The current discourse on teachers as "lazy" and "overpaid" made me reflect on the course of education in this country over the last thirty years. We are in the midst of another pendulum swing in our educational (and cultural) systems. However, because of the widening gap between the "haves" and the "have nots", the arc of that pendulum is gradually increasing, rather than following the natural progression of physics (and culture) which would pull it toward a central point.
The following paper was written by a thorough intellectual during the debate over Reagan's educational "reforms". I feel his argument is more than appropriate in the current climate. Educators, when seen as professionals, (and given the tools, space and respect accorded to professionals) will be professionals. We go to school for a reason; we wish to help kids. We do not put ourselves through college (in some states a Master's degree is required for certification) in order to gain fame or because we are bored and need a diversion. We go to college to help transform society.
Teachers as
Transformative
Intellectuals
Henry A. Giroux
The call for educational reform has gained the status of a recurring national event, much like the annual Boston Marathon. There have been more than 30 national reports since the beginning of the 20th century, and more than 300 task forces have been developed by the various states to discover how public schools can improve educational quality in the United States.' But unlike many past educational reform movements, the present call for educational change presents both a threat and a challenge to public school teachers that appears unprecedented in our nation's history. The threat comes in the form of a series of educational reforms that display little confidence in the ability of public school teachers to provide intellectual and moral leadership for our nation's youth. For instance, many of the recommendations that have emerged in the current debate either ignore the role teachers play in preparing learners to be active and critical citizens or suggest reforms that ignore the intelligence, judgment and experience that teachers might offer in such a debate. Where teachers do enter the debate, they are the object of educational reforms that reduce them to the status of high level techni¬cians carrying out dictates and objectives decided by "experts" for removed from the everydav realities of classroom life.2 The message appears to be that teachers do not count when it comes to critically examining the nature and process of educational reform.
The political and ideological climate does not took favorable for teachers at the moment. But it does offer them the challenge to join in a public debate with their critics as well as the opportunity to engage in a much needed self critique regarding the nature and purpose of teacher preparation, inservice teacher programs and the dominant forms of classroom teaching. Similarly the debate provides teachers with the opportunity to organize collectively so as to struggle to improve the conditions under which they work and to demonstrate to the public the central role that teachers must play in any viable attempt to reform the public schools.
In order for teachers and others to engage in such a debate, it is necessary that a theoretical perspective be developed that redefines the nature of the educational crisis while simultaneous]y providing the basis for an alternative view of teacher training and work. In short, recognizing that the current crisis in education largely has to do with the developing trend towards the disempowerment of teachers at all levels of education is a necessary theoretical precondition in order for teachers to organize effectively and establish a collective voice in the current debate. Moreover, such a recognition will have to come to grips not only with a growing loss of power among teachers around the basic conditions of their work, but also with a changing public perception of their role as reflective practitioners.
I want to make a small theoretical contribution to this debate and the challenge it calls forth by examining two major problems that need to be addressed in the interest of improving the quality of "teacher work," which includes all the clerical tasks and extra assignments as well as classroom instruction. First, I think it is imperative to examine the ideological and material forces that have contributed to what I want to call the proletarianization of teacher work; that is, the tendency to reduce teachers to the status of specialized technicians within the school bureaucracy, whose function then becomes one of managing and implementing curricula programs rather than developing or critically appropriating curricula to fit specific pedagogical concerns. Second, there is a need to defend schools as institutions essential to maintaining and developing a critical democracy and also to defending teachers as transformative intellectuals who combine scholarly reflection and practice in the service of educating students to be thoughtful, active citizens. In the remainder of this essay, I will develop these points and conclude by examining their implications for providing an alternative view of teacher work.
