John Dewey on Progress Speed, or What Happens When Education is Not Critical: In Praise of Dr. Fendler. Clinton E.

Betts Assistant Professor McMaster University I read, with great interest and agreement, Dr. Fendlers recent article in Ethics and Education (Vol. 31, Iss. 1). She has cogently identified one of the most significant educational, if not social, issues of our time educationalisation and while her paper was rather circumspect, it certainly was important and prescient. There was, however one aspect of it that did disappointed me somewhat. That is, her failure to develop the theme of social reproduction with any force or clarity, particularly given that social reproduction theory has all but disappeared from the educational landscape. I would like then, to offer some brief comments that might extend Dr. Fendlers thesis. The essential point that I would like to make is that educationalisation, as Fendler discuss it, to the detriment of democratic and critical education, is a form of social reproduction and hence ethically dubious, to say nothing of bad education. One can only hope, or I do at any rate, that this might motivate her to continue this important work rather than leave it largely as a descriptive one off. Educationalisation the transformation of social issues into pedagogical issues, (Fendler, 2008, p. 15) probably begins with John Dewey, and I have always had a problem with Dewey. Now, for those of us who work in educational theory and in particular those of us who advocate for a practice of critical and democratic education, that may well sound like heresy. Although I do not discount the importance of Dewey or deny the educational genius that attempted to bring down the epistemology industry, however read a certain way, one gets the impression that he envisioned a democracy with an army of bespectacled citizens walking around with calculators (or perhaps now lap tops), sporting pocket protectors and searching for problems to solve, all the while failing to notice that many, if not most, of the problems we are faced with are ones we have created. Or as Leet (2003) puts it tremendous problems and dangers we have produced and which we are apparently unable to manage via the political process. (p. 683). Add to this the fact that This meta-change of modern society [from modernity to second or reflexive modernity] results from a critical mass of unintended side-effects, (Beck, Bonss and Lau (2003, p. 2) and hopefully my point, and the need for something called a critical education, is clear. Perhaps the most pressing problem that we have created, or that has developed as a side effect of our social and economic behaviour (I might even go so are as to say Enlightenment problem solving), is global warming, which as the term states is a truly global issue. Solving social problems, and using, both education broadly speaking and the graduates of formal schooling programs to do it, without a multi-perspective, which is to say critical, understanding of those problems, their history, their social construction, their development and their diverse potential solutions, is not only ethically dubious, but a bad use of education. For example, are students ever asked to ponder and reflect on Heaths truly probative question (2004) Is it possible to emulate many of the attractive features of [modern] western societies while avoiding the social pathologies? (p. 666). Or is modern western society the very

template from which solutions to social problems are developed, while the socially constructed historiography of its problems are simply ignored? Elsewhere I referred to this strictly pragmatic attitude to social problems, that ignores the consequences and side effects of merely solving problems, as the logical oddity of addressing a problem with a problem. (Betts, 2005, p. 182). Indeed in this nightmare scenario of Deweyian problem solving, progress and practical inquiry everyone looks suspiciously like an engineer. Or that everyone has been surreptitiously fed something like progress speed. As C. A. Bowers (2006) recently pointed out: Dewey represents intelligence (experimental inquiry) as the opposite of tradition the celebrated champion of democracy, ends up promoting another set of abstractions that provide legitimacy for the neoliberal/corporate interest by conditioning the public to equate constant technological change with progress. I mention this because reading Fendlers (2008) excellent paper brought it back to mind. Thus, her claim that when science is taught according to an approach of PBL, it tends to conflate science and engineering, intellectual and practical domains, (p. 23) could not be more correct. I teach in a problem based health sciences curriculum where students are reflected, evaluated and assessed to death, or at least to the point of boredom and disengagement. In a similar manner as Fendlers discussion, constant improvement, life long learning, problem solving, practical knowledge application and experimental inquiry are the vulgar pragmatic ideology of the day (indeed where is it not). It is nothing less than a correspondence model of curriculum (though perhaps coherence is a better term in keeping with the epistemology metaphor), similar to Bowles and Gintis (1976) theory of social reproduction, where we reproduce what is out there in the hopes of doing more of it. And, of course, doing more of it also means doing it bigger, better, faster like everything else in the age of excess. Hence the tongue in cheek title of Fendlers (2008) article New and improved educationalising: faster, more powerful and longer lasting. I have previously called this, assuming practice (Betts, 2006) where we assume that a given practice is what it is and then teach to that, in a largely neoTylerian approach, much like teaching to test, or teaching to assessment. In essence we take raw material, usually a young student, and create a worker, a professional, an administrator, a bureaucrat, a leader or what have you through a PBL process that disciplines, controls and circumscribes what counts as knowledge and reinforces the attitude that education ought to be about engineering: solving existing problems. (Fendler, 2008, p. 23). And, of course, to do this we utilize an unrelenting series of assessments, (Fendler, 2008, p, 18) although we usually refer to them as; self assessments, midterm and final evaluations, reflections and occasionally reflections on reflection. We rarely consider issues of autonomy and coercion, to say nothing of power, domination, subjugation, oppression, or emancipation, and whats more we convince ourselves, and with that them, that it is necessary, given todays world, and that it is for their own good as well as the good of our society. Should we encounter resistance from students, and we encounter a great deal of resistance, we do not see it as a potential product of discipline and control (as the resistance or critical educational theorists did, for example Willis, 1977; Apple, 1979; Giroux, 1983), but rather as indication for the need of more (and perhaps subtler forms) of discipline and control. Although rarely in an authoritarian form, but rather in the Foucaultian and the Deleuzian manner that Fendler (2008) refers to. Indeed Young

