Editor’s Introduction: Agency as Purpose

Author(s): Andy Kaplan

Source: Schools: Studies in Education , Vol. 9, No. 2 (Fall 2012), pp. 121-126
Published by: The University of Chicago Press in association with the Francis W. Parker
School
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/667907

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Editor’s Introduction
Agency as Purpose

ANDY KAPLAN
Francis W. Parker School, Chicago, Illinois

Inquiry into the subjective life of schools is a vital effort to search out the
intrinsic value of education. At a time when far too much of public discourse
about education reduces the conversation about value to the metrics of out-
put and external standards, education that matters will continue to thrive
only as teachers, students, and parents insist on the value of education that
matters to them. It may be too much to hope that reasoned conversation will
take the place of invective and the relentless search for blame, but the cur-
rent state of educational practice is so rich and so diverse that we need to
ponder and celebrate achievements rather than only react defensively. As I
have learned in my years of editing this journal, these are in many ways dark
times for public education, especially in the United States. But for all the
stories I have heard about how teachers are scapegoated and demonized,
how attitudes as well as laws have constrained the teaching profession and
demeaned the goals of democratic education, I have heard also the stories
of experimentation, perseverance, and triumph.
One of the themes of this latter kind of stories is the way in which teachers
and school programs act upon students in such a way as to make students
active. In the traditional model of schooling, the student is a passive recip-
ient of the facts and skills that a teacher presents, and the success (or failure)
of the student is a function of what he or she can retain. In stories of dem-
ocratic schooling, there is a very different notion of process as well as out-
come. Instead of emphasizing the retention of previously known facts, the
goal of democratic schooling is the creation of meaning through appropriate
and determined use of facts. While traditional schooling seeks to preserve
and reproduce the world, democratic schooling seeks to present the world

Schools: Studies in Education, vol. 9, no. 2 (Fall 2012).

© 2012 by Francis W. Parker School, Chicago. All rights reserved. 1550-1175/2012/0902-0001$10.00

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as it is to students, not to preserve it but to help students figure out what to
do with the world they inherit. While those who care deeply about the fate
of schools will continue to struggle against the regime of the big test and the
big textbook, we need to resist as well as oppose, and I continue to believe
that our resistance requires our attention to alternative narratives, to the
stories we tell each other about the ways schools and teachers and students
and parents work to provide and create meaning.
When students create meaning, they invent ways of connecting their in-
terests and concerns to the subjects they are learning. This is an exciting and
sometimes daunting discovery of agency. When school subjects become part
of students’ lives, when students’ lives become part of their studies, school
matters. Instead of relying on standards of learning imposed by others, stu-
dents who create meaning learn to rely on themselves, to challenge them-
selves, to work with and for each other for goals they have themselves deemed
worthy. This creation of meaning, this discovery of agency, is one of the most
important life skills that schools provide. Among the many purposes that
schools must serve in a democratic society, student agency is vital because it
brings with it not just certain intellectual capacities but also a habit or pre-
disposition to work toward goals shared with others. This democratic agency is
a determination to find ways to join with others, to make efficient use of the
interests and skills of each individual in a group in order to do things that are
important.
The essays in this issue of Schools bear witness to the power of democratic
agency. The stories and reflections examine some of the ways in which teach-
ers, students, and administrators work for and with each other, ways that are
as various as they are encouraging. And it is encouragement that we all need
at this time. We begin this issue with three tributes to Bertram J. Cohler, a
scholar and teacher who made the encouragement of others his life work.
Cohler guided, developed, and led many people and institutions, among
them this journal. Cohler was a founding member of the editorial board of
Schools, and he contributed articles and book reviews as well as served as a
reader of manuscripts. Most important of all for the life of this journal, it was
Cohler who orchestrated our introduction to the University of Chicago Press.
I recall with fond gratitude the luncheon he hosted for Daniel Frank and me
at the University’s Quadrangle Club, to which Cohler invited Kari Roane, the
journals acquisition editor, and other members of the Press. That meeting
opened the door for our collaboration with the Press and made it possible for
Schools to establish a firm presence in the publishing world. Thank you, Bert.
Daniel Frank, Thomas J. Cottle, and Dennis McCaughan begin this vol-
ume with tributes to Cohler. Frank was Cohler’s student at the University of