Toward a Devaluing and
Deskilling of Teacher Work
One of the major threats facing prospective and existing teachers within the public schools is the increasing development of instrumental ideologies that emphasize a technocratic approach to both teacher preparation and classroom pedagogy. At the core of the current emphasis on instrumental and pragmatic factors in school life are a number of important pedagogical assumptions. These include: a call for the separation of conception from execution; the standardization of school knowledge in the interest of managing and controlling it; and the devaluation of critical, intellectual work on the part of teachers and students for the primacy of practical considerations.3 This type of instrumental rationality finds one of its strongest expressions historically in the training of prospective teachers. That teacher training programs in the United States have long been dominated by a behavioristic orientation and emphasis on mastering subject areas and methods of teaching is well documented. The implications of this approach, made clear by Zeichner, are worth repeating:
Underlying this orientation to teacher education is a metaphor of "production," a view of teaching as an "applied science" and a view of the teacher as primarily an "executor" of the laws and principles of effective teaching. Prospective teachers may or may not proceed through the curriculum at their own pace and may participate in varied or standardized learning activities, but that which they are to master is limited in scope (e.g., to a body of professional content knowledge and teaching skills) and is fully determined in advance by others often on the basis of research on teacher effectiveness.. The prospective teacher is viewed primarily as a passive recipient of this professional knowledge and plays little part in determining the substance and direction of his or her preparation program.5
The problems with this approach are evident in John Dewey's argument that teacher training programs that emphasize only technical exper¬ tise do a disservice both to the nature of teaching and to their students.6 Instead of learning of learning to reflect upon the principles that structure classroom life and practice, prospective teachers are taught methodologies that 'appear to deny the very need for critical thinking. The point is that
teacher education programs often lose sight of the need to educate students to examine the underlying nature of school problems. Further, these programs need to substitute for the lan¬guage of management and efficiency a critical analysis of the less obvious conditions that structure the ideological and material practices of schooling.
Instead of learning to raise questions about the principles underlying different classroom methods, research techniques and theories of education, students are often preoccupied with learning the "how to," with "what works," or with mastering the best way to teach a given body of knowledge For example, the mandatory field practice seminars often consist of students' sharing with each other the techniques they have used in managing and controlling classroom discipline, organizing a day's activities and learning how to work within specific time tables. Examining one such program, Jesse Goodman raises some important questions about the incapacitating silences it embodies. He writes:
There was no questioning of feelings, assumptions, or definitions in this discussion. For example, the "need" for external rewards and punishments to "make kids learn" was taken for granted; the educational and ethical implications were not addressed. There was no display of concern for stimulating or nurturing a child's intrinsic desire to learn. Definitions of good kids as "quiet kids," workbook work as "reading," on task time as "learning," and getting through the material on time as "the goal of teaching" all went unchallenged. Feelings of pressure and possible guilt about not keeping to time schedules also went unexplored. The real concern in this discussion was that everyone "shared.
Technocratic and instrumental rationalities are also at work within the teaching field itself, and the), play an increasing role in reducing teacher autonomy with respect to the development and planning of curricula and the judging and implementation of classroom instruction. This is most evident in the proliferation of what has been called "teacher proof" curriculum packages.6 The underlying rationale in man), of these packages reserves for teachers the role of simply carrying out predetermined content and instructional procedures. The method and aim of such packages is to legitimate what I call management Pedagogies. That is, knowledge is broken down into discrete parts, standardized for easier management and consumption, and measured through predefined forms of assessment. Curricula approaches of this sort are management Pedagogies because the central questions regarding learning are reduced to the problem of management, i.e., "how to allocate resources (teachers, students and materials to produce the maximum number of certified ... students within a designated time."' The underlying theoretical assumption that guides this type of pedagogy is that the behavior of teachers
needs to be controlled and made consistent and predictable across different schools and student populations.
What is clear in this approach is that it organizes school life around curricular, instructional and evaluation experts, who do the thinking while teachers are reduced to doing the implementing. The effect is not only to deskill teachers, to remove them from the processes of deliberation and reflection, but also to routinize the nature of learning and classroom pedagogy. Needless to say, the principles underlying management pedagogies are at odds with the prem¬ise that teachers should be actively involved in producing curricula materials suited to the cultural and social contexts in which they teach. More specifically, the narrowing of curricula choices to a back to basics format and the introduction of lock step, time on task pedagogies operate from the theoretically erroneous as. sumption that all students can learn from the same materials, classroom instructional tech. niques and modes of evaluation. The notion that students come from different histories and embody different experiences, linguistic prac. tices, cultures and talents is strategically ignored within the logic and accountability of management pedagogy theory.
