Foreword

by Henry M. Levin

Several weeks ago I visited an elementary school that had met all of the requirements of "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). Although the school was in an inner-city with more than half of the students on a reduced-cost or free lunch and 70 percent drawn from minority populations, it had met all of its academic growth targets under the law. The school was heralded in the local press as an exemplar that demonstrated what a dedicated school could accomplish.

On my visit I spoke with teachers and the principal and observed several classrooms. I also spoke with students. What was clear was the extent of strict devotion to success as defined by NCLB. According to teachers and students, each day began with a pre-test of material that was to be covered over the next days or a post-test of what had been covered in one or another subject. Both pre-tests and post-tests followed the state test formats. The curriculum was modeled after the test domains and items, and emphasis was placed on test performance. Teachers were required to follow scripted approaches to both language and mathematics in terms of the units and their presentation and activities. Worksheets that reinforced the content of each unit and test format were employed extensively. I observed little discussion. Questions emanating from the natural curiosity of the children were not forthcoming.

I asked teachers how they covered poetry and what kinds of projects the students were undertaking. Teachers reported that they had dropped coverage of poetry because it was not reflected on the tests, and that a vocabulary project for each national holiday was all that time permitted. Although they did not feel comfortable with "narrowing" the curriculum, as a school-wide effort, they were pleased with the test results.

The principal was very proud of her school-wide approach, telling me that more than 90 percent of instruction was well-aligned with the test. Her view was that she was doing what was expected to achieve success as defined by state standards and NCLB. Although students told me they wanted more art and "fun" activities, they agreed that the school was good because they had heard this repeated by parents and teachers. Overall, about 60 percent of students met state "proficiency" standards in reading and mathematics. The principal sympathized with student views on broadening the curriculum, but she said that "they had a job to do" and that after-school programs, recess, and summers could be used to do other things. Besides, their present success was evidenced by unending requests by potential visitors to observe the school as well as a backlog of applicants for transfer from other schools in the district.

On leaving the school I was reminded of a scene from the movie, Hans Christian Anderson (1952). This fanciful film on the Danish writer of children's stories, starred Danny Kaye as Anderson. Presumably, Anderson was a cobbler in a small village who had hired a young boy, Peter, as a part-time, cobbler's apprentice. Peter was a dreamer. He found school to be boring and looked forward to his afternoon apprenticeship with a regular dose of Hans's far-fetched stories. One morning the young Peter arrived at the gate of the village school, late by an instant. The stern schoolmaster reprimanded him and barred his entry. Disconsolately, Peter sauntered to an open window to listen to the lesson. Passing by, Hans discovered Peter there, and the two of them knelt by the open window to listen to the instruction, surrounded by the marigold garden bordering the school.

As they crouched among the marigolds, they observed an inchworm, maneuvering its body in measured fashion across the giant orange blossoms. Just at this moment, the school children broke out in recitation: "Two and tWo are four. Four and four are eight. Eight and eight are sixteen. Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two" Repeated again and again.

With this recitation as chorus, Hans directed a song at the insect: "Inchworm, inchworm, Measuring the marigolds, You and your arithmetic will probably go far. Inchworm, inchworm, Measuring the marigolds, Seems to me you'd stop and see how beautiful they are."

The contrast between the mechanical recitation inside the schoolhouse and the boundless world of beauty and curiosity facing Peter is poignant. Outside of the window, Peter is immersed in nature, aesthetics, and humanity. He can realize the proportions of the flower from the inchworm's movement in ways that cannot be seen by the children in their recitation and memorization. He is ready to learn from Hans's stories and experience in a way that is precluded by drill and memorization. And, shortly thereafter, Peter gives up his formal schooling as the two of them set off for Copenhagen to see the larger world. In this clever scene one can see the poverty of limiting learning to the traditions of the schoolhouse, the present tradition being imposed on schools by NCLB, and the possibilities that can only be found when learning is elevated to a larger stage in which student experience and participation are the enabling ingredients and activities that are intrinsically valuable are the aims.

Mike Seymour and his talented colleagues believe that all children are left behind by NCLB. Education for Humanity has the purpose of providing educational aims for all of our children through democratic classrooms that commit themselves to all children and a present and future society that is robust, healthy, and sustainable. By creating schools that are devoted to all dimensions of the human condition, all students will be engaged collaboratively to succeed by a caring educational community. To do this, our children must be made aware of both the threats to such a society and the opportunities and possibilities that education provides to create a world that is prosperous, equitable, peaceful, and sustainable from an ecological perspective. This is an education that engages all of us in recognizing both the challenges and opportunities before us and provides us with the tools of analysis and
action.

In Chapter Eight, "Aims in Education" of his classic book, Democracy and Education, John Dewey discusses aims in education. Dewey refers to good aims as follows:

The aim set up must be an outgrowth of existing conditions. It must be based upon a consideration of what is already going on; upon the resources and difficulties of the situation. Theories about the proper end of our activities educational and moral theories often violate this principle. They assume ends Iying outside our activities; ends foreign to the concrete makeup of the situation; ends which issue from some outside source. Then the problem is to bring our activities to bear upon the realization of these externally supplied ends. They are something for which we ought to act. In any case such "aims" limit intelligence; they are not the expression of mind in foresight, observation, and choice of the better among alternative possibilities. They limit intelligence because, given ready-made, they must be imposed by some authority external to intelligence, leaving to the latter nothing but a mechanical choice of means.

Much of what is done under NCLB is done to increase scores on stultified tests, not to engage students in a world in which they will succeed. In Dewey's terms these are "externally supplied ends." Although done ostensibly to prepare students for labor markets, the evidence linking the test scores to economic success is meager. High productivity workplaces want workers who can undertake responsibility, plan a project, evaluate the quality of their work, cooperate with others, and anticipate problems and solve them. Where do students get experience doing these things with a scripted curriculum broken down into units contained between bookends of pretests and post-tests where everything has a fixed answer that can be captured in a multiple choice answer? This is not to say that many of the skills are unimportant. It is to say that they should be learned in a context that allows thinking, planning, risktaking, and meaningful applications, and above all they must allow for participation and democracy and moral determination.

The thrust of this volume is the quest to open the school experience to a different reality for students; a world that poses many contradictions that need resolution. Students need to consider the presence of material abundance alongside poverty, massive conflict and insecurity alongside desire for peace and stability, and natural beauty and order amidst environmental degradation and destruction. Only through confronting the challenges can these contradictions be overcome by human community. Education for humanity is awareness of both the problems and possibilities that we face and the proactive tools and courage to act togeeher. It is the provision of educational tools and processes that make the world a better place for humanity through serving human needs and those of community. It is an education dedicated to awakening and empowering our spiritual sensitivities, our relation to human community, our connection to nature, and our values as human beings dedicated to a healthy society, present and future.

Sadly, such aims are noticeably absent from the official accountability standards of contemporary educational systems, the tests that measure their attainment, and the curriculum and instruction that slavishly pursue these narrow ends. In a Deweyan world, the test results that are worshipped presently by the political process should be viewed as mere by-products of the educational process, regardless of their value as by-products. Surely our children and the future of our society are worthier of much more than the delivery of by-products that can be validated by the scratch of a number-two pencil on a multiple-choice test form. Mike Seymour and his colleagues make a powerful case for a highly attractive alternative vision in what follows.