Pushing Past the Missionary Position

Education, Salvation, and the Attempt to Alter Teachers’ Conceptions of their Role

Ira David Socol

TE 924
Michigan State University Spring 2008

The American system of public education grew out of two elite needs/desires. First, the
need/desire to create a moral citizenry with few of the costs of dissent, sloth, and energies
wasted in immoral pursuits. Second, the need/desire to create industrial workers capable
of the most efficient, and thus cost-effective, use of man hours.

These two sets of needs and desires continue to dominate most education in the United
States and in nations globally which have been deeply influenced either by Protestant-
Capitalism themselves or which have been deeply influenced by transmitted American
policies and attitudes since the end of the Second World War.

From one we have received the notion of the classroom as Calvinist Church. White-
walled, frontally-focussed, seats in pew-like rows, students silent and all reading the
same text at the same time and expected to absorb the same knowledge and wisdom at the
same rate, as they follow a path to conversion into obedient, Christian, adults. From the
other we have received the industrial processing model of the school system, in which
raw materials are taken in one door, and with continuous application of pressures, are
transformed step-by-step into useful machines which emerge 13 or 17 years later.

The debate regarding the industrial process of schooling, and the function of school as a
training program for workers, has been a long one. “[S]chools should be like factories,”
Stanford University’s Elwood Cubberly, stated in the second decade of the twentieth
century, and he referred to “teachers as the factory workers and the students as the raw
material to be turned into the product which was to meet the specifications of the needs of
the 20th century.”’1 (Barger, 2003) From the appointment of The Committee of Ten in
1892 on through the scientific curriculum debates of the first quarter of the twentieth
century, to the government policies of the U.S. in the months after the U.S.S.R.’s launch
of Sputnik in 1957 this role of education has been explicitly explained. One need only
read the 1983 report A Nation at Risk,2 or the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001,3 or any
document produced regarding the needs for curriculum to correlate with contemporary
labor requirements*4 to see that this effort has never slackened.

But the debate regarding the role of education as salvation has had a less prominent role,
though American educators from the early New England ministers through the same Dr.
Cubberley, were clear in their intent that the mission of school was a moral one. The goal

*
“The Chamber's goal is to make sure that all students in America graduate high school academically
prepared for a postsecondary education and the workforce. This includes placing a greater emphasis on
academic success in the areas of math and science. Accomplishing this goal is vital to assuring a hopeful
and fruitful life to all our young people as well as a competitive America in the global marketplace.” –
United States Chamber of Commerce.
 Ira David Socol
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of the public school, Cubberley wrote in the 1890s, was to implant, ‘“[t]he Anglo Saxon
conception of righteousness, law and order, and popular government” into the immigrant
children.”5 (Barger, 2003)

When teachers meet students

American teachers today, and perhaps in all times, would likely object to being seen as
Cubberly’s factory workers. They have shown strong resentment of the current U.S.
governments view of them as passive deliverers of scientifically-determined curricula. In
fact, many teachers may view themselves as the humanizing component of the
educational system, and a mediating force between government and societal policies and
students, or even as defenders of student individuality against the industrial process.
“Standards-based reform ignores the diversity of needs and talents among adolescents
and fails to provide them with a matching diversity of opportunities in education and
work,” said one opinion writer in Teacher Magazine.6 “Over 40% [of teachers surveyed]
believe that NCLB does not result in teachers making instructional decisions that are best
for their students or that it's helping to reduce the achievement gap in education-its
primary goal,” according to Teachers Network,7 “And fewer (3%) agree that it
encourages them to improve their teaching effectiveness with all students.”

But would they also object to being seen as Cubberly’s missionaries of, “righteousness,
law and order, and popular government.”?

Perhaps this depends on the precise framing, for while the popular understanding of being
a “missionary” is inscribed with meanings specifically tied to religion, the concept is
essential to the self-image of educators. “[P]edagogical research has inscribed a particular
idea of progress,” Thomas Popkewitz says in his 1998 article, The culture of redemption
and the administration of freedom as research. “Research about childhood and about
teaching are directed at governing the dispositions, sensitivities and capacities of the
child. Along with the re-visioned child is a re-visioned new teacher who functions as a
redemptive agent. The teacher brings progress to society through the social
administration of the child. However, the redemption of the child is not the religious
redemption of the 17th and 18th centuries, but instead a secular, worldly redemption that
is guided by rational, scientific thought. In this sense, pedagogy and its research govern
the soul of the child to produce change and individual betterment.8

Whether teachers would object or not may not represent the essential questions. The
essential questions might be: Would they recognize this as their role? Would they show
an understanding of the implications of this role on the students? And if they recognized
the role and understood the implications, would they find this troubling?

Redemption and Salvation

“The chief subject matter of school, viewed culturally, is school itself.

