WHAT KIND OF CITIZEN?
EDUCATING OUR CHILDREN FOR THE COMMON GOOD
BY VIVIAN MCCAFFREY L
What Kind of Citizen? Educating Our Children for the Common Good Joel Westheimer New York: Teachers College Press, 2015. 122 pages, $32.50
ike its title, Joel Westheimer’s
recent book asks what kind of citizens our education programs imagine. Do “schools in demo- cratic societies teach children to
think they are individual actors who work with others to create a better society? Are they taught to think for themselves and to govern collectively?” Westheimer’s view is that the goals of
education have shifted away from prepar- ing students to be active and engaged citi- zens. Through standardized curriculum and standardized testing, schools have moved to a more narrow focus on career preparation and individual economic gain. Both factors work against fostering the critical thinking skills that politicians and education policy- makers say should be at the heart of 21st cen- tury education. What Kind of Citizen stands as a treatise on
public education’s role in educating students to be active, responsible citizens in a demo- cratic society. It makes the case that educators have an important opportunity to influence how students understand the world and how they view their capacity to shape it. A professor in the University of Ottawa’s
faculty of education, Westheimer has a par- ticular interest in the relationship between education and democracy. He is also a vocal critic of standardized testing. Westheimer began his education career
as an elementary teacher in New York City’s public schools. He later went on to graduate school where his research included study- ing the different approaches schools adopt for teaching students about being citizens. Much of his book is based on the American
10 ETFO VOICE | SPRING 2016
schools, particularly the high schools, he and his research partner Joe Kahne studied. Nevertheless, it is useful for reflecting on how the Ontario curriculum, the provincial testing program and educators’ own views on what constitutes a citizen affect how we educate students for their future civic re- sponsibilities.
HOW WELL DO PUBLIC SCHOOLS SUCCEED IN EDUCATING RESPON- SIBLE CITIZENS?
Education means more than teaching stu- dents the basics in literacy and numeracy. Westheimer argues that students are being asked to read but not to consider what’s worth reading. They are being asked to be proficient in adding numbers but not at thinking about what the answers add up to or how they connect to our society. He laments that curricular approaches that “spoon-feed” students to be successful on narrow academic tests “teach students that broader critical thinking is optional.” Ontario does not experience the egre-
gious consequences of the high-stakes test- ing culture that characterizes education in the United States. But we share some of the outcomes, including an over-emphasis on literacy and numeracy to the detriment of other subjects such as social studies, history, science and the arts. Westheimer observes that proponents of teaching these latter subjects feel compelled to demonstrate how they contribute to improved literacy and numeracy achievement. This is certainly happening in Ontario and other provinces where there is pressure to link, for exam- ple, the importance of studying music to
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