Those who study education often refer to earlier periods of schooling with wistful memories of idyllic, effective, and orderly schools. However, Joseph Featherstone challenges us to look back in educational history with honesty and clarity – that, in fact, many of the problems we see in schools today have perpetually plagued schools and educators. Featherstone calls this romanticized view of the past a ‘history of amnesia.’ Based on your readings of Willard Waller, Theodore Sizer, and Dan Lortie, as well as concepts and themes from the lectures, how have schools remained resistant to change, and why are they such difficult places to enact meaningful change? As you observe the contemporary efforts and public discourse focused on school reform, where do you see possibilities for productive change? 
Introduction

The complexity of school culture and the conservative nature of the teaching profession provide powerful resistance to school reform. The isolation of cellular classrooms mitigates against professional interdependence and the potentially powerful voices of teachers are neglected in the reform discourse. Willard Waller (1961) asserts that schools are complex institutions based around control and stability, Dan Lortie (2002) describes teachers as conservative and isolated, and Theodore Sizer (2003) places blame for the failure of school reform squarely on bureaucratic systemic structures. The best possibility for productive change lies with de-privatizing teaching and building the internal capacity of schools. However, reform will only succeed when bureaucrats and policymakers recognize that real power does not lie in the central office.

Resistance to change

Schools have remained resistant to change due to the underestimated complexity of their institutionalized “intertangled social relationships” (Waller, 1961, p. 12). Because a school is a complicated “social organism” (p. 6), the interdependence of all its parts makes it impossible to disentangle one part of the system from other parts. Things stay the same because if one part is changed, everything needs to be changed. These entrenched social patterns provide powerful resistance to change. The failure of reformers to acknowledge the power of these conditions sabotages school reform efforts.

Institutions only tolerate a small degree of individuality and the tension between collective values and individual values is always resolved in the direction of the collective (S. Lawrence-Lightfoot, lecture, September 29, 2010). The preoccupation with order, structure, and continuity is a consequence of the belief that without strong social norms, society would disintegrate into chaos. According to Sizer (2004, p. 210), society looks to schools to provide certainty in times of turmoil and this reinforces the status quo. Similarly, Durkheim views schools as institutions which promote stability and social cohesion in times of change (S. Lawrence-Lightfoot, lecture, September 8, 2010).

School is based on controlling students and “are organized on the authority principle” (Waller, 1961, p. 10). The authority role of teachers is the balancing tension in a complex power dynamic between students and adults. Consequently, schools have developed a “despotic structure” and exist “in a state of perilous equilibrium” (p. 10). Confronted with constant threats from within and interference from outside, this despotism is not just accepted but is demanded by the community for the maintenance of stable social order. The separate culture that grows within a school, binding personalities together and separating the school from the surrounding world has profound consequences for the attitudes and behavior of teachers.

School reform efforts have failed to sufficiently acknowledge the fundamental role teachers play in school culture. Almost every aspect of teachers’ work lives reinforces conservatism. The processes of recruitment, the socialization, and the career rewards of teaching all lean toward continuity. The fact that teaching is a flat rather than a staged career tends to attract socially conservative entrants in the first place. Prior to taking up their first post, teachers have already typically been encultured for sixteen years in “traditional patterns of thought and practice” (Lortie, p. 24). This degree of socialization is potent.

Indifferent teacher education and the abrupt, isolated introduction to the classroom leads teachers to fall back on the long “apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie, 2002, p. 61) that they undertook as school students. Consequently, teachers self-socialize into teaching and their “personal predispositions” (p. 79) stand at the core of what it means to be a teacher. Conservatism is emphasized when the training experiences of beginning teachers encourage them to view teaching as “an individualistic rather than a collegial enterprise” (p. 70).
Isolated in cellular classrooms, the individualistic nature of teaching continues throughout the career. The single cell classroom has played a key role in development of the American public school and “like any persistent feature of a social system, it became interconnected with other parts of that system” (p. 15). Schools have been bureaucratized and organized around “teacher separation rather than teacher interdependence” (p. 14). This professional isolation has operated as a bulwark against school reform.

