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Articles by Deborah Meier on
Is Less Governance Always Better for Students? - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. We agree and yet... Yes, Harry, when defining democracy I start with governance, and yet I agree that without greater social equality, a justice system that promotes justice, and greater citizen agency, the definition is empty.
Our Democracy Is Weak Now, Let's Fight for It in Schools - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. It may be less a disagreement then ... hmm. We're talking about different issues. I'm exploring the basic "mechanics" that allow citizens to govern their government. What other "structural" elements must exist. My definition of structure is pretty broad. For example. democracy requires that its citizens not be afraid to act politically on behalf of their own beliefs.
School Choice That Might Work - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. I'm trying to figure out where it is we agree and disagree, Harry. I've often made clear, I think, that some parochial schools, some private schools, and some home schooling situations are conducted in the true spirit of democracy, mutual respect, and care.
The Importance of Community - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte and David Randall, director of communications for the National Association of Scholars. To read their full exchange, please visit here. Dear Harry and friends, I'm in too much agreement. As one taught from birth to argue it leaves me speechless. It's not often that progressives quote "the Catholic idea of subsidiarity, devolving power to the lowest possible unit." We should.
Charter Trade-Offs - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte and David Randall, director of communications for the National Association of Scholars. To read their full exchange, please visit here. Ah, Harry, you have a way with words. Stealing "public relations" from the business world (with the addition of "hips"). Having had our language so often stolen to sell the latest products in education, it's fun to see it reversed.
Can School Choice Return to Its Progressive Roots? - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte and David Randall, director of communications for the National Association of Scholars. To read their full exchange, please visit here. I need help thinking through the issue of choice in public education. It affects my views about charters, of course, but after all most of the schools I've had a large influence on have been schools of choice.
Keeping Democracy Alive Requires Practice - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte and David Randall, director of communications for the National Association of Scholars. To read their full exchange, please visit here. Actually, I never thought Saul Alinsky considered himself a socialist, nor did "we" (I have thought of myself as a socialist since about the age of 18). I suspect that your claim that Alinsky was for a "strategy of conscious deception to advance a socialist agenda for America" is seriously disputable.
The Risk of Teaching Democracy in Schools Is Worth It - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. It's an interesting argument! And like many good arguments about democracy, it's tricky. In the interest of one set of concerns one risks another set of concerns. "Of, for and by the people" can rarely literally prevail, nor the preconditions inherent in democratic life as well as our Constitution. The question before us is: where and how should we teach democracy.
Educating citizens - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. I've been "on the road" now for 12 days! But it hasn't been wearying because the last seven days have been with my son and daughter-in-law and good friends in Santa Cruz County. It's great to be able to "hang out" with those I love. Today I'm off to the Bay Area visiting with friends and family.
The First Reform - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. I have argued in speech and writing for years that democracy is not "natural." Although it is well within our human capacities it is not our "default" position. To demonstrate this would take longer than this blog/web allows. But I think there are good solid reasons why as a species we retreat to authoritarian solutions so often.
The Constructive Work of Teaching and Learning - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. Yes, democracy is not just voting—deciding who has the power to do what. Yes, it's not just protest. The "this is what democracy looks like" chant at many protests is far from true. Yes, both may stem from a sense of self-agency: "I make difference" and "I make choices." Even if I'm just one vote, just one protester, one member of my class. .
Schools as Foundations of Democracy - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. We get back—in your last letter—to an underlying theme that runs through our discourse! Election vs. citizen action. Actually, Harry, I suspect we'd really both agree that we don't have to choose between them. You can't win in elections if you don't have deep roots and connections with potential voters—especially if your goals are to empower "the people".
The Tough Road Ahead - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. It's hard at the moment to continue the thread of our discussion. But maybe the following is, in its way, in keeping, even if not a response to your last blog. Note also that I'm writing as though none of our readers are happy with the election results (that itself is part of the problem I face--I don't want to get into their heads)! I sit here thinking of what to say.
The Politics of Democracy, After Election Day - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. Maybe memory requires having experience—even briefly, real life experience—or something akin to it. Just maybe. Maybe the stories told by real life people are sometimes absorbed as if they were one's own experience. Good story-telling can do that.
The Truth of the Common School Movement - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Harry Boyte continues his conversation with Deborah Meier. To read their full exchange, please visit here. Is there a "common school movement" of any sort today? No. We're split between basically school reform groups with a focus on teachers who have a shared set of ideas, several national parent groups to protect parental rights, and an assortment of national groups with a somewhat overlapping agenda such as Diane Ravitch's PE, SOS, and more. This could be a strength, and it could be a weakness.
The Politics of Citizen Teachers - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. We've allowed politics to have such a bad name that we forget that practicing smart politics is one of the arts and crafts of a working democracy. None of us can play full roles as citizens, or citizen-teachers, if we insist on being ignorant about these skills.
Communities of Co-Creators - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. Well, the one good thing about being out of service for so long—with my peculiar eye condition—is that I think a lot about what to say. Democracy is one of those topics that can be talked about substantively and operationally for ever, and has been.
