TECHNOS

July 20, 2008

TECHNOS QUARTERLY Spring 1992 Vol. 1 No. 1

Interview with Theodore R. Sizer

With Carole Novak

Like Don Quixote, Theodore Sizer is on a crusade, a quest for educational reform. Sizer is professor of education and chair of the Coalition of Essential Schools at Brown University in Providence, R.I. A former history instructor and headmaster at Phillips Academy, Andover, and former dean of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard, Sizer is author of the 1984 landmark Horace's Compromise: the Dilemma of the American High School. His new book, Horace's School: Redesigning the American High School (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992), again features Sizer's alter ego, English teacher Horace Smith, at the fictional Franklin High. Horace and his colleagues, like Sizer and Quixote, are on a quest for reform at Franklin. TECHNOS talked to Ted Sizer about “Horace's School,” educational reform, and using technology in schools.

If one word describes your philosophy, it's ‘empowerment’— that of the community, the teachers, the students. You're talking about a basic change in philosophy and attitudes, of a shift in power.

As a historian, I call myself Don Quixote. Indeed, the ideas that inform the American high school have been around for 90 years. Various sturdy assaults have been made on it, but it remains pretty much intact. There are exceptions to the rule, such as the way we treat kids with special needs. We put the blind kid in a closet in 1950, and we mainstreamed him in 1990. That's a major change—in attitude as well as practice. But, by and large, we still have English, math, social studies, science, broken up into 52-minute periods with tests for review. That's the way it was in 1893.

How many Don Quixotes will it take to change the situation?

Putting aside our Spanish friend, I think the realistic among us in this project said, ‘If one of five schools can pull it off, that's a great deal.’ The question is, how many schools do you need to get a 20 percent that really has an impact? We remain not only Quixote-esque but also determined that we can do a lot better by kids in this country. And it is no real insult to our forebears to suggest that the ideas that they espoused in the 1890s can probably be reformed. Further, I think that in contrast with the political climate when we started in the mid-1980s [1984-85], it's much more promising today. Even though we have in many cases a financial crisis, there is much more informed interest about serious improvement of schools of an ambitious sort than was the case as recently as eight years ago.

In your book, you call for teachers to know and to respect students. Don't kids today have problems that need more attention than just a well-intentioned team of teachers with fewer students in their classes can provide?

That's true. But you have to ask, ‘Compared to what?’ Research that a group of us did in the early 1980s identified a group of kids referred to as the ‘unspecial majority.’ It's true that the majority of kids go through school not really known very well by any adult. The kind of rearrangement and the reducing of the number of kids per teacher [80 to 1] that is suggested in Horace's School simply sets up a condition whereby a determined teacher has a fighting chance of really being able to get to know each youngster. That's not to say that just because three or four teachers really know little Jimmy that they're going to be able to address all of his problems. But it sure is a light year ahead of the way it used to be.

They can at least call him by name.

That's right. And the record in Coalition schools where they've reduced the number of students per class is a record of sharply decreased dropping out and sharply increased attendance and sharply reduced disciplinary problems. It's always nice when practice follows what one thought was a common sense conclusion.

The word ‘technology’ doesn't appear until well over 150 pages into your book. You finally acknowledge the ‘key’ that technology can be, calling it ‘a central part of an individual's new means to the end of a consequential education.’ What are your thoughts about the use of technology in education?

A couple of things: First, my experience in schools is that the existing technology—if ‘technology’ means computers and sophisticated audiovisual equipment—by and large, these are handmaidens of the existing assumptions. That is, you take the existing curriculum and work up drill exercises. Or, if you're more imaginative, you take the existing physics curriculum and create a computer-based game. Essentially, the reality that I and my colleagues have looked at is that of technology as the handmaiden of the existing system, and as such it isn't very important in most schools. The exception—and this is my second point—is with regard to libraries, specifically information systems. I'm impressed in a few libraries to see the beginning, a real flicker, of libraries being real information centers of a very profound kind.

For instance, let's say you have a dynabook, with instantaneous access to an entire encyclopedia. And let's assume that dynabook is truly accessible to the poorest kid at the school. And Internet, an on-line information system, is available. What if you can cut your dynabook into Internet? And what if there were visual as well as other forms of interactive communication? You could completely rethink school.

Absolutely.

And our friends at IBM, with whom I've talked most about this, say that technically, this is a possibility. We know how to do technologically most of what such a system would require. The problem is cost, which, granted, is a fundamental one. The other—and far more difficult—problem is changing people's habits.

What do you think of technologies like interactive videodisc and the prospect of virtual reality in the classroom?