In what follows, I want to argue that one way to rethink and restructure the nature of teacher work is to view teachers as transformative intellectuals. The category of intellectual is helpful in a number of ways. First, it provides a theoretical basis for examining teacher work as a form of intellectual labor, as opposed to defining it in purely instrumental or technical terms. Second, it clarifies the kinds of ideological and practical conditions necessary for teachers to function as intellectuals. Third, it helps to make clear the role teachers play in producing and legitimating various political, economic and social interests through the pedagogies they endorse and utilize.
By viewing teachers as intellectuals, we can illuminate the important idea that all human activity involves some form of thinking. In other words, no activity, regardless of how routinized it might become, can be abstracted from the functioning of the mind in some capacity. This is a crucial issue, because by arguing that the use of the mind is a general part of all human activity we dignify the human capacity for integrating thinking, and practice, and in doing so highlight the core of what it means to view teachers as reflective practitioners. Within this discourse, teachers can be seen not merely as "performers professionally equipped to realize effectively any goals that may be set for them. Rather [they should] be viewed as free men and women with a special dedication to the values of the intellect and the enhancement of the critical powers of the young."10
Viewing teachers as intellectuals also provides a strong theoretical critique of technocratic and instrumental ideologies underlying an educational theory that separates the conceptualization, planning and design of curricula from the processes of implementation and execution. It is important to stress that teachers must take active responsibility for raising serious questions about what they teach, how they are to teach, and what the larger goals are for which they are striving. This means that they must take a responsible role in shaping the purposes and conditions of schooling. Such a task is impossible within a division of labor in which teachers have little influence over the ideological and economic conditions of their work. This point has a normative and political dimension that seems especially relevant for teachers. If we believe that the role of teaching cannot be reduced to merely training in the practical skills, but involves, instead, the education of a class of intellectuals vital to the development of a free society, then the category of intellectual becomes a way of linking the purpose of teacher education, public schooling and inservice training to the very principles necessary for developing a democratic order and society.
I have argued that by viewing teachers as intellectuals those persons concerned with education can begin to rethink and reform the traditions and conditions that have prevented schools and teachers from assuming their full potential as active, reflective scholars and practitioners. It is imperative that I qualify this point and extend it further. I believe that it is important not only to view teachers as intellectuals, but also to contextualize in political and normative terms the concrete social functions that teachers perform. In this way we can be more
specific about the different relations that teachers have both to their work and to the dominant society.
A fundamental starting point for interrogating the social function of teachers as intellectuals is to view schools as economic, cultural and social sites that are inextricably tied to the issues of power and control. This means that schools do more than pass on in an objective fashion a common set of values and knowledge. On the contrary, schools are places that represent forms of knowledge, language practices, social relations and values that are representative of a particular selection and exclusion from the wider culture. As such, schools serve to introduce and legitimate particular forms of social life. Rather than being objective institutions removed from the dynamics of politics anti power, schools actually are contested spheres that embody, and express a struggle over what forms of authority, types of knowledge, forms of moral regulation and versions of the past an d future should be legitimated and transmitted to students. This struggle is most visible in the demands, for example, of right wing religious groups currently trying to institute school prayer move certain books from the school library, and include certain forms of religious teachings in the science curricula. Of course, different demands are made by feminists, ecologists, minorities and other interest groups who believe that the schools should teach women's studies, courses on the environment, or black history. In short, schools are not neutral sites, and teachers cannot assume the posture of being neutral either.
In the broadest sense, teachers as intellectuals have to be seen in terms of the ideological and political interests that structure the nature of the discourse, classroom social relations and values that they legitimate in their teaching
With this perspective in mind, I want to conclude that teachers should become transformative intellectuals if they are to subscribe to a view of pedagogy that believes in educating students to be active, critical citizens.
