in the NSSE’s 1955 volume, Modern philosophies and education: The fifty-fourth yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part 1 of 2. I also thank Jim Chesebro, whose wisdom, energy, and sage advice meant a lot to me and will long influence my thinking and management of future projects. Also there is Jeff Courtright, whose friendship, coaching, sound-boarding, and humor have been great blessings upon me and my work. Plus David Blakesley, Parlor Press’s curator-in-chief, gave me marvelous support throughout the process, especially in refining the book’s focus. Parlor Press’s anonymous reviewer gave me excellent comments that helped me and the contributors make this book into a sound contribution to the literature. And Joan Leininger always has been interested in and supportive of this project, especially through her special relationship with Bernie Brock.
Last but certainly not least is my family. My wife, Patty, and my boys, Matt and Jeffrey, put up with a lot of my musings about this and my other projects. Their love and support of me every step of the way means more than they know.
Introduction: A Prelude to Critique
Peter M. Smudde and Bernard L. Brock
Fifty years hence we may well conclude that there was no “crisis of American education” in the closing years of the twentieth century—there was only a growing incongruence between the way twentieth-century schools taught and the way late-twentieth century children learned.
—Peter Drucker
America’s approach to education is terribly outmoded and should be updated to the realities of the 21st century.1 The contributors in this volume would like to breathe some new life into the education system and set a new direction. This book’s central focus, then, concerns Burke’s philosophy of education and how his larger system informs us about education as a specific arena of human symbolic action. Isolating a Burkeian pedagogy is simple enough, if and only if one were to depend on his only formal treatise on education from 1955, “Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education,” published here in the first chapter. But Burke scholars would strongly caution against such an approach, citing at least the explanatory power of Burke’s canon to truly illuminate his thinking and apply to humanistic education. This orientation is particularly true when it comes to the symbolic action of education and all that transpires in this specialized realm of human relations.
Kenneth Burke’s philosophy and critical method have been extended into many areas of human relations, but perhaps the least-often addressed area for extension is that of education. A search of published scholarship on the application of Burke to specific and general areas of education (see Chapter 4) reveals only a handful of work, and most of it was published sporadically within the last quarter century and focused on applying only selected Burke “tools” (especially the pentad). Other scholarly work done around the turn of the 21st century was presented at National Communication Association conferences in 1999, 2000, 2003 and 2004, all of which largely targeted ways to teach Burke’s ideas and only began to examine his system as it applies to broad matters of pedagogy.
This book does not develop or advance any singular view on education, except to have Burke as the nexus for thinking about and acting on education. Accordingly, in true Burkeian fashion, this book allows for multiple perspectives. As Burke once said of himself and the critical enterprise: “I think that there has to be a lot of leeway in this business. I see no reason for being authoritarian. . . . The fundamental notion of choice in my scheme is difference” (as cited in Chesebro, 1992, p. 365). The fact that Burke created an open system—one that welcomes others’ views that are similar and different, converging and diverging—allows it to grow beyond what he originally set forth. This book seeks to do just that for education.
Humanistic Critique of Education’s collection of critiques about education addresses the subject on both general and specific levels. On a general level this book concerns the rhetoric of contemporary teaching and learning. Humanistic Critique of Education focuses on education as “symbolic action” that is “equipment for living” and the foundation for discovery. In this way the book sparks dialog about improving education in democratic societies through a humanistic frame. On a specific level, this book takes the lead from Burke’s only focused piece on education to address matters about the design, practice, and outcomes of educational programs in the new millennium. Concepts like cognitive motivational outcomes, student development, literacy, active learning, constructivism, problem-based learning, cooperative educational movement, learning communities, student retention, community responsibility/service, technology, curriculum development, and others are featured. Such specificity grounds Humanistic Critique of Education in the current context of pedagogy and public policy. This book takes the position that Kenneth Burke’s approach to humans as “bodies that learn language” and rhetoric as symbolic action has a great deal to contribute to a rebirth of education. The chapters that follow will describe aspects of that rebirth.
Readers may wonder why a 50 year old educational treatise can help improve today’s and tomorrow’s education situation. Burke is a pivotal figure in twentieth century rhetoric and social criticism, and we can use his ideas to help us learn from the past and, especially, better prepare for the future of education in America. The guiding principle for Humanistic Critique of Education is that education is the foundation for citizenship and community. This principle is humanistic in its origin and serves as the perspective from which the book analyzes the subject of education. Kenneth Burke’s work is the inspiration for the book’s humanistic perspective on education. The central question raised and answered in the book is, “How does Burke’s philosophy of education and, especially, his larger system, inform our understanding of the nature and activity of a humanistic education, and how would that understanding be applied to education?” The book also answers a natural follow-up question: “Why is a Burkeian perspective important as we critique education in this new millennium?”
Timeliness for Critique
An accumulation of problems is throwing American education into crisis, derailing it from its goal to prepare students to become positive, contributing members of society. The traditional signs of crisis are overcrowded classrooms, school buildings in dire need of repair, and under-prepared teachers. Silent dropouts and HIV rates continue to increase. Charter schools have seen mixed results, especially for those where students did not score better than those from traditional public or private schools or scored worse (cf. Planty, Hussar, Snyder et al, 2008; Snyder, Dillow, & Hoffman, 2008). Some students are receiving excellent educational experiences, but this simply is not happening for many children throughout the country, many of whom score below their grade in reading, writing, or mathematics (cf. Bracey, 2007; Ginsberg & Lyche, 2008; Loveless, 2007; Mead & Rotherham, 2008; McCoog, 2008: Murnane & Steele, 2007; Ogden, 2007). No Child Left Behind has been either a praised or vilified public policy (cf. Bracey, 2007; Lips, 2008; Nelson, McGhee, Meno & Slater, 2007; Ogden, 2007). Its antecedent report, A Nation At Risk, in 1983 has also been cited as a watershed to the increasing federal influence—for better and for worse—on the nation’s educational policy and curricula, including the benefits of standardized testing (cf. Casey, Bicard, Bicard, & Nichols, 2008; Ginsberg & Lyche, 2008; Hewitt, 2008; Lips, 2008).
These are just a few of the problems that have brought about the crisis and suggest the timeliness of this critique. However, we cannot solve the crisis by simply adding more money and doing more of what the schools have traditionally done. The following concepts, the detail of which are laid out in Figure 1, frame the tone for that new direction and are central to this book. First, the Western world is experiencing a paradigm shift in thought from a scientific to a humanistic orientation. This does not mean that the technology created by science will be dismantled. It only means that it will be placed in a new context. Instead of people being at the mercy of science and technology, humans will control them for the betterment of society. Education must reflect this shift in values.
Table 1. Comparison between status quo and humanistic views of education.