That is how most students experience it, and it determines what meaning
they make of it.”9 (Bruner, 1996)
 Ira David Socol
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As the chief subect matter of church is religion, and the chief matter of the Christian
religion is salvation, school, Jerome Bruner argues in The Culture of Education, is about
school, and school is about conversion. “Folk pedagogies,” Bruner writes, “reflect a
variety of assumptions about children: they may be seen as willful and needing
correction; as innocent and to be protected from a vulgar society; as needing skills to be
developed only through practice; as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge that only
adults can provide; as egocentric and in need of socialization. … whether these views are
"right" or not, their impact on teaching activities can be enormous.”10

“We ascended toward the light, five floors up, and split up into thirteen
rows facing the god who unlocks the gates of morning. Then there was a
pause, then in came Biehl.

“Why the pause?

“When asked straight out about his pauses by one of the bright girls, Biehl
had first gone absolutely still. Then he-who normally never referred to
himself as "I"-then he had said, slowly and with great gravity, as though
he was surprised by the question, and perhaps even by his own reply,
"When I speak, you should listen, first and foremost, to my pauses. They
speak louder than my words."

“And so it was with the interval between the hall going absolutely still and
him coming in and up to the podium. An eloquent pause. His own words.

“The morning song was followed by a pause, the Lord's Prayer recited by
Biehl pause, a short hymn pause, a traditional, patriotic song pause, and
finish, and he left the hall as he had come, briskly, almost running.

“What feeling was there in the hall while this was going on?

“There was no special feeling, really, I said, it was early in the morning
and people were tired, and could we finish now, I was getting a headache,
and it was late, the bell had gone already, I pointed out the time.

“Not yet, she said, there was yet another relationship she wanted to call to
my attention, and that was the relationship to pain. When pain made itself
felt during an experiment – like now, with this headache – one should
never just break off and walk away from it. Instead one should turn upon it
the light of awareness.

“That is how she spoke. The light of awareness.

“And so we turned upon the fear.” (Høeg, 1993, pp. 3-4)

 Ira David Socol
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When Danish author Peter Høeg begins his book Borderliners in this way he begins his
description of education as that process of salvation, and “special education” as a
particular form of salvation, the kind exported to the “darkest” places of the earth by the
bravest missionaries. He also begins to describe the responses of those who are to be
saved. Right in this first passage the victims of this humanitarian rescue are exhausted,
and sick, and in pain, and in fear.

“The light of awareness.” A Google search of “enlighten students” brings back “about
307,000 web references,11 covering everything from “Ag Day,”† to The Vagina
Monologues‡ to climate change,§ the use of “Smart”boards,** Muslim culure,†† and, of
course, algebra.‡‡ Googling the phrase “bring to Christ” does produce more hits although
a quick perusal suggests a somewhat less diverse group originating those web pages.

This bringing of the light suggests that education – as a concept – falls into two
significant components which reach back to those Protestant conceptions of teaching. For
the ‘elect,’ and the ‘pre-destined’ education serves as a guiding path to ensure that one
not fall from grace. In this role it is stifling and limiting, but in use of paradigms and
limits created by the parents of this group, the violence and abuse is also limited, and
ready excuses are always at hand which allow an easy return to ‘the path.’ But for those
outside these boundaries, whether because of culture or flaws of birth, education is as
brutal as any historic representation of Christian colonialism. For those deemed furthest
from the light – those with “cognitive impairments” or “emotional impairments” or
severe physical “disabilities” – the expressions are only slightly less violent and
demeaning in nature than the treatment of slaves brought from Africa for hard work and
Christianization. For those closer, there is the wholesale brutality of forced conversion by
the missionary class.

In fact, Høeg’s novel makes this last point explicitly. “Something crucial is lost in the
translation from the Danish original,” Malene Arpe of the Toronto Star, wrote in 1995.
“Although cumbersome, a direct translation to “Those Who Might Be Useful”§§ would
more precisely convey the theme of this thriller/psychological study.”12

So, in the perception of students, seen most clearly from Høeg’s “borderline,” the role is

†
The Grand Island Independent -
http://www.theindependent.com/stories/03232008/new_agday23_001.xml.shtml
‡
The Chicago Flame -
http://media.www.chicagoflame.com/media/storage/paper519/news/2006/03/13/Features/Happy.Fact.Vagin
a.Monologues.Enlighten.Students-1684624.shtml
§
The Review (the University of Delaware) -
http://media.www.chicagoflame.com/media/storage/paper519/news/2006/03/13/Features/Happy.Fact.Vagin
a.Monologues.Enlighten.Students-1684624.shtml
**
Mount Desert Islander -
http://mdislander.com/site/index.php?Itemid=36&id=286&option=com_content&task=view
††
The Spectrum (Sacred Heart University) -
http://mdislander.com/site/index.php?Itemid=36&id=286&option=com_content&task=view
‡‡
DonorsChoose proposal at http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=115222&zone=114
§§
De måske egnede is the Danish title of Borderliners.
 Ira David Socol
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enlightenment, salvation, and conversion for those who “might be useful.” As for, “[t]he
children who could not be processed to completion,” in the words of Notre Dame’s
Robert Barger, they would be, “considered as scraps,”13 or, in missionary terms,
consigned to the fires.

