The Woeful Educators

Two months ago, some 30 students at the Graduate School of Education christened themselves the "Woeful Educators" (WE). The school, they argued, is not preparing its students for teaching in cities, nor providing them with consistently good supervision as student teachers, nor encouraging enough communication between specialists. Their answer was to form a group of student committees to find out why.

They have had little to be woeful about since. Dean Sizer has welcomed all of WE's committees; two student-run seminars have been set up; the Ed School Student Association has won representation on two faculty planning committees and will soon set up a Student Committee on Academic Policy.

WE is not the first group at the Ed School to see the possibility of student influence on academic policy, but it may be the first in many years to act on it. A successful student movement at the Ed School has always seemed highly unlikely--to mention just the most obvious problem, half of the students are enrolled for only one year.

But--paradoxically enough--there may be a real threat to future student movements at the Ed School in the faculty's ready acceptance of WE's proposals. One reason for the acceptance is that the faculty is well aware of the problem WE is trying to solve; for almost two years, it has been leading a revolution in the Ed School's attitude toward them.

When WE talks about training urban teachers, the Faculty can look to its new Center for Research and Development and imminent participation in several federal programs aimed at poverty areas. When WE talks about supervising student teachers, the faculty can look at its new student-teaching centers in Arlington, Brookline and Newton. When We talks about changing the curriculum, the faculty can look to (and beyond) the Scheffler Report.

WE has been invited to help make these programs a success, to learn about them with the faculty--and that is a valuable role for a student group. But even more valuable would be a continuing, effective student voice where programs are iniated and changed--with the Committee for Academic Policy and the Library Committee, for example.

Besides participating in an urban school plan and a student-teaching plan, WE might consider backing less attractive proposals, such as giving student representatives on some faculty planning committees the right to vote and pressing for faculty involvement in course evaluation. Support for measures like these might result in temporary friction with the faculty; but it could give future educators what they now ironically lack--a voice in determining the basic nature of their own education.