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Lessons Taught, Lessons Learned Vol. I
SECONDARY EDUCATION IN
RURAL ALASKA
by
Pennee Reinhart
Kiana
No culture will give
popular nourishment and support to images or patterns which are
alien to its dominant impulses and aspirations.
Marshall McLuhan,
The Mechanical Bride
We need our curriculum planners
to deliver an apologetic suited to the realities of our times.
We must accept the fact that many of our traditional
instructional forms have died of exhaustion. Misguided but
undaunted, we continue to embalm them with sterile enthusiasm,
paint them in gaudy colors and dress them in the latest
pedagogical finery. We have become trained morticians of the
mind who make pitiful attempts to give our corpses the illusion
of life. We would serve our students far better if we would
prop up our tired symbols and rituals and dance them one last
jig over their graves. Then we should bury them with the one
room schoolhouse and Dick and Jane readers.
Peter McLaren,
Schooling as Ritual Performance
Any discussion of current trends
in secondary education must address the effect of the report of
the National Commission on Excellence in Education.
The publication of A Nation at
Risk in April 1983 has profoundly influenced decisions about
education in rural Alaska. The commission recommends a curriculum
that includes 4 years of English, 3 years of social studies, math,
and science, and 1/2 year of computer science, as well as
standardized testing of all students in these subjects. The report
also calls for devoting significantly more to the "new basics," for using
the existing school day more effectively, and for lengthening the school day
or the school year. Another contention
is that educational reforms, particularly those focusing on math,
science, and computers, are essential to restoring the American
economic position in the world.
Many school districts in Alaska
are adopting these recommendations, making school administrators
and teachers responsible for the education of students within the
parameters of "excellence." Some of the issues raised by this
trend will be discussed in this paper, especially curriculum,
standardized tests, time devoted to education, and education as it
relates to employment.
Curriculum
The reliance on the
subject-oriented curriculum as it is currently implemented in
rural Alaskan schools has been increased with the quest for "excellence." In all subjects, "the emphasis is on transmitting a
predetermined body of knowledge or a particular set of skills from
those who possess such knowledge or skills to those who do not.
Thus, to a large extent in a subject-oriented curriculum, the
learning process becomes subordinate to, or is determined by the
nature of the content" (Barnhardt,
this publication). Reducing the learning process to the
acquisition of subject-matter skills contributes to maintaining a
fragmented pattern of learning which frustrates the students needs
for integration.
Success in school continues to
consist largely of mastering skills and procedures that have
little intrinsic meaning to the student. Teachers become both the
diagnosticians and the surgeons, no matter how trivial,
misconceived, and ultimately damaging the treatment might be, and
the students remain the passive recipients of that treatment. If
the bleeding does not seem to be restoring the patient to life,
bleed some more. "The subject-oriented curriculum appears to be
inadequate, in both content and process of, for the educational
needs and circumstances of cultural minority students. The content
is often divorced from the experiential and situational framework
for the student, and the resultant process is usually culturally
biased" (Barnhardt,
this publication).
Standardized Tests
Students' scores on
standardized tests have become the measurement of excellence in
most rural Alaskan schools. According to the National Commission,
educational excellence involves the teaching of higher-order
intellectual skills, such as the ability to analyze facts, draw
inferences, solve problems, and create concepts. Standardized
tests do not measure creativity or problem-solving ability. What
they do assess is the capacity to locate answers to predetermined
questions. Rather than indicating what students know, test items
serve to catalyze what is taught. The more decisions are based on
test scores, the more teachers teach to the test. The more
educators design curricula around standardized tests, the less
teachers devote time or energy to the processes by which students
acquire knowledge. This policy stifles many competent teachers
with homogenized scope and sequence and monotonous instruction. As
a result, mediocrity instead of excellence is promoted in our
schools.
Time Devoted to
Education
The National Commission on
Excellence in Education has recommended that students in high
school be assigned more homework, that the school day be increased
to 7 hours, and that the school year be extended to at least 200
days, and possibly 220 days. The commission also advocates that
learning time should be increased through better classroom
management and more efficient organization of the school day and
that additional time should be found to meet the special needs of
slow learners, the gifted, and others who need more instructional
diversity.