But what do teachers see? And how might we help them see what students see?

Telling the story

Is there a mirror which one might be able to hold up to teachers in a way which might
build an understanding of this role? Or must there be multiple mirrors, creating multiple
reprsentations? How will these mirrors be understood by the “learner” in this situation, a
teacher who has often chosen this profession precisely because of the fit between the
missionary role and the ‘helper’ personality?

Bruner, attempting to make the culture of education visible, begins with the nature of
teaching:

“Teaching, in a word, is inevitably based on notions about the nature of

the learner's mind. Beliefs and assumptions about teaching, whether in a
school or in any other context, are a direct reflection of the beliefs and
assumptions the teacher holds about the learner.”14 (Bruner, 1996)

Yet this approach has power only if the teacher understands the lens through which they
are likely to create those assumptions about the learner. So it may be necessary to add
first an explicit description of Calvinist theology with its refusal to accept “learner
intitiated action” and thus inability to truly accept “learner-centered education.”

“Despite the various contributing streams of thought, a distinctive issue

in Calvinist theology that is often used to represent the whole is the
system's particular soteriology (doctrine of salvation), which emphasizes
that humans are incapable of adding anything to obtain salvation and
that God alone is the initiator at every stage of salvation, including the
formation of faith and every decision to follow Christ.”15 (Wikipedia on
Calvinism)

This direct religious argument surely needs more support, including the specific
description of the connection between Protestant theology and American education
policy, so one could seek support for this even from the American right-wing (the Hoover
Institution in this case):

“Protestant ministers, who played a large role in social reform

movements of the nineteenth century, looked askance at the growth of
the Catholic population. Reformers expressed concern about the
nation’s social fabric and about its future unity. They looked to the
schools to teach the rising generation the values, morals, and outlook
 Ira David Socol
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that seemed necessary for the future well-being of the nation.

“The schools appeared to offer a perfect mechanism with which to

address these concerns. In the case of the urban poor, reformers
expected the schools to combat the bad examples of parents. As they
contemplated the possibility of using the schools to uplift the poor and
spread republican values.”16 (Ravitch 2000, pp. 8-9)

Or the Mackinac Center for Public Policy here:

“Mann succeeded in great part because nonsectarianism was a staple

of evangelical Protestantism. Where theological division did exist,
Mann exploited it to raise fears of sectarianism. Eventually, the
generalized Protestant character of the common schools was enough
to unify all but the most orthodox Protestants in support of
government schooling. This was bolstered in part by Protestants'
reaction to increased Catholic immigration and the attempt by
Catholics to gain tax support for their parochial schools. Author
Andrew J. Coulson notes that some believed that little could be done
to "salvage adult immigrants, irretrievably indolent and immoral as
they allegedly were." But that their children "could ostensibly be
saved from the twin ailments of Irish birth and Catholic faith by the
`great remedy' of Protestant public schooling." Indeed, the common
school movement and anti-Catholic sentiment were inextricably
bound up with one another as citizens desired to prevent Catholic
schools from being assisted through tax money and to "Americanize"
the foreign-born.”17 (Mackinac Center, 2001)

But if teachers are modernists, and full believers in progress, these meditations on the
origins of their role in society may be seen as completely irrelevant. In this case
Popkewitz’s shift from explicit to implicit religion might be essential:

“The school was to act as a moral technology, not merely inculcating

obedience, but also seeking to shape personality through the child's
emulation of the teacher, through the use of pastoral techniques to
encourage self-knowledge and enhance the feeling of sympathetic
identification, through establishing the links between virtue, honesty, and
self-denial and a purified pleasure. (Rose, 1989, p. 223) Whereas previous
pedagogies sought truth in divine providence, "modern" pedagogical
knowledge combined certain religious views about salvation with
scientific dispositions toward truth and the rational governing of the self.
Schooling was a program of disciplining and training the political and
social capacities of the democratic citizen (Hunter, 1994, pp. 152-163).
Children were to be redeemed-rescued and saved-by making them
productive citizens (Baker, 1998; Popkewitz, 1996).”18 (Popkewitz, 1998)
 Ira David Socol
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Or perhaps Høeg’s more poetic combination of the purposes of education and God might
reach further:

“Fredhoj and Biehl never said it straight out, but I know now, with
certainty, what they were thinking. Or maybe not thinking, but sensing.
What the cosmology was, upon which all of their actions rested. They
were thinking that in the beginning God created heaven and earth as raw
material, like a group of pupils entering Primary One, designated and
earmarked for processing and ennoblement. As the straight path along
which the process of evolution should progress, he created linear time.
And as an instrument for measuring how far the process of evolution had
advanced, he created mathematics and physics.

