Can the Foundations of Education Survive? Grappling with our Death Wish

Abstract

Developing new ways of looking at who teachers are, where they work, and what they believe should be a high priority for all foundational faculties.The truth is becoming more obvious: the foundations of education, long the academic staple of teacher preparation, are in serious trouble. The City University of New York (CUNY) system has recently announced drastic cutbacks in foundational areas. Dozens of untenured faculty are being dismissed, while senior faculty are being reassigned to other departments. Elsewhere around the country, administrators curtail or dissolve our program. And, pathetically, we who are the endangered species in teacher education continue stubbornly to do what we have always done. Even some of our most supportive colleagues in other areas whisper indiscreetly that we in foundational programs have a &dquo;death wish,&dquo; because we seem so blase in response to attacks mounted against us.Cohen, in an historical analysis of the role of history, philosophy, and social foundations of education in teacher education, demonstrates how our past has been marked by one central internecine conflict: between those who perceived foundational studies as liberal disciplines, and those who perceived the field as &dquo;functional,&dquo; of direct utility to practitioners (1). Cohen shows how the academicians fought for rigor and purity, and the functionalists fought for societal reconstruction and a problems-orientation. This battle reverberates even at the present time. In spite of those who accuse us of being &dquo;hidebound&dquo; in our academicism, there appears to be a resurgence of &dquo;the rigors-ofthe-discipline&dquo; approach to foundational studies (2). The sad upshot of this continuing conflict is that today we are overly isolationist and specialized, preoccupied with our own internal problems, and oblivious to the concerns of the larger world of teacher education.At the heart of our survival crisis lies our present confusion over roles. Some of us insist that our role be primarily to provide educators with scholarly insight, analysis, and perspective, especially during time of turmoil. Thus, many of us retrench and dedicate our efforts to furthering scholarship in our specialized fields of study. Others flirt despairingly with alternative teaching and curricular modes, but find it increasingly difficult to avoid falling back into the &dquo;read-lecturetest&dquo; format so typical of foundational courses. Some of Robert 1. Nash, David A. Shiman, and David R.Conrad are faculty members in the College of Education and Social Services, The University of Vermont, Burlington. Currently they teach a variety of foundational courses. us indiscriminately blame everyone but ourselves for our predicament: students are seen as unmotivated and lethargic; nonfoundational colleagues as pedestrian and anti-intellectual; and administrators as voguish and shallow. A few of us sincerely believe that we are &dquo;above it all.&dquo; We view any fray as contaminating, fearing that interdepartmental contact will only...