One of the presumptions of the
commission has been that more time in school is the crucial factor
in the apparently better academic performance of students in
foreign countries, particularly Japan. Japan has a longer school
day and school year than the United States. However, the
performance patterns of Japanese students are divergent,
suggesting that factors other than time are significant. Cultural
differences influence school performance. The Japanese have
extensive school solidarity, built upon student responsibility for
cleaning buildings, serving meals, and attending school
assemblies, which include inspirational songs and messages. Art
and music are considered basic skills in Japan. Students work for
the honor of their class, school, and family and endeavor to do
well on the rigorous high school and university entrance
examinations. There is a direct correlation between high scores on
examinations and the attainment of high-paying jobs. The ends
justify the means. This is clearly not the case in rural Alaska,
nor for that matter in the rest of the United States. Doing well
in school does not guarantee employment. Because of these cultural
differences, emulating the Japanese system of education would be
unrealistic.
It seems to be a trend in this
country, including Alaska, to spend an inordinate amount of time
and resources on the gifted and talented students and students who
qualify for other special help and to ignore the average students
who make up the majority of the population in schools. These
students have no advocates and are virtually excluded from
academic expectations. We have heeded the Commission's cry for
devoting increased time to the exceptional, but in the process we
are breaking the backbone of society by failing to educate the
students who happen to fall in between.
We have been led to believe
that obtaining a good education will insure a rewarding
occupation. That this is an erroneous assumption becomes evident
in the following examination of labor statistics by Gross and
Gross (1985): "In 1982 the Department of Labor ranked the number
of actual job openings by category. These openings reflect
turnover as well as net job growth. The top fifteen job
categories, with a single exception, are ones that middle class
parents hope their children will avoid... The economy will
generate some 19 million new jobs between 1980 and 1990, about 3.5 million
of which will be professional and technical. Low-wage, service and clerical
work will account for almost 7
million new jobs. Far from a high-tech future demanding skilled
labor, the new technologies seem to be reducing the skills needed
for most kinds of work. For most, the future rests at the counter
of McDonald's or K-Mart; or if one is interested in computers
directly, as a $4/hour key punch operator, not a $25,000/year
programmer or repair person" (p. 367).
Education and
Employment
There is no clear evidence
of a shortage of qualified engineers or computer scientists.
Perhaps the United States is experiencing high unemployment and
low productivity, not because of a lack of a technically skilled
work force, but because of a failure to modernize our industrial
plants and a failure to educate the majority of our youth who
previously have provided the impetus which has kept this country
at the forefront of nations high in technology. We are speaking of
that "average" student who is being by-passed on that long,
arduous road to excellence.
Conclusions
"If an educational program
is to become integrated with the cultural patterns of the
surrounding community, then the goals, content, and structure of
that program should reflect some form of experiential learning.
Experiential learning goes beyond the scope of discovery or
inquiry methods, by emphasizing direct involvement in real-life
experiences, rather than simply 'learning by doing' in the
context of a classroom" (Barnhardt,
this publication). We are immersed in a time of change. We are
leaving an age of industrialization and entering an age of
information. Our concepts of what constitutes basic education need
to be adjusted. Learning to deal with the ever changing world
mandates that coping skills become basic. These include skills in
health, nutrition, drug and alcohol education, and physical and
psychological education. Decision making, a key to our development
as individuals, should be the most important basic skill taught in
school. For students to be able to solve problems and make
decisions, it is essential that they learn how to predict and
check the results of their actions, monitor their activities, and
test reality. These abilities are crucial for effective thinking
in any kind of learning situation, be it in the school or in the
community.