“I have had the following thought: What if God were not a math-
ematician? What if he had been working, like Katarina and August and
me, without actually having defined either questions or answers? And
what if his result had not been exact but approximate? An approximate
balance perhaps. Not something that had to be improved upon, a
springboard to further achievement, but something that was already more
or less complete and in equilibrium.19 (Høeg, 1993. pp. 255-256)

Is there one of these mirrors, or some combination, which will serve the purpose? Which
will reflect back a reality of the problems with the educational missionary position?

The problem bedevils the authors who try. Even Høeg, writing an emotional novel, finds
himself trying to explain the developments in European history of the concepts of God
and time. Long sections of the book are devoted to understandings of cosmology and the
particular notion of time as it formed in northern Europe. Høeg seems unable to tell the
story of why “inclusion” – the treating of students who are different as if they were the
same – does not work without ensuring that his readers know their philosophical history.
Similarly Popkewitz must repeatedly pause in his essay on the role of redemption in
education and social administration to recount that same history.

“Progress implied a belief in the growth and the development of an organism,” Popkewitz
writes, building an explanation very similar to Høeg’s paragraphs just above. “That
belief, found in Greek and Hebraic thought, was modified in Christian theology and then
secularized in science. Between the 17th and l9th centuries, for example, the idea of
progress changed from a spiritual mandate to a descriptive idea that embraced knowledge
alone, then to one that included the whole of humanity. The guarantor of movement was
people's ability to exercise ever increasing control over both natural and social
environments. Kant, for example, established principles of evolution and the progress of
mankind that gave justification to social and moral perfection and even human happiness.
Reforms of government and society were to make visible the latent, inherent provision of
progress.”20 (Popkewitz, 1998)

This need to offer philosophical tutorials might seem obvious, after all, philosophy is
 Ira David Socol
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barely taught in American schools, and American teachers particularly, faced with a
“dual-major” situation in every teacher training institution (their major field of study and
education) as well as unpaid apprenticeships, have little time to delve into the field on
their own. And history is another field of limited study in U.S. schools, beyond the
memorization of certain timelines. While the intersections of philosophy, history, and
religious belief are avoided in most classrooms at all costs. This would not just be time
“away from the curriculum,” but would engage the teacher in the most controversial of
topics in America – something generally unwelcome by local school boards. While the
philosophy of colonialism might appear in a British syllabus regarding history, the better
to understand Ireland and India and Zimbabwe, in the U.S. there is no interest in
understanding American colonization of the Philippines (or even in knowing that it
happened), and thus the discussion of the underlying philosophy would not occur in
schools. If the philosophies which underlie Colonialism are not discussed, the thought
that, “the idea of progress changed from a spiritual mandate to a descriptive idea that
embraced knowledge alone, then to one that included the whole of humanity,” essential
to comprehending both Popkewitz’s and Høeg’s views, are not easily understood.

But neither Høeg nor Popkewitz write for the American teacher. Høeg writes for a
European audience which holds basic understandings of Marxist theory and the role of
Christianity in the shaping of European thought, and which has a fairly strong base
knowledge of the history of dominant cultures interacting with others. Popkewitz is
writing for an academic audience, an audience also likely to have the background
knowledge and the vocabulary required to follow the path he lays out.

Thus the question is, is either an effective way to hold up the mirror? Are both? Is there a
better way?

A priori knowledge which reinforce the missionary position

“Not only is folk psychology preoccupied with how the mind works here
and now, it is also equipped with notions about how the child's mind
learns and even what makes it grow. Just as we are steered in ordinary
interaction by our folk psychology, so we are steered in the activity of
helping children learn about the world by notions of folk pedagogy. Watch
any mother, any teacher, even any babysitter with a child and you'll be
struck by how much of what they do is steered by notions of "what
children's minds are like and how to help them learn," even though they
may not be able to verbalize their pedagogical principles.”21 (Bruner,
1996)

The folk pedagogy which lies at the root of teaching practice is based in a set of societal
myths which remove the desire of teachers to look into the mirror at their own notions
and understandings.

American teachers “know” certain things a priori. They know, for example, that
“equality” is an important thing, and they have a definite view of what “equality” means.
 Ira David Socol
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In American terms “equality” means something like, ‘treating everyone the same way.”
“The U.S. system of education, in contrast [to European models of the late 19th Century],
was almost at its start distinctly egalitarian. Americans eschewed different systems for
different children, and embraced the notion that everyone should receive a "common,"
unified, academic education.”22 (Goldin, 1999) As egalitarian as this sounds it is really an
an expression of an inherently Calvinistic viewpoint based in proof of status as a member
of “the elect.” “Calvinism places strong emphasis, not only on the abiding goodness of
the original creation, but also on the total ruin of human accomplishments and the
frustration of the whole creation caused by sin,”23 notes Wikipedia. All children are born
the same, those who fail to achieve are those led astray by sin. Those who succeed have
proven themselves pre-destined to hold the strength of God.

