Culture, Community and the Curriculum
by
Ray Barnhardt
University of Alaska Fairbanks
This article was originally published
by the Center for Cross Cultural Studies, University of Alaska
Fairbanks, 1981.
Any approach to educational development is a multi-faceted
affair, with many dimensions on which decisions must be made, and
numerous alternatives from which to choose on each dimension. Of
primary importance, however, is that the alternatives selected be
commonly understood and agreed upon, and that they reflect
consistency from one dimension to the next. A common thread
throughout most formal education programs for minority people has
been the relative absence of either of these conditions. Only
rarely are the ends toward which minority programs are directed
made explicit, and when they are, different interpretations exist
so that the means used to attain the ends are often inconsistent
and sometimes conflicting.
The School and the
Curriculum
The four basic dimensions of any educational program are,
1) the goals or function, 2) the content, 3) the structure, and 4)
the methods used. If an approach is to be effective, all four
dimensions must be functionally integrated, and consistent with
the underlying processes through which they interact to form a
whole. That is, each dimension must be mutually reinforcing of
each of the other dimensions if the total educational experience
is to be cumulative and integrative for the student. To achieve
such interrelatedness requires close attention to underlying
processes of education, such as communication, cognition, and
social interaction. We will examine some alternative goals and
content for education as they relate to those processes first, and
then turn to the structure and method through which they may be
attained. In each dimension we will work toward a cross-cultural
approach in the development of educational programs and practices
for cultural minorities.
Schools: For what
purpose?
One of the most difficult, yet most important tasks in the
design of any educational program is to make explicit the goals
toward which the program is directed. When the task is complicated
by such extensive and pervasive educational functions as those of
potential interest to the school, and by the often conflicting and
divergent expectations regarding schools in a minority setting, it
often appears insurmountable. It is necessary, nevertheless, to
attempt such a task, and we shall do so by first examining some of
the goals of education in general, and then looking at the two
most commonly espoused goals for minority education-"cultural
assimilation" and "cultural pluralism". An alternative goal of
"cultural eclecticism" will then be offered as the basis for the
ensuing discussion.
In most instances, school goals are bound to universalistic
intellectual or social functions associated with the dominant
society. The most explicit function to which the schools are
directed is to the inculcation of the particular knowledge and
skills deemed necessary for individual participation in the larger
society. This is sometimes refined to place a more specific
emphasis on the development of the mind, with a primary concern
for factual knowledge and intellectual skills. In other
situations, the emphasis is placed exclusively on the development
of particular occupational or practical skills. Either approach is
obviously narrowly selective from the totality of human
experience, and is inevitably bound to a specific cultural
definition of appropriate knowledge and skills. A less direct, but
often explicit function attributed to the school is that of
developing "citizenship" and the appropriate attitudes and
understandings necessary for participation in a democratic
society. Again, the emphasis is on preparation for the roles and
expectations associated with membership in the larger society.
Some of the least direct and least explicit functions of the
school become apparent when it is viewed in the context of
cultural minority education. The traditional intellectual and
social functions indicated above are then confounded by the
additional and seemingly invidious factors associated with
cultural differences, such as conflicting values, varied learning
styles, diverse behavior patterns, non-conforming social
allegiances, and alternative perceptions of reality. These
factors, when thrust into the amalgam of traditional school
policies and practices, reveal the extent to which the school
serves a concomitant function of inducing acculturative influences
in the domains of values, attitudes, beliefs and social behavior.
In an effort to more directly accommodate these additional
cultural factors, schools involved with minority education have
been called upon to adopt some variant of the goals of cultural
assimilation or cultural pluralism.
Cultural
assimilation:
Though it is rarely made explicit, and is often unintended, one
of the most distinguishing features of schools in cultural
minority settings is their overwhelming press toward assimilation
into mainstream cultural patterns. Whether intentional or not, the
basic thrust of schooling is toward the breaking down of
particularistic orientations and developing in their place, a
universalistic orientation. Even where accommodations are made to
include ethnic studies or bilingual education in the curriculum
content, the structure, method, and processes through which the
content is organized and transmitted are usually reflective of
mainstream patterns and exert a dominant influence on the student
(cf., Bayne, 1969). Schools are agents of the dominant society and
as such, they reflect the underlying cultural patterns of that
society. As long as they reflect the structure and social
organization of the dominant society, they can be expected to
perpetuate its values, attitudes, and behavior patterns within an
implicit framework of assimilation.
What then, does a school goal of assimilation have to offer the
cultural minority, and what are some of its limitations? On the
surface, a cultural assimilation orientation would seem to offer
the minority student an opportunity to gain access to the skills
and resources necessary to participate in the larger society on
equal terms with others. This expectation often goes unfulfilled,
however, because of the school's inability to adequately respond
to the differences in learning styles associated with differences
in thought, communication and social interaction on the part of
the minority student. Consequently, the requisite skills are not
learned, status differentials are reinforced, and access to
societal resources is further impeded, thus thwarting the minority
students' aspirations. The school cannot contribute effectively to
the assimilation process without careful attention to the unique
cultural conditions out of which the minority student emerges.
If assimilation is desired and is to be achieved in full by a
cultural minority, it must be supported by social, political and
economic forces beyond those available through the school. Though
the school may serve a useful, and even necessary function in the
assimilation process, it cannot accomplish the task alone (cf.,
St. Lawrence and Singleton, 1976). If cultural assimilation is not
desired, alternative goals must be adequately articulated so as to
be able to assess the extent to which schools may or may not be
able to contribute to their attainment. One such alternative goal
that has received widespread attention is that of cultural
pluralism.
Cultural
Pluralism:
Whereas assimilation stresses the ways of the dominant society,
cultural pluralism is intended to stress the ways of the minority
society. Cultural pluralism is advocated as an educational goal by
those who seek a pluralistic, multi-cultural society in which each
ethnic, racial or religious group contributes to the larger
society within the context of its own unique cultural traditions
(cf., Banks, 1976). The school's task, therefore, is to recognize
the minority culture and to assist the student to function more
effectively within that culture. Heavy emphasis is placed on
ethnic studies and minority language programs, but, as pointed out
earlier, these are usually offered within the traditional
structural framework of the school and have only tangential effect
in terms of minority development goals. The primary beneficial
effects are in the symbolic implications of the formal recognition
of the minority group's existence by the school, and in the access
to broader societal resources and experience by the minority group
members who are employed to carry them out. Such access can result
in positive influences of minority groups on the functioning of
the school.
As presently espoused, however, with an emphasis on cultural
autonomy and homogeneity, cultural pluralism falls short of being
a realistic goal toward which the schools may direct their
efforts. In addition to participating in various was in the
cultural traditions of their own society, most (if not all),
minority group members also participate in varying degrees in the
cultural traditions of the larger society. To maintain true
cultural pluralism, a structural separation of cultural groups
must exist (Gordon, 1964), and this is not the case in American
society, with the school being but one example of structural
interaction. Different cultural groups interact with each other in
various ways for various purposes, resulting in diffuse
acculturative influences and constant adaptation, within the
context of a national social order. Under such conditions, the
goals of education must necessarily extend beyond minority group
boundaries, if the student is to be prepared for the larger social
reality s/he will face as an adult.
Even if cultural pluralism were to be
viewed as a realistic goal (and it may be, under certain
conditions of oppression), we would still have the problem of
using an institutional artifact of one society (i.e., the school)
to promote the cultural traditions of another. To change the
subject-matter (content) without a concomitant change in the
structure, method and processes through which that content is
conveyed, may in the end, only strengthen rather than weaken the
influences of the larger society. To achieve educational
independence does not necessarily lead to cultural independence,
if the educational experiences remain within the structural
framework of the dominant culture.
It would appear then, that neither
extreme of complete cultural assimilation or separation is
appropriate or adequate as an educational goal, nor are either
realistically attainable through the traditional framework of the
school. We must, therefore, seek an alternative goal that rests on
the middle ground between assimilation and pluralism, and then
devise a means by which such a goal might be achieved.
Cultural
eclecticism:
Since there are features of both the assimilationist and
pluralist perspectives which seem desirable in developing
educational programs for minorities, we will devise an eclectic
approach, which allows for minority selection and adaptation of
those features which they deem most desirable, and attempts to
overcome the previously stated limitations. The goal of this
approach will be referred to, therefore, as "cultural
eclecticism." This is not to imply that the school is to present a
hodgepodge of cultural practices from which students choose at
whim, but rather that the school will assist the student in
understanding the nature of the diverse experiences which are a
natural part of his/her existence, and thus contribute to the
development of an integrated cultural perspective suitable to the
student's needs and circumstances.
