Over 100 years ago, Margaret Haley, the Chicago
elementary school teacher who was also the founder of the first American
teachers’ union, argued for a vision of public schools as the center of our
democracy. However, she proposed, schools can democratize society only if
schools themselves are democratic. Haley and another maverick, Ella Flagg
Young, a prodigy who passed her teaching examinations at age 15 and went on to
become the first women to serve as superintendent of a major American city,
both argued that teachers must play central roles in school administration and
policy-making, and as professionals who are critical to the nation, must have
opportunities and support to continue to grow intellectually throughout their
working lives. Without this, they claimed, schools would become little more
than factories, with rote assignments administered by teachers relegated to the
role of automatons.
The issues and debates
about education then were much the same as they are today. What’s different is
that we now have decades of evidence showing that Haley and Flagg were right.
For example, the nation with the most successful education system by many measures,
including highest students scores and smallest spread of scores between schools
is Finland, a country in which all curriculum is local and developed by
teachers who are charged with designing and pursuing high standards and shared
targets within their professional communities. Yet these high levels of success
and responsibility don’t translate into top-down mandates. The schools are
democratically organized and decisions are made laterally. Teachers evaluate
their students, and collaboratively design ways to assess and improve
school-wide successes. Students spend less time in school that those in most
other industrialized nations and Finnish teachers spend less time teaching than
do teachers in many other countries, and are not required to be present at
their schools when they don’t have classes or other duties.
The Finnish education
scholar Pasi Sahlberg describes a system in which teaching is consistently
rated as one of the most desirable and admired professions, ahead of doctors,
architects and lawyers. Finnish teachers are considered knowledge workers,
education leaders, and critical members of their communities and the nation. So
what are we doing wrong?
While we should certainly learn from the successful educational systems
designed by our global neighbors, we should also look back at the insights of
our home-grown visionaries in education, like Margaret Haley and Ella Flagg
Young. They pointed to the need for what Finland has put into practice and
proven as successful for students—a public education system that supports and
trusts its teachers.
Remarks I gave at the
Chicagoland Researchers for Transformative Education (CReATE) Press Conference,
March 12, 2012
Sources:
Rousmaniere, K. (2005).
Citizen teacher: The life and leadership of Margaret Haley. Albany, NY: State
University of New York.
Sahlberg, P. (2011).
Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland?
New York: Teachers College Press.
