http://www.ikedacenter.org/thinkers/perrone_talk.htm
By Vito Perrone
Remarks from Fourth Annual
Global Citizen Awards
Ceremony, 1998
Dr. Vito Perrone was introduced by Deborah Meier, educational innovator
and author of The Power of Their Ideas
.
I've known Vito Perrone for more than 25 years. I met
him when I was "just" a kindergarten teacher in a Harlem school. We met at a
time when the brave and bold work being done by early childhood educators across
the country, led by giants such as Vito and Lillian Weber, were confronting
another reform movement heading in the opposite direction. This second movement
was bent on a return to precisely the bad practices that had caused us to launch
the progressive reforms of the '60s. The counter-attack came to us under
auspices of the need for more accountability — a very different concept
of accountability than Vito and Lillian were championing.
Debbie Meier
|
In short, we were being challenged by proponents of
standardized testing of five- and six-year-olds as the only fair measure of our
work. Sound familiar? Fortunately, the attack was blunted by the outcry from
parents in Head Start. But it made its mark. It didn't go away. I've just spent
the day watching eleven-year-olds prepare for a test designed to fail most of
them — the exam to get
into the city's prestigious exam high schools. They're as bad, or perhaps worse,
than ever, precisely because they make it harder, not easier, to be accountable
to our own communities —
the children, their families, and our fellow citizens.
Vito pioneered accountability in the best sense
— giving an account of one's
work to those whom one served. For the 20 years that I've been at this
full-time, my friends and I have been fighting to embed a different picture of
the learning human being than the narrow mechanistic picture at the heart of
standardization. This different picture rests on acknowledging that our best
learning takes place when it is most embedded in meaningful, satisfying, and
joyous work where the extraordinary efficiency of the human mind to learn is not
ignored, where ignorance is seen as a provocation to learn, not a hole to be
filled.
We learn by the company we keep, including the books we read, the authors we
are in conversation with. We learn from those we can imagine being with and
wanting to be
— and in such a
setting we are remarkable learners.
It turns out then that it's far more critical to encourage youngsters to
enjoy reading than the hard-nosed realists and inventors of rigor have
acknowledged. They've often bullied us into shying away from the word "joy"
— as though it were a fatal
weakness, a romantic fallacy. Joy, they argue, isn't measurable.
We wearily accommodate to the latest fads at our peril. We can hold out only
if there are heroes in our midst, like Vito. Vito has some kind of radar for
staying the course, for ignoring fads, for sticking to old-fashioned language,
for remembering our common history. He reminds me that our ideas are actually
based on old verities, and the ones we're so alarmed about are actually the
latest version of an old game
— the effort to do away with the orneriness of our fellow humans. But our
orneriness is our glory. It makes us, in the end, hard to brainwash, hard to
permanently subdue. It makes us ultimately human.
This current fascination with trying to make every schoolhouse like every
other
— replicable
reform
— will soon
pass. Vito's generous confidence in our ability to grow, our openness to change
over time, and our toughness in the face of adversity makes it easier to go the
course, to dig in for the long haul when necessary. That's how one feels when
one leaves his presence
—
ready to take on tough tasks. That's what has made him such a staunch
ally, and someone that I've turned to over and over and over.
Vito was, as tonight's award reminds us, never "just" an American hero, or
just a leader of educational reform. He was a leader in many other causes. He
was a spokesperson on issues of justice and peace. He saw that a peaceable
community could only survive if we learned to cherish each other's strengths and
each other's differences. The very qualities of respect for others that make him
so special as an educator make him special as a global citizen, as a man of all
places and all times.
Vito leads quietly. On occasion one might not notice how firmly he sets the
course and how demanding that course is. I'm told that Vito was a wrestler in
his youth. At first I found it surprising and then I decided it's where he
learned how to fight strategically, sometimes even sneakily; he disarms with his
quiet and patience. He diverts our attention as he leads us down a better
path.
While there are aspects of Vito that remain private and hidden, the friend
and mentor I know is, I suspect, all of a piece, consistent in his demands on us
all and on himself. Vito's life itself represents a standard of excellence, a
standard by which so many of us in this room measure ourselves.
I come before you as an educator and historian of education concerned about
children and young people, their families and teachers, their communities and
schools.