In developing an eclectic approach, we are assuming that each
minority group has unique characteristics that distinguish it from
other groups, and that all groups share characteristics common to
the larger society. We are also assuming that variations exist
within and between groups, in orientation toward minority vs.
dominant cultural characteristics. Some individuals and some
groups wish to stress the minority culture, while others are
oriented toward the dominant culture, with still others desiring
the "best of both worlds." Our concern then is with the
development of an educational approach that respects this vast
diversity, while introducing everyone to the range of options
available, so that they themselves are able to exercise some
degree of choice in their individual or group life style and
goals. Such an approach must recognize the multifaceted and
dynamic nature of a large, complex, open, continually evolving
society, and must allow for the varied cultural expressions of
ethnic, religious and political beliefs and practices within the
broader framework of that society. It is through such variation
and diversity that the vitality of the society at large is
maintained, and our understanding of the range of human potential
and capabilities is deepened. We are building, therefore, on the
notion of "multiculturalism as the normal human experience"
(Goodenough, 1976) and are attempting to make evident and
accommodate to a condition that already exists, but is largely
ignored.
Thus, we present a goal of "cultural eclecticism" for minority
education, in which features of both the assimilationist and
pluralist ideologies are incorporated with the emphasis on an
evolutionary form of cultural diversity to be attained through the
informed choices and actions of individuals well grounded in the
dynamics of human and cultural interaction processes. Eclecticism
implies an open-ended process (rather than a dead-ended condition)
whereby individuals or groups can adapt and define the functions
of the school in response to their changing needs, assuming that
they understand those functions and are in a position to influence
school programs sufficiently to make them fully compatible with
their needs. How then, might the school be made flexible enough,
in structure and method, as well as content, to accommodate such
potentially diverse demands?
To respond to that question, we will build upon the
perspectives outlined above, seeking ways to restructure the
social organization of the school so as to foster a closer linkage
between socialization and formal education processes. To
accomplish this, we will work toward an experiential,
community-based approach to learning, in which what is learned
derives its meaning from the context in which it is learned. We
will begin with an examination of instructional content, since the
structure and method we develop should be built upon and
consistent with what it is we are trying to teach. The content
should, in turn, reflect the full range of processual and
situational features necessary to achieve the goal of cultural
eclecticism. With such a goal in mind, we will turn now to the
development of a curriculum framework for minority education.
Curriculum:
Process and Content
Curriculum, in its conventional usage, refers to the "scope and
sequence" of the subject-matter conveyed in a school. Curriculum
development, therefore, generally focuses on the selection and
organization of specific knowledge and skills to fit particular
developmental needs of the student and the unique operational
structure of the school. Curriculum development usually does not
explicitly address the social context in which learning takes
place, nor does it consider the underlying cultural processes by
which the content is acquired and utilized. These considerations
are usually implicit to the cultural framework from which the
curriculum is derived, with the school considered a "given" in
that framework.
As the previous discussion has indicated, however, content,
context and process are all intertwined, so that any one dimension
can be affected by cultural variables and thus affect the outcome
of the educational process. In the context of this discussion,
curriculum development will, therefore, encompass all discernible
dimensions that enter into the determination and implementation of
the directed learning experiences by the school. From this
perspective, the scope and sequence of the curriculum will be
extended to include the interaction between content, process and
context, and thus go beyond the usual culture-bound determinations
that are associated with an emphasis on content alone. The
approach developed here will proceed from an assumption of the
unique social and cultural conditions of the child as a "given,"
rather than the universality of a particular body of knowledge or
a particular mode of learning. We will begin the discussion on the
latter assumptions, however, with a look at the subject-oriented
approach currently reflected in school curriculum, and then move
toward a more cross-culturally applicable alternative.
The
subject-oriented curriculum:
The approach to curriculum design currently reflected in the
schools is drawn from the classical Western tradition of the
categories of knowledge. In their most general form, these
categories are represented by the major academic disciplines of
the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics,
languages, and aesthetics. In their more specific form, they are
represented by the list of typical subjects taught in the schools
today. At the elementary level, this includes subjects such as the
language arts (reading, writing, spelling), arithmetic, science,
social studies, and art. At the secondary level, the categories
become more specialized with subjects such as history, literature,
algebra, biology, drama, and French. If a secondary program
includes a vocational emphasis, the curriculum may extend beyond
the knowledge categories to include a variety of occupational
skill-oriented subjects, under general headings such as industrial
arts, distributive education (business), home economics, or
agriculture.
In all of these subjects, the emphasis is on transmitting a
predetermined body of knowledge or a particular set of skills from
those who possess such knowledge or skills to those who do not.
Thus, to a large extent in a subject-oriented curriculum, the
learning process becomes subordinate to, or is determined by the
nature of the content. Such an approach to curriculum presents at
least two sets of problems in minority education, one in regard to
content, and another in regard to process.
The content problems derive from the presumption that the
classical Western categories of knowledge are universally
applicable and can be appropriately adapted to any learning
situation. In an examination of the academic disciplines as a
basis for curriculum planning, Lawton (1975: 72) identifies four
different justifications for their use:
1) Because reality is like that. The disciplines are
presumed to be close approximations of how the "real world" is
organized.
2) Because different sorts of questions are being asked. The
various disciplines use different approaches to gain
alternative perspectives on the world.
3) Because children develop in that way. The disciplines
reflect the processes by which children classify experience.
4) Because disciplines promote more economical learning. The
disciplines provide a structure for organizing and disciplining
thought, and thus, simplify understanding.
Such justifications for the disciplines may be considered
adequate if viewed within the context of a culturally uniform and
stable Westernized society. They do not, however, take into
account the confounding variables created when the disciplines are
confronted by cultural perspectives divergent from those reflected
in the Western categories. The categories used to analyze and
organize reality from an academic perspective often have little
relation to the categories required to carry out the functions of
everyday life and, therefore, often appear irrelevant or
artificial outside the academic context. If the categories of
learning employed by the school cannot be tied to the experiences
of the student, they will not stimulate much interest or
understanding.
Another problem with the subject-matter approach to curriculum
content has to do with the emphasis on static, discrete knowledge
and skills in a rapidly changing and expanding social and cultural
environment. Although the subject areas of the curriculum are
occasionally updated (often in a piecemeal fashion, however) to
account for new understandings and changing societal conditions
(e.g., "new math," computer programming, or "modern art"), much of
what is taught remains rooted in out-moded knowledge and obsolete
skills. An emphasis on knowledge and skills will inevitably
reflect a lag between what is known and what is taught, and thus
provide little preparation for the changing conditions of the
future, and may even necessitate unlearning as new conditions are
encountered.
In addition, the subject approach separates knowledge into
discrete categories which are dealt with independently of one
another, disregarding the overlap and inter-connectedness between
subjects. The student who is not acquainted with the cultural
patterns that would normally serve to integrate academic subjects
with one another and with reality, will find their content
disjointed, unpredictable, and thus of little value. The task of
transforming academic subjects into a meaningful and coherent
educational experience is difficult enough with Anglo students who
are presumably already familiar with the requisite underlying
cultural patterns of organization and use. To do so with minority
students for whom such "equivalence structures' may not be
available requires more resources than are available to the
teacher or the school. Modifications in content or teaching method
to make the subjects more palatable or to "fit the student's
abilities and interests," are of minimal value without situational
and processual changes as well.
This brings us to the process problem associated with the
subject-oriented curriculum. This problem derives from what Freire
(1971) has critically labeled the "banking concept" of traditional
schooling, in which "knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who
consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to
know nothing" (p. 58). Though Freire presents his case in the
framework of cultural oppression, his analysis of the attitudes
and practices that accompany a traditional educational approach is
not limited to such conditions. He lists the following as
characteristics of the banking concept of education (p. 59):
a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
b) the teacher knows everything and the students know
nothing;
c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
d) the teacher talks and the students listen-meekly;
e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the
students comply;
g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of
acting through the action of the teacher,
h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students
(who were not consulted) adapt to it;
i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his
own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the
freedom of the students;
j) the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while
the pupils are mere objects.
Though this may state the condition in the extreme, it
illustrates how the academic world of knowledge and learning can
become disassociated from the experiential realities outside the
school, and potentially interfere with the student's own processes
of inquiry. When viewed in a minority context, the implicit
patterns of interaction and cultural assumptions that are
reflected in the banking concept (as an expression of the
subject-matter approach), are clearly stacked against the student.
The teacher's authority is predominant and the student's role is
that of passive recipient.
The problem lies not with the teacher or the student, but with
the structural framework within which the teacher and student
interact. The educational process leaves little room for
accommodating to the unique cultural and situational needs of the
minority student (cf., Chance, 1973). Even when the curriculum
content is opened up to include subject matter electives such as
"ethnic studies" or "bilingual education," the content is still
cast in the structural and processual framework of prevailing
educational ideology, with only limited opportunities for
alternative categories of reality and patterns of interaction to
be included. Community patterns and categories are modified to fit
the framework of the school, rather than the school modifying its
patterns and categories to fit the framework of the community. In
effect, all responsibility for establishing equivalence structures
is relegated to the student.
