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Reflections on the Icon of the Little Red Schoolhouse
By Dr. Mary Brabeck, Dean, Steinhardt School, NYU - New York , NY
Monday, Oct 19, 2009 - 09:00 am
As students and teachers across the country settle in to the familiar routines of another school year, we as educators would do well to reflect not only on where our education system comes from, but also on where it is headed in the coming years.
My colleague at NYU Steinhardt, Jon Zimmerman, professor of educational history, has just published an insightful new history an icon of American schooling for over a hundred years. His book, Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory, brings his own experience in the classroom to bear on his inquiry into our nostalgia for this bygone institution, and the ways our attitudes toward “the little red schoolhouse” have changed with the times.
The idealized version we carry of the one-room schoolhouse — with its tidy red clapboard exterior and white trim, complete with a bell tower up top and warm, inviting hearth inside — is miles away from the often unpainted, cold, and windowless structures that still dot the American landscape (more than a quarter million, according to Zimmerman).
As variegated as the history of the one-room schoolhouse is, one thing that has remained the same is our tendency to re-imagine it in ways that serve our own purposes. For liberals, the schoolhouse was a place of communalism and cooperative teaching and learning; for conservatives, the schoolhouse was a place of quiet obedience, where values such as patriotism and industry were inculcated in the young students. Zimmerman writes:
“Whatever their political or pedagogical bent, Americans have imagined a little red schoolhouse to suit it. Unavoidably, then, they have exaggerated certain dimensions of the one-room school and downplayed others. That does not make them manipulative, cynical, or evil. It simply makes them human. We all tailor the past to serve the present, all the time. But Americans are probably more likely to do it when they encounter an icon like the little red schoolhouse, which is so shared and loved. Just as they have altered the memory of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln in light of latter-day events, so have they distorted the one-room school.”
Despite the many differences in schooling that separates our own time from that of one hundred years ago, the little red schoolhouse remains a powerful symbol and, as Zimmerman notes, “it connects us to a shared past.”
It is worth reflecting on this past as we confront the challenges of 21st century education. The schoolroom of today looks nothing like the schoolrooms of the 1800s — or even of the 1900s. American schools are more diverse today than at any point in history. English language learners are now the fastest growing student population. Further, in NYC, almost half of all students come from immigrant-headed homes, representing 190 different countries.
The task for educators and citizens now is to translate the values of the “little red schoolhouse,” (community, cooperation, patriotism and industry) to fit the needs of a globalized culture, with its demands for interdisciplinary thinking, critical problem solving skills, and the cultural knowledge and skills to work with all individuals in our diverse society.
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Comments
Mary – although new to this forum, I found your article thought-provoking and forward-looking. But it is, unsurprisingly, a little USA-centric. Could I suggest a different starting point which tries to omit the cultural icons and looks at it from a more fundamental human standpoint?
We all enter this life without a view of what the world is like. As human beings we have certain advantages over other species in this planet. We can communicate in sophisticated ways, we can reason, we can learn, read, write, wonder, speculate, explore, kill gratuitously our own and other species in large numbers. We have the capacity, not always used, to climb the ladder of learning from ignorance to information to knowledge to understanding to insight to wisdom. No other species can do this to remotely the same extent. As we grow we are influenced by a variety of pressures – our parents, teachers, the radio, television, newspapers, imams, priests, the leaders of the culture we are nurtured in, governments, advertisers, friends, relations. They all seek to exert power over our thoughts and actions. Both as children and adults, it is not something we can ever dissociate ourselves from. Thus we are conditioned to believe that madrassars and evangelical schools are pathways opening our minds to enlightenment before God, or narrow minded establishments for closing our minds to the richness and diversity of alternative world-views. We believe that Western nations are imperialist aggressors who deserve to be punished (and oh dear, innocent people will suffer in the process) or liberators of the world from terrorists who seek to impose an alien culture (and oh dear, innocent people will suffer in the process).
It is difficult to stand outside of our upbringing and our culture to take a detached view. But the in-built personal tools; the power to reason and to learn , the ability to transcend the ego, the liberty to make life-changing decisions, to choose between opening up the mind or closing it down, to hate or to love are our own to make. The capacity of every human being to be wise, to create good, to contribute more than he/she takes away from life, to achieve potential, to aspire to greater things, is within our capability.
But such wisdom stands on the shoulders of knowledge. We cannot achieve our potential or aspire to act wisely for the benefit of humankind without the acquisition of knowledge and understanding through as open and rational a mind as we can muster. To understand the majesty of the heavens and the expanding universe we need to do more than look at the stars. To understand the history of our planet and the species upon it we need to do more than contemplate the soil. To solve the intractable problems that our generation has passed onto our grandchildren requires a wider vision than patriotism. We have but one planet and only by creating a passion to learn together can we save it.
Schools differ, Mine in the UK was one of the better ones. Amid the usual curriculum dross there were teachers who transported me to the delights of poetry, to the enchantment of great music, to the pleasures of great art, to the love of science and nature, to the value of evidence. They didn’t teach, they enabled me to learn. Without them I would be diminished. I stood on their shoulders, and they in turn stood on the shoulders of great men and women from the past. Now it is my turn to embrace creativity, expand imagination, reject sophistry and make a contribution to the future. Without the drive to transform learning into understanding I do that from ignorance. I become centred on the self.
But there are also things to experience, to feel, to sense, that many schools do not aspire to. In my book on Learning Regions, I identify some of these higher values
ü A sense of ‘other’ - the transcendence of ego that allows individuals to appreciate, and respond to, the existence of other needs, other ideas, other peoples, other cultures,
ü A sense of ‘planet’ - understanding the need for sustainability of the ecosystems that guarantee the future of us all, and humankind’s responsibility as a planetary steward for all species
ü A sense of ‘together’, and its hierarchy of local, national and global community, the enthusiasm to live, work and communicate sensibly and sensitively with people from a wide variety of cultures, creeds, beliefs and races
ü A sense of ‘wondering’ – of envisioning one’s place in the cosmic scheme of things, striving for insight, seeking self-awareness and understanding of ‘higher’
ü A sense of ‘evolving’ – of reaching for enlightenment, achieving fulfilment and realising one’s own enormous potential.
Let’s call them the values of 21st century enlightenment. No doubt there are others. The acquisition of these values imposes a dedication to discovery, a constantly enquiring mind, a commitment to personal growth, a recognition that learning is the most natural human instinct, without which we are diminished.
How many schools aspire to these values? The ideals that will provide our grandchildren with the tools to mend our ailing planet? The media, which could so easily be a powerful ally in opening minds, expanding the limits of our understanding of ourselves and our relationship with others throughout the world, instead concerns itself with the trivial, the predictable, the easily digestible, the destructive.
Mary - your one-room school-house is now a one-world schoolhouse – its pupils have expanded enormously and most of them are getting a raw deal.
(1)‘Learning Cities, Learning Regions, Learning Communities – Lifelong Learning and Local Government’ Norman Longworth (Taylor and Francis 2006)