LOWER-TRACK CLASSROOMS: A curricular and cultural perspective.by Reba Page. New York: Teachers College Press, 1991. 272 p. Reviewed by
Page paints the working of this dilemma, or paradox, in the details of the working of a few classes in the two high school of Maplehurst: "Southmoor," the popularly anointed "heavenly" school where 'all' students are the college- oriented children of professional parents, and "Marshall," the popularly anointed "nothing-out-of-the-ordinary" school where 'all' students are the vocational- oriented children of blue-collar workers. Both at the general school and at the class levels, each high school displays itself as intellectual vs. vocational, professional vs. bureaucratic, oriented to critical thinking vs. focused on fact and skill, etc. Page shows, however, that to accept these self-definitions would be to miss something: both schools serve very similar populations--as measured by occupational statistics. Social class does not determine the schools or their curriculum. Rather the curriculum, and the general school culture, validates in everyday practice the identification it presents to the town, and to itself--both in its regular and lower tracks.
For Page, the distinction between the two types of classes is not an absolute one. Rather, it is related to the overall identification of each school. Both in Southmoor and Marshall, the Additional Needs classes have more in common with the regular, or even advanced, classes in each school, than they have with each other. In both schools they are marked as being "lower" by being something of a caricature of the regular classes. In Southmoor, where the regular classes are characterized by a lively exchange of ideas as teachers encourage "critical thinking" in their students, the Additional Needs classes have turned into free- for-all theaters of jokes, off-color remarks, etc., what teachers identified as "chaos," "disorder," etc. In Marshall, on the other hand, both classes are characterized by a bureaucratic view of education as a set of facts to be learned exactly as taught by the teacher and text-book. The "lower" status of the Additional Needs classrooms is marked by an even stronger emphasis on rote learning, and a lowering of what amount of facts