While parents, teachers and school administrators are busy worrying about students鈥� declining reading and math scores on standardized tests, a 天美影院researcher fears another basic educational tenet may have slipped off the radar screen.
A good democratic education, according to Walter Parker鈥檚 just published book, Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life, is imperative both for individuals and for the health of American society. Parker will be talking about the book during a symposium on the 天美影院campus from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 13.
鈥淭he kind of democratic education we need access to today is one that helps us understand exactly how it is that cultural diversity and political unity can exist side by side,鈥� he said.
And that鈥檚 an education that most students aren鈥檛 getting, according to Parker, a professor in the College of Education. The symposium, 鈥淭eaching in a Changing World: Diversity, Citizenship, and Dialogue鈥� will also feature two of Parker鈥檚 colleagues in the college, James Banks and Geneva Gay.
Banks, the director of the UW鈥檚 Center for Multicultural Education and a past president of the American Educational Research Association, will speak on culturally diverse societies. Multicultural societies, Banks says, are faced with the problem of constructing nation-states that reflect and incorporate the diversity of its citizens and yet have an overarching set of shared values, ideals, and goals. He says such nations must help their students develop complex and thoughtful identifications with their cultural communities, nation-state and the global community.
Banks is the editor of the Multicultural Education Series by Teachers College Press. Parker鈥檚 book is the latest in the series.
Gay will share her research into culturally appropriate and relevant approaches to teaching. She says that culture strongly influences the attitudes, values and behaviors that students and teachers bring to the educational environment and therefore culture has to be a major determinant of how the problems of underachievement are solved.
鈥淚t鈥檚 critically important to share the stage with these colleagues,鈥� Parker said. 鈥淕eneva鈥檚 work on culturally responsive teaching and Jim鈥檚 work on globalization and democratic citizenship so perfectly set the stage for looking at the problems and promise of dialogue.鈥�
Parker says most students, whether they are from the most affluent neighborhoods or the poorest, are missing out on an adequate democratic education. They are learning too little about democracy, and they are participating too little in democracy. Democratic education is important to both groups for different reasons.
Students from affluent backgrounds will wield the most power as adults. A good democratic education increases the likelihood that they will use that power wisely and work to close the gap between democratic ideals and realities.
Students from historically oppressed groups need a good democratic education, too, so that they can participate fully in democratic life and work to improve it. Typically, Parker says, it is the excluded members of society who are democracy鈥檚 vanguard, pushing it toward its ideals.
鈥淭he framers of the U.S. Constitution may have been the birth parents of American democracy, but those who were excluded, both then and now, have been its adoptive, nurturing parents,鈥� he said. 鈥淛ust look at the civil rights and woman suffrage movements.鈥�
Parker鈥檚 recipe for a good education involves coming together to work on shared problems.
鈥淚 think the core, not the sole piece, but the core piece of a good democratic education, is the provision of many opportunities to deliberate public problems together,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o just being together in a diverse congregation of people is necessary, but not sufficient. What you need to be doing is solving the problems that inevitably arise because of the congregation 鈥� you need rules, you need norms.鈥�
And school is the perfect place for this sort of interaction, Parker says, because it鈥檚 the first exposure to a public space for most children. For that reason, teachers need to be ready to foster a deliberative environment in their classrooms and throughout the school.
鈥淵ou can鈥檛 have a democracy without democrats,鈥� Parker said. 鈥淓ducators are in a really great position to provide that deliberative education that our students and our society needs.鈥