The subject-oriented curriculum appears to be inadequate,
therefore, in both content and process of instruction, for the
educational needs and circumstances of cultural minority students.
The content is often divorced from the experiential and
situational framework of the student, and the resultant process is
usually culturally biased. Such an approach to curriculum design
obviously cannot contribute much to the goal of cultural
eclecticism. If we are to overcome these limitations, we must seek
an alternative form of curriculum content that is applicable to a
wider range of cultural conditions and allows for greater
flexibility in the processes of instruction.
A
process-oriented curriculum:
One approach to the alleviation of some of the problems of a
subject-oriented curriculum in minority education becomes evident
when we rephrase the core curriculum development issue of "What
should the schools teach?" to "How do the students learn?" The
emphasis is immediately shifted from content to process, and from
the school to the student. Such a shift does not negate the need
for content, but recasts it as a means, rather than an end, and
it establishes the student's need to learn as the
determinant of the instructional process. We must, therefore,
anticipate the varied and changing needs of the student, and
provide a curriculum that can accommodate to those needs. If
students are to be prepared to cope with new and changing
conditions, they must be exposed to more than current factual
knowledge and occupational skills. They must be familiar with the
generalized processes by which such knowledge and skills are
acquired and utilized under new and unforeseen conditions. They
must learn, for example, how to think, communicate, organize,
interact, make decisions, solve problems, and assign priorities,
but most of all, they must learn how to learn.
A curriculum design built around processes such as these can,
in addition to better preparing a student to encounter the
unknown, accommodate a wider range of patterns by which an
understanding of present and future conditions may be acquired and
utilized. An open-ended, process-oriented curriculum is
potentially less culture-bound, and thus may be more readily
adapted to alternative settings without intruding on their
cultural and situational variability. If appropriately conceived,
process skills can be taught by building on those patterns
indigenous of the background of the student, and then extending
the processes to include the patterns of the wider community. To
the extent that a minority student is able to employ such process
skills in his/her daily encounters within his/her own and the
larger society, s/he will be better able to blend those encounters
into a lifestyle and world view that will contribute to the goal
of cultural eclecticism.
Obviously, this can happen only under conditions in which the
social, cultural and institutional milieus are able to nurture the
development and exercising of such skills-conditions which are not
easily attainable in the society at large, let alone in minority
communities. As a step in that direction, however, the schools can
formulate a curriculum that has as its purpose the development of
process-oriented persons who possess the intellectual and social
skills indicated above, and consequently, "are able to handle
themselves and the situations of which they are a part with
adequacy and ease" (Berman, 1968: 10). Just as the persons who
make up contemporary society must possess a degree of flexibility,
adaptability, creativity, and tolerance to accommodate to rapidly
changing conditions, so must the curriculum reflect such
characteristics if it is to effectively contribute to the
educational development of those persons. Processes, with their
open-endedness and capacity for self-renewal, can provide the
basis for such a curriculum design.
Process, in its general sense, may be defined as "a function of
change in the relationships among variables" (Kimball 1976: 269).
More specifically, when applied within the domain of human
influence, process refers to the use of particular rules, methods,
procedures, actions, or operations to reorganize events,
conditions, or energies toward some end. Within the context of
education, "process" may be further restricted to refer to "the
cluster of diverse procedures that surround the acquisition and
utilization of knowledge" (Parker and Rubin, 1966: 1). Since our
interests here are not in the full range of natural or man-made
processes encompassed by the first two definitions, we will settle
on the latter definition, but include in our discussion the social
as well as intellectual processes associated with teaching and
learning. In that context, we may consider processes at two
levels-in terms of process as content, and in terms of the
processes of instruction.
At the first level, we are concerned with the content of
education. If process skills are to become the "end" and the
content is to serve as a means to that end, then the content
itself should be organized around processes. In a process-oriented
curriculum, therefore, processes should be reflected in the
content, so that what is taught is consistent with the goal toward
which the teaching is directed. One way by which this may be
accomplished is to replace the traditional list of academic
subjects with a list of appropriate general processes and devise
an educational program aimed at developing an understanding of
those processes. Such a process-oriented curriculum could overcome
many of the limitations of the traditional subject-oriented
approach. An outline of the content of such a curriculum is
offered by Berman (1968), who
identifies the following process skills as the minimum
essential ingredients: perceiving, communicating, loving,
decision-making, knowing, organizing, creating, and valuing. In
her model, these skills would serve as the core around which the
educational program would be organized. She presents several
alternative organizing schemes, some that emphasize processes
alone, and others that blend processes with the traditional
subjects.
Another effort to employ process as content in school learning
is that of Parker and Rubin (1966), who summarize the tasks to
which process-oriented curriculum developers must address
themselves as follows:
1) A retooling of subject matter to illuminate base
structure, and to insure that knowledge which generates
knowledge takes priority over knowledge which does not.
2) An examination of the working methods of the intellectual
practitioner, the biologist, the historian, the political
scientist, for the significant processes of their craft, and
the use of these processes in our classroom instruction.
3) The utilization of the evidence gathered from a
penetrating study of people doing things, as they go about the
business of life, in reordering the curriculum.
4) A deliberate effort to school the child in the conditions
for cross-application of the processes he has mastered-the ways
and means of putting them to good use elsewhere (p. 48).
They too, offer several models for incorporating processes into
the standard curriculum, with a particular focus on the
reformulation of subject-matter to emphasize the underlying
structure, rather than the surface features. They seek to use
subject content to acquaint students with the processes by which
knowledge is formulated and put to use. Their concern, therefore,
is with inquiry processes, such as analysis, inference,
classification, synthesis, integration, and evaluation. They
caution, however, that extensive study is necessary before we can
determine which processes may be appropriately incorporated in the
curriculum. "What seems most clear is the pressing need to
research the kinds of processes inherent in different subject
matter and to determine how and where they are most useful to the
purpose of the school" (p. 51). The tendency to limit
process education to the intellectual domain (cf., Cole, 1972) is
one of the drawbacks that needs to be overcome if such an approach
is to address the broader communication and social interaction
processes referred to earlier.
Both of the approaches to a process-oriented curriculum
described above go a long way in reorganizing the curriculum
content to shift its emphasis into a process framework which is
more readily accommodating to the learning needs of minority
students. Neither approach, however, goes far enough in addressing
the second-level question of "How are these process skills to be
learned?". To change the content of the curriculum to include
processes is not adequate if the structural framework in which
those processes are to be learned is not itself changed to reflect
the process emphasis. If students continue to sit in a typical
classroom setting, under the authority of a teacher, and proceed
to learn only about processes, in the same manner in which they
learn about history or science, they will not make much progress
over the traditional subject-oriented curriculum. Parker and Rubin
point out the need for an alternative teaching approach when they
state that "the requirements posed by a process-based curriculum
deal primarily with the identification of worthwhile processes to
which students should be exposed, the design of instructional
strategies that make effective use of the processes, and the
realignment of subject matter so that it complements the
instructional strategies" (p. 44). Berman also acknowledges the
need for a revised approach to teaching in her statement of the
conditions necessary to acquire process skills. She lists those
conditions as:
1) the opportunity to experience the use of the skill
in a wide variety of contexts and,
2) the chance to verbalize the meaning of the skill so an
interplay can exist between the logical and the intuitive (p.
10).
The experiential emphasis implied by Berman coincides with the
need to bring schooling in closer alignment with community
socialization processes. What we need then is a way to link the
content of a process-oriented curriculum to the experiential and
situational framework of everyday life, so that what is learned
and how it is learned can be more effectively merged into a
meaningful whole. We also need a flexible and adaptive curriculum
design that will accommodate the diverse needs of minority
students, and that can be incorporated into a school program in
various ways and to various degrees, since the existing curriculum
is not likely to be wholly transformed to accommodate a totally
different approach. As a means of synthesizing the promising
aspects of the approaches described above into a coherent
framework for minority education, we will focus now on the
development of a project-centered curriculum design.
The
project-centered approach:
We now have two frameworks within which to establish curriculum
content categories and organize learning activities-the
subject-oriented curriculum built around the academic disciplines,
and the process-oriented curriculum built around the procedures
associated with the acquisition and utilization of knowledge,
though the latter needs to be expanded to include social processes
as well. The subject-oriented approach appears to be least
accommodating to the immediate needs of minority students, but it
has the force of tradition behind it and serves functions
compatible with the needs of the society at large, and, therefore,
cannot be disregarded. The process-oriented approach, on the other
hand, has greater potential for the adaptation of curriculum
content to fit varied cultural settings, but does not adequately
move that content into an everyday experiential framework where it
can be tested against reality and put to use.
