George S. Counts

Counts' thesis that "complete impartiality is impossible" speaks in interesting ways to our recent national obsession with standards and objective tests.  Counts points out that simply by including some material (American history) and excluding others (Australian folk culture) we are making a value choice on what our children will learn.  Counts places a great deal of faith and responsibility into the schools that he believes can act, through teachers, as agents of change and improvement.

Although Counts was writing nearly sixty years ago, I believe his words and his call still ring true.  I think teachers and schools are in a unique position to improve the lives of those who attend them.  Schools should educate citizens who can think and question the structures of society, and who can work to improve those structures when they find that they are lacking.  When we refuse to break a standardized, status-quo curricula we do a grave disservice not only to the students before us, but also to all those that these students may have helped.  I think that by teaching students to improve the world we have provided a service that is necessary in the community.  For example, poverty will not end if we train all students to be rocket scientists, because there are not enough rocket scientist positions open to all the students we teach, and because we still need nurses, teachers, farmers, grocery clerks, and hairdressers.  Greater social change would occur if we worked to insure that all workers were paid a living wage.

I think we need to teach students to read, write, and think critically.  I thought that Sister's example of her community graffiti project was excellent for this purpose.  These students learned about, examined, and helped to change a problem in their community.  This project teaches about graffiti, but also that students can work together to influence change.  I think our students and our communities really benefit from authentic learning assignments like these, and it takes innovative educators to break out of the mold of worksheets to develop these projects.  Great job, Sister!

George S. Counts Web Resource
http://www.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/nadams/educ692/Counts.html

Methods
I think it was at this time in the semester that we had a visit from Mr. Hilton's British friend, Susan Moore.  She was an interesting and informative speaker.  I thought that it was especially interesting that the most student-centered progressive methods are used in public schools, which are used by many non-college bound families while the traditional classrooms are in the private schools.  This just shows that we often consider one type of knowledge and learning (rote memorization) preferable to actual acting and thinking.