I think they're like all good teaching tools, dumb animals. It depends to what use we put them. Interactive videodiscs only make sense when you have a situation where interaction is absolutely necessary and the parties involved have the incentive to interact. Technology follows pedagogy—not the other way around. There's no point in having technology if you can't use it. We have a lot of examples of people having a new hunk of technology saying, ‘How can we use this?’ And we know that a lot of that equipment is just sitting, gathering dust in closets. Why? Because the system is driven by different ideas. Change the ideas! Make those ideas such that it's impossible to achieve what you want to achieve without the use of technology.

For instance, a humble, but very important way to illustrate this is with word processing. If I'm an English teacher and I want a student to revise his paper 17 times, I need a word processor. Ideally, that word processor would be on line, so if I sit at home, I can just tune into the paper that the student has at home or at school. And, in fact, the computer sets it up in such a way that I don't need a red pencil anymore. Essentially, I can red pencil his paper—in real time—and the kid sitting at home can actually see me do it.

Now, my goodness! Wouldn't that accelerate the process? Those of us who taught in the 1950s and those of us who teach in the 1990s have seen—in favored schools where there are word processors—significant change in the way we can teach and in the quality of the work.

You mentioned ‘favored schools.’ Are we really going to be able to ensure total, free access to technology?

Well, in an absolute sense, it's probably impossible. But as an objective, it's a very high priority. We can't afford to have a significant sector of our population that's easily pushed around intellectually, conned by slick advertising, and simply paralyzed when faced with something new in the workplace or in the home. Of course, when one talks about technology, one has to expect more of the kids. There is an army waiting to be mobilized in schools, and it's the adolescents.

You say in your book that we should give them more responsibility.

Just expect it as routine. We now spend a whole lot of money hiring custodians to sweep up after healthy kids. It's a terrible education! It says there's a free lunch in this world. It's also an incredible waste of resources. Kids should have a sense of shared obligation, of ownership. They should say, ‘This is our school. And it's our school, even after a pep rally.’ You can't do this in big schools, of course. But it just radiates from schools which are small enough so that people have a sense that they're part of something. How do you do that in a school with 5,000 kids? It's impossible.

Some of our inner-city schools have so many other problems to deal with.

But our experience in the Coalition is, in schools serving kids who are under tremendous pressure outside, those schools which are small, and simple, and focused, and demanding—and that get those teacher loads down—are schools that have very high attendance rates. And the kids end up doing all sorts of things they weren't supposed to do, like stay in school, get a diploma, and go to college. On one level, it's really not all that complicated.

Let's go back to the subject of technology for a moment. Do you think past instructional technologies have been used well?

I haven't, as a historian, really delved into it. As a practical school person, I was particularly struck by the impact of the hand calculator. The difference in the teaching of mathematics and physics in the school at which I was principal from 1972 to 1981 radically changed. In 1972 the math department forbade calculators; in the late 1970s, the department assigned them, thereby profoundly accelerating the serious mathematics and physics that was taught. Now, there is a modestly priced bit of quite sophisticated technology which had a real and physical impact.

Your earlier comments about library on-line information systems brings up an interesting point. John Abbott, the director of Britain's reform movement, Education 2000, tells us that in some cases they've seen a 300 percent increase in the number of books checked out of libraries through those systems. Not only is the computer user friendly, it's bringing kids back to books.

I'm familiar with Education 2000, and John and I have spoken many times. My hunch is the primary reason the students are going back to books is that it has less to do with technology than with the ingenious, attractive quality of the questions being posed by and through the technology. People read things when they're engaged and interested. Whether I tell them, or whether they are attracted by something from their computer, people work on things that they find inherently interesting and important to them.

Is there a connection among the nine principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools, England's Education 2000 principles, and America 2000 goals?

I doubt whether the English Education 2000 had much of an impact on America 2000, though I don't know. America 2000 is an interesting grab bag that was put together very fast, I gather. And indeed, there are parts of it that are contradictory. You have American achievement tests where something called ‘the nation’ tells kids what to study, but this clashes with the concept of ‘choice.’ Some of my English friends call that ‘Maggie Thatcher's choice plan,’ whereby local entities are allowed to run the schools as long as they meet the definition of education devised by a centralized authority. Now, I don't mean this very critically—it would be nice if those principles would fit coherently into America 2000, but I don't think that's what [U.S. Department of Education] Secretary [Lamar] Alexander felt he could do. As a result, some of America 2000 is very supportive and consistent with the kinds of things my friends in Coalition schools are doing. The notion of ‘break-the-mold’ schools, for example, is simply the assertion that we can do better in this country in the way we think about learning in the schools. What isn't consistent is the notion that some small group of people will figure out cheap tests that will measure learning.