Vito Perrone
|
At the end of the last century, the newspapers and
journals were full of accounts of progress, especially in relation to industry,
technology, and commerce. The twentieth century was previewed as a time of peace
and social justice. The new century obviously brought accelerated growth in
various technologies and industrial output, but in so many of the things that
truly mattered, issues of life and death and matters of the human spirit, the
twentieth century has been on the other side of what was predicted. The ravages
of war and human displacement, of great hunger and human suffering, have been of
overwhelmingly unimagined proportions.
While the large and powerful nations have avoided in the past half-century a
full-scale military encounter, the surrogate conflagrations and struggles with
new nationalisms have been every bit as devastating as the earlier wars and a
peaceful world seems far removed from the peoples of Kosovo, Afghanistan,
Rwanda, Liberia, the Congo, Losotho, and the Middle East, and I have hardly
covered the globe.
Additionally, the social and economic gaps are enlarging: hunger and
inadequate medical resources remain a genuine threat for many millions of
people, educational opportunity is far away for large numbers, and religious and
political freedom and human dignity are not sufficiently the rule. Even in
countries like ours, the economic disparities are growing, poverty is a way of
life for too many, educational opportunities are far from equal, homelessness is
all around us, and hatreds remain potent.
Our need in the years ahead, certainly in the coming century, is to make a
break with those habits of mind, beliefs, and actions that have permitted such
conditions to exist, that have left us as individuals and societies so
impoverished morally, lacking the will and capacity it seems to imagine other,
more equitable, more powerful, more generous possibilities.
Nobel Prize recipient and last year's Global Citizen honoree, Oscar Arias,
made clear in this particular venue, as well as an earlier Harvard commencement
address, that a willingness to take risks is always a prerequisite for change
because the conventions, the constancies, are so deeply ingrained. He encouraged
us in this regard: "Don't ever fear the risks you will have to take to build a
different world ... [because] accomodation with the old world where you see
violence and injustice, poverty and submission, offers no reward." I accept this
premise for the world as well as for our educational institutions.
How might those of us who care about education, who still believe that we can
educate for a more democratic and humane future, think about this? Let's put
ourselves in the 1840s in the United States and hear again the evangelizers of
the common schools describe these emerging institutions as settings in which
"all of America's children could meet, democratic life could be nurtured, strong
character built and economic and cultural growth guaranteed."
Listen to Horace Mann: "If we do not prepare children to become good citizens
. . . imbue their hearts with the love of truth and duty, and a reverence for
all things sacred and holy, then our republic must go down to destruction." We
would do well to recapture some of that language, to consider our schools as
democratic centers, with students and teachers aiming to make their communities
and the world better places in which to live.
I believe with Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican writer and diplomat, when "we say
justice, we say development, we say democracy; words won't bring them, but
without the words, they will never exist." We need the words more than ever.
Unlike so many of his contemporaries at the turn of the century, John Dewey
understood that the Industrial Age was producing changes that demanded an
education of greater power, that had embedded in it a stronger moral tone, a
more extended sense of citizenship, and greater community consciousness. How, he
asked,would the growing excesses of individualism be moderated? How would the
dignity of the human person be maintained in an economic system that fostered
anonymity, alienation and materialism? We should be asking such questions today.
Conditions are not so different.
"Be careful how you describe the world, it is like
that."
|
In Dewey's terms, we need to see education as a critical path to
imagination
— that distinctively
human capacity to envision a world of greater potential. Because the world has
been so violent doesn't mean that we can't imagine a world that is at peace, in
which nations, like individual families, find ways to reach out to others in
need, who see their well-being resting more fully on the well-being of others.
We don't have to live all the zero-sum formulations. Moreover, because
inequities have existed for so long doesn't mean they can't be moderated, even
eliminated. To speak of imagination in these terms is to bring forward Erich
Heller's often quoted admonition: "Be careful how you describe the world, it is
like that."
I wish also to acknowledge Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, who has provided
considerable intellectual inspiration for the work of the Center. As a
contemporary of John Dewey, he expressed similarly provocative ideas. As he
understood it, schools need to be places that nurture creativity, happiness,
cooperation, a oneness of spirit, connected more fully to the world, to "real
life activities." Makiguchi noted in relation to these aims: "I have to admit to
myself that the results of this line of thinking may not be realized in my
lifetime. Nonetheless, I have come to burn more and more with a fever to do
something, and the sooner the better." That sense of burning for the better
should be within all of us.
