A+Place+Called+School+Chapter+10

A Place Called School - Chapter 10 - Beyond the Schools We Have **Summary** This chapter is based around four conditions that will affect schools and must be addressed in order to create a clear conduct of education and schooling according to Goodlad. These conditions include– **Youth culture** (individuals much less shaped by home church and school but system still suited to old lifestyle, earlier development), **Advances in technology** (schools have responded little to technological revolution compared to other institutions, tv’s are the closest thing in society to schools), **Vocational education** (future calls for a better understanding of schools and workplace but specifics for jobs are best taught by employers, general education for all), **A highly educated society** (encourage awareness insight and problem solving abilities provided from education, idea of ecosystem of school in society, need for collaboration and support, “volunteerism”, paideia). Goodlad presents a framework of how to put his ideas into action called The Partnership. This is a model that will generate many projects of ways to improve schools based on the goals to improve quality and effectiveness of existing schools, understand education as community wide, develop new configurations of educational institutions – for example redesigned continuum of schooling. Goodlad proposes a redesigned continuum of schooling. The total expected school duration for students is cut down by two years, 12 total. The students would start school at an earlier age and end at an earlier age. This new system would consist of 3 phases of education- primary (ages 4-7yrs), elementary (ages 8-11) & secondary (ages 12-15) each lasting four years. Organizationally he uses the idea of schools-within-schools so ultimately he is advocating for smaller schools with an emphasis on the relationships having each unit be governed by the same group to teachers. Other highlights of the continuum include- Nongraded units they measure progress in increments of work mastered and not on time spent or in a grade, peer-group teaching and teacher freedom in what to teach are important aspects. Goodlad uses incongruencies and “soft spots” within the present education system to support this new reform.

**Key passages** “This is what we do in “real life”. School should not be made “unreal”. A major problem of schooling is the degree of connectedness it often has with reality beyond school, even while those in it are living out the only lives they know. The resulting incongruity makes much of school meaningless.”(335)

“Many students successfully go through the motions of rote learning, pass the requisite tests, and move on to more of the same in college. What they have had little of, however, are encounters that connect them with the major ideas and ways of knowing that the fields of knowledge represent.” (337)

“Difficult as it is to think in this way (referring to new continuum of schooling)…. after all, the learning we do outside schools-where we spend the bulk of our lives-is not organized by years and grade levels.” (331)

“One school administrator said that it was not unusual for over 50% of the students supposedly in school to be elsewhere on a given day. To address ourselves only to those commonly classified as “incorrigible” is to obscure the possibility that secondary schooling and many of those it is supposed to serve are out of sync.”(324)

“There seems to be an upside down quality in schooling, with those procedures most likely to engage students in learning decreasing at the time their development increasingly is distracting them from school demands and expectations. The result is a disjuncture between what powerfully preoccupies adolescents and what secondary school teachers perceive their job to be.” (359)

“Community education becomes not just schools opening up their facilities and extending their resources, but an ecosystem of institutions and agencies conscious of their responsibility for developing the knowledge, values, skills, and habits of a free people.” (361)

Volunteerism- Adults would volunteer within their area of expertise in society and would be assigned interns, aides, or advisees to serve as helping the education of youth by acting as role models, mentors and supervisors.
 * Important Terminology**

Paideia- Interplay of development of mature, enlightened individuals and maximum cultural development. The community educates.

What are your opinions on Goodlad’s reconstruction of the school continuum? What are strengths and weaknesses of the model? Is it a plausible direction for future reform in education?
 * Discussion Guiding Questions**

What role do you think that the school has to play with vocational training? How much career education should be included in general education? Or should it be left up to the employers to do?

Goodlad refers to television as being the closest thing in society compared to a school do you agree with this claim? And how can schools account for this technology gap that Goodlad refers to?

In this chapter Goodlad touches on many agents of change in education similarly to other great educational minds of the past in mentioning more progressive way to run a school but why have we still yet to see these ideas being the framework for our schools?