zapata Calderon is Emeritus Professor in Sociology and Chicano Studies at Pitzer College. Active in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement of the 1970s, he continues organizing on immigrant, education, and labor rights issues today. He is editor of the book,Race, Poverty, and Social Justice: Multidisciplinary Perspectives through Service Learning and has a recent article "One Activist Intellectual's Experience in Surviving and Transforming the Academy" in the anthologyTransforming the Ivory Tower
