Education and Reform: The Cult of Crisis

To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: DOWNLOAD

Education and Reform

The Cult of Crisis

by Michael Ernest Sweet

An argument can be made that education has been under reform from the very beginning. Most certainly, the past century has been witness to many pedagogical paradigms. Additionally, an argument can be constructed to assert that schools are merely a microcosm of society; thus, it seems to follow that society too has remained in a state of flux. Certainly the twentieth century ushered in much change, most notably, two distinct forces have been at the forefront: globalization and democratization. Both of these forces of change have had a tremendous impact on education and therefore educational reform. Why then, according to many scholars, has little actually changed in the classroom? That is, why do our classrooms, and the activity which takes place therein, still resemble by and large, that of a century ago?

Canadian research chair and internationally noted democratic education scholar Emery Hyslop-Margison and colleague Alan Sears elucidate this very issue in their recent article titled The Cult of Citizenship Education[i]. In their work, professors Hyslop-Margison and Sears speak of how a cult mentality has overshadowed any meaningful reform in our educational practice. Their claim is that educational reform is driven by unexamined and unchallenged slogans, rhetoric and dogma. Policy and thus new reforms, are little more than shallow and often purposeless collections of trendy “speak,” which serve to reassure the public that something is being done to improve the state of public education in response to perceived crises. The essential problem lies in the fact that policy makers, educational authorities, administrators, and most importantly educators, do not push such reform concepts beyond their lofty slogans. As Hyslop-Margison and Sears cite, Janice Gross Stein, in her work for the 2001 Massey Lectures, found that “this type of overheated rhetoric is ubiquitous in contemporary public discourse…and education [debate] in particular is overtaken by a cult mentality that precludes meaningful dialogue about effective [lasting] reform.”

In respect to the perceived crises in education, Hyslop-Margison and Sears point to three in particular which are especially pervasive in the current discourse of educational reform: a) The Crisis of Ignorance, b) The Crisis of Alienation, and c) The Crisis of Agnosticism. In précis, crisis of ignorance refers to the concept that students are not learning enough information in contemporary education. Alienation speaks of young people disconnecting from their communities; these authors focus on political alienation and discuss how voting rates are often used to forward this argument. Lastly, the crisis of agnosticism refers to contemporary youth and their lack of beliefs, particularly in relation to democratic values.

To focus this concept, let us look more closely at the crisis of ignorance, because it is particularly pervasive. This is an argument often constructed around history in particular. It is not a question of adequate historical knowledge, but rather the idea that its decline is recent or novel. How many times have we heard, “students today don’t learn anything” or “they don’t know anything” bantered around the staff room table? As the Hyslop-Margison and Sears article rightly points out, there is no empirical evidence to support this claim. In fact, any historical knowledge deficit which can be noted is a problem which has concerned educators for much of the past century. It is not getting worse. Similar arguments follow to dismantle the crises of both alienation and agnosticism. I assert that the real problem is in how we educational stakeholders read educational goings-on. If we employ a lens of crisis when entering the analysis, then not surprisingly, we perceive a crisis to be present. This form of trapped thought within an ideological vacuum is, of course, the cult mentality.

The problems with this mode of analysis, and the conceptual framework it invokes, are nearly immeasurable. As a result, spheres of pedagogical action, which are dismissed under the auspices of reform rhetoric and slogans, become the real seat of crisis in education. Within trendy “speak,” worthy and sometimes essential practices, capable of actually addressing present educational concerns, are pushed aside or unchained from their actual meanings altogether. One such example is that of critical thinking. I seriously question the extent to which we, in reality, adhere to this concept in our classroom practice. Granted, we have no shortage of discourse surrounding the concept, but does anyone actually understand it, its importance, or how to encourage our students to be critical thinkers? My casual observation in a large Quebec public schooling environment is, categorically, that we do not.

Democracy and globalization are complex social frameworks within which human subjectivities deeply affect their positive and negative social, economic and human consequences. Imperative to their beneficial evolution is the engagement of critical thought by those actors, directly or indirectly, participating within these dynamic and ever-evolving paradigms. Children must be taught to question, examine, and challenge why things are the way they are. Our students must grow into citizens who take responsibility to engage their world and imagine possibilities, alternate courses of human action, and thus alternate outcomes. We need to both understand and genuinely enact educational reforms. Critical thinking, for one, could bring both the educational and general public’s conversation from, in the words of Janice Stein, “cult to analysis.” In effect, this would allow our rationality—that which we proudly claim defines us—rather than prejudice, racism, and other unfounded beliefs to shape our lives and the world.

I recently rediscovered a note I had scribbled in my bachelor of education days. It reads: “Teaching is not about the answers, it’s about the questions.” We, as educators, cannot allow our public school policies to stifle thought amid mountains of political slogans, rhetoric and dogma; too much is at stake. If we continue to rush around within an illusion of crisis in education, avoiding meaningful, critical and engaged dialogue on current and even controversial issues, we will truly give birth to a dark age.

Michael Ernest Sweet (1979-) lives, writes, and teaches in Montreal, Quebec. He is a Master’s student in the department of Educational Studies at Concordia University. He holds degrees in humanities and education as well as diplomas in child psychology and drama in education. His research interests include homosexuality and schooling, poetics as a pedagogy, and democratic citizenship education.