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Chicago and later a frequent associate, collaborator, and mentor. Frank
writes of their many intersections over the years, especially the ways in
which Cohler’s expansive notion of the possibilities of the social sciences as
a humanistic enterprise inspired and sustained Frank’s intellectual ambi-
tions. Cottle recalls Cohler’s wisdom, expressed in simple but profound
language at a conference in the mid-1990s. Cottle is grateful for the grace
and modesty of Cohler’s reminder about the personal context of learning.
McCaughan goes further back, to the 1970s, recalling Cohler’s commit-
ment to his students and to the cooperative inquiry into the vital texts of
psychoanalytic literature. Cottle and McCaughan give us glimpses into the
character of a great educator, a scholar, and a humanist. It is my hope that
their tributes will be just the prelude to a more extensive survey of Cohler’s
career and influence in a future issue.
Sanja Bilač describes her work in a Croatian elementary school as the cre-
ation of support and guidance structures that encourage her young students
to work together on projects. She helps and coaches students by shaping the
circumstances of their learning. Bilač focuses on her work with one partic-
ular child, a young girl who wanted very much to take on a leadership role in
her group but feared the responsibility in general and the task of speaking up
in particular. Bilač responded with a structure she calls “consultation,” a
kind of conference or help session during which students can discuss the
progress and the pitfalls of their group projects. Consultations helped the
child who had been timid find strength and support, but the sessions with
this child and many others had a positive effect on the entire classroom. In-
stead of supporting this child apart from the group, Bilač made the structure
of support integral to the life of the classroom.
Diana Kodner Gökçe, Dana O’Brien, and Lizanne Wilson worked to-
gether as teachers on a project with second and third graders that experi-
mented with student agency. The three created a multidisciplinary project
as part of their school faculty’s yearlong inquiry into the question, “How do
we know what children know?” Their collaboration with each other fo-
cused on classroom work they developed in collaboration with their stu-
dents: the reflexivity of agency here is striking. It is one thing for teachers
to ask students to work with each other; it is quite another, and, in my ex-
perience, both more rewarding and more difficult, to ask teachers to parallel
the same process in their work with each other. The nominal subject was
Greek mythology, but the activities and skills ranged across music, drama,
art, and literature, and the course of study culminated with the production
of a music-theater performance. The power of this work grew in large mea-
sure from the confidence the teachers had in their students to work with

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each other in a program that proceeded by unfolding and following student
interest.
Roger Wallenstein presents a stirring reflection on the power of educa-
tion in one of America’s poorest communities. Wallenstein and his wife
volunteer in a public elementary school in Southern California. This is the
first essay of its kind in Schools—an account of work by retired (Wallenstein
says he prefers “unemployed”) adults. Now that Wallenstein has made such
an impassioned beginning, I look forward to further contributions from
school volunteers of all ages. Wallenstein assesses the circumstances and
prospects of the students he works with quite candidly. He finds nothing sur-
prising in their testing statistics, but these children of immigrant and mi-
grant farm workers do surprise Wallenstein with the joy and the pride they
have in their own learning. Many or even most of them may never go to
college or hold white-collar jobs, but Wallenstein reminds us not to confuse
agency with outcomes. Against the depressing numbers recorded on their
state tests, Wallenstein places a far more powerful sign of what children are
doing and learning in this school: he describes the fervent enterprise and
loud sound of children raising their voices in song together—singing a Ha-
waiian Christmas carol.
Wallenstein has spent some time with the principal of this school, and in
her wise and patient direction, he finds the kind of intelligence and compas-
sion that a school leader must have in order to cultivate the agency of teach-
ers and students. Circumstances beyond the school’s control always compli-
cate effective teaching, learning, and leadership, but the situation in America
is especially daunting for all but the schools that serve affluent communities.
In most school districts, poverty constrains opportunity, and the work that
schools might accomplish is secondary to the demands of standardized test-
ing. Frank Pignatelli argues that even in these dark times, effective school
leadership may still be progressive and democratic, but only if a school leader
can bend, compromise, and select which battles to fight. Pignatelli considers
the perils and opportunities of enlightened school leadership as a difficult act
of moral and political balance. “Staying true,” as Pignatelli calls it, requires
not only the espousal of progressive practices; it also means learning how to
balance what schools should do with what schools must do. School leaders
must continue to protest the ridiculous demands of standardized tests, and
they must continue to clamor for reduced class sizes, and they must continue
to inspire and invigorate their staff in the face of so many threatening and
demeaning circumstances. The kind of agency that a school leader needs,
Pignatelli writes, does not derive from hewing to progressive ideas alone, be-