American culture has been
criticized for excessive individualism in lieu of collective
commitment, cooperative behavior, and social responsibility. This
philosophy is contrary to the world views of many minority
cultures in Alaska. Eskimo children, for instance, are taught "never to make judgments that ignore others, that are not, really,
part of a community's judgment. The emphasis is on 'us', as
opposed to 'I'. It is dangerous, they learn, to cultivate
oneself; true, one learns to distinguish one's own life from those
of others, but with none of the intense psychological
assertiveness, even imperialism, that some other American children
generate" (Coles, 1977, p. 215). Schools in rural Alaska
increasingly pressure students to prove their self-worth as
measured by performance on standardized tests and competence in
subject-oriented curriculum. With success becoming more and more
dependent on these criteria, a growing portion of our school
population will find themselves defined as failures. If the
competencies taught in school were directed toward human sharing
and collaborative work, and if individual achievement was viewed
as serving collective interests and the welfare of the community,
then experiential learning, rather than transmitting predigested
content, could become a viable approach to education.
If excellence in Alaskan schools
is to become an attainable reality, quality education for all
students needs to be made into a priority. Since it is a slow
process to raise overall achievement scores, many Alaskan
educators have opted to select those students who are at the upper
echelons of the achievement range and place a higher emphasis on
their education at the expense of the other students.
When Peters and Waterman (1984)
set out to look for excellence in corporate America, they found
that excellent companies turned the average person into winners by
designing systems to support and reinforce winning attitudes. The
investigators also observed that less-than-excellent organizations
viewed their workers negatively and designed systems that seemed
to tear down their workers' self-image. Recognizing winners is a
lot easier than creating them; however, to create winners should
be the purpose of education. It is not the recognition of quality
but the creation of quality that breeds excellence.
It is our responsibility as
teachers in Alaska to bridge the gap between education in the
classroom and the requirements for employment in society and to
create a learning environment which prepares the majority of
students for their roles as productive adults.
References
Coles, R. (1977).
Children of Crisis (Vol. IV). Boston: Little Brown and
Company.
Gross, B. & Gross, R. (Eds.). (1985). The Great School Debate. New
York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
McLaren, P. (1986). Schooling
as Ritual Performance. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Peters, T. & Waterman, R. (1984). In Search of Excellence.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Foreword
J. Kelly Tonsmiere
Introduction
Ray Barnhardt
Section
I
Some Thoughts on Village
Schooling
"Appropriate
Schools in Rural Alaska"
Todd Bergman, New Stuyahok
"Learning
Through Experience"
Judy Hoeldt, Kaltag
"The
Medium Is The Message For Village
Schools"
Steve Byrd, Wainwright
"Multiple
Intelligences: A Community Learning
Campaign"
Raymond Stein, Sitka
"Obstacles
To A Community-Based Curriculum"
Jim Vait, Eek
"Building
the Dream House"
Mary Moses-Marks, McGrath
"Community
Participation in Rural Education"
George Olana, Shishmaref
"Secondary
Education in Rural Alaska"
Pennee Reinhart, Kiana
"Reflections
on Teaching in the Kuskokwim Delta"
Christine Anderson, Kasigluk
"Some
Thoughts on Curriculum"
Marilyn Harmon, Kotzebue
Section
II
Some Suggestions for the
Curriculum
"Rabbit
Snaring and Language Arts"
Judy Hoeldt, Kaltag
"A Senior
Research Project for Rural High Schools"
Dave Ringle, St. Mary's
"Curriculum
Projects for the Pacific Region,"
Roberta Hogue Davis, College
"Resources
for Exploring Japan's Cultural Heritage"
Raymond Stein, Sitka
"Alaskans
Experience Japanese Culture Through
Music"
Rosemary Branham, Kenai
Section
III
Some Alternative
Perspectives
"The
Axe Handle Academy: A Proposal for a Bioregional, Thematic
Humanities Education"
Ron and Suzanne Scollon
"Culture,
Community and the Curriculum"
Ray Barnhardt
"The
Development of an Integrated Bilingual and Cross-Cultural
Curriculum in an Arctic School District"
Helen Roberts
"Weaving
Curriculum Webs: The Structure of Nonlinear
Curriculum"
Rebecca Corwin, George E. Hem and Diane Levin
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