What we can learn from Escuela Nueva

Decades ago, John Dewey, America’s foremost education philosopher, asserted that students learned best through experience and that democracy “cannot go forward unless the intelligence of the mass of people is educated to understand the social realities of their own time.” 

I'm not a big educational "models" guy. But it's hard to argue with this one.

Escuela Nueva is an educational model designed in Colombia in the mid 1970’s by Vicky Colbert, Beryl Levinger, and Óscar Mogollón to improve the quality, relevance and effectiveness of the schools in the country. With simple, concrete strategies, Escuela Nueva promotes a classroom environment where students actively learn, participate, and collaborate; and strengthens the relationship between the school and the community. It is a flexible educational model tailored to meet the needs of each individual child, allowing students to complete units and advance to higher grade levels at their own pace.

A 1992 World Bank evaluation of Colombia’s schools concluded that poor youngsters educated this way — learning by doing, rather than being endlessly drilled for national exams — generally outperformed their better-off peers in traditional schools. A 2000 Unesco study found that, next to Cuba, Colombia did the best job in Latin America of educating children in rural areas, where most of the schools operate with this model.

This reminds me of the kind of research that was done in Ralph Tyler's renown "Eight-Year Study" (1933–1941) which compared the academic success rates of students in traditional and progressive alternative schools. In his widely read and used, post-study book, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949), Tyler popularized the lessons from the study and described learning as taking place through the action of the student. "It is what he does that he learns, not what the teacher does."

According to U.C. Berkeley Prof David Kirp, writing in the N.Y. Times:

Escuela Nueva turns the schoolhouse into a laboratory for democracy. Rather than being run as a mini-dictatorship, with the principal as its unquestioned leader, the school operates as a self-governing community, where teachers, parents and students have a real say in how it is run. When teachers unfamiliar with this approach are assigned to these schools, it’s often the students themselves who teach them how to apply the method. “In these schools, citizenship isn’t abstract theory, It’s daily practice.”

Rachel Lotan, a professor emeritus at Stanford, is quoted the Times story:

“Doing well on the high-stakes test scores is what drives the public schools, and administrators fear that giving students more control of their own education will bring down those scores.” Officials, and those who set the policies they follow, would do well to visit Colombia, where Escuela Nueva has much to teach us about how best to educate our children.

The question is, can a model of democratic education take root in a country like this one where testing, sorting and tracking students is the name of the game?

More than 80 years ago, Counts asked, "Dare the school build a new social order?"

“The urgency is real. We are not saying that it is too late to take actions, but the window for action is closing rapidly. The choice is ours, and the clock is ticking.” -- Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Executive Director Kennette Benedict

Back in 1932, George S. Counts asked his colleagues in the Progressive Education Association, "Dare the School Build a New Social Order?" Counts, who was influenced by progressives like John Dewey and Francis Parker, favored the progressive education model of child-centered learning. But he and other social-reconstructionists feared that school curriculum, even in progressive schools, was being sanitized and separated from the real social conditions like the Great Depression and the global crisis caused by the rise of fascism in Europe and the threat of a new world war. He called for a "critical pedagogy" that might produce a new generation of social justice activists, capable of "reconstituting the democratic tradition and of thus working positively toward a new society".

I'm thinking about Counts' challenge to the educators of his time this morning, as I'm reading that the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) has decided to move the minute hand on its symbolic Doomsday Clock 2 minutes closer to disaster. The clock now shows 3 minutes before midnight because the “probability of global catastrophe is very high” as a result of continuing climate change and efforts to modernize nuclear weapons stockpiles. The BAS board includes more than 20 scientists, 17 of whom are Nobel laureates.

It's stunning that the clock should move this far, even after six years of a liberal and self-proclaimed progressive, Democratic Obama administration which pledged to "set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it." Sad to say that the pace of dismantling our massive stockpile of nuclear weapons has slowed nearly to a stand still and the development of new weapons of mass destruction and modernized delivery systems is rapidly moving forward. And now the threat of a new Cold War with Russia is growing stronger.

Global greenhouse gas emission rates are now 50% higher than they were in 1990. Emission rates have risen since 2000 by more than in the previous three decades combined. Investments have continued to pour into fossil fuel infrastructure at a rate that exceeds $1 trillion per year, with additional hundreds of billions of dollars in continued fossil fuel subsidies.

Faced with this global crisis and rising poverty and racial oppression (the new Jim Crow) here at home, the question of the role of teachers and schools is back on the table as is the question posed to progressive educators by Counts more than 80 years ago.

Life of an ed blogger

"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy." -- John Dewey, School & Society

Every day my mailbox is filled with requests from different promoters, asking me to pimp pump their products, their programs, and their private and charter schools. Urban public schools have no publicists.

Looks like fun, doesn't it?

I have no idea why some of these folks think I would want to promote them. But sometimes I do, unintentionally. Case in point, this morning I got this missive from Glenn Gray, who promotes something called the Heritage Academy.

Hi Mike, [they always address me by my first name]
Heritage Academy – a progressive, coeducational school (grades 5-12) located on Hilton Head Island – announces a fall class representing 25 countries and 20 U.S. states. A record 11 different activities are featured this year, including aviation, ballroom dance, crew, equestrian, fast track education, golf, interior design, swimming, modern dance, tennis and volunteering. High res images are available upon request. Thank you for your consideration.

Tuition at Heritage is a modest $15K/year. Modest that is, when compared to Chicago's new elite GEM Academy, which runs from $32-$37K. Let's just say, it's not for everybody.

Usually, I just do a quick run-through of the morning mail and hit the delete button 20 times. Problem solved. But I couldn't help myself on this one. I think it was the word progressive that jumped out on me.

Few public schools would dare call themselves progressive in this, the age of Race To The Top, testing madness, and corporate "reform." They would run the risk of being "reformed" out of existence. Yet this chic private academy on Hilton Head, whose curriculum is loaded with every subject the children of the rich need to learn in order to join the country's ruling class -- did they forget polo and fox hunting? -- pitches itself to its target audience as a "progressive" alternative.

Jean Anyon

It brought to mind research by the late Jean Anyon on the class nature of curriculum. Anyon studied the experiences of children in working class, middle class and wealthy elite schools. In the elite schools, she found, for example:

While strict attention to the lesson at hand is required, the teachers make relatively little attempt to regulate the movement of the children at other times. For example, except for the kindergartners the children in this school do not have to wait for the bell to ring in the morning; they may go to their classroom when they arrive at school. Fifth graders often came early to read, to finish work, or to catch up. After the first two months of school, the fifth-grade teachers did not line the children up to change classes or to go to gym, and so on, but, when the children were ready and quiet, they were told they could go--sometimes without the teachers. -- Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

Peter Orrell, President and CEO of Junior Sports Corporation, owner/operator of the Heritage Academy puts it this way.

“To position students for success at the next level, we promote individual and differentiated attention in each classroom.”

Yes, progressive in form. But missing progressive education's democratic heart. "Progressive" ed, learning through doing, connection with the world of work, for the elite. Race To The Top, testing madness and intellectual rigor mortis for the rest.

Glad to help, Glenn.