There is a misconception that power in high schools is found in the central office (Sizer, 2004). Real power lies in the subject departments. The subject is more important to a teacher than any top-down imposed curricular goals, and in a work environment that does little to encourage collaboration, a focus on content is the only realistic method of coordination available. “The curricular world of a typical high school teacher is a world in a particular department, dominated by a sequence of things to be covered, week by week, day by day, very privately in particular classes” (p. 92). The organization of high schools around content is a method of control. Careers depend on this stability.

Learning is a complex business and there has been a chronic underestimation of the skills involved in teaching well. Popular visions of teachers inspiring forever eager students are miserably naïve. Very few adults outside the teaching profession understand the power dynamics of the relationship between students and teachers. As Sizer (2004) notes, “Managing a high school classroom is a complex business, requiring judgement about adolescents as well as a sense of order, a firm grasp of the subject under study, and a thorough understanding about the accepted folkways of the craft.” The failure of adults outside schools to understand the nature of learning within school contexts has resulted in simplistic remedies to complex school issues.

When teaching is regarded as a bureaucratic function it is treated mechanistically as if it is something that somebody does to someone else. Metaphors from factories and the military are adopted. I have been startled to notice subtle shifts in language since arriving in the USA. I had rarely heard terms like ‘administrator’, ‘building’, and ‘instruction’ used like they are here. In Australia the equivalent choice of terms are ‘educational leader’, ‘school’, and ‘teaching’. Language matters and reveals a great deal about implicit assumptions.

Meier’s (2003) description of teachers as “increasingly undervalued and constrained adults, in highly bureaucratic and powerless institutional settings” (pp. 1-2), presents an image of teachers as victims which has been reinforced by academic research. Researchers preoccupied with behavioural and replicable data have neglected to ask the right questions about the development of adults in their work, leaving the perception of teachers as inarticulate (S. Lawrence-Lightfoot, lecture, October 6, 2010). As long as teachers remain voiceless in the public discourse on schooling their potential power will remain in the shadows.

In addition to underestimating the power of teacher culture, the powerful role that students play in schools is seldom considered in school reform. Sizer (2004) writes that “kids run schools” (p. 140). While most students choose to support the school system, this “masks the nascent power that students hold” (p. 140).

Students accept the mass custody of the current system and view it as a rite of passage. Erving Goffman’s work on asylums echoes these thoughts. In school everyone is treated alike and expected to do the same thing together, and there is a tight schedule imposed from above by explicit rules and body of officials. There is a social split between a large managed group and a small supervisory staff (S. Lawrence-Lightfoot, lecture, October 13, 2010). This hierarchical structure persists because “going to school is an important democratic ritual” (Sizer, 2004, p. 209) and “no one messes lightly with such rituals” (p. 210).

Viewing school as a rite of passage helps explain the contradiction between the structure of schools and the espoused purpose of schools. Sizer (2004) found the toleration of the obvious lack of connection between stated goals and school practice curious. He came to the conclusion that the widespread support for students taking subjects “in a systematized, conveyor-belt way” (p. 83) and narrowly tested outcomes is because of a belief that schools simply cannot achieve loftier “ill-defined goals” (p. 10). As Meier (2003) neatly states, “this far-reaching distrust has its roots in facts about our lives that go well beyond school” (p. 2).

The public acceptance of this contradiction goes a long way towards explaining apathy about school reform. “Perhaps…the unchallenging mindlessness of the status quo is truly acceptable: it doesn’t make waves” (Sizer, p. 210). This inertia is supported by Sexton who asserts that schools are passive and never in a position to initiate change (S. Lawrence-Lightfoot, lecture, September 8, 2010). There is always a cultural lag as schools try to catch up with society and this makes schools anachronistic. Katz and Apple acknowledge the oppressive, hierarchical role schools play in order to protect the status quo (S. Lawrence-Lightfoot, lecture, September 8, 2010). Schooling assures the social hierarchy, while providing the illusion of benevolent government. Effective school reform without a redistribution of power may be impossible.

