Business As Usual

By David Ruenzel

Ever since Socrates attacked the sophists for producing sophists, critics have observed that teachers tend to teach the way in which they themselves were taught. If they as children were placed in desks arranged in long, narrow rows, then they are likely to restrict the movement of their own pupils. If they spent years filling in blanks and bubbling in answers, then their own students are likely to be inundated with work sheets and multiple-choice tests. If silent obedience was expected of them, then they in turn are likely to equate respect with dutiful acquiescence.

The job of encouraging teachers to break with, or at least to reflect upon, handed-down practices lies in part with the nation's colleges of education-- the 1,300 institutions that prepare thousands of new teachers each year. The climate, as perhaps never before, is right for these schools of education to challenge the traditional views that many of their students bring to the campuses. For one thing, the reform movement has raised critical questions about how schools are organized and operated. For another, there recently has been an explosion of cognitive research demonstrating that children don't learn best the way most public school teachers teach. Scholars such as Harvard University's Howard Gardner and the University of Chicago's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have convincingly documented that children are inherently creative thinkers with an insatiable curiosity and robust theories about the world around them. They are not, as the system seems to assume, passive vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge handed down by teachers.

The young people currently making their way through our colleges of education will be entering the public schools at a time when traditional behavioristic approaches to teaching are under assault and schools are being asked to meet unprecedented challenges. How, if at all, have schools of education changed to prepare their students for this new world? Are they gearing up to turn out the "reflective practitioners'' that almost all reformers are calling for? Have they calibrated their courses and teaching with the knowledge and ideas that are...