people are unconscious foot soldiers in the long front of modernity, involuntary and disoriented conscripts in battles never explained. (Willis, 2003, p. 390). Fendler (2008) is correct that social reproduction theories have generally emphasised the reproduction of social hierarchies, (p. 23) although they are certainly not as popular in the educational literature these days, however if you will, there is a new social reproduction in town. That all our graduates should be armed with state of the art knowledge and skill, have high and upwardly mobile economic aspirations, and get to work solving all these problems we seem to have just noticed we have (and ignoring the fact that very few of them actually seem to get solved). This is to say that we, by and large, measure our graduates by how they are able to function in the world. And whats more we (again assuming practice) too often teach as though the world and its problems is our first responsibility. I do not mean to suggest that it is not, it certainly is, however the question is not what we teach (ie. the world) but how we teach about and for it. What is largely forgotten is a critical, and to be sure democratic, approach to the world and the development of students with informed and thoughtful ideas, attitudes and values. It might even be argued that the ideas, attitudes and values that they do end up having are, in many respects, the ones we give them. As I write this the American presidential political games are in full swing with the various pundits (Senators Obama, Clinton and McCain), despite their differences, agreeing that social problems need to be solved now, quickly and to a large extent education, or educationalisation, is the preferred route. To be sure there are problems to be solved, now and quickly, but as far back as 1963 Edgar Friedenberg (1963), in his classic Coming of Age in America, noted our habitual evasion of moral issues by turning them into empirical problems (p. 10). Not long after that, Robert Dreeban (1976), a functionalist in the Parsonian (Parson, 1959) tradition no less, referring to the unwritten (hidden, informal, covert, implicit) curriculum, stated that it has been the frequent habit of educators to spend inordinate amount of time thinking about goals, planning new activities to achieve them, and then continuing to do what they have done all along. (p. 121). Moreover, he added some careful speculation about the unwritten curriculum, the unanticipated effects of educational decisions, should become part of our ordinary thinking about schooling. (p. 121). Again, this was in 1976 and I am not sure it is really any different today. Few seemed to have noticed that education, or again educationalisation, might well be part of the problem. Although hidden curricula do abound no doubt (and still have their connection to class, race and gender inequality), what we rarely focus on is what Eisner called the null curriculum what schools do not teach... the options students are not afforded, the perspectives they may never know about, much less be able to use, the concepts and skills that are not part of their intellectual repertoire. (1985, p. 107). In a word critique. To be sure educational mission statements, philosophies and objectives are saturated with the words critique, criticism and critical thinking, however on the educational ground, as it were, the mandate is vulgar pragmatism all the way down. if we shift our attention to the teaching activities of the undergraduate college [the] picture is of the gradual shrinking of the old arts and sciences core of the university and the expansion of occupational and professional programs. (Brint, 2002, p. 231). Moreover, have educators, curriculum planners, administrators and others who have before them the delicate task of

legitimating what education is, even read Randall Collins (1979) The Credentialed Society? More recently Collins (2002) goes so far as to suggest that: Many people have been mesmerized by the high-tech sector and easily fall into the rhetoric that makes it a justification of massive educational expansion the skills of cutting-edge high-tech industries, such as computers, are generally learned on the job or through personal experience rather than in the formal bureaucratic setting of schooling. (p. 26) Hence, the rush to meet the demand of the, so called, knowledge economy is largely an ideological smokescreen that sidetracks us from something like John Drummonds explication of professional caring: The professional act of caring is not only about what can be verified. It is also about the attachment of the carer to the human condition, to a philosophy of both the individual and the collective that, while it may prove difficult (or even impossible) to define comprehensively, may nevertheless withstand the vagaries of economic rationalism. (p. 65) I am certainly not a conservative traditionalist waving around Allan Bloom (1987), Roger Kimball (1990), William Bennett (1992) and the like, in fact I am probably more in line with the radicalism of Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren (indeed I might be a tenured radical, if I were tenured). Yet despite decades of education theorizing by Marxists, critical theorists, post-modernists, post-structuralists, feminists and so on, we seem to be experiencing an expansion of modernization with a vengeance (Latour, 2003, p. 45). The question is where are all the educational radicals? although Michael Apple (2006) is still at it to some extent it seems. Even Michael Young (of Knowledge and Control fame) seems to have taken back most of his early work in two recent articles (2008; 2007 with Johan Muller) in favour of a new, more empirical, sociology of educational knowledge. Indeed, in some respects, empiricism seems to have returned with a vengeance. Perhaps, in the post-civil rights era, radicals, and to some extent liberals, are simply expending all their energy in the struggle to stem the tide of the neoliberal/neoconservative advance, and the pervasive educationalisation rhetoric that is often used as a carrot to keep us motivated given the age of cynicism. Perhaps they have nothing left with which to take back ground toward critical and democratic education. The point is that we do not need more educational theorizing (although I am not suggesting some Rortian acquiescence), but rather more education (as opposed to training) and less educationalisation (or course I am not saying anything new here). Perhaps we should recall Kierkegaards (1985) long forgotten, yet subtly brilliant, definition of education What then is education? I had thought it was the curriculum the individual ran through in order to catch up with himself: and anyone who does not want to go through this curriculum will be little helped by being born into the most enlightened age. (p. 75). I have always considered it a great irony that I work and teach at the same university as Henry Giroux. And yet we, in our department at any rate, have failed to recognize the potential of problem based learning for critical and democratic education. Indeed, I was shocked when I began work on this that no one else had recognized it either. I could locate only a single article (Burch, 2001) that addressed the issue of using a problem based approach that is both democratic and critical. Burch (2001) used a PBL format to convey political and ethical content. (p. 193). Moreover, he claims that by

