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-# The redistribution of educational tasks between schools and other organs of society
-
-The purpose of this paper is not to stimulate discussion on internal change within school systems. I would l1ke to raise a different question: can the purpose of a school system established by any given society be continually and effectively renewed? If so, what are the necessary cond1t1ons for constant renewal?
-
-Only a limited portion of the total educational process in any given nation is organized under formal bureaucratic control. The remainder is usually left to institutions over which the planner and programmer have little influence. If we look only at that part of the educational process under formal control, we discover that only a part of it is actually performed by institutions which society considers "schools." The rest is left to programs which are not thought of as formal "schooling." This would include everything from in-service training to driver's education or sex education.
-
-At this moment we are beginning to analyze society's ability to reapportion education and to influence the growth and orientation of "non-school" education. In this discussion I would like to set aside the concrete mechanics of renewal in the schooling process in order to examine the conditions necessary for a constant renewal of the school's goals.
-
-First, I will identify the school system which I have observed, and with which I am the most familiar. Then I will list a series of conditions which I consider necessary in order for any school system to continually renew itself and by renewal I mean: allowing new levels of humanism in teaching to be reached, revising educational technology, and eventually abandoning previous tasks to "non-schools" so that the "schools" can assume new tasks.
-
-
-## Catholic schools in Latin America
-
-During the last few years I have spent a great deal of time analyzing the effect of private schools on the over-all educational process in each of the Latin American nations. And in Latin America "private school" means Catholic school. The latter have a double, stated purpose: they were established to inculcate an ideology which is often taken to be the Catholic Faith, and to offer educational services (i.e. alternate schooling, usually custodial child-care) for those whose parents or sponsors are of the moneyed classes.
-
-The impact of the private school on the over-all scholastic picture in a developing nation can be viewed from several angles.
-
-1) Private education in Latin America can be understood as an economic contribution to development. Tuition to these schools can be viewed as a self-imposed additional tax by a minority group which frees regular tax funds by relieving the government of the cost of educating from five to 20 per cent of the school age population and this five to 20 percent is by no means chosen at random. Private schooling provides instruction for children whose parents or sponsors would otherwise have the power to demand above average outlays of government funds for the education of their children. It is also interesting to note that these private schools for the already-privileged in Latin America attract voluntary foreign aid in money and manpower which, since 1960, amounts to more than 20 million dollars per year.
-
-2) The effect of private education on development can also be viewed from a socio-political angle. The private school system is a broad, systematic device which allows the privileged sector to grow at a rate far beyond its natural growth-rate. At the same time, the private school system allows the privileged sector to acquire a new, flexible internal cohesiveness while still maintaining its very obvious aloofness.
-
-a. Private schools give a modern rationale both to the existence of a new elite, its identification with the old elite and the exclusion of those rejected by both. Superior, separate and ideologically differentiated private schooling in Latin America is thus important for the rich, and those favored by the rich. Private schools often act as social elevators for a special type of individual from the lower classes. It would be most interesting to determine who these people are, since the achievement-oriented character of their parents might prove to be the most important factor in deciding who will receive scholarships to private schools.
-
-b. It might turn out that in the long run private schools in Latin America are more important as sieves which allow a certain character type from the lower socio-economic groups to join the elite, than as opportunity for the especially imaginative or intelligent student.
-
-
-## The planning of private Schools
-
-Private schools could be understood as a challenge to public education. They might provide means to develop and test new educational models, an important factor in educational planning and policy-making. This is a point which has been frequently neglected in the past. Educational planning bodies concerned with facilities and, more importantly with policies in Latin America have yet to propose effective and racional penalties and incentives to include private school initiatives in efforts to achieve overall educational goals. To date effective planning of private schools in Latin America has been politically tabu.
-
-At present traditional (Church) and new (private enterprise) ideologies keep private schools beyond the reach of the educational planners. Yet we can forecast a strong trend in the opposite direction: namely, that specialized instruction will be industrialized, and that public agencies will both license and contract the services of institutions dedicated to such instruction.
