Edmund W. Gordon

Education and justice : a view from the back of the bus

This collection of essays reflects the authors commitment to improving the effectiveness of education and advancing the practice of democracy. All essays are introduced with commentaries in which Edmund Gordon contextualizes and explains the continuing relevance of the issues.

Characteristics of Socially Disadvantaged Children

A review of research related to the education of socially disadvantaged children reveals no aspect of this investigative problem that has received more attention than the study of the characteristics of this population. There are few studies reported since 1950 which have not devoted some attention to the enumeration, identification, or confirmation of those behaviors or circumstances which are assumed to set these children apart from their more privileged peers. These investigations have focused on home environment and family status, on language, cognition, and intelligence, on perceptual styles and patterns of intellectual function, and on motivation and aspiration.

Common Destinies—Continuing Dilemmas:

Edmund W. Gordon and Aundra Saa Meroe, Yale University . . . I must again in candor say to you members of this Commission-it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland-with the same moving pictures reshown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction. Kenneth Clark’s reflections upon the 1968 Report of the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders (Kerner, 1968, p. 483)

7: Decentralization and Community Participation in Public Education:

Although one of the traditional goals of education in the United States has been to prepare citizens for participation in a democratic society, American public education in large cities has been characterized by centralization, standardization, and professionalization which allow for little democratic participation. In general, the moves toward centralization in urban and rural areas have been progressive: centralization has provided uniform and equal educational opportunity, raised professional standards and created efficient and economical systems. In some instances, however, increased centralization resulted from political momentum rather than educational planning and from an unquestionable faith in the efficiency of power accumulated at a single point. Three questions are inherent in any evaluation of a centralized or decentralized political system: 1) to what extent are the primary needs and expressed wishes of clients of the system represented in the process? 2) are the identification and involvement of the clients with the process advanced or retarded? and 3) is the system maximally efficient in accomplishing its purpose? In education, goals are largely defined in terms of preparing individuals for functioning in a democratic society; thus the three questions are interrelated.

Human Diversity, Cultural Hegemony, and the Integrity of the Academic Canon.

Questions concerning the appropriate treatment of diverse human experiences, identities, and perspectives in the curricula of our schools have achieved prominence in the debates over curriculum development in recent years. As manifestations of diversity in human characteristics have become more obvious and are experienced as being ubiquitous in the lives of all members of society, the facts of human diversity and cultural pluralism have become a significant source of social concern. As the special interests of diverse subgroups have been increasingly expressed in the political arena, the problems for education have been exacerbated and the debate accelerated. It is in this context that concern for Africentric and multicultural education has become the focus of so much attention and often uninformed debate. Africentric education can be thought of as a response to or corrective for what has been perceived by some as Eurocentric education, with the latters history of having preempted the academic canon by imposing standards for knowledge content and validity that are associated with the cultures of northern Europe. Proponents of Africentric education insist that the long and rich history of the peoples of Africa and their cultures are legitimate foci for academic study; and that all students, especially students of African descent, should have the opportunity to be exposed to such studies. Additionally, the critics of an exclusive or excessive focus on Western civilization (Eurocentric knowledge) argue that such a truncated approach to knowledge is a distortion of reality and must be corrected. In both approaches the tendency exists for a single perspective and knowledge community to be the focus for curriculum organization. Thus, what is often debated are the contending validities and priority claims of each. In a recent report to the New York State Board of Regents, Gordon and Roberts (1991) argue that such a juxtaposition of claims misrepresents the problems. In their view, the problems are defined as having to do with (1) the juxtaposition of concern for human diversity, cultural hegemony, and the integrity of the canon; and (2) the pedagogical question of how

Reading and Other Forms of Literacy: Implications for Teaching and Learning

Critics have suggested that crash educational rehabilitation programs operating in the United States should borrow a page from Third World literacy campaigns whose efforts to bring large numbers of nonreading persons into the literate population have been reported highly effective. The implicit challenge is this: If such efforts work for technologically underdeveloped countries, why not try them on the underdeveloped populations in technologically advanced societies? Heavy investment has been made in basic reading and other content-area instruction as a response to the widespread problem of educational underdevelopment and illiteracy in many inner-city American schools. Despite these efforts, America does not seem to be able to duplicate the kinds of successes reported from the Third World. Why? One of the most obvious answers to this question lies in the ways literacy has been defined. Our own casual observation in some Central American countries and in the Caribbean suggests that, in those settings, literacy refers to mastery of very elementary skills such as decoding, word recognition, and signal reading. The literacy attainment goal of such programs is comparable to thirdor fourth-grade level reading competency in a country like the United States. A second possible explanation compares the level and nature of the effort directed at the problem. In many Third World programs, even though the quality of reading instruction is believed to vary considerably, the ethos and enthusiasm of students and teachers alike reportedly is quite high. In most cases, Third World literacy campaigns have the endorsement of their national governments and literacy attainment is coupled with nationalist pride. Such a supportive political climate stands in stark contrast to the low degree of expectation, the heightened sense of alienation between participants and target populations, and the lack of enthusiasm that plague many basic literacy programs in America. Indeed, if Third World literacy programs are effective it may be because (1) their literacy goals are not high and (2) the context in which they are implemented is unusually supportive. However, a more complex problem exists. In a world dominated by advanced technology which functions on the basis of complex abstract concepts and numeric relationships, basic literacy, while important, is