This is not an idea held only by those attending traditional Calvinist churches, a minority
of Americans. This is a societal viewpoint, an inherent part of America’s civil religion,
born of presidential oration, Sunday school sermons, and Horatio Algeresque literature.

If being led astray into sin is the problem, the solution is evangelism.

Another thing American teachers know is that the real fault lies in their execution and
commitment. They are told this daily by politicians and news media, by parents and
business leaders, by community members. If the students are failing, it is the failure to
properly deliver the word to the students. They know this because they know that
America is “the best country in the world,” the “most religious,” the “hardest working,”
the wealthiest.” They know that even America’s poorest are nowhere near as poor as
those elsewhere, and that unlike secular nations American families are, “committed to
their children.”

This message is often provided directly within the system of education by the message
that the U.S. educational system is, “the envy of the world.” This is expressed by noting
the impressive creativity of the American economy. Bill Gates (Harvard) and Sergei
Brynn (Stanford) stand as the exemplars – prove that American education works when it
is ‘done correctly.’

And there is no doubt that successful education exists in the United States. The problem
is that it is generally reserved for the children of the economic and intellectual elite.
Schools which, “teach creativity and the problem-solving skills critical to prospering in
the global economy,”24 to quote Edward B. Fiske of the Fiske Guide to Colleges. These
schools, from Montessori primaries, to Day Schools in wealthy suburbs in the nation’s
northeast and northwest, to elite universities and colleges from the Ivy League to places
such as St. John’s in Maryland and Reed in Oregon do offer a non-industrial style of
education centered in individualized attention, a dialogical form of instruction, and a
certain acceptance of student choice. These schools, in turn, provide the United States
with much of its economic and political leadership. However, these educational options
exist only for a tiny percentage of American students,*** though this choice might seem

***
The numbers are difficult to collect, but total private (including religious) school enrollment in the
 Ira David Socol
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common to a writer like Mr. Fiske who worked for The New York Times and runs a
Manhattan-based corporation.

This myth-making regarding the success of American schools extends to into history,
where the freedoms of the very few are declared as a representation of society in general.
“The first and most important tradition is that the family is primarily responsible for its
children’s education,” says Hoover Institute historian Diane Ravitch in her argument
against public education. “In the colonial era as well as in most of the nineteenth century,
families played a large role in teaching their children to read, reading poetry from the
schoolbooks at the dinner table or at the fireside, and deciding where to send their
children to school.” (We might count the number of poetry books in 18th Century
America, but this is a utopian vision as engrained in American consciousness as deeply as
Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood spent doing “homework by firelight” – an unlikelihood in a
time before students would have possessed either printed books or paper, and before the
idea of “homework” was conceived). “The second important tradition is pluralism,”
Ravitch continues. “Until well into the nineteenth century, there was no single pattern of
schooling. Children and adults learned in a variety of settings, including dame schools,
public schools, academies, private schools, church schools, Sunday schools, libraries, and
lyceums.”25

These arguments confuse the debate and leave teachers in 98% of American schools at a
loss. The implication is a deeply modernist one: the system as it has evolved is fine, or at
least good enough given the society’s needs (“To put it bluntly,” Fiske says, “American
students may not know as much as their counterparts around the Pacific Rim, but our
society allows them to make better use of what they do know.”26), if there is a problem it
is in the practice, or in the raw material to which the value is to be added. For teachers
faced with a classroom full of students apparently learning neither skills nor creativity,
they may choose to blame themselves as their government does with its No Child Left
Behind Law, or they may choose to blame the students (a failure of the raw material
itself), or, perhaps most commonly, they will choose to blame the environment in which
the raw materials were created (as in, ‘this country produces poor cotton,’ or, ‘the stone
in these quarries is far too soft,’ or – obviously – ‘what can you do with kids from homes
like that.’27).

If the blame is to be placed on either the raw material itself or the environment which
created that material, then the only solution, sans ‘giving up,’ is to attempt alchemy to
transform that material, or, in human terms, to perform conversion.