He wrote his first transnational, pacifist tract at the time of the
Russo-Japanese War in 1905. He was at it again as the militarist government
began to mobilize in the 1930s. Faced with a requirement for silence about the
dangers of militarist rule and demands for an education supportive of military
expansion, Makiguchi chose to resist. His story, which culminated in death in
prison in 1944, is inspiring, a symbol of moral courage. We know, by the way,
large numbers of names of those who have directed various campaigns of war; we
know far fewer of those, such as Makiguchi, who have given over the years voice
to peace, to non-violence, to the resolution of conflict. An education for
global citizenship and global responsibility should change that circumstance,
making the peacemakers at least as important, as recognizable, as the warmakers.
That, too, should be one of our imperatives.
The United States is often described as a "microcosm of the world." Mr.
Ikeda, by the way, speaks of the U.S. as the "miniature of the world." Early in
the next century, the majority of school-age students will come from Hispanic,
Asian, African, and African American families. We should be celebrating the rich
possibilities of this diversity, relishing our place as the crossroad of the
world, where people of many nations are converging. The potential for learning
would seem to be enormous. Our task is to make this American house work to the
fullest for all who choose to live here. That could be, by the way, our greatest
contribution to what is defined as global citizenship.
There are pressures to separate students by perceptions of ability, talent,
or gift. Such separations, often called tracking, are a means of perpetuating
inequities, pitting students against each other, mostly by race and class
—
which are the primary determinants of academic groupings in the
schools. They also lead us to accept the message of test scores rather than to
go beyond them.
What if our children and young people learn to read and write but don't like
to and don't? What if they don't read the newspapers and magazines, or can't
find beauty in a poem or love story? What if they don't go as adults to artistic
events, don't listen to a broad range of music, aren't optimistic about the
world and their place in it, don't notice the trees and the sunset, are
indifferent to older citizens, don't participate in politics or community life,
and are physically and psychologically abusive to themselves? And what if they
leave us intolerant, lacking in respect for others who come from different
racial and social backgrounds, speak another language, have different ideas or
aspirations? Should any of this worry us?
If we focused attention here, much might change. Schools might become places
that ensure that children and young people possess the skills, knowledge, and
dispositions that will enable them to change the world, to construct on their
terms new paths. What if we asked in regard to everything done in our
educational institutions, how will this help our students be in a position to
change some aspect of the world? Such a focus would raise the stakes greatly.
But we don't tend to ask those kinds of questions.
"Are students helping create a genuine commonwealth?
|
I ask often: Are our children being provided a basis for active participation
in the life of their communities? Are they learning the meaning of social
responsibility, of citizenship in the broadest sense? Are they gaining ongoing
experience in helping make their communities better places to live? Are they
adding something important, something lasting to their communities? Are they
helping create a genuine commonwealth? When we don't keep such questions firmly
in mind, making them a part of the ongoing discourse, schools tend to lose their
potential for becoming the centers for inquiry, authority, and change they need
to be.
When I think of schools and citizenship, I often go back to the work of
Leonard Covello and his Benjamin Franklin Community School in the early part of
this century. This New York City public school committed itself to preparing
students to be in the world, seeing themselves as genuine stewards, as real
citizens. It is not surprising that students at Benjamin Franklin were involved
in citizenship training programs, established community libraries, designed and
constructed neighborhood parks, worked on housing drives and land use studies,
and conducted health surveys. Why isn't that the norm in our current
schools?
As we move toward the twenty-first century, I wish we were in a better place
socially and educationally. The democratic society we need and desire is not yet
with us. There is still too much silence about matters of race and class. The
languages and actions of fear and hatred, of self-consciousness and guilt, of
privilege and discrimination remain with us, still needing to be better
understood, spoken about, moved away from.
Our needs today, as they were at the beginning of the century, continue to
rest around matters of equity and more supportive social and economic
environments for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual
orientatoin, language, or culture. The democratic society we need and desire is
not yet with us. Education is not the whole of our future and the many
imperatives that face us, but it is a central element.
What is the likelihood of schools actually serving students, families, and
communities at more powerful levels? It is hard not to have a genuine sense of
possibility kept alive when faced each day by the students that I am privileged
to work with, whose intellectual and moral commitments are so large. When I add
to that the many thoughtful teachers I see in our schools, and the parents I
meet everywhere who are so devoted to an education filled with power and
decency, and the young people I observe in the schools who are so caring and so
responsible and crave a genuine education, even as they receive little support
from adult society, my optimism soars.
)