As a means of integrating the useful features of the subject
and process orientations outlined above and putting them into a
functional experiential framework for minority students, we will
explore a project-centered approach to curriculum design and
instruction. In pursuing such an approach, we are seeking to
establish a framework that has maximum flexibility, so that it can
be used at all levels, in varying situations, and to any degree
considered desirable or appropriate by the school and/or
community.
The term project, as used here, refers to a planned task or
problem undertaken by one or more persons for the purpose of
achieving some goal. A more specific definition is provided by
Harrison and Hopkins (1967: 455) in reference to a cross-cultural
training program, where "project" is used to refer to a
process-oriented activity requiring a learner to:
1) Obtain information from the social environment
(communication);
2) Formulate and test hypotheses about forces and processes
present in the environment (diagnosis);
3) Select and describe some part of the situation which is
to be changed or altered (problem definition);
4) Plan action to solve the problem (commitment,
risk-taking);
5) Carry out the action, enlisting the help and cooperation
of others (influencing and organizing);
6) Verbalize attitudes, perceptions and tentative learnings
from the experience (cognition and generalization).
Though Harrison's and Hopkins' description focuses primarily on
problem-solving activities, the listing of processes (in
parenthesis) associated with each step of the activity illustrates
how effectively content, process and experience can be integrated
in a project approach. The content is not considered in an
isolated context, but is assessed in terms of its functional
contribution as a means to the solution of the task at hand.
Content and process cannot be dichotomized in a project approach,
because they are implicit to one another and to the approach
itself. Likewise, to engage in a project implies engaging in some
form of experiential activity, so that all the requisite
characteristics for a productive learning experience are merged in
the project approach. The task, then is to determine how such an
approach can be incorporated into educational programs,
particularly in a cultural minority setting.
A primary virtue of the project-centered approach is its nearly
unlimited flexibility. A project can take almost any form: it can
be a lesson plan, a unit, or a year-long effort; it can take place
inside or outside the school; it can involve one student, a class,
or the whole school; and it can be incorporated in nearly any
subject or learning activity. Examples of some common educational
practices that reflect aspects of the project approach are field
trips, work/travel/study programs, internships, practicums, and
apprenticeship programs. Although these are not often organized as
formal projects, they all engender some sort of loosely defined
experience-based learning through active involvement in a flexibly
structured activity. The students, therefore, have a great deal of
flexibility in defining the nature of their participation and
pursuing their own avenues of interest. Most of the examples
listed, however, are usually employed outside of, or incidental to
the formal educational framework of the school and, thus, do not
adequately utilize the full educational potential of a
project-centered approach.
If a project-centered approach is to be effectively utilized to
carry out a substantial part of the educational responsibilities
vested in the school, then the projects themselves will have to be
deliberately and carefully planned with particular learning tasks
in mind, blending the academic functions of the school with the
cultural patterns of the community. Projects will have to be
developed that incorporate and blend, implicitly or explicitly,
the subject and process skills determined appropriate and
necessary for the students involved. A project such as a school
store, for example, can combine subject skills in math, business
and language, with process skills such as organizing, planning,
decision-making and interacting. A class project conducting a
survey of energy consumption in the community can incorporate
elements of science, math, and social studies, along with
processes of problem-solving, communicating, analysis and
evaluation. Any combination of knowledge, skills or processes may
be represented in a particular project. The important thing,
however, is not which of these specific ingredients are involved,
but whether or not the experience gained from involvement in the
project is contributory to the educational needs of the individual
student, the local community, and the society at large.
One of the best (and only) examples of the use of a
project-centered approach for a total education program is
provided by Helser (1934), in his description of what he calls a
"meaningful experience curriculum," as developed for the rural
Bura people in northeastern Nigeria. Though the specific content
of Helser's curriculum is not always transferable to a
contemporary minority setting in America, it does provide a useful
illustration of how a project approach may be applied to a
specific set of conditions and problems. The children in Helser's
program spent about half their time on school projects and the
other half on home and community activities in which these
projects "take on flesh and blood" (p. 23). His primary purpose
was to build an experience-based educational program around the
conditions in which the children lived, utilizing local as well as
outside resources, to help them become contributing members of
their community, as well as of the national society. He sought to
foster "appreciation of various situations and wholesome attitudes
toward situations, along with controls and specific skills" (p.
35).
To accomplish this he built a curriculum, with the help of
community members, around four general areas (home and social
life, health, agriculture and livestock, and crafts), each of
which served to generate a series of "problems". Each problem was
presented to the students as a task for inquiry in school, as well
as a task toward which they addressed their energies outside of
the school. Thus, the schooling process was closely linked with
local patterns of interaction, communication, and socialization.
Some examples of problems addressed in Helser's curriculum are as
follows:
1) What difference does it make where a compound is
built?
2) Why do crowds of people go to market?
3) How can we be strong?
4) Where can we have our farms?
5) What can we make from the skins of animals?
The extent to which this curriculum linked school life with
home life is illustrated by the list of "objectives" Helser
associated with the problem of, "How much corn ought each family
represented in the class have in order to have enough to last
throughout the year?" (p. 217).
a) To create interest in the vital question of an
adequate food supply.
b) To learn to calculate the approximate number of granaries
and the approximate number of baskets of corn in each compound
in the community.
c) To learn to take more interest in the work of the
homefolks.
d) To learn to calculate the number of baskets of corn per
person in each compound.
e) To see what a shortage of corn means.
f) To discover how much corn the average family should have.
g) To find out the number of granaries required to hold the
family's supply of corn.
h) To determine the most desirable size of granary.
i) To see the relation between the piles of pebbles and the
numbers on the blackboard.
j) To appreciate the desirability of being able to calculate
in the sand or on the blackboard or on paper.
k) To get the thrill of helping to make a community chart.
l) To do a valuable piece of work for each compound in the
community.
This single project brought together a wide variety of subject
matter and process skills and focused them on a real-life issue in
that community. The learning that took place was for the purpose
of solving the problem, not to make a good grade or to please the
teacher. The project incorporated valuable learning experiences
with a useful social function, thus helping students learn new
skills while addressing a problem in a way that fit their
particular cultural and situational needs.
Helser's summary of the "curriculum principles" upon which a
project approach should be built reflects many of the points to
which this article has been addressed and therefore, is included
here in its original form (p. 304-305).
1) Educational aims should arise out of a study of the
life needs of the child and his environment. All that makes
life richer and more abundant which other agencies are not
supplying should be the responsibility of the school.
2)Educational aims should include the ideals, attitudes,
dispositions and appreciations to be striven for, as well as
those for knowledge, habits and skills. The analysis of these
aims should be continued until they are reduced to units small
enough to be specifically worked for in the activities
requiring them.
3)Educational aims should cover every phase of essential
life experience and make possible healthy living and
surroundings; helpful home membership; wider social interaction
and sharing; an understanding of the privileges and the
responsibilities of citizenship; appreciation of the world's
practical and intelligent use of its products; such use of
leisure time that it truly recreates and invigorates; such
ethical and religious ideals as will develop socially valuable
character and service, and such command of fundamental
processes and techniques as will enable the individual to
successfully meet and solve difficult problems and activities.
4) Educational aims should include not merely the adjusting
of the child to his environment, but the development of such
attitudes and abilities as will enable the child to adjust the
environment to meet his higher ideals, wants and appreciations.
5) True simplification of the curriculum involves a
conception of education as growth and life. The school should
be thought of as a place where pupils may receive stimulating
guidance and help in carrying out their valuable environmental
activities, so that they may not only successfully complete
them, but profit by all the moral, social and accessory
interests which arrive.
6) Changed ways of behaving (conduct) should be the test for
learning, rather than the oral command of subject matter. If
this is to result, the emphasis in teaching must be upon the
actual living through a valuable experience, rather than the
mere reading about it.
7) The school environment and procedure should be such as to
emphasize the purposing of worthwhile activities, the
developing of them on the child's level of interest, and his
need for them here and now, rather than as a preparation for
the vague future.
8) Subject matter should be thought of as the vital
experience necessary for the child's fullest enjoyment and
understanding of life. It should be used to supplement the
child's own experience, the old and the new being organized
into the necessary new way of behaving. Such supplementary
experience should come from the local inheritance and from
world culture. The test of its value to the child is the extent
to which he can use it in furthering his activities and in
securing more satisfying and effective
9) The curriculum for the first four years of school life
should be general, in the sense of providing a common equipment
for life and citizenship for all pupils, with the fullest use
of the local environment as a starting point and as a source of
interests and materials in furthering the educative process.