How Do We Rebuild Democratic Communities for Education? - Bridging Differences - Education Week
I'm fascinated by how differently we come at this topic which, I think, we are at heart in agreement. But, I'm trying to figure out our differences. As you know I love Public Achievement. It serves a very different purpose than the kind of Community Service projects we did at CPESS and Mission Hill, which were more "just" getting kids out into the world, seeing the world in a different role—as co-workers versus as students.
The Power of Citizens Over Public Education - Bridging Differences - Education Week
Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here. Why do I have ambivalent feelings about the word citizen? I think probably because it has so often been used as a synonym for dutiful rather than powerful. Like you, I know voting is but a small part of democracy. But it's also a critical part because it relates to the power to throw the rascals out without the blood and drama, or revolution.
Summer Break Pondering My Obsession With Schools and Democracy
Today Deborah Meier concludes her dialogue with Joe Nathan. Read their full conversation here. It's been fun, Joe. Our writing back and forth has pushed my thinking. Thanks. I hope we keep trying to figure this out--in many different arenas. We agree on five out of seven of my "dictates" for publicly funded schools and disagree on my more "detailed" description of school governance and your view on choice--as "mandates" anyway. Actually, my seven "dictates" (as the headline read) are hardly that.
7 Dictates for Schools That Accept Public Funding
Today Deborah Meier writes to Joe Nathan on what makes a school "public." Read their full conversation here. The challenge: what makes a school "public" and what, as a public institution, is its bottom line? A school has a public responsibility whenever it accepts public funding, above all when it rests on such public funding — be it local, state or federal.
How Should Schools Help Teach Democracy?
Today Deborah Meier and Joe Nathan discuss how schools can teach students about democracy. Deborah begins and Joe responds. As I've noted many times elsewhere, democracy is hard to define for good reasons. Its definition is, at its best, so deeply contextual and never a fixed, "there, that's it." Furthermore, it's not particularly natural, I'd guess. No more than any other form of governance. It might even be that it's particularly unnatural, though that's hard—if not pointless — for us to decide.
How Can Arts Education Be Promoted More Effectively?
In today's installment, Deborah Meier and Joe Nathan respond to readers who commented on their post earlier this week about the importance of advocating for arts in education. BD Taylor wrote: It wasn't educators who marginalized the arts in schools, but school boards who mainly represented the views and beliefs, contrary to assertions made, of their parent communities.
To Mandate or Not, That's the Question
Today Deborah Meier and Joe Nathan discuss what should and should not be mandated in public education. Deborah begins, and Joe responds. "There oughtta be a law." What we might wish to "mandate" and what we may passionately believe in but wouldn't, even if we could, require of others, is a knotty dilemma. There's the "could" and the "would" to consider. I suspect our lists (see last two weeks!) differ in this respect--at least a bit. Would you mandate projects, for example?
Bring Schools Back to the Community
Democracy presumes both some minimal equality of resources between voters and/or some form of well-organized balance of power that limits such existing inequalities. (To accomplish this, some "democracies" limit voting rights!) Today we have both unprecedented and well-organized inequalities of financial power and virtually no well-resourced and well-organized opposition. It's dangerous. The purpose of corporate governance is profit-making. That can't be the only self-interest we care about.
What Are Appropriate Roles for Companies in Education Reform?
Today Deborah Meier and Joe Nathan discuss the role of corporations in improving schools. Deborah Meier begins, followed by a response from Joe. I always hesitate to turn any help down. One of the best grants we ever got at CPE was from EXXON for a longitudinal study of our grads in the 1980s. I've never been able to get another for this purpose. For me it's about power. Who has power over who? There was a time when corporate giving to schools was truly "charity" in the best sense.
What's the Appropriate Role of Profit-Making Companies in Student/School Assessment?
Today Deborah Meier and Joe Nathan discuss the role of for-profit companies in assessing students. Deborah begins, and Joe responds. "Pearson should pay for state-wide testing process," you write. Of course. How could anyone have signed a contract that didn't require that the product works? Of course, even worse, is the fact that we've bought--for years now--a fraudulent product. Pearson is "just" the latest version. And like Pearson, past versions also come with textbooks and test prep to match.
What's the Future for District Teacher Empowerment?
Today Deborah Meier and Joe Nathan discuss future opportunities for educators to create new options within school districts. Deborah Meier begins. I agree with so many of the comments posted earlier this week! So it's also interesting to ask why so few "hedge fund" guys and their friends got behind the District 4s and the Pilots vs. charters, and next vouchers. No monetary rewards for them in those old schemes?
When Should Teachers Have Opportunities to Create New Schools?
Today Deborah Meier and Joe Nathan continue their discussion about giving educators the ability to create new public schools. Deborah begins, and Joe responds. Thanks for sending me the information about the charter school sponsored by Chapman University. I met with their faculty some years go and discovered we were on the same page. My son, Nick, has done some online courses for them.
What Role Does School Choice Have in a Democracy?
"Is choice, like free speech, at the heart of our definition of democracy?" Yes, in terms of voting for whomever you wish. No, in terms of whether you can stop paying taxes or drive on the right side of the road. Sometimes it makes no "common" sense. Other times choice interferes with another powerful value--like diversity or community. Joe Nathan responds: Yes, having freedom and choices within some limits is one of the central American liberties, not just in voting.
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