Education and Society
1. What is the course
about?
2. Why should you do it?
3. Will it make you a better
teacher?
4. What is required of you?
5. How will you be
assessed?
Ronald G. Sultana
Textbook, power points and
past papers are available:
http://www.um.edu.mt/emcer/courses2/b.ed.hons.
What is the course
about?
• Micro-level of classroom
teaching
• Meso-level of institutions
• Macro level: education &
society
The macro-level
•What is education?
•Apprenticeship into life
•Creating forms of life
•How the powerful use
education
Examples of power / education
• Hitler and antisemitism
• Palestinians & Israelis
• Girls can do Anything
• Eco-Schools
• Streaming &
employers
• The veil
Macro-Meso-Micro links
Case study 1: Women‟s issues
• National politics
- Links to global, regional, supranational politics
• Educational Politics: e.g. coeducation
• Institutional Politics: Curriculum,
administration, socialisation
• Classroom Politics
• Policing the body
Macro-Meso-Micro links
Case study 2: Disability issues
• National politics: representation of
disabled
- Links to global, regional, supranational politics
• Educational Politics: e.g. mainstreaming
• Institutional Politics: Curriculum,
administration, socialisation
• Classroom Politics
• Policing the body
Macro-Meso-Micro links
Case study 3: Social class issues
• National politics: representation of
class
- Links to global, regional, supranational politics
• Educational Politics: e.g. access,
costs…
• Institutional Politics: Curriculum,
administration, socialisation
• Classroom Politics
• Policing the body
Why should you do this course?
• The need to understand the
context in which you will work
• Professional issues: beyond
technocratic skills
• The teacher as intellectual and
reflective practitioner
It will make you a better teacher
What is required of you
• Active attendance
• Download and read the course text
• Bring the course reader with you –
passages highlighted
• Open book examination
• Availability for discussion:
ronald.sultana@um.edu.mt
• Power points
Why be critical?
At the heart of it all: human dignity
for all
• What is the legacy of the
19th & 20th century?
• The enlightenment,
modernity and utopia
• The French Revolution
• The Industrial Revolution
What kind of world
have we created?
Arch of social dreaming / nightmares
Being critical is
…hard work
Going
against
the
Going
against
the
Going
against
the
Going
against
the
grain
Going
against
the
grain
Going
against
the
grain
Going
against
the
grain
grain
grain
grain
The prison
of
language
language
language
language
language
language
language
Fighting
the
tyranny
of
common
Fighting
the
tyranny
of
common
Fighting
the
tyranny
of
common
Fighting
the
tyranny
of
common
sense
Fighting
the
tyranny
of
common
sense
Fighting
the
tyranny
of
common
sense
Fighting
the
tyranny
of
common
sense
sense
sense
sense
Being critical has its
consequences
The Frankfurt School
• Social philosophers in Germany
• The rise of anti-semistism
• Trying to understand the rise of
fascism
• Understand the world as it is,
in order to imagine a world
as it could and should be
De-coding this complex world
In whose
interests
does it all
work?
Critical educators
Education is not just
about reading the
word….
…it is about reading
the world
Critical educators
• Paolo Freire
• Lorenzo Milani
School of Barbiana (1969) Letter to a Teacher
http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/LTAT_Final.pdf
• Manwel Dimech
• Gorg Preca
Social formations
1
2
4
5
The human condition:
having a choice to act…
…otherwise
The human condition:
having a choice to act…
…otherwise
Tools for critical thinking
Historical imagination
Anthropological
Against reification
If people have not always
come together the way
they do now
Across time
Across space
Then…
… people have the
option…
…to act otherwise
A conflict or consensual view?
• Society as
caring for all
its members.
• Some are more
equal than
others
Social formations across time
Slave mode of production
Capitalist mode of production
Feudal mode of
production
The realities of class
A set of unequal
relationships to the
„goodies‟ of life
-
• Power /
Influence
• Money
• Health
• Education
• Life-chances
• Status
• Security
• Lifestyle
• Autonomy
• Self-determination
+
Education and social mobility
From ascribed to achieved status:
towards a meritocratic society?
“It‟s what you do… not who you are”
Ability + Effort = success
“Ma, ma mmurx skola…”
“Ma tmurx ghaliex?! Isa Toninu, isa
sabiћ…”
But: is this true?
Origins and destinations
(Halsey, Heath & Ridge, 1980)
Generation 1
Generation 2
Origins and destinations
(Halsey, Heath & Ridge, 1980)
Absolute mobility
Relative mobility
Generation 1
Generation 2
Education as struggle
• Struggle over access
• Struggle over
financing
• Struggle over
structures
• Struggle over
curriculum
• Struggle over language
• Struggle over culture
Struggles over education…Past…
Jew b’xejn….
….jew xejn!
Struggles over education… Present…
Future struggles?
Explaining failure at school:
[1] Deficit theories
Common sense explanations:
< IQ + < effort = < success
• Deficit in individual
• Deficit in environment
• Deficit in family
Hegemonic views among teachers,
parents?
The dubious origins of IQ
Links between social
sciences and
•
•
•
•
•
•
Imperialism/colonialism
Fascism/Nazism
Militarism
Racism (the bell curve)
Capitalism
Repression in communist
regimes
Who defines „potential‟?
Darwinism
Empowering approaches to
ability
• The indeterminate
nature of „intelligence‟
• Cultural vs Biological
approaches to
„intelligence‟: Vygotsky
vs Piaget
Empowering approaches to
ability
• Constructivist
approaches and the
critical psychology
• The influence of
critical educators:
Bowles & Gintis, Willis,
Bourdieu…
• Getting inside the
school
How do we explain school failure for
working class background students?
• The most important variable to explain school
failure:
Socio-economic background
• Who
• Who
• Who
• Who
jobs?
is in lower streams?
is in low achieving schools?
does not go to post-compulsory education?
does not get the high ability (high wage?)
BUT:
• Importance of “School Effects”
• Influence of “significant others”
[see ch.14]
The question is:
Does schooling
Facilitate social class mobility –
hence transform social structure
Or
Does schooling
reproduce social structure
3 key reproduction theories:
• Economic reproduction
Herbert Bowles & Samuel Gintis; Jean Anyon
• Cultural reproduction
Paul Willis, Pierre Bourdieu
• Ideological reproduction
Antonio Gramsci, Michael Apple
Economic reproduction:
Schools and capitalism
school
work
•Inter- and intra-school streaming vs comprehensive systems
•Different diet for the different streams
•Where would we park students if all were successful?
The Correspondence Principle
Ideological reproduction
• The curriculum as a selection
• The curriculum has both formal
and informal components
• What we select is never
innocent
• The selection has real effects
on who feels included, and who
feels excluded
• The kind of knowledge we
value has social class
components
Cultural reproduction
• Culture as a form of life
• Whose form of life prevails in schools?
• Who feels comfortable with the norms,
practices, traditions, pedagogies, ways
of learning?
• Bourdieu‟s central insights and notions:
Habitus
symbolic violence learned helplessness
Reproduction of social position
Inheritance in modern
times
father
son
Educationa
l capital
Economic
capital
Cultural
capital
Inheritance in feudal