-
-
-## The disestablishment of a school System
-
-Finally, we can consider the Catholic school system in Latin America as a model for the study of the dynamics of other school systems. We have pursued this line of research in Cuernavaca for the past six years. We have been privileged to act as self-appointed observers and promoters of the only case known to us of the disestablishment of an entire school system. Some of our observations might be relevant for other school systems and their eventual, partial disestablishment.
-
-Church schools are by no means a negligible factor in Latin America. The Church spends from 60 to 80 per cent of her total budget in any country (except Cuba) for the building and maintenance of schools. From five to 20 per cent of the school-age population in any Latin American nation is studying in Catholic-controlled schools. The total enrollment in Latin American Catholic schools is greater than the total public school enrollment in all but three of the Latin American countries. Yet if present trends continue this percentage will have shrunk to almost nothing by 1980.
-
-These trends are caused by factors beyond the control of Church administrators and constituencies: ever-rising costs, manpower crises, socio—political variables. And just as important in this trend toward the dis-establishment of the Church from schooling is the conviction of a number of key church-men that Catholic schools constitute the major obstacle to the socio-educational relevance of the Church on this continent.
-
-This surprising process (which I foresee) is of paradigmatic value of an often neglected relationship; namely, the relationship between education al intent and the choice of schools for the implementation of that intent. Since the Conquest the primary social function of the Latin American Church has been education. But now the Church finds herself entangled in her own school system and is trying to remove herself from school administration altogether. This trend will become surprisingly obvious by 1970. But if recognized now, policies can be created which will allow teachers to eventually accept the rethinking of education, the radical re-apportionment of educational functions or the charismatic renewal an already functioning educational system.
-
-
-## Major points
-
-1) Mechanism can be built into school systems which accelerate their innovative capacity, but pressure for the renewal of a school system will usually come from outside that system. The preceding statement is a corollary of the knowledge that good schools are "teacher proof." That is, we have evidence that teachers advocate more reform of their milieu than almost any other professional group, yet they are the least effective when it comes to actually effecting that reform. This is due to the fact that the teacher's main task is to formulate questions never asked, or even accepted, outside of the classroom. At the same time, he must preside over an academic life which is accepted outside the school only if it carries the academic "label." Indeed, the better a school can function despite its "subversive" teachers who formulate questions not acceptable to non-academic society, the better teachers that school can afford to hire. The exercise of academic freedom can never be the source of the systematic improvement of the system itself. Indeed, the teacher's very job greatly dilutes his ability to change the educational system from within. His ideas will be generally ignored when he voices them beyond the walls of academia.
-
-2) The school planner is the last person who can make fundamental innovations in the system. His employer has already told him exactly what special educational task the school must perform, and the school planner simply arranges the allocation of resources to accomplish that task. As soon as the school planner raises the question of a totally different apportionment of the task itself he moves out of his limited area of money allocation, and into the broadest type of social planning.
-
-3) The definition of the school planner's task is ultimately based on
-a clear separation of: a) the school system, and b) overall educational planning.
-
-The planner of the overall educational process, as opposed to the school planner, must decide which specific social tasks should be pe{formed by formal schooling, as differentiated from educational tasks which must be left to the responsibility of others—from mothers in a community to driving instructors. Only if this decision is made outside of the_school system, will the latter avoid becoming a "state within a state" (like the Medieval Church), or a political football. If the school planner would attempt to formulate overall educational policies, he would reduce all education and instruction demanded by clients, economic planners or politicians to a form of formal schooling. On the other hand, if the overall educational planner cannot treat the school system as a service agency to which specific tasks may be assigned, he will never be able to demand effectiveness and efficiency from that system.