United States represents 11% of the total K-12 school population (US Department of Education -
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=65 ), and obviously not all of these represent a non-normative
educational philosophy. Montessori enrollment may include as many as 0.3% of US K-12 students
according to data from a variety of sources. Enrollment in Ivy League universities totals 0.2% of US
university undergraduates - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League - (a number only slightly larger than
the undergraduate enrollment at Arizona State University alone), and if all ‘similar’ and otherwise non-
traditional higher education options were combined the total seems likely to fall no higher than 10 times
that, or 2%.
 Ira David Socol
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Making the argument

If education operates as if it were a path to salvation, how does one fight against that in
an implicitly Christian culture? If educators see themselves as people who enlighten, who
bring truth, who offer perfection and the security of future acceptance, how does anyone
convince them of the damage done to human beings by those who seek to bring others to
their ‘true path’? If education occurs in a modernist context, with a belief in both the
perfectability of humanity and the desire for that, how is it possible to offer a counter
hypothesis?

Forty years after the “French Theories” of post-modernism and deconstruction began to
filter into American discourse, the attempts to break free of this modernist path to
salvation remain both highly controversial and largely unfulfilled. The fact that these
theories remain so threatening seems proof of the strength of the Protestant Modernist
cosmology. When The New York Times devotes 5,400 words (plus voluminous responses
to readers) to Stanley Fish’s recursive loop disproving the value and impact of these ideas
and their supporters four decades later (while deeply lamenting the damage done),28 it is
clear that any suggestion of breaking with the inherited American belief system is
considered a major threat to the national system of values. The strongest form of
condemnation is dismissal, whether that is to label “liberal” thinking as “bleeding heart,”
or Fish’s final declaration that, “Not only does deconstruction not threaten anything or
deliver anything, it doesn’t change anything. This is not to say that it is useless, just that
its uses are properly confined to the ongoing conversation about epistemology in which it
is a participant.”29

But the theories of deconstruction may represent the only route beyond the educational
missionary position. A point articulated by an anonymous “Derick” responding to Fish on
The Times’ web site. “One more thought,” he notes, “showing that positions are socially
constructed doesn’t invalidate them, of course, since every position is. But it does
something else, which I think has been left out of this discussion: it suggests that because
a position is socially constructed, it may be open to change. Certainly the change will
come through the work of interpretive communities, evaluating evidence & so on, as SF
argues here. But the revelation that statements that seem “natural” are social products is
itself potentially liberating, because it suggests the ‘possibility’ of alternatives, even if it
does not — in and of itself — disprove such statements.” He continues, “Also,
understanding ‘how’ statements are socially constructed can suggest strategies for
transforming them. Again, the political struggles will not simply be aimed at showing
their social constructedness, but an analysis grounded in a social constructivist or
deconstructionist epistemology opens up a different front for exposing weaknesses in the
arguments of one’s opponents and formulating counter-positions (witness Lakoff’s work
on framing for a more tangible example).”

This seems the essential path, but the walking of that path is the difficult thing. For
despite Fish’s fears that deconstructionist philosophies undermined the scholarship of
modernists (“Ph.D’s trained in fields that were no longer hiring; scholars who could no
longer get their work published, programs that died on the vine because students stopped
 Ira David Socol
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flocking to them, students who were force-fed a bunch of stuff they couldn’t digest.”30),
any impact of post-modernist thinkers on undergraduate pre-service teachers seems more
than undone by the structure of teacher education programs, devoted as they are to “best
practices,” and “scientifically proven solutions,” as well as by a culture led by teacher-
educators who act, more often than not, as preparers of missionaries – committed as they
are themselves to the transformational power of American education.

Popkewitz says that, “The school was to act as a moral technology, not merely
inculcating obedience, but also seeking to shape personality through the child's emulation
of the teacher, through the use of pastoral techniques to encourage self-knowledge and
enhance the feeling of sympathetic identification, through establishing the links between
virtue, honesty, and self-denial and a purified pleasure. (Rose, 1989, p. 223) Whereas
previous pedagogies sought truth in divine providence, "modern" pedagogical knowledge
combined certain religious views about salvation with scientific dispositions toward truth
and the rational governing of the self. Schooling was a program of disciplining and
training the political and social capacities of the democratic citizen (Hunter, 1994, pp.
152-163). Children were to be redeemed – rescued and saved – by making them
productive citizens (Baker, 1998; Popkewitz, 1996).31

In other words, to challenge this missionary orthodoxy most of the a priori “knowns” of
teachers – and especially teachers-to-be – must be challenged. They must be proven to be
social constructs and the philosophies which are the foundation of the social constructs
must be exposed. Not to prove that they are wrong, but so that they can be compared,
considered, and understood.

And we must bring this deconstruction to the teachers and teachers-to-be at the place
where their folk psychology and folk pedagogy meet their current developmental
moment, as Vygotsky would expect those teachers to bring their pedagogy to each
student’s development zone.