Sizer (2004) left no doubt where the blame for the failure of school reform lies when he stated, “The people are better than the structure. Therefore the structure must be at fault” (p. 209). Schools are constrained by the historical weight of school bureaucracy. The bureaucratic standardization of high school is a result of the nineteenth century fear of urbanization, industrialization and immigration. Rational, scientific management was the answer and it has profoundly affected school reform ever since. Bureaucracy depends on what can be easily measured and as a result the obsession with, “attendance rates, dropout rates, test scores, suspension rates, teachers’ rank in class in their colleges” seems to be an unpleasant parody of Vietnam War body counts (Sizer, p. 207). One cannot help but recall the phrase from the same war, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it”.

The mechanistic emphasis on reductionist science has progressively developed schools into more and more unhealthy institutions. Today’s unprecedented centralization is perpetuated because those who have the most to gain from the bureaucratic structures are the people who are in the best position to challenge its inefficiencies. It is comfortable and financially rewarding for the people at the top of the hierarchy (Sizer, 2004). This results in faceless bureaucrats physically removed from schools dictating policy that changes the interactions that occur in schools. Accountability, standardization, and bureaucratization become the only means of controlling the unwieldy structure. Yet in a bizarrely contradictory twist, “standardization and bureaucracy fuel the very distrust they are aimed to cure” (Meier, 2003, p. 2).

Possibilities for productive change

According to Graham, if we understand the complexity of the ecology, the way we describe schools will be different, and therefore the remedies will be different (S. Lawrence-Lightfoot, lecture, September 15, 2010). Once we acknowledge that school reform fails due to the conservative culture of schools, centralized bureaucracy, and teacher individualism, we are able to seek out possibilities for productive change. Ultimately schools are about relationships and school reforms must start with the people in schools, the teachers and students, rather than mandating top-down accountability and systemic change.

Sizer’s answer to the complex mess is to provide teachers with a large measure of autonomy “and then get out of their way” (p. 221). Building internal capacity and expertise is the best alternative to external control. Increasingly schools are acknowledging the need to de-privatize teaching by establishing regular times for joint lesson planning and team teaching. This improves collegial relationships, develops trust, builds professionalism, establishes the teamwork that characterizes other professions, and is a cornerstone for building a sustainable learning culture. In addition, emerging teacher leadership roles provide the staged career that characterizes a profession as opposed to employed subordinates.

Too often school reform tries to confront the system head-on when the most likely avenue of success is by circumventing it. Fine-tuning the existing system has been ineffectual and more innovative strategies will most likely come from outside the traditional school system. Paradigm shifts frequently start in the margins rather than the mainstream. In the fast paced 21st century, social entrepreneurs, disruptive organizations and technologies will inevitably create new models for learning. Giroux’s (2005) distinction between the border and the street reminds us of the great disconnects between students’ lives and their schooling. Perhaps school reform should start where the kids are learning, in the media and on the streets.

Conclusion

Our ‘history of amnesia’ reveals that many of the problems we see in schools today have historically plagued schools and educators. Schools are difficult places to enact meaningful change because they are designed to only tolerate limited individuality. There is widespread support for the conserving roles that schools play in society and the historical weight of bureaucracy constrains schools. The single cell classroom has played a key role in the development of schools and teaching is an individualistic enterprise. More than any other factor, this professional isolation has operated against school reform. For productive change to occur, teachers need a clear voice in the public discourse on schooling, and the complexity of learning, teaching and schools needs to be acknowledged.

References

Giroux, H. (2005). Border crossings: Cultural workers and the politics of education. New York: Routledge.

Lortie, D. C. (2002). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Meier, D. (2003). In schools we trust: Creating communities of learning in an era of testing and standardization. Boston: Beacon Press.

Sizer, T. R. (2004). Horace’s compromise: The dilemma of the American high school. Boston: Houghton Miflin Company.

Waller, W. (1961). The sociology of teaching. New York: Russell & Russell.