[NLA] Call for OERI Re-organization -- How will Adult Education Research fare?

[George E. Demetrion]

John and others:

There very well may be a need to support the OERI legislation on grounds
of political expediency, though without further examining the issue I'll
adopt an agnostic position.

Still, it would be one thing if the OERI were going to take a broad
eclectic approach on research traditions and methodologies and allowing
work to be judged on its content merits based upon the canonical
traditions of the various academic disciplines that buttress educational
studies. That is definitely not the case.  Rather, the state is taking a
very reductionist  position on what counts and what doesn't count as
legitimate research.  It is entering into the field of defining
legitimate knowledge. That I view as dangerous.  What I find troubling is
the wholesale repudiation of educational scholarship by the USDoE as
asserted in those three irresponsible sentences in the draft Strategic
Plan which has been carried over into the actual Plan. Recall the
statement by the USDoE:

"Unlike medicine, agriculture, and industrial production, the field of
education operates largely on the basis of ideology and professional
consensus.  As such, it is subject to fads and is incapable of cumulative
progress that follows from the application of the scientific method and
from the systematic collection and use of objective information in policy
making" (p. 48, draft document).

This has been discussed.  What I find pernicious is that the actual
content of said scholarship is not examined, but is brushed aside
wholesale.  It is brushed aside not because it is not based on
substantial scholarship, but because the USDoE doesn't like the politics
from which such scholarship is based.  If not, fine, but critique the
work on its merits.   It is more than a little disingenuous to make such
a wholesale dismissal and to place it in a document that purports to
support evidence-based "rigorous" scientific research.  

One wonders what the "hidden curriculum" is beneath such rhetoric.  I
believe we are entering into an Orwellian state of thought control,
something historically, that Republicans have repudiated.  THis is not
just politics as usual. but politics with a strong ideological mission to
eradicate the influence of the 60s and the progressive legacy upon which
it was based.

To state it in other terms, by ruling out progressive educational
scholarship on the dubious grounds that it is not methodologically
rigorous is an intrusion of the state into areas where it does not
belong.  This is detrimental to the vitality of a vigorous democratic
citizenry as well as to that of sound scholarship and good educational
practice.   It is also placing in jeopardy at least in spirit if not in
letter the 1st Amendment.  This is particularly ironic given the strong
profession of patriotism as an American value that the Bush
administration purports to advocate.  There is much in the USDoE
Strategic Plan that is easily deconstructable, though on scholarship no
longer viewed as sufficiently evidence-based and "rigorous."  Let
scholarship meet scholarship on its own ground without artificial
handicaps from the state.

Which educational scholarship specifically, is being threatened by this
latest effort of the state to define the sphere of legitimate knowledge? 
Broadly speaking, anything to do with constructivism is the target.  One
of the major targets is the notion of  learning as an inquiry process
between the learner, the text, and the content.  Rejecting the notion
that learners are active processors of knowledge, the neoconservative
standard-bearers claim that what students need to do is learn the
received content.  

Thus, objective subject mastery of the received tradition, including
traditionally centered US history is what students need to focus on. 
Never mind diverse and conflicting interpretations over such issues as
slavery, immigration, or other contentious matters.  Never mind the rich
and highly contentious body of scholarship on US history which profoundly
challenges the operative assumptions of "traditional" US history.  

The mastery of the basic facts is what should be focused on and these can
be measured by objective means through standardized test scores. This and
the promotion of patriotism is what US history should be about.  Besides,
our students need heros more than they need the "insights" of contentious
left wing academicians.  Anything else, such as inquiry-based learning
drawing deeply from student knowledge and experience is to succumb to
faddism, guruism and ideology. 

 Some of the major educational figures being repudiated from this point
of view are:

John Dewey.
L.I Vygotsky
Paulo Freire
bell hooks
Robert Kegan
Jack Mezirow
Howard Gardner
Sylvia Scribner

That's quite a body of work represented by these major figures and those
who have been influenced by them.  It is also is a repudiation,
implicitly of much key work in adult literacy education over the past 30
years.

It may or may not be strategically necessary from a policy perspective to
accept the legislation, though on grounds of educational scholarship the
current USDoE needs to be profoundly challenged.  And such criticism
can't be confined to the reservation (aka, the university), but needs to
be made in the public sector.

Notwithstanding its own rhetoric to the contrary, it is the Bush USDoE
that is seeking to destabilize 100 years of cumulative progressive
research extending back to Dewey's Child and the Curriculum.  Allowing
that to happen would be a great travesty.  

George Demetrion
Sophocles5 at juno.com


On Sun, 31 Mar 2002 10:03:37 -0500 comingjo <comingjo at gse.harvard.edu>
writes:
>The House version of the OERI legislation has passed in its committee 
>and though I haven't read it through yet, I'm told that it does continue

>support  for the R&D Centers program that funds NCSALL.  The Senate
committee 
>will take this up on April 30th in hearings.  I think Kennedy will
support the R&D Centers.  OERI does need reorganization and when it is
reorganized, it will probably receive more funding, and so we should
support reorganization.
>
>My concern is this: The new structure will have separate "Institutes"
for research, dissemination, evaluation, and education statistics (like
NALS). The head of each institute will be a k-12 researcher. ABE will get
little or no attention.  The only reason OERI is funding NCSALL (and NCAL
before us) is because two Congressmen Goodling and Sawyer) told them they
had to do it. 

Goodling, Sawyer, and Kennedy have weighed in several times to look after
our 
>interests over the last 10+ years.  Goodling is now gone.  I feel we
need some language in the bill that identifies ABE, adult ESOL, and ASE
programs and students as a required area of OERI's work and that each
"institute" must have a staff person who has experience and expertise in
our field. If there is no ABE person, the institute will not pay
attention to our concerns.
>
 I think our field needs an integrated OERI institute in which research,
dissemination, evaluation, and statistics are linked together.  This goes
against the existing House bill, but I just don't see a structure run by
K-12 researchers working for us.
>
>I would, of course, like the R&D Centers program to continue, but the
field's concern should be "How will the ABE/ESOL/ASE field get the
attention it deserves in OERI."  I think it will only get that attention
if OERI hires several researchers whose careers are in our field and
that, for our field, research, dissemination, evaluation, and statistics
are coordinated, which in a federal agency means that one person would be
in charge of them.


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