“[T]o say only that human beings understand other minds and try
to teach the incompetent is to overlook the varied ways in which
teaching occurs in different cultures. The variety is stunning. We
need to know much more about this diversity if we are to
appreciate the relation between folk psychology and folk pedagogy
in different cultural settings. Understanding this relationship
becomes particularly urgent in addressing issues of educational
reform. For once we recognize that a teacher's conception of a
learner shapes the instruction he or she employs, then equipping
teachers (or parents) with the best available theory of the child's
mind becomes crucial. And in the process of doing that, we also
need to provide teachers with some insight about their own folk
theories that guide their teaching.”32 (Bruner, 1996. pp. 48-49)

Høeg attempts this act by the construction of the natural empathy for the orphaned
children we meet first in his book. Peter and Katarina evoke first sympathy and then
 Ira David Socol
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understanding because of their circumstances. Only when he has pulled the reader deeply
into this engagement does he bring on the philosophical and historical backgrounds, and
even then, he does this in the voice of the abused child. First, this holds the reader
because it is a trusted voice speaking. Second, it challenges the reader to learn at least
what this unfortunate child has learned. When Høeg springs his first trap, the introduction
of a child character who might normally elicit no sympathy, the readers are forced to
view him not through their own eyes but through Peter’s. When Høeg springs his second
trap, proving the absurdity of modernist educational theories, readers are caught because
they have been dragged into viewing the problem from a cultural viewpoint entirely
unlike their own.

“I believe that Biehl's Academy was the last possible point in three
hundred years of scientific development. At that place only linear time was
permitted, all life and teaching at the school was arranged in accordance
with this-the school buildings, environment, teachers, pupils, kitchens,
plants, equipment, and everyday life were a mobile machine, a symbol of
linear time.

“We stood on the edge, we had reached the limit. For how far you could,
with the instrument of time, push human nature.

“And then it was bound to go wrong.” 33 (Høeg, 1993. pp. 260-261)

Bruner attempts to open these teacher/learners up these kinds of investigations in part by

appealing to vanity. Those studying other subjects, he suggests, are ahead of you and you
must catch up. In a way this is leveraging some old Protestant techniques in the cause of
their demolition – that, “first generation of New England Puritans required that church
members undergo a conversion experience that they could describe publicly,”34 and now
‘public conversion,’ in this case psychologists showing educators the way, will be used
help start to break the old ties.

“There is one "presenting problem" that is always with us in dealing with

teaching and learning, one that is so pervasive, so constant, so much part
of the fabric of living, that we often fail to notice it, fail even to discover it-
much as in the proverb "the fish will be the last to discover water." It is
the issue of how human beings achieve a meeting of minds, expressed by
teachers usually as "how do I reach the children?" or by children as
"what's she trying to get at?" This is the classic problem of Other Minds,
as it was originally called in philosophy, and its relevance to education
has mostly been overlooked until very recently. In the last decade it has
become a topic of passionate interest and intense research among
psychologists, particularly those interested in development. It is what this
chapter is about – the application of this new work to the process of
education. To a degree almost entirely overlooked by anti-subjective
behaviorists in the past, our interactions with others are deeply affected by
our everyday intuitive theories about how other minds work. These
 Ira David Socol
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theories, rarely made explicit, are omnipresent but have only recently
been subjected to intense study.”35 (Bruner, 1996. pp. 45-46)

Popkewitz’s idea is another route. He brings the teacher into the student’s boat, pointing
out how they are caught within the same system. This seems an attempt to get teachers to
reach beyond the assumed causes of their discontent, in order to see systemic issues
rather than failures of performance or faith.

“The redemptive theme is no longer merely to save the child but also to
remake the soul of the new teacher. The strategies appear as constructivist
pedagogies that emphasize a decentralized, local teacher. The rhetorical
stance is exemplified in the teaching of science and mathematics. Teachers
and children, for example, are viewed as participating in the construction
of knowledge as active individuals who produce, modify, and integrate
ideas. … When the reform strategies are more closely examined, the
governing of the soul emerges as the personification of professionalism
and the professional. The teacher is a redemptive agent who embodies and
imparts the norms of policy and research. The argument about giving
coherence to state policies is intertwined with the self-regulatory
capabilities of the teacher – the "teachers' knowledge, their professional
values and commitments, and the social resources of practice" (Cohen,
1995, p. 16). The teachers "are the agents on whom policy must rely to
solve that problem, for unless they learn much more about the subjects
they teach, and devise new approaches to instruction, most students'
learning will not change" (Cohen, 1995, p. 13).”36 (Popkewitz, 1998)

These three strategies all appear to have their value, but perhaps they would be most
effective in combination, assuming a carefully constructed order of introduction and a
commitment to recycling through the techniques as the teacher/learners slowly begin to
deconstruct their world. I might suggest beginning with the kind of fictional and
involving narrative that Høeg’s Borderliners represents, or I might start on an even more
emotional (and accessible) level with Tim Burton’s film Edward Scissorhands, with
questions targeted at the actions of Diane Wiest’s portrayal of “Peg.” The actions of
society in this film – and thus by proxy the structure of American education – are clearly
villainous, but “Peg,” in her representation of the teacher, forces an early look at all the
questions of conversion.