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cause no matter how true the position, accommodation and flexibility are
just as important as being right.
In lieu of our regular feature “From the Archives,” the next essay focuses
on an encounter with archival material. I first came upon the work of
Caroline Stephenson in an article in the Chicago Tribune, and I was instantly
attracted to the richness of the story she had created. Stephenson is a docu-
mentary filmmaker, whose most recent work focuses on the schools built
with the financial support of Julius Rosenwald, the founder of Sears Roe-
buck. Rosenwald provided the seed money and worked with local govern-
ments to fund, build, and staff public schools for the black population of the
rural south. These “Rosenwald Schools,” as they came to be known, began in
1912. Eventually, there were 5,000 Rosenwald Schools. Stephenson writes
about her personal connection with one of these schools and about the way
efforts to save that school led to immersion in the history of this amazing en-
terprise. As you read her account, you will hear echoes of the stories Wallen-
stein tells about the high regard the black community had for these schools.
In a time of poverty and segregation, the Rosenwald Schools provided not
just a school for young people but a source of great pride and community
awareness for their parents as well.
The next two essays were written by two of my students at Francis W.
Parker School. After I provide some context in an introduction, Samantha
Bensinger and Nina Friend write about their discovery of agency as stu-
dents in project courses that focused on the heritage and possibility of pro-
gressive schooling. Bensinger took the course two years ago, when the proj-
ect was the creation of a documentary film on the intersection of two
important educational heritages: progressive education in the United States
and soka education in Japan. Last year, Bensinger extended that work with
extensive reading in educational theory, focusing on the work of John
Dewey and Paulo Freire. These readings helped Bensinger articulate a new
sense of agency as she searches for the value of educational experience and
explores her options as a rising high school senior. Friend took the course
last year: her class created a workshop for the 2011 conference for the Pro-
gressive Education Network. In addition to that project, Friend and her
classmates developed a course for all ninth-grade students at Francis W.
Parker School. The object of the course is to acquaint the youngest mem-
bers of the high school with the heritage of their school and the meaning
of progressive education. The students proposed themselves as the teachers
of this course. Friend and her classmates then taught a sample lesson to ris-
ing ninth graders. Friend reflects on these rich experiences in a series of let-

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ters to her students, her classmates, her teacher, and American students in
general.
Alia Tyner-Mullings affirms the power of student agency as one of the
hallmarks of effective schooling. Tyner-Mullings returned as a graduate stu-
dent to the public school in New York where she had been a student. In her
graduate studies, Tyner-Mullings had read and admired the work of Paulo
Freire, but she had also thought his pedagogy too idealistic to implement in
American public schools. The more she thought about her own Central Park
East, however, the more she wanted to know about its value and long-term
effects in the hearts and minds of its alumni. A research project developed
into an intellectual as well as personal connection as Tyner-Mullings began
to see how Freire’s ideas about student engagement and empowerment
were implemented in the practice of her former school.
Our book review for this issue is a reprint of an essay by Diane Ravitch
that first appeared in the New York Review of Books, which has kindly per-
mitted this republication in Schools. Ravitch takes a searching look at a
recent study of American public schools published by the Council on
Foreign Relations, in which the authors find that American schools pose
a threat not just to America’s economic prosperity but, even more alarming,
to national security. The lead authors of this study are Joel Klein and Con-
doleeza Rice, and while Ravitch finds that their claims of a security threat
are unfounded if not downright spurious, she thinks it is important to puzzle
out just why Klein, Rice, and their coauthors would think this way. In other
words, Ravitch does the authors the great courtesy of treating their claims
rationally. She finds that the authors present claims about the current state
of American education and proposals for the future that are without evi-
dence. More important, she reminds us all as citizens of what the true threats
to American well-being and security really are.

126 Schools, Fall 2012

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