Helser's detailed description of a project-centered approach to
education points out that it is not a new approach, but it is one
that is particularly well suited and adaptable to cross-cultural
situations, because of the experiential linkage it can provide
between school learning and cultural practices. While his is but
one example of how it might be employed, it indicates the
potential of a comprehensive project orientation where a large
part of the program is built around projects, rather than a
limited number of projects being built into some component of a
conventional program. A project-centered approach does not
preclude the necessity for more formalized forms of learning
activities at various stages, but the attention is shifted from
the use of projects as a supportive activity for academic
learning, to academic learning as a supportive activity for
projects.
To the extent that a program is project-centered and
process-oriented, it has the potential to accommodate learning to
situational and cultural differences and to prepare students to
cope with future life experiences. It is through the flexible use
of projects as a means for structuring process-oriented learning
experiences linking school and community, that schools can assist
minority (and majority) students and communities in achieving the
self-determining goal of cultural eclecticism.
While the focus of this section has been primarily on goals and
content issues, the more critical features of a project-centered
approach are reflected in the actual social organization of the
educational setting (structure), and the experiential processes by
which learning is achieved (method)-topics which will be addressed
in greater detail in the next section. As indicated earlier, the
goals and content of an educational approach must be made explicit
before the appropriate structure and method can be developed.
Having established "cultural eclecticism" as the goal, "processes"
as the content, and "projects" as the means, we can now pursue the
situational and cultural implications of alternative approaches to
structure and method, which together make up the instructional
process.
The Community and
the Classroom
In seeking to develop an approach to education that has
the potential for application to varied cultural and situational
conditions, we must go beyond the simple revision of curriculum
content or classroom teaching practices. We must take into account
the interactional setting itself, and find ways to restructure the
social organization of that setting to allow the participants to
pattern their interaction to fit the goals they are attempting to
achieve. As with thc content, we need a structure that is flexible
and adaptable enough to accommodate a wide range of cognitive,
communicative, and interactional patterns, while maintaining some
degree of order and continuity in terms of overall direction and
effort. We will, therefore, examine the suitability of formal
education as a vehicle for addressing structural and
methodological issues in minority education.
Teaching and
context: The situational variable
In the development of a social structure for an educational
program, we must take into account the contextual features of the
settings in which learning is to take place, because context is a
major influence in the shaping of any learning process. Of
particular concern are the varied cultural and situational
patterns reflected in the learning experiences associated with
school vs. community settings. Is one type of setting more
appropriate than another for particular kinds of learning
experiences? The features of formal vs. informal education
indicate that the social structure of the school is best equipped
to support academic, subject-oriented learning, whereas the
natural community setting is most appropriate for
experience-based, process-oriented learning. Though schools may
engage students in active learning experiences and deliberately
attend to certain learning processes, if that learning remains
within the detached and unique social context of the classroom, it
remains subject to the distortions associated with transference
from an academic to a real-world setting. The process skills most
effectively learned in a school context are those required to
continue school learning and to function in an academic-oriented
environment. Process skills required to function in daily life
outside of the school setting can be most effectively practiced
and learned in a broader community context. The more natural the
situation in which learning takes place, the greater the potential
for integration with the functional learning system of the
learner, and the less the potential for distortion in the transfer
of such learning to future situations.
Let us look then, at some different approaches to the merging
of community and school experiences in the development of
educational programs. We will look first at efforts to shift
formal processes of education to "nonformal" contexts, and then at
an attempt to recreate a "micro-society" within the formal
structure of the school. Finally, we will examine a combination of
those two approaches as reflected in the "school without walls"
approach.
Nonformal education: In addition to the institutionalized form
of education reflected in the school, there are other forms of
organized, formal educational activities in which persons may
participate at various stages in their life, such as youth clubs,
adult literacy programs, apprenticeship programs, and cooperative
extension programs. Since these usually take place outside the
formally organized educational system, they are sometimes referred
to as "nonformal" education, even though they often involve
formalized processes. In its usage, nonformal education tends to
be restricted to the discussion of occupational training in the
context of economic, human resource, or manpower development in
developing countries. In most cases it is viewed as an extension
of, or complementary to the formal educational system, and serves
as a means for translating formal learning into marketable skills.
This interrelatedness is indicated by some of the questions posed
by Harbison (1973: 7-8) in regard to planning a nonformal
education program:
1) Can nonformal education activities, satisfy
educational needs that cannot be met by the formal education
system?
2) Are nonformal education projects, because of their
flexibility in comparison with the rigidities of formal
education, more susceptible to innovation?
3) Do successful innovations in nonformal education induce
desirable innovations in the formal education system?
Harbison goes on to conclude that, "In some cases, nonformal
education is the only practical means of skill and knowledge
development; in others, it offers an alternative, and often a more
effective one, to education and training in formal schooling; in
most cases, it can supplement, extend, and improve the processes
of formal education" (p. 11).
Nonformal education may, therefore, offer a model for adapting
formal education to the informal context of the community. To
determine its potential, we will take a closer look at some of the
assumptions and characteristics reflected in a non formal
approach.
Brembeck (1973), in an analysis of the uses of formal and
nonformal education, provides the following premises as the basis
for the development of nonformal education programs:
. . .learned behavior is determined by the environment
in which it takes place. Behavior is shaped and maintained by
its consequences. The learning environments of formal and
nonformal education tend to be of a different character. They
shape and maintain different kinds of behavior. The goal, then,
of educational strategy should be to determine the kind of
behavior sought and create those educational environments which
most clearly support and encourage it (p. 63).
Whereas formal learning tends to focus on the detached
acquisition of knowledge, nonformal learning is geared to action
and the application of knowledge. The structural characteristics
of nonformal education "derive from its proximity to immediate
action, work, and the opportunity to put learning to use. These
elements of the environment close the gap between learning and
doing, find intrinsic motivation in the learning situation, imbed
objectives in work and activity, and associate learners and
teachers in meaningful lines of action" (p. 58).
Nonformal education thus, has many of the characteristics we
are seeking in the development of an alternative educational
approach for cultural minorities. It draws on community resources,
incorporates experiential learning, allows considerable
flexibility for varied types of learning experiences, and provides
opportunities for student and community influence on the form and
direction of learning (cf., Paulston, 1973). It provides a
structural framework consistent with that required for the
project-centered, process-oriented approach toward which we are
working. In fact, many nonformal education programs, such as 4-H
clubs, Boy Scouts and home extension services, do actively employ
projects as a primary vehicle for their educational efforts. The
task then, is to expand the use of such projects so that the
structure of nonformal education can be extended to encompass more
of the functions currently carried out by formal schooling.
The persistent calls for school reform would seem to indicate
that there is a continuing need for a thorough rethinking of the
fit between structure and function in educational processes.
Brembeck emphasizes this need in calling for a careful assessment
of the capabilities of both formal and nonformal education before
the latter is put to widespread use.
...both formal and nonformal education have built-in
structural elements which condition their capabilities to
contribute in defined ways to the attainment of certain
educational objectives. Perhaps the fundamental task is to
analyze more precisely the structural properties of each, to
determine the potential of each for contributing to particular
kinds of educational goals, and to build programs which utilize
these strengths within a more unified and coherent policy of
educational development. If this were done, investments in both
school and nonschool education might yield better payoffs (p.
55).
Whereas nonformal education attempts to move learning out into
the community, it may also be possible to move features of the
community into the school to enhance learning experiences. In
reference to schools, however, Brembeck indicates that "their
success as places of learning depends in part upon their ability
to recreate within their walls a learning environment as naturally
compelling as that existing on the outside. That environment must
be created; it is not naturally built into the structure of school
learning" (p. 60). Though teachers often attempt to recreate bits
and pieces of the community environment in the school, seldom do
they go beyond superficial aspects, and even less often are their
efforts part of a comprehensive and well-thought-through plan. One
exception to this is the "micro-society" school, devised by George
Richmond (1973).
The
Micro-Society approach:
Richmond, while working in the public schools of New York City,
devised an approach to schooling that attempted to recreate
critical aspects of society in microcosm in the context of the
school. He, with the help of the students, created social learning
experiences such as the micro-economy game, the micro-capitalist
society, micro-politics, and a judicial system, all within the
social and academic framework of the school. He sought to "create
a society small enough for the student to manage and large enough
to breed the kind of expertise that convinces individuals that
they can have some measure of control over the environment" (p.
275). Instead of moving learning out into the community, he
attempted to create a sense of community within the school. He
describes the premises for such a model of schooling as follows:
As an approach, it must be a dynamic process, one that
will liberate students from a curriculum without any apparent
fit to life, one that will orient students to jobs in the
service industries and the professions, and one that will
obtain for students a better appreciation of the world of
experience. The process must have the power to penetrate the
classroom and alter its way of life. In so doing, it must make
the inmate-custodian operating in many traditional schools
untenable. And although the connection with work bears
emphasis, the model must also offer students opportunities to
become involved in academic pursuits, in recreation, in civic
projects, and other productive activity (p. 189).
