The Defender and the Critic
By
John A. Beineke
November 2001
Teachers are told that the key to their success is the ability to reflect on their practice and experiences. The formal term is metacognition. As I approach almost a decade of deaning, I have done my own "metacognating" lately. I have concluded that deans have two major (and often conflicting) roles — that of defending the public schools while at the same time being a critic of the public schools.
The need to be a defender of the schools is obvious. The women and men we educate in colleges of education become the backbone of the schools. If our students fail then the schools fail and ultimately teacher education fails. The schools and colleges of education are inextricably linked. We in higher education depend on the schools as laboratories for our pre-service teachers. This relationship is not an "interlocking directorate" comprised of public schools, colleges of education, and state departments of education as Arthur Bestor once charged. But short of ethical lapses or harmful pedagogical practices in the schools, deans should and must support the public schools.
And yet, how do we effect change and reform if all we do is approvingly pat the schools on the back and mouth an obligatory "well done." Deans must also be critics. This, though, can be as tricky as baptizing all that goes on in schools as wonderful. Public schools take an unbelievable amount carping and even censure from the public. For deans of education to "pile on" is not wise, appropriate, or helpful. But we must be agents of change and choose our words with care and in a constructive manner. Part of leadership is the ability to ask the right questions at the right time to the right people.
So which is it — defender or critic? There are some terrific in-house critics and defenders that can meld the two approaches. John Goodlad has been able to demonstrate the shortcomings of both colleges of education (Teachers for Our Nation’s Schools) and the public schools (A Place Called School), while still being an advocate for both institutions in his work.
As far as defending the schools, no two educators do a better job than David Berliner and Gerald Bracey. The reality checks that these two men produce are important counter-weights to the constant drumming of bad news about our schools. And even the more critical pundits within educational circles have their role.
Again though, we turn to John Dewey for our answer to this schizophrenic problem of a dean’s duality of purpose. His books made that case for both not either/or. He wrote about The Child and the Curriculum and Democracy and Education and Experience and Education. The emphasis was on the and not the or. Probably the most effective practitioner of this art today is David Imig, CEO of AACTE. With both eloquence and scholarship, he provides educators with the reality of such issues as assessment, vouchers, and alternative routes to certification while supporting colleges of education and the public schools. He affirms us when we need to be supported and nudges us when we need to be moved in a different direction. His yearly "environmental scans" of the teacher education landscape is a model of truth-telling and frankness. Imig is a true Deweyan in his role as educational leader.
Recently, word came to me indirectly that some leaders in the state thought that education deans were "turf protectors" and that we had to dragged "kicking and screaming" whenever change was mentioned. I also heard that I did not get an appointment to a state commission because my ideas "were a bit too controversial." Neither assertion is probably totally accurate, but it does demonstrate that like it or not we deans are in the middle — and need to be to do our jobs. By both education and experience, the voice of a dean of education has much to add to the advancement of schools in our country.