19 November 2007

I Will Now Deliberate With You

Edit: Comment criticism is legit; this argument's main premise is shoddy

Someone in the RCAH said to me, "People don't use simple sentences any more, and it makes me sad."

Now Serving Deep-Fried Parents

The argument for deliberative democracy is a very strong one, and in most circumstances I don't hold that it faces very legitimate opposition. A directly democratic process that simply lists options and calls for votes is more subject to irrationality than a deliberative one. With deliberation, argument allows for the force of reason - which is firmly entrenched in the most common of minds as the best and solely legitimate support for democratic options, as opposed to the popularity of the speaker or novelty of the option - to enter the collective consciousness of the deliberating group.

As Terence Beck writes in "The Music of Deliberation," deliberation gives citizens a chance to listen to each other, expand the volume of their considerations, and weigh both the ethical as well as practical implications of an option. As each citizen expresses a unique concern, all the concerns involved with an issue become relevant. We move away from hastily-adopted positions based on rhetoric, and towards concise positions based on the unique circumstances of a given problem.

Beck's anecdotal example of the deliberative process clearly shows its strengths. He saw that opposing sides "seemed to stop asking 'how can I win?' and started asking 'What should we do?' The letters, phone calls, and lobbying ceased." Not only was a solution arrived at, but resources (material as well as temporal) that would have been spent on endless fighting were saved for better use.

While it's clear that deliberation is far superior to the war-like, competitive direct-democracy approach, I oppose its use in parent-teacher relationships. I'll simply say that teachers are very obviously more qualified to make decisions regarding education than parents. Parents come from all walks of life; while some are well-educated, others are not only ignorant, but simply wrong on educational issues.

Our educational institutions, as a whole, have come to certain conclusions about their field. Everyone involved is certainly not on the same page, and they have disagreements, but their disagreements come within a reasonable range. It's an academic subject, in which their is dialogue - or, to use a more appropriate term, deliberation - among scholars in the field. One cannot advocate for a position and expect to be heard without first having read lengthy, detailed articles about hundreds (if not thousands) of other positions. There is no conclusion or widely-accepted opinion in the educational institution that hasn't come from a long, deliberative process in which every participating member has spent a lifetime studying the subject.

To bring this down to teachers, consider that public school teachers have to become re-certified every few years, going back to school to study the academic subject of education. At higher levels, studying a subject is (to some extent) participating in the scholarly deliberation about it. What I'm getting at is not only that teachers have expertise and training that the common parent simply doesn't have, but that the deliberation has already been done. A democratic process, of a sort, has already taken place, well before ideas or systems have been brought to bear on schools. It took place with the appropriate participants (unlike deliberations involving parents), people who have a lot of knowledge to feed into the deliberative reasoning machine.

Let's take a look, again, at Beck's anecdotal example. When the interests of general education clashed with the interests of music education, there wasn't a compromise so much as there was a sacrifice in another area, recess. I'm sure that sixth-grade students, who are known for having no opinions about their education and never disagreeing with their parents or teachers, were extremely pleased with that result. I'm sure that they brought their squeaky strings and quacking horns to music class with bright eyes, bushy tails and aspirations of becoming concert musicians (and, of all people, wouldn't be distracted by thoughts of outside-playing that they're missing out on).

As long as I'm on this, I feel obliged to state my own position on the subject of music and general education. While I can't speak for the specific situation of Terence Beck's school, I (ironically enough) agree with the parents' stance in more general circumstances - that music should be taught during school. The education provided to children at that age ought not to focus on the hard knowledge of math and science; it should be more concerned with teaching children how to learn, and helping them grow. If that's our goal, then our achievement of it hinges less on what is taught, and more on how it is taught.

There does appear to be a disconnect in my argument - if teachers are more qualified than parents, then why am I siding with the parents? I'll note again that I'm not actually taking a side in the case of Beck's school, but rather in a broader national debate; I don't know enough details to speak authoritatively about that school's situation. Nor, in fact, do I have much authority at all in the national debate - which brings me to my original point. I'm not a certified teacher; I have a neglible amount of experience assisting teachers in private, religiously-oriented classes, and certainly no degree. When the question of music and general education in public schools comes up, my opinion comes without the extensive backround of an experienced and certified educator.

While Beck's argument for the deliberative process clearly shows its superiority to the directly democratic process, it doesn't show why it is that parents' opinions should be involved.

1 comment:

Shawn said...

I think you need to resolve that contradiction and the way to do it is to realize you're taking liberties with your framing of the educational establishment's scholarly practices. You are ignoring the long history external influence on that field, not just from parents but from parents in alliance with powerful political forces. Then there are the various legitimating moves made by the establishment to try and ameliorate the influence of stakeholders; you seem to neglect the question of whether such moves are really legitimate. The general education teachers in the case were not standing up for some long established academic consensus; they were trying to avoid losing ground on the educational accountability front. Music is not part of the reward system surrounding accountability.