The Nurturance of African American Scientific Talent

Recent data suggest that international students from China, India, South Korea, and Taiwan, who are studying at colleges and universities in the United States, graduate as engineers and scientists in higher rates than native-born American students. (1) Earlier this year, the New York Times reported on the findings of two National Science Foundation reports that found a corresponding decline in the number of Americans entering science and technical fields. (2) On average, U.S. students score lower on standardized tests in mathematics and science than their counterparts from these countries. According to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), U.S. eighth graders performed at an average level in relation to their international counterparts, but American twelfth graders performed below the international average. (3) It is clear that elementary and secondary education needs to improve in the United States, for without continuous and large-scale nurturance of scientific talent and intellective competencies for all students, including those who are consistently underrepresented and underserved, we will not maintain high degrees of scientific competitiveness and productivity. Throughout its history, the myriad infrastructures and systems in the United States have conspired to negate the scientific contributions of U.S. African Americans and undermine their status as equal citizens. As an intrinsic part of this phenomenon, African American inventors who were enslaved had the added complication of being denied meaningful recognition for their significant contributions to society. Historically, the treatment of African Americans by the dominant white majority was based on the Eurocentric perspective that Africans were intellectually and culturally inferior as a group. The underdevelopment and neglect of African American intellective and creative talent can be traced to the long experience of enslavement, the racist values that were constructed to justify it, and the accommodationist political stances taken by some leaders in the African American community. Nevertheless, people of color, especially persons of African descent, were well represented among fledgling scientific and technological contributors to the developing nation. (4) African Americans were less well represented among cultural and literary workers, but even so, some distinguished themselves (we continue to discover evidence of literary productivity during the years of enslavement). African American inventors and craftsmen in the 18th century were involved in skilled work, ranging from painting, silver and goldsmithing, to the construction of houses. The origins of African American participation in the craft and inventive traditions may be traced from the nameless black craftsmen who helped to produce the tools and machines required for life in colonial America, to those better-known inventors of the late 19th century. It is perhaps this involvement in doing the actual work that accounts for the heavy representation of African American people among Americas early inventors. Lisa Jardine has noted the association between creative contributions to science and technology and the involvement of the inventors in the activity of the work. It seems that doing the work, and thinking about the problems that the work entails, generate new knowledge and technique. (5) Before and during the Civil War, most of the agricultural and mining industries of the South were carried out with enslaved labor. Available information from this period suggests that many of the tools developed were designed by enslaved people to lessen the burden of their daily work. These inventions were not patented by the United States patent office because Jeremiah S. Black, U.S. Attorney General at the time, ruled in 1858 that since a patent was a contract between the government and the inventor, an enslaved person could not make a contract with the government nor assign his or her invention to his master since a slave was not considered a U. …

Bias and alternatives in psychological testing.

There is a paradox of contradiction confronting those of us who hold equally high values concerned with social justice and values concerned with psychometric integrity. Traditional approaches to testing may be considered to be consistent with the requirements of social justice when the criteria for just society are equal treatment, constancy of standards and uniformity (sameness) of judgments across individuals, across groups and across situations. Standardized test items, standard procedures, and standardized scores support the consistency and integrity of traditional approaches to psychometrics. However, such approaches are inconsistent with social justice when the criteria for the just society are fairness (i.e., appropriateness to background), sensitivity to differential attributes, and conditional or pluralistic standards. It is the paradox of contradiction intrinsic to this dual concern for social justice and psychometric integrity, traditionally defined, which underlies the continuing debate concerning bias in mental testing. In a recent book, Jensen goes to great length to support with empirical data the claim that there is no substantial evidence that tests of mental ability are biased against any of the U.S. born, English speaking minority groups. 1 Jensens work covers an

Bringing formative classroom assessment to schools and making it count

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to present alternative views on the theory and practice of formative assessment (FA), or assessment to support teaching and learning in classrooms, with the purpose of highlighting its value in education and informing discussions on educational assessment policy. Methodology/approach – The method used is a “moderated policy discussion”. The six invited commentaries on the theme represent perspectives of leading scholars and measurement experts juxtaposed against voices of prominent school district leaders from two education systems in the USA. The discussion is moderated with introductory and concluding remarks from the guest editor and is excerpted from a recent blog published by Education Week. References and author biographies are presented at the end of the article. Findings – While current assessment policies in the USA push for greater accountability in schools by increasing large scale testing of students, the authors underscore the importance of FA integrat...

Class, Race, and Educational Achievement

The relationship between class, race, and educational achievement has been a focus of considerable research attention and debate concerning educational policy and practice for most of the past century. The literature, however, has generally neglected to discuss how race, class, and educational achievement are intertwined. The related issues have been difficult to untwine and understand because of their embeddedness in the political economy; that is because of the classism and racism that are ubiquitous in the social order and, in part, because the issues themselves require multilevel analyses where unilateral analysis is more customary. In this chapter we focus on the “isms” that have come to be associated with these constructs – classism and racism – and discuss how these forms of oppression are at the root of the problem of providing opportunities for human development and educational achievement.