decentralizing the classroom, students discover the latitude to explore ideas, form opinions, and express themselves. They also find they must engage others and confront novel ideas. (Burch, 2001, p. 203). Indeed, I am a supporter of PBL and the use of problems or cases in education. However, the purpose of such an approach is not merely to solve the problem, but rather to use real world problems to be critical of this particular real world in addition to gaining knowledge and developing skills to live and work in it. Most importantly it is imperative that students come to see that this real world, indeed all real worlds, as every critical theorist and post-modernist knows, are constructed and so can be deconstructed and reconstructed, though not arbitrarily (see Hacking, 1999), rather than simply lived and worked in. But, deconstructed and reconstructed into what is the central question. And the answer can only be ascertained with a critical education, not training in problem solving. Perhaps if we view what we are doing as Deleuzian social control and certainly a form of reproduction, which Fendler has so wisely pointed out, rather than as many seem to think merely and meticulously preparing graduates for the world, then we might also come to see that not moving away from correspondence or coherence models of education toward critical and democratic ones is unethical behaviour to both our students and the, so called, world. Rather than John Dewey on speed as are educational founder, we need a sober, contemplative democratic philosopher that recognizes the need for education to be education, which is to say emancipatory, instead of simply training for social and economic ends. References Apple, M. (2006). Educating the right way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. (1979). Ideology and curriculum. London: Routledge/Kegan Paul. Beck, U., Bonss, W. & Lau, C. (2003). The theory of reflexive modernization: Problematic, hypotheses and research programme. Theory, Culture & Society, 20(2), 133. Bennett, W. J. (1992). The de-valuing of America: The fight for our culture and our children. New York: Summit Books. Betts, C. E. (2006). Assuming practice amid the culture wars: a response to James P. Smith 28 years later. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 54(5), 633-644. Bloom, A. (1987). The closing of the American mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of todays students. New York: Simon And Schuster. Bowers, C. A. (2006). Silence and Double Binds: Why the theories of John Dewey and Paulo Freire cannot contribute to revitalizing the commons. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 17(3), 71-87.

Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. New York: Basic Books. Brint, S. (2002). The rise of the practical arts. In S. Brint (Ed.). The future of the city of intellect: The changing American university (pp. 231-259). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Burch, K. (2001). PBL, politics, and democracy. . In B. J. Duch, S. E. Groh, D. E. Allen (Eds.). The power of problem-based learning: A practical how to for teaching undergraduate courses in any discipline (pp. 193-205). Sterling: Stylus Pubishing. Collins, R. (2002). Credential inflation and the future of universities. . In S. Brint (Ed.). The future of the city of intellect: The changing American university (pp. 23-46). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Collins, R. (1979). The credential society: An historical sociology of education and stratification. New York: Academic Press. Dreeben, R. (1976). The unwritten curriculum and its relation to values. Curriculum Studies, 8(2), 111-124. Drummond, J. (2003). Care of self in a knowledge economy: Higher education, vocation and the ethics of Michel Foucault. Educational Philosophy and Theory 35(1), 57-69. Eisner, E. W. (1985). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Fendler, L. (2008). New and improved educationalization: Faster, more powerful and longer lasting. Ethics and Education, 3(1), 15-26. Friedenberg, E. (1963). Coming of age in America: Growth and acquiescence. New York: Vintage Books. Giroux, H. A. (1983) Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey. Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Heath, J. (2004). Liberalization, modernization, westernization. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 30(5-6), 665-690. Kierkegaard, S. (1985). Fear and trembling (Tr. A. Hannay). New York: Penguin. Kimball, R. (1990). Tenured radicals: How politics has corrupted our higher education. New York. Harper and Row.

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