Revising the Quest

Nestled snugly between Garden and Brattle Streets in an eclectic collection of traditional and modern buildings, faculty members of the Graduate School of Education could easily allow personal research plans and international conferences to eclipse the problems in the American public school system. The enthusiastic response to a recent call for renewed attention to these problems shows, however, that Ed School professors are resisting the alluring ivory tower in the frustrating search for adequate public education.

Quickly assembled committees, faculty seminars and plans for short-term training sessions are the most obvious evidence of the Ed School's reaction to the findings of a major self-evaluative study completed in December under the direction of Roland S. Barth, a lecturer at the school. Paul N. Ylvisaker, dean of the Ed School, believes that this reaction indicates a shift away from a "dangerously negative posture, an attitude of neo-conservatism," which had blurred educators' aims during the last fifteen years. Ylvisaker commissioned the special study late last spring to examine the relationship between the Ed School and American secondary schools.

In his 48 page report, Barth criticizes the over-dependence on federal, state and city agencies that developed in the late 1960's, and he scorns the notion that such organizations would untangle the knots in the public school system "if only those agencies had enough money, or the right sort of staff, or better training, or the appropriate legislative mandate." Instead, Barth suggests that the Ed School give added attention to individual schools and their "leaders" (principals, teachers and parents) in an effort to identify the components of a successful public school. "We have come to a realization after a decade of individually-oriented programs withering away that it is dangerous for a graduate school to be this far away from its aim," says Barth.

The former Newton public school principal outlines several specific ways to assist local leaders in creating an effective classroom, including the establishment of a new one-year program in "school leadership." Fueled by foundation grants totaling $327,000, the Ed School has already begun to implement plans for a case study research project and a summer institute for school administrators. The results of biweekly faculty seminars now underway will become the basis for a series of practioner workshops scheduled to being next fall. Ylvisaker will need much more money to complete these endeavors, but he says, "There is a good deal of enthusiasm among the members of the (Harvard) Corporation for the direction defined in the report."

Despite the layman's astonishment that the Ed School would now have to be reminding itself to minister to individual schools, experts such as Gerald S. Lesser, Charles Bigelow professor of Education and Developmental Psychology and a member of the group that assisted in the preparation of Barth's report, calmly insist that "there are always a lot of ebbs and flows in educational philosophy. We have never really been disassociated with secondary schools." Ylvisaker adds, "This is not a 180 degree change...We were missing one balancing wire and this is it."

Before the Ed School joined the Johnson-inspired crusade for federalization, the school had focused on suburban schooling. The now-defunct Master of Arts in Teaching program used to train students for cushy positions in Brookline and Scarsdale. But eight years ago inflation, the disintegration of urban public education and a disappearing teacher's job market combined to force the elimination of many programs with direct ties to schools; the educational elite had decided that the Great Society would create the perfect classroom with broad-based, centralized planning. "All of those things were valid," Ylvisaker says, adding that, "We want to continue to be very broad in our approach to schooling."

No matter how Ylvisaker defines the readjustment of programs and goals presently underway, he and his colleagues face a Herculean task; many American schools will need more than tinkering before they again provide a satisfactory education. Those in Longfellow and Larsen Hall who lament the "decline in American education" often point to tight budgets and decreasing respect for the field. "The Proposition 13 mentality has been turning the faucet off on education," says Ylvisaker. Falling enrollments in suburbia and over-crowded classrooms in the city plague both communities, and, or course, there is the fiercely debated effect of television.

Harvard educators do not pretend that their philosophical fine tuning will have an immediate effect on secondary school education. Patricia A. Graham, Charles Warren Professor of the history of American Education and the chairman of the special committee overseeing the implementation of Barths's theories, says educators are already considering more drastic options such as "putting more (students) to work and adding some sort of academic component to the work environment," to deal with adolescents who now glide through high school with second-grade reading levels and 50 per cent attendance records.

Although Ylvisaker concedes that "a lot of lousy teachers" contribute to the frequent failure of the public school, he quickly adds that "It's all too easy to exaggerate these problems." Because of the glutted job market, neither the dean nor his professors forsee a return to teacher training at the Ed School, but they do believe that the proposals they are considering will correct the balance of the crucial relationship between the offices on Appian Way and classrooms around the country.