Thus, through a simulated situation, Richmond attempts to bring
the school into a closer alignment with conditions in the
surrounding community. Though he retains the broad framework of
the school, he seeks to modify the content and method of education
to improve its usefulness and effectiveness. Instead of studying
the society around them, students and teachers engage in the
evolutionary process of creating their own model of society and
coping with the economic, social and political exigencies that
such an effort entails. Gradually, as the school society expands,
it incorporates characteristics of the surrounding environment.
"As the Micro-Society matures, the school will integrate aspects
of the local community-for example, ethnic traditions-with the
traditions it evolves as a separate society. At more advanced
stages still, students and student groups based in the school will
explore ways and develop the means to contribute goods and
services to communities and organizations operating in the shadow
of the school" (p. 197). Schools, which are now almost completely
consumers of goods, are to be restructured by the micro-society
approach to become producers of goods and services as well.
Through such experiences, the students are expected to learn
the knowledge and skills necessary to eventually move out and
become contributing members of their own community.
To facilitate this transition into the real-life community,
Richmond suggests that the detached, somewhat protected form of
society that is created in the earlier stages of schooling
gradually give way to actual participation in the larger society
outside the school at later stages. The emphasis at the secondary
level would shift from building a micro-society in school, to
"building society from school" (p. 220). He suggests that students
could become involved in numerous economic enterprises, some that
they would operate (e.g., newspapers, day-care centers, stores,
theaters), and others that they would affiliate with, as managers,
employees, or researchers. In addition, secondary students could
become involved in social development activities, such as
"preserving and revitalizing the history, traditions, and other
cultural patterns of the locale," or "developing personal,
community, and institutional ways to cope with social deviance"
(p. 222-23). He sees the micro-society school as having the
potential, therefore, not only to prepare students for life in
society as it is, but to prepare them to serve as agents of social
change. One of the premises on which the model is built is that
"children who create a society of their own in school, need reach
only a few steps beyond-possibly only to secondary school-and only
a few inches inward to appropriate the power to transform
themselves and their immediate environment" (p. 190).
To the extent that the micro-society approach can achieve
a restructuring of the schooling environment and create a
realistic microcosm of society, it has the potential to overcome
many of the inadequacies of the existing school system for
cultural minorities. Such a task will not be accomplished,
however, unless the students' educational experiences encompass
the full range of situations and conditions they will encounter as
minority persons in the real world. It is when the students get
out into the surrounding community, therefore, that they will
learn the critical survival and action-oriented skills they will
need to gain control over their future in the larger society.
Richmond's design for moving students into the community at the
secondary level brings us to the third approach to the linking of
school and community experiences, that of the "school without
walls," which combines features of both nonformal education and
the micro-society school.
The "school without walls":
One of the most widely publicized approaches to the merging of
school and community has been the Philadelphia Parkway Program,
otherwise known as the "school without walls." As originally
designed by John Bremer, the program was literally without
boundaries-physical or educational. Instead of placing students in
formal classrooms, the program operated in and around the social,
political, and economic institutions along a parkway in the city
of Philadelphia. Instead of following a formally structured
academic curriculum, the program was designed to engage students
and teachers in a continuous process of creating their own
curriculum, within the framework of school district requirements.
Bremer summarized the program as follows in a recruitment letter
to potential students:
The Parkway Program will not be a school with
classroom or bells. The organizations around the Benjamin
Franklin Parkway will provide laboratories, libraries, and
meeting space. Although participation will only be required for
the length of the normal school year, study and work programs
will be available year-round. Students and faculty will form
small groups for discussion, study, counseling, and
self-evaluation. Learning situations will vary from films,
jobs, and lectures to special projects (Bremer and von
Moschzisner, 1971: 281).
Students primary participation in the program was through
membership in tutorial groups, consisting of a faculty member, a
university intern, and fifteen other students. It was in the
context of the tutorial groups that students worked out their
program activities and acquired the basic skills in language and
mathematics required to work in the participating institutions
along the Parkway. The program combined formal courses with work
programs in civic institutions, social agencies, and local
industries and businesses. Some courses were taught by program
staff, while others were taught by members of the participating
institutions. In addition, students were directly involved in the
management of the Parkway Program itself, through membership in
"management groups" and participation in "town meetings." Such
involvements were designed to afford the students maximum
opportunity to learn and acquire management, organizational, and
human relations skills, while contributing to the functional needs
of an ongoing program. As Bremer saw it, the whole program was to
be the curriculum and, therefore, not only content, but structure
and method as well, were to be built around the learning needs of
the students. "It is a learning community, and the problem is to
provide internal structuring or grouping in such a way as to
promote learning, not hamper it or simply be irrelevant to it" (p.
23). Thus, there were not artificial, formal age or grade
distinctions. Secondary level students sometimes worked
side-by-side with elementary level students. Students
participated, according to interest and ability, in all aspects of
the program. They learned from each other as well as from their
"teachers" and the surrounding community.
Since the program was not housed in a conventional school
building, facilities such as abandoned warehouses, offices and
schools along the Parkway were used for meeting places and to
store materials and resources. Students and teachers met on a
flexible schedule for various learning activities, depending on
outside involvements and individual or group needs. Teachers
served as tutors and counselors, and supervised student activities
with cooperating agencies and institutions in the community. The
purpose of the program was to provide means for the students to
learn in the community, rather than about the community, so the
emphasis was on active participation in real-life enterprises, and
coping with the many, varied and complex aspects of society.
Through such participation and coping, students learned "to
reflect on, to understand, and to control more effectively their
own lives" (p. 292).
Learning was not to be restricted to society as it is, however.
From Bremer's point of view the Parkway Program had two
challenges: "how to help the student to live learningly within his
present life space, and, second, how to expand this life space"
(p. 291). To meet these challenges, Bremer sought to change the
social organization of education to bring the roles and
relationships embodied in the pursuit of formal learning in line
with those extant in the surrounding community, where such
learning must ultimately be put to use if it is to be of any
value. And it is in this context that the Parkway Program provides
a useful model for minority education. By moving learning
activities into the real-life environment of the community, the
detached and artificial nature of traditional schooling is avoided
and natural situational frames are provided, within which students
can acquire the process and subject-matter skills necessary to
function in whatever roles they choose as adults.
The "school without walls" provides a well-articulated and
comprehensive model for accommodating schooling to the cultural
and situational patterns of a particular community. The Parkway
Program was not without its problems in its evolution as a new
form of institution, however, and consequently, it underwent some
structural revision following the departure of Bremer as its first
director, in an attempt to bring the program more in line with the
traditional and predominant educational system with which it was
presumed to be competing.
A "school without walls" is indeed a radical departure from
conventional educational practice, but the potential and promise
that such a departure holds for overcoming existing inadequacies
in the formal system of education will not be realized if the
program's implementation is not approached in such a way that it
can overcome the inertia of the present system and prove its worth
over the span of generations. To attempt educational reform of the
magnitude required to address the issues that have been raised in
this article requires a long-term commitment, and a transcending
and wholistic perspective. We cannot expect to significantly alter
and improve the ultimate effects of the educational system by
tinkering with elements within the system, such as the classroom
or the curriculum. We must instead consider the relation of the
system itself to the social and cultural environment in which it
operates. Only then will we be able to make the kind of
long-lasting and significant changes sought by Bremer in his
design and creation of the "school without walls."
Social
organization of community-based education
The three alternative frameworks for education that we have
looked at all have a common concern-to fit formal education
processes more closely to the real-life conditions reflected in
the surrounding community, that is, to make the community the
basis for education. Two ways are available by which this can be
accomplished: 1) by moving everyday life into the school; 2) by
moving the classroom out into everyday life. The first approach is
represented by the micro-society school, and the second by
nonformal education and the school without walls. As was indicated
earlier, such approaches require major changes in the social
organization of the school, particularly in terms of
school/community and teacher/student relationships. The greater
the departure from traditional school practices, the greater the
need to restructure the social organization in which learning is
to take place, so that the structure and function of education are
compatible. Without such restructuring, and without community-wide
understanding of the need for it, any alternative approach to
community-based education is likely to be short-lived and of
little consequence in the improvement of education. It is
necessary, therefore, that we give careful consideration to the
implications of community-based education for the social
organization of learning and determine its appropriateness for the
process-oriented, project-centered approach to minority education
we outlined earlier. We will look first at the social and cultural
implications of the community as a classroom, and then at the
consequences of such an approach for the roles of teacher and
student.
