Why Is Incremental Change in Schooling Typical?
The short answer is that conservatism is built into the purpose of schools and both teachers and students share that innate conservatism–at first.
Tax-supported public schools have two purposes. The first is to change students, imbue them with knowledge, skills, and values that they would use to gain personal success and make America a better place to live in. The duty of public schooling as an agent of individual and societal reform took off in the early 20th century as Progressivism and has been in the educational bloodstream ever since.
The second obligation was for the tax-supported school to actively conserve personal, community and national values ranging from inculcating traditional knowledge, obeying authority including that of teachers, show respect for religious beliefs, practicing honesty, and displaying patriotism.
Often conserving such values can be seen in rules posted in nearly every classroom across the nation at the beginning of the school year. For example:
Teachers are agents of that conservatism insofar as they have been students for 16-20-plus years and know first-hand what happens in classrooms and schools. When faced with reforms that expect major changes in classroom practices, they adapt such policies to fit the students they face daily, their content and skills expertise, and what they believe they should teach and students should learn. They do this, of course, piece=by-piece. Incrementally. You want 180 degree changes in what happens in classrooms, it won’t happen. You want 10 degrees or 20 degrees of change, with teacher understanding, capacity, and willingness, CONTINUE READING: Why Is Incremental Change in Schooling Typical? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
