AED Justification Paper
This is first in what willbe a series of postings regarding sustaining the Agenda for Education in a Democracy.
Dr. David Lee Keiser, Montclair State University
26 April 2012
Making the Case for the Agenda for Education in a Democracy
Since my arrival at Montclair State University in Fall 2000, The Agenda for Education in a Democracy (AED) has been a touchstone for me. Not knowing the politics of my new academic home, nor having much interest in reading dense philosophical frameworks, I welcomed the directness of the four pillars, or the Moral Dimensions of Teaching, or, as we’ve come to call them here, SAND (stewardship, access, nurturing pedagogy, and democratic practice). This thematic quartet has infused our college materials, assessment system, conceptual framework, and, we hope, our facility at teaching with a moral compass open and inclusive for all.
The AED continues to work as an organizing principle by which we hold ourselves accountable: Does this lesson or unit provide opportunities for students to demonstrate and observe nurturing pedagogy? Or: how does this course or fieldwork experience make use of best practices in stewardship or in providing access to knowledge for all students? Or: how can professors and mentors preach the gospel of democratic practice in school when we don’t model it ourselves? In fact, the four pillars of the AED serve as perfections to which we strive, albeit imperfectly and incrementally, for all our teaching and learning lives.
I have been struck during work-related travel at how exceptional our AED is; despite imperfections, it truly is an explicit Agenda. It is due to this exceptionality that our work remains as needed as ever; it is due to our resolute commitment to all learners that a Scantron score alone cannot measure our progress. To be sure, challenges remain. The late author Audre Lorde famously wrote, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” After eight years of Bush/Chaney and No Child Left Behind, and four more of Obama/Biden and Reach for the Top, our Master’s House is being refinanced and refurbished in front of our eyes.
How to Ensure the AED Remains Influential for US Education
Several years ago, at an Annual NNER Meeting, John Goodlad offered us a caution to stay low, so as not to be targeted, ostracized, or attacked by the forces of marketization and high-stakes testing in education. While some in the audience might have been chagrined at this seemingly disempowered suggestion, others took it to heart. Through a combination of resolve, stealth advocacy, and, yes, the moral dimensions to our work, AED Scholars and others have continued to work within the parameters of the four-themed mission of the organization. We continue to work with the hearts and minds of all we meet—students, colleagues, administrators, and various community constituencies—in order to create a more just society.
We ensure the solvency of the AED not only through our semi-regular meetings and synergistic academic exchanges, but also through resilience, confidence, and stalwart adherence to the social, emotional, and moral dimensions of what it means to teach, and to teach others to teach. Here’s one local example: in a required diversity course that I currently teach, I created an assignment to underscore the irreducible need for access to all students. I call it the uncomfortable field trip; students visit a place they wouldn’t normally, with people that neither look nor sound like them, and where they are in the minority. Some Christian students attend a temple or mosque service, some Jewish students attend a Christian church service, and some students brave the half-hour drive to New York City. In all cases, students experience a loss of entitlement, as they become minorities reliant on others to figure out cultural norms. This semester a young man wrote movingly about attending a Deaf Culture event and feeling lost, unable to decipher the swirling, fluid signs moving around him. He took to writing down comments and questions, and was grateful that the hearing impaired hosts welcomed him.
John Goodlad has said repeatedly that despite his earlier work, A Place Called School, spawning over two dozen doctoral dissertations it had little appeal for policymakers. So we know that data, compelling as it may be, may not be enough to sway those with a simplistic understanding of the field of education. Our groundwork, however, is both invaluable and irreplaceable; this includes the undergraduate and graduate students who we teach and mentor, the P-12 students affected by our teaching candidates, and the various constituent communities with whom with work and entrust our pedagogical experience and values.
Relatively new groups such as the Forum, A Bigger Bolder Approach, and many others steel our work with intellectual resolve, academic and philosophical fodder, and moral support as well. But our Agenda remains well positioned to help fulfill the public purposes of education in an emerging democracy.
Venceremos!
David Lee Keiser
Montclair State University