Classroom
and community:
A basic theme throughout all of the previous discussion has
been the need for a closer alignment between schooling and
community socialization processes, particularly in minority
communities. We have been seeking ways to overcome the detachment
of learning from reality, and the cultural biases of the social
organization reflected in current school practice. Toward that end
we have espoused a process-oriented curriculum set in a
project-centered format, steps which in themselves, if implemented
in a conventional school context, can go a long way toward opening
formal learning to a wider range of cultural experiences. Such
steps do not go far enough, however, in adapting schooling to the
functional learning system of the minority student. To accomplish
this, we must go beyond the framework of the school and look at
the real-life environment in which varied cultural and cognitive
patterns are expressed, and find ways to adapt formal learning to
that environment. We have, therefore, examined various approaches
to community-based education as a means to that end.
By using the community as a classroom, we are in a
position to use natural situational frames as a means for
integrating learning and practice and fitting patterns of formal
learning to local patterns of informal learning. Instead of
depending on the unique setting of the school to establish a
simulated form of learning environment in which to teach
subject-matter skills, we can use the natural setting and events
of the community to bring students into the flow of real-life
experiences where they can acquire more pervasive and useful
process skills. Students can interact and communicate with people
through responsible participation in the full range of natural
community situations that they might encounter as adults, and
learn-through observation, reflection and practice-the skills
necessary to effectively function in those situations. Through
their involvements in the community, the students can serve useful
social functions and maintain their cultural identity, while
learning how social systems operate and by what forces they are
changed. They will then, be in a position to act on the goal of
cultural eclecticism and contribute to the continuing evolution of
a dynamic social order.
All of the above is of little use to anyone if it cannot
be put into a framework that schools and communities can identify
as realistically attainable. Obviously, we cannot simply turn
students loose in the community without some direction and
supportive structure within which to function. That would not be
acceptable or helpful to the school, the community, or the
students. But neither is the rigid structure of the existing
school system acceptable or functional as a means for organizing
learning experiences for minority students. Between those two
conditions there are unlimited options, however, from which
schools and communities can choose to organize learning
environments suited to the educational goals they hold for their
students.
The option that has been proposed here is the
project-centered approach, because it is flexible and adaptable to
nearly any situation considered desirable for learning and can
accommodate any form of knowledge or skills a community considers
important for their children, with a minimum of cultural
intrusion. If conditions are such that learning experiences cannot
be provided in the community, projects can readily be incorporated
into a school-based program as well. But the project approach is
particularly well-suited to the education of minority students in
a community setting, because it engenders widespread interaction
between school and community participants, and thus, provides
built-in mechanisms for community influence on the direction and
form of learning. In addition, projects can be designed around
natural patterns of interaction and groupings of persons, while
addressing actual tasks and problems in a minority or a majority
setting.
Combining projects with community-based education
provides a powerful alternative to conventional schooling. It
shifts control of education into the hands of the community and it
opens up opportunities for meaningful learning experiences to a
broader sector of the population. Instead of imposing externally
derived categories of learning on students, the categories are
derived from the natural conditions surrounding the student's
daily life experiences. Project activities are flexibly structured
to allow students to fit the learning to their individual learning
styles, needs and abilities, and to community values, norms and
cultural practices with a minimum of discontinuity. Educational
performance is judged by task-oriented standards, rather than test
scores, thus reducing the discrepancy between ideal and real. The
vast diversity of situational and cultural conditions extant in
any community is accommodated, therefore, by an organizational
structure that is supportive of the differences, but still
provides a means for the development of equivalence structures by
which productive interaction and social order can be achieved.
The success of any attempt at a project-centered,
community-based approach to education is highly dependent, as is
any educational endeavor, on the orientation of the persons
involved in its implementations. The critical persons in formal
educational processes are the students and the teacher, so it is
to an examination of the consequences of our approach for their
roles and relationships that we turn next. Without appropriately
oriented and prepared teachers and students, we cannot expect any
alternative approach, no matter how well conceived, to go very far
in practice.
Teacher
and student:
The adaptation of formal education to a project-centered,
community-based format can have a dramatic effect on the
traditional roles of teacher and student. In general, the power
and authority for the control of learning is substantially shifted
from the teacher to the students and community. The source of
skills and understanding is lodged in the setting, rather than the
person of the teacher. Any situation, person or event is a
potential source for learning, and the student has considerable
latitude in defining the nature of that learning. Through their
direct participation in the educational process, community members
can acquire the power to influence the direction of learning.
Learning can become a two-way process, whereby students learn
through the activities organized by teachers, and teachers learn
through their active involvements with students in the community.
It is through this two-way flow of learning, that educational
experiences can be made meaningful and adapted to changing
conditions. In a community-based approach, the teachers employ
their process skills to assist students in acquiring similar
skills of their own, through joint exploration of the real-life
opportunities available in the surrounding natural physical and
social environment. Students are able to engage in projects that
bring them together in natural groupings related to the
requirements of the task and needs and interests of the learner,
rather than artificial grouping by age-grade or test scores.
Attention can be paid to the processes by which students function
as a group, so that they can learn from each other as well as from
the learning activity itself. Through such group experience,
students are able to build and solidify their own identities, and
acquire the skills and attitudes necessary to function as
contributing members of other social groups. Students are able to
develop their individuality through the natural processes of group
interaction. Thus, the social group takes on a greater
responsibility in the shaping of learning experiences in a
community-based approach to education. The student serves as
teacher as well as learner, through participation in a group
process of educational and social development. While such
processes occur naturally in a community setting, they are often
thwarted by the one-way flow of experience reflected in the
conventional social organization of the school.
Along with the student role, the role of "teacher"
changes too, from that of transmitter of knowledge and skills, to
that of organizer of learning activities. Instead of doing things
to students, the teacher works with students, as a tutor,
counselor, facilitator and supervisor, in the development and
carrying out of learning projects. The teacher's role is to
organize community resources into productive learning experiences
contributory to student needs, rather than serving as the only
source for such learning. Those learning needs that cannot be met
in the community context can then be provided through more
formalized means, with the teacher working with the students as a
resource person in developing the knowledge and skills necessary
to carry out particular responsibilities in the community. Only at
the advanced stages of schooling, for those students who wish to
pursue avenues of interest that cannot be tied to experience or
where the opportunities for experience are not readily available,
is it necessary to pursue a detached form of learning. Below
university level work, such instances need be few in number, given
adequately prepared, experientially-oriented teachers.
Since a community-based approach involves the teacher
more directly in community activities and fosters more
personalized involvement with the students, it is necessary to
distinguish between the roles of local community members vs.
non-community members as teachers in such an approach,
particularly in the context of a minority community. A minority
teacher from the same cultural background as the student is in a
position to establish a much morn productive relationship with
that student than a non-minority (or other-minority) teacher (cf.,
Barnhardt, 1974). The minority teacher, as a representative of the
student's culture, is able to identify with and directly relate to
the cultural patterns indigenous to the community and the student,
and thus avoid many of the conflicts and discontinuities
associated with schooling for minority students. Because of the
similarity in communication and interaction patterns, the minority
teacher does not have to go through the process of building
appropriate situational frames and establishing equivalence
structures to engage in productive interaction with the minority
students. These are inherent in the relationship. This can be
particularly helpful in the early years of schooling, when the
students are especially vulnerable to discontinuities in
educational experience. The minority teacher can provide
continuity in the student's transition from informal to formal
learning, and thus reduce the chances of the student developing a
negative, dysfunctional stance toward learning.
The opportunity for a minority teacher to serve the
positive functions outlined above is predicated on two conditions,
however: 1) that prior experiences, particularly while in
training, have not impeded the indigenous characteristics
necessary to function effectively in the cultural minority
setting; and 2) that the schooling environment itself is open to
the establishment of alternative roles and relationships. The
first condition is sometimes lacking because of the attitudinal
and behavioral changes that often accompany four years of
university experience. This can become a serious problem if the
teacher training program inculcates a structured form of teaching
behavior that is incompatible with the indigenous patterns of
behavior and interaction in the minority community. The minority
teacher with such training will be placed in the untenable
position of having to resolve two conflicting modes of
interaction-one in the school, and one in the community. The
implications of this problem for teacher training are obviously
numerous.
The second condition-the flexibility of the schooling
environment-is of even greater importance than the first, because
the appropriate teaching environment can oftentimes overcome the
inadequacies of the training, whereas the reverse is more
difficult. A minority teacher in a minority school setting can
greatly improve the quality of the educational experiences in that
setting, both as a role model and as an effective interactant.
This is assuming, however, that the improvement of conventional
school experiences is in the student's best interest. If such
experiences are oriented, implicitly or explicitly, toward
assimilation, the minority teacher might become a vehicle to
enhance the goals of the school, rather than the goals of the
minority community. Such issues must be dealt with at a
situational level, because the goals of education will vary from
one context to another, and individual teachers will be supportive
of different goals for themselves.