-
-4) The demand for renewal will either take the form of a request to
-serve new clients, or will be a reaction to a model tried and proved
-successful elsewhere. The clients of a school system may demand that their system produce new results in a new manner which has proved successful elsewhere. '"Schools should produce..." "Schools should serve..." --it is doubtful that such demands will be effective, since good school systems are not only "teacher proof," but they are also vaccinated by constant disillusionment against utopian ideas coming from outside the system itself. Therefore, effective demands for renewal will usually take the form of a request that the system incorporate competitors. "If the teachers there can do it, why can't our teachers do it? If another system can produce these results, why can't ours?"
-
-5) A model is usually the agent utilized to effect change in a system. Politics aimed at polarizing power for change in educational systems consistently utilize models to create issues. An effective educational model or experiment must have four facets. The model must prove the following:
-
-a. That something new is now possible, that the present behavior of another can determine our own future. I would expand a bit on Jerome Bruner and say: '"Personal creativity produces an effective surprise concerning a present possibility." ("They did it!")
-
-b. Something previously untried has proved itself effective, that it has produced education outside of the current school system. An effective educational result has, for the first time, been defined as a scholastic need. This need is a possible result of systematic teaching, and should now be adopted here. ("Our school should do it.")
-
-c. The experiment raises a question. Can the educational system effectively allow the model to be reproduced? Must the reproduction of the model remain outside of the system? ("Should we do it? Is our system that 'teacher-proof:? Let 'them' organize it. It's none of our business.")
-
-d. Is the present system willing to pay the price of.adapting to the new process? Can the present system insure the continuation of the model through its institutionalization? ("Maybe we had better let them continue to try it.")
-
-6) The last characteristic (d) puts the educational experiment into a class by itself. A school system cannot produce teachers, contrary to popular opinion. It can only create more or less ideal situations for teaching. In the strict sense, educational invention is personal and inimitable. Ideally, the individual teacher is a creator with a personal style which cannot be imitated by another. Individual teaching is the "celebration" of an intimate experience which has no precedent: The charismatic and prophetic quality of a new style of teaching distinguishes it from invention of educational technology.
-
-Since most teachers are uninventive, dull, or worse, the school system tends to make the teacher a part of the program itself in order to guarantee that his presence in the system be worthwhile. He must "follow the teaching program” laid down by his superiors. This kind of thinking should be avoided. New teaching should not be a model for a process which will eventually be institutionalized. On the contrary, it is concrete proof of a possibility which might lead to the adoption and development of a methodological model within a school system.”
-
-## Summary
-
-This Principle could very well be restated in a paradox: Nobody should be paid for the privilege of teaching. But effective and efficient instructors should be so well paid that they can have the privilege of becoming true teachers.
-
-The effectiveness of planned change in a school system depends largely on the rational selection of scholastic goals within the overall educational process, formal and informal, which a society has defined for itself.
-
-The Latin American public school systems are irrational, comprehensive, ecclectic combinations of educational goals which have sedimented over a period of 150 years and are glued together by an intensely formalized ideology. The levels and branches of these systems, even if they are somewhat updated, are still historical relics which have ceased to be self-contained sub-systems or "careers." Now education is measured by the number of years one has "passed" on successive levels of the "educational supermarket." The student moves from the First Grade "supermarket" to the Second Grade "supermarket," and eventually may move through 15 or 20 different "supermarkets" and receive a university degree. This system will probably have to be replaced by measurement through statistically described sets of typical educational processes resulting from parallel educational services. In each of these processes almost any individual may obtain a qualitatively, narrowly defined "schooling" at almost any moment in his life.
-
-I propose that for the intent of the present discussion, the suggestions made here be seen against the background of history; in fact I believe that only through the study of history we will be able to gain the sufficient freedom of imagination to envisage radically new re-distribution of educational tasks between formal schooling and other forms of education or celebration.
-
-For this purpose, I suggest that we analyze the history of religious institutions throughout the centuries. They are the only major formally
-educational bodies who, in the past, had to grapple with the issues now faced by major school systems.
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