Jack Shelton
Westover, Alabama
March 2005
American students are citizens of a pluralistic democratic society. They are members of specific communities that strongly inform their identity and that are essential contexts in which they learn and exercise their citizenship. They will earn their livings in a participatory economy that is increasingly information-based. Consequential Learning, the approach to school-based education advocated in this book, takes seriously all students’ citizenship and their membership in communities. Accordingly, Consequential Learning aims to strengthen the capacity of schools to help students to develop these skills:
• gathering, creating, and evaluating information;
• collaborating with others to define and realize common goals;
• participating in an open economy;
• setting and realizing personal life goals; and
• exercising private and civic moral judgment.
This is a reasonable goal for public education. It encourages the development of self-aware learners. It places high value on the formation of dispositions and competencies necessary for successful individual initiative and civic action. It links learning to character formation, schools to communities, and education to a democratic way of life. Connecting public education and political governance is no easy task. In Democratic Education, Amy Gutmann notes that Kant identified education and government as the most difficult of human inventions.[1] Certainly, drawing them together is difficult, but attempts to promote their effective connection are essential for a democracy.
This summary is a guide for realizing the objectives of Consequential Learning elaborated throughout this book:
Consequential Learning contends that core academic and extracurricular programs of schools should routinely engage all students in the use of the concepts and tools of academic, technical, business, and artistic disciplines in order to produce beneficial public outcomes that invite direct public assessment and participation.
The goals, approaches, and programmatic formats of Consequential Learning have been developed primarily through long-term associations with students, teachers, members of rural communities, and other colleagues in the definition and implementation of programs at the University of Alabama and in rural Alabama public schools, especially those in the PACERS Cooperative.[2] Through these programs young people have demonstrated their desire and capacity to contribute to community well-being, have grown personally and academically, and have established important links to their futures. My use of the term “Consequential Learning” for the approaches presented here is not intended to suggest that other ways are without consequence. I use it because the projects from which Consequential Learning principles are derived have been praised by students, teachers, and community members for being transparently relevant to their lives and communities.
A primary purpose of this book is to help schools and communities consider, implement, and strengthen educational approaches and programs that share the values of Consequential Learning and that improve schools and communities as well as the lives of young people. To this end I describe programs through which the approaches were developed and refined. I delineate their implications for teaching and learning. I provide guidelines and summaries of exemplary practices, and I consider related issues of educational policy and culture.
Several matters should be clarified at the outset. In criticizing educational practice and culture, I am not joining the wide-spread condemnation of American public schools, though I certainly do suggest that substantial reform is needed. The high dropout rate of students and the rapidly growing practice of home schooling both confirm that serious change is needed. I do not take lightly the difficulties faced by public schools, the lack of equitable support for many of them, or what they have accomplished; and I recognize that systemic reform does not come easily. In the face of existing challenges, my expectations are modest and take into consideration that a variety of changes are required if significant progress is to occur. Complex problems will not yield to single-shot methods, including standardized testing, the current prescription for healthy schools. In fact, it appears that the virtually uncontested influence of testing often makes promotion of examsmanship the only goal of schools—a limited vision of schooling at best. My argument here is not with standards or with tests, although in the current climate questioning of the absolute authority of testing is often presumed to mean indifference to standards and “accountability.” To the contrary, what is generally expected of young people, including what is fostered by the most rigorous standardized testing, is far too limited to meet the needs either of students or of a democratic society.
It is too often assumed that schools are the sole agencies of instruction and that within them learning remains unconnected to the communities where their students live. However, learning takes place in more than one setting, and kids spend the great proportion of their time in non-school contexts. Their perspectives and interests are inevitably shaped by their extra-school circumstances and the places in which they live. Consequential Learning, therefore, emphasizes that communities constitute valuable instructional resources and that schools and communities must be linked to maximize student learning.
Self-determination, active learning, and entrepreneurship are central features of the educational approach recommended in this book. They suggest the high value it places on students taking initiative, becoming self-aware learners and critical thinkers capable of defining their own futures and confident that they can make a difference. They are judgments against educational practices that cultivate passivity and reminders that, as citizens and community members, students are more than receptacles for information. They warn against the potential that school has for making students academic sleep walkers, who go through the motions without understanding how school activities relate to their current or future lives. They suggest that learning is not simply the retention of information; discovering how to think and exercise critical judgment are obviously crucial. All young people in a democratic society must be expected both to become skilled at learning on their own and exercising their right to determine the accuracy and relevance of information—that is, to gain proficiencies required for informed citizenship.
Good citizenship is a matter of character and inevitably includes concern for others. Consistently in my experience, young people want to help people and to make a difference in their communities. And given the proper contexts, they work hard to do so. Kids’ desire to help is an indicator of their integrity and should be fostered in schools through action. Although the impact of the ethical perspectives of elders on young people is considerable, it is important to emphasize that students have their own moral values and are ready to put them to work. Consequential Learning offers immediate opportunities for young people to contribute to the well-being of their communities, thereby, enabling them to act on and strengthen their commitments and to continue their personal and civic growth. In Making the Grade, Tony Wagner cites a Public Agenda survey indicating that 71 percent of all Americans believe that teaching values is more important than teaching academics.[3] In Consequential Learning the favored process for “teaching values” is akin to that used to teach driving: students learn by putting character into action.
Over time, I have arrived at three conclusions about schools which bear on this book and often surface in it directly. First, small school size is very beneficial, especially for but not limited to kids from impoverished families. My experience, as well as current research, underscores the strong positive correlations between