The most effective use of a minority teacher occurs when
the goal is cultural eclecticism, and education is
community-based. Under such conditions, the minority teacher is
uniquely equipped to maximize the opportunities for learning to
occur in a cumulative and integrative manner. The teacher and
students can adapt themselves to the surrounding conditions and
carry on fruitful interaction in all dimensions of community and
educational experiences. The minority teacher serves as a natural
extension of the community into the educational domain of the
minority students.
The teacher from outside the minority community is in a
different position in relation to students from that community.
The outside teacher must recognize that there is no universal form
of teaching practice or method that will achieve comparable
results in any cultural setting. Each situation is unique, and
teaching behavior that may be appropriate in one situation may be
quite inappropriate in another. An outsider coming into a new
minority setting must, therefore, expect to spend a considerable
amount of time (a year or more) just getting his/her bearings in
the local cultural scene. Only after s/he has acquired a
familiarity with local patterns of communication and interaction,
can s/he expect to contribute much more than limited factual
knowledge and skills to that scene. If properly oriented and
placed, however, the outside teacher can be an important
contributor to minority education. As a representative of the
larger society (usually), the outside teacher can provide the
exposure to outside experiences that is implied in the goal of
cultural eclecticism. The crucial factor is the attitude reflected
by such a teacher in providing that exposure. If the teacher takes
a holier-than-thou position and presents the larger world in a
detached context and in a glorified manner that implies "this is
the only way to go," s/he will be of little value to the minority
student. If, on the other hand, s/he works with the students in a
community context with the intent of involving them in various
larger-society experiences to help them understand and cope with
alternative situations they may encounter as adults, then s/he is
in a position to make a valuable contribution.
Outside teachers can be most useful at the upper levels, as
students begin branching out into new situations and alternative
avenues of interests from those indigenous to the minority
community. If the students are to learn to function in a complex,
multicultural society, then it is helpful for them to have
multi-cultural experiences in the course of their education,
provided the external cultural influences do not unfairly
predominate in those experiences. A balance of minority and
non-minority teachers operating in a community context provides
one means by which this can be accomplished.
We have seen, then, that community-based education calls
for major revisions in the social organization of the school. The
school becomes more closely integrated with the cultural patterns
of the community, and the teacher and student roles are opened up
to a form of shared experiential development that has the
potential for transcending cultural boundaries and bringing
education into the realm of cultural eclecticism. It is that
experiential focus that is at the heart of a cross-cultural
approach, so it is to the relation between culture and
experiential learning that we turn now to draw together the
threads that have been interspersed throughout the preceding
discussion.
Culture
and experiential learning
In exploring the various approaches to goals, content, and
structure in minority education, we have worked our way through,
in each dimension, to an approach that is dependent on some form
of experiential learning. Cultural eclecticism as a goal, depends
on each person having the range of experiences necessary to make
realistic choices in life style and cultural commitments. A
process-oriented curriculum is dependent on opportunities for the
experiential development of the requisite process skills. And the
project-centered, community-based structure is designed to
organize learning activities in the context of real-life
experiences. The "experiential learning" reflected in all these
dimensions of our approach, serves then, as our educational
"method."
Experiential learning is more than the "learning by
doing," "discovery" or "inquiry" methods that are sometimes
espoused by educators. These methods, while indicative of the
value of having students "work it out for themselves," are usually
employed within the context of formally structured learning
activities, stopping short of the direct involvement in real-life
experiences called for here. Experiential learning is more akin to
the "walkabout" approach suggested by Gibbons (1974) as a means
for facilitating students' transition from childhood to adult
roles during the last years of formal schooling. Drawing on the
Australian Aborigine practice of sending out their young to
survive alone in the wilderness for an extended period as a "rite
of passage" (cf., van Gennep, 1960), into adulthood, Gibbons
proposes a comparable experience for American high school
students. He contrasts a conventional high school experience with
features of the "walkabout" as follows:
The young native faces a severe but extremely
appropriate trial, one in which he must demonstrate the
knowledge and skills necessary to make him a contributor to the
tribe rather than a drain on its meager resources. By contrast,
the young North American is faced with written examinations
that test skills very far removed from the actual experience he
will have in real life. He writes; he does not act. He solves
familiar theoretical problems; he does not apply what he knows
in strange but real situations. He is under direction in a
protected environment to the end; he does not go out into the
world to demonstrate that he is prepared to survive in, and
contribute to, our society. His preparation is primarily for
the mastery of content and skills in the disciplines and has
little to do with reaching maturity, achieving adulthood, or
developing fully as a person (p. 597).
As a means of pulling school experiences together and
making them contributory to passage into the adult world, Gibbons
proposes a modified form of the walkabout as a kind of culminating
trial experience preparatory to graduation. A principal feature of
the walkabout program is that "it should be experiential and the
experience should be real rather than simulated" (p. 598). He
indicates that it should also involve "personal challenge,
individual and group decision making, self-direction in the
pursuit of goals, real-world significance in activity, and
community involvement at all stages of preparation and conclusion"
(p. 600).
In practice, Gibbons' walkabout experiences would address
five "challenge categories:" adventure, creativity, service,
practical skill, and logical inquiry. Students would be required
to select and carry out a major project in each category. Gibbons
provides numerous examples of potential walkabout projects, such
as a month-long expedition in a wilderness area, producing an
original film, volunteer work with the elderly, operating a home
appliance repair service, and researching questions such as "What
ways can the power output of an engine be most economically
increased" (p. 599). Just prior to graduation, the students would
present formal reports to community and school members,
summarizing the results of their walkabout experiences.
The walkabout, in its theory, design and practice, is a
prime example of experiential learning. Students learn through
direct involvement in the physical and cultural environment around
them. Such an approach does not have to be limited, however, to
the culminating years of school experience. It can be readily
adapted to any level and to cover many aspects of the curriculum.
It offers one more way to more closely align formal schooling with
community socialization processes.
The experiential approach to learning outlined here
reflects many of the characteristics associated with informal
education. It provides for a more particularistic orientation in
the organization of social relations, thus allowing critical
identity and value formation processes to develop freely in a
natural community context. Students and teachers are able to
maintain personalized relationships and establish an informal
atmosphere of mutual respect and trust. The content and processes
of learning are focused on actual, real-life phenomena, with an
emphasis on observation, action and participation as a means of
acquiring an understanding of those phenomena. There is a
continuity between community and school related experiences, with
a great deal of flexibility to fit learning to individual needs
and circumstances. Much of what is learned is spontaneous and
unanticipated, consistent with the loose structure and inductive
nature of the learning activities. Finally, learning is evaluated
on the basis of conduct and action in the course of carrying out
real-life responsibilities within a natural context, rather than
on the basis of achievement test scores resulting from the
imposition of externally defined criteria set in a detached
environment. All of these characteristics serve to indicate the
appropriateness of an experiential learning approach for adapting
formal education to the varied cultural and situational conditions
in minority communities.
An implicit function of experiential learning, as
reflected in the educational approach outlined in this discussion,
is to provide a means by which students can test themselves and
the world around them, through a process of critical involvement
and exploration in that world. This process is comparable to
Freire's (1971) notion of "praxis-a testing of theory through
practice. Students confront and eventually learn to modify and
improve their social reality through the experience gained from
direct participation in that reality. This development of a
critical social consciousness is a by-product of experiential
learning that makes it especially suitable in a minority setting,
where an understanding of the processes that shape social reality
can provide a major step in gaining control over the future of
that reality. If cultural minorities desire educational
opportunities that will prepare them to extend beyond the
boundaries of their present existence, they will need to overcome
the experiential limitations of the traditional educational
system. That system, with its detachment from real-life
experience, is not capable of perpetuating the minority culture,
nor is it capable of transmitting any more than superficial
aspects of the majority culture. It is only through direct
experience that a critical understanding of basic cultural
processes and thus, self-determination, can be achieved. As
Wallace (1970: 109) has indicated in reference to processes of
cultural transmission in general, "The best a culture can do is
communicate the general framework of 'its' plans and ensure
that the new generation is placed in situations in which they will
have to reinvent the details, probably with minor modifications."
The provision of such situations becomes all the more critical
when the circumstances include varying conditions of
acculturation, as in minority settings.
Experiential learning, as applied in the cross-cultural
approach to education outlined here, is intended to serve as a
means to address cultural processes, rather than cultural content.
The specific cultural patterns reflected in a particular community
serve as a means to gain an understanding of the more general
processes by which culture defines the nature of our existence,
and by which culture changes as a result of human interaction. The
justification for the approach outlined here is aptly summarized
by Hall (1976: 165) in the following statement "Without first
mastering culture's unwritten rules, we cannot escape the binding
constraints on knowledge of our species which can be seen in all
situations and contexts and can be observed wherever human beings
interact. Where does one begin such an inquiry?" We might begin by
looking at ourselves and the processes by which we come to
understand and shape the world around us. We may then find ways to
build educational programs that contribute to the multiple and
diverse needs of all the people, rather than a select few.
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