You argue against standardized testing.

Sure. The notion that the kind of standards we really need would be measured by these tests flies in the face of what we know about such tests. We'll end up with tests that don't test that which we really value.

What about financing educational reform? In your book, you call it a ‘forlorn society’ that must rely on lotteries to finance its schools.

To me, it's appalling. It's funny on one level—that we're using lottery funds, which depend on an ignorant population, a more desperate population. Or when we expect schools to go begging—that public education depends on a bake sale or the generosity of the local bank. That says a lot about us as a people that is very embarrassing.

We'd hope that we could again finance our schools as we began to, with public funds from taxes. But these days we're hearing more and more that it's just impossible.

It's a matter of political will.

Yes, but our politicians are telling us that we have to go out to corporations to do this.

That, to me, corrupts the system. And it's unworthy of our democratic tradition. I think it's a very sad statement that we can spend hundreds of millions to put a corrupt Kuwaiti government back in place, but we can't find a few millions to invest in better schools. I understand the politics of that, but to say there isn't money is simply an evasion of the responsibility.

That brings to mind privatization. In your book you mention ‘entrepreneurs in the private sector,’ specifically Chris Whittle and his $60 million Edison Project to design a system of ‘break-the-mold’ schools in the United States. It seems you don't like the idea, but you recognize the potential for change.

Yes. I think Chris Whittle is terrific. If he's successful, he's going to show the public sector that it's inefficient and it's arrogantly unwilling to think of schooling in different ways.

So you see the value of his project not so much as producing better schools, but to shake us all up?

Right. And I wish him very well. The possibility of the Edison Project is that it will gather people who can look at much more powerful ways of moving serious learning by kids forward. It's an embarrassment to me, as an American, to acknowledge that we may need to do what he's doing. But given the present political climate, I say, ‘Three cheers for Chris Whittle for taking the risk.’ It's a horrendous risk, because he'll be fought every inch of the way. The difficulty in community after community after community where my friends are trying to change their schools is that nobody really supports them. So a little competition out there—a little bit of Avis trying harder—is going to help.

Is there a risk in privatization of someone teaching his or her own ideas? Can we trust these people to do what's right?

I think we have the risk right now represented by the private sector in the textbook industry. The American textbook industry is really controlled by fewer than six companies. To say that there isn't a major for-profit influence in public schools now is to fly in the face of common sense. So, the public schools are already somewhat privatized, and that's OK. What I'm concerned about—as I think all of us are—is to keep a variety of influences in the schools. Just as I'm against a single national exam or exam system, so too am I against only a small number of textbook companies, the choices of their products being made by highly centralized state textbook committees.

I think our freedom and the likelihood that the best material will win out depends on a truly open market of ideas and materials. If that be privatization, so be it. It has less to do with public and private forms of management and control than it does with a public system that deliberately encourages all kinds of participants and influences, some of which are supported by public authorities, and some of which are supported by private authorities.

One final question just out of curiosity. What is the reaction of American universities to the Coalition and your philosophies? Are they going to help train teachers for the Essential Schools?

There's not been much interest.

Really?

Yes. As a former dean of a school of education and a long-time ‘denizen’ of higher education, I'm not surprised by that. I'm a little hurt by it, but not surprised.

Why?

They really don't feel the pressure of the need for consequential change the way the schools do. The majority of the people in the universities really don't understand what's going on or keep up with the fact that society's changing and that what kids need in 1992 is different from what they needed in 1981. It's been 10 years since I've been a high school principal, but just in listening to my friends I know that the world has shifted in interesting ways. And the good teachers are with the world as it shifts. So, people like me who pontificate at universities pontificate for days past. We hate to admit it—it hurts us a lot—but that's what we're doing. So many of my old friends at universities, to put it cruelly, don't have a clue. They don't understand the world as it is.

That's a scary thought.

It's very scary and it's very poignant. And, of course, I can say these things because I'm one of them.

You have such idealistic views about education and what we can do for it, and yet you're a realist.

Well, maybe it's my training in history. You've gotta have a bit of both. It's awful—like being a parent is awful. You wish the world for every child, but you learn that they do lose their sweaters.

Photo by John Foraste, Brown University.

In addition to the print version of this important TECHNOS Interview, you can now listen to the interview with Dr. Sizer from AIT's Reinventing Our Schools . These audio excerpts are provided to you by TECHNOS and can be listened to using the Real Audio player.

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