Central to the category of transformative intellectual is the necessity of making the pedagogical more political and the political more pedagogical. Making the pedagogical more political means inserting schooling directly into the political sphere by arguing that schooling represents both a struggle to define meaning and a struggle over power relations. Within this perspective, critical reflection and action become part of a fundamental social project to help students develop a deep and abiding faith in the struggle to overcome economic, political and social injustices, and to further humanize themselves as part of this struggle. In this case, knowledge and power are inextricably linked to the presupposition that to choose life, to recognize the necessity of improving its democratic and qualitative character for all people, is to understand the preconditions necessary to struggle for it.
Making the political more pedagogical means utilizing forms of pedagogy that embody political interests that are emancipator), in nature; that is, using forms of pedagogy that treat students as critical agents; make knowl Problematic; utilize critical and affirming dialogue; and make the case for struggling for a qualitatively better world for all people. In part, this suggests that transformative intellectuals take seriously the need to give students an active voice in their learning experiences. It also means developing a critical vernacular that is attentive to problems experienced at the level of everyday life, particularly as they are related to pedagogical experiences connected to classroom practice. As such, the pedagogical starting point for such intellectuals is not the isolated student but individuals and groups in their various cultural, class, racial, historical and gender settings, along with the particularity of their diverse problems, hopes and dreams.
Transformative intellectuals need to develop a discourse that unites the language of a critique with the language of possibility, so that social educators recognize that they can make changes. In doing so, they must speak out against economic, political and social injustices both within and outside of schools. At the same time, they must work to create the conditions that give students the opportunity to become citizens who have the knowledge and courage to struggle in order to make despair unconvincing and hope practical. As difficult as this task may seem to social educators, it is a struggle worth waging. To do otherwise is to deny social edu-cators the opportunity to assume the role of transformative intellectuals.
1. K. Patricia Cross, "The Rising Tide of School Reform. Reports,' Phi Delta Kappan 66:3 (November 1984 p. 16
2. For a more detailed critique of the reforms, see my book with Stanley Aronowitz Education Under Siege (South Hadley MA Bergin and Garvey Publishers, 1985 also see the incisive comments an the impositional nature of the various reports, in Charles A. Tesconi, Jr., "Additive Reforms and the Retreat from Purpose Educational Studies 15:1 (Spring 1984), 1 11; Terrence E. Deal, "Searching for the Wizard pp. Quest for Excellence in Education," Issues in Education 2:1 (Summer 1984), pp. 56 57 Svi Shapiro, "Choosing Our Educational Legacy: Disempowerment or Emancipation?" Issues in Education 2:1 (Summer 1984 pp. 1] 22.
3. For an exceptional commentary on the need to educate teachers to be intellectuals, *see John Dewey "The Relation of Theory to Practice," in John Dewey, The Middle Works 1899 1924 edited by Jo Ann Boyd ( Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977 [originally published in 19041. See also, Israel Scheffler "University Scholarship and the Education of Teachers," Teachers College Record 70:1
(1968)
Pp. 1 12; Henry A. Giroux, Ideology Culture and flit, ocess of Schooling (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1981).
4. See for instance, Herbert Kliebard "The Question of Teacher Education," in D. McCarty (ed.) New
Perspectives on Teacher Education (San Francisco: Jossey¬ Bass, 1973).
5. Kenneth M. Zeichner "Alternative Paradigms on Teacher Education," Journal of Teacher Education 34:3 (May June 1963; p. 4.)
6. Dewey, op. cit.
7. Jesse Goodman, "Reflection and Teacher Education: A Case Study and Theoretical Analysis," Interchange 15:3 (1984), 1. 15.
8. Michael Apple, Education and Power (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1982).
9. Patrick Shannon, "Mastery Learning in Reading and the Control of Teachers and Students.'' Language
Arts 61:5 (September 1984), p. 488.
10. Israel Scheffler, op. cit., p. 11
Henry A. Giroux is an Associate Professor of Education at
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. 'Teachers as Transform,
ative Intellectuals,'' by Henry Giroux, Social May
1985 pp. 376 379. copyright 1985 by Social Education