Would the reading of Borderliners be changed by the experience of Edward

Scissorhands? Possibly. Would the reading of Popkewitz become more urgent once
Borderliners was absorbed? This is likely. Might Bruner be paired with a more concrete
narrative, such as Lisa Delpit’s Other People’s Children,37 allowing richer analysis based
in recognizable situations? Should a book like Delpit’s (and thus Bruner’s) follow Høeg
and Popkewitz to ensure that these discussions do not become mired in the a priori
knowledge of race in America? I would suggest, yes.

The priesthood, the ministry, missionary work, and teaching all come out of the same
 Ira David Socol
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tradition in western culture. They are all evangelical occupations, dedicated to the
transmission of culture, the saving of souls, the betterment of society. In Protestant
cultures they go one significant step further, with all functioning to divide the world
between those who are saved and those who are not, with the expectation that the trials of
faith (or the tests of education) will separate the worthy from the unworthy.

Any chance to separate the missionary position from education thus requires challenging
the most engrained assumptions, the purest a priori knowledge, of the Protestant culture.
One must doubt progress, doubt the certainty of faith, and doubt the nature of salvation in
order to begin to push beyond this boundary which traps teachers (as Popkewitz says) and
destroys children (as Høeg suggests).

That probably requires a reconsideration of the entire American school curriculum, but it
must at least start with a reconsideration of what it is important to devote time to in a
teacher education program. Certainly a single course in multiculturalism can not offer
students the opportunities they need to begin to dig through lifelong assumptions.
Obviously courses which suggest “best pedagogical practices for student achievement”
are likely to reinforce, not deconstruct, the Protestant/Modernist “right path”
assumptions.

Only with those beliefs in doubt can teachers begin to find another path, which suggests
that what they now see as the greatest of their gifts to children, their faith and their
persistence, are the things which pose the greatest dangers to the children who are, or will
be, in their care.

“Of course, there were schools elsewhere, too, this I know. But surely no
place with a vision such as Biehl's.

“Elsewhere, in other countries, they have held children in the grip of time,
for a while they have held them. But, in time, those children who could not
cope, or whose parents did not have the wherewithal, were given up,
dropped.

“But Biehl would not give up on anyone, that was the exceptional thing-
maybe the exceptional thing about Denmark. They would not entertain the
thought that some pupils were down there, in darkness. They did not want
to know anything about the darkness, everything in the universe had to be
light. With the knife of light they would scrape the darkness clean.

“It is as though that thought was almost insane.”38 (Høeg, 1993. p. 227)
 Ira David Socol
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“enlighten students” search via Google on 12 April 2008 at 1:48 am.
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Barger, R. N. (Editor) History of American Education Web Project,University of Notre Dame. Prepared
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http://www.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html Accessed 15 Jun 2004 3:48 pm.
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Popkewitz, T. The culture of redemption and the administration of freedom as research. Review of
Educational Research. Washington: Spring 1998. Vol. 68, Iss. 1.
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Høeg, P. Borderliners. [De måske egnede] 1993 as translated by Barbara Haveland, 1994. Dell, New
York. 1995 pp. 255-256.
20
Popkewitz, T. The culture of redemption and the administration of freedom as research. Review of
Educational Research. Washington: Spring 1998. Vol. 68, Iss. 1.
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Bruner, J. The Culture of Education. 1996. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. p. 46.
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Wikipedia. Calvinism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism 27 April 2008 8:48 am
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Ravitch, D. American Traditions of Education. A Primer on American Schools. 2000. Hoover Institute,
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Fiske, E. A Nation at Loss. The New York Times. 25 April 2008
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Fish, S. French Theory in America and French Theory in America, Part II. The New York Times. 6 April
2008 http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/french-theory-in-america/ and 20 April 2008
 Ira David Socol
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http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/french-theory-in-america-part-two/
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30
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31
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Educational Research. Washington: Spring 1998. Vol. 68, Iss. 1.
32
Bruner, J. The Culture of Education. 1996. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. p. 48-49.
33
Høeg, P. Borderliners. [De måske egnede] 1993 as translated by Barbara Haveland, 1994. Dell, New
York. 1995 pp. 260-261.
34
Library of Congress. Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.
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35
Bruner, J. The Culture of Education. 1996. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. p. 45-46.
36
Popkewitz, T. The culture of redemption and the administration of freedom as research. Review of
Educational Research. Washington: Spring 1998. Vol. 68, Iss. 1.
37
Delpit, L. Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. 1995. The New Press. New
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38
Høeg, P. Borderliners. [De måske egnede] 1993 as translated by Barbara Haveland, 1994. Dell, New
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 Ira David Socol
Pushing Past the Missionary Position
TE 924 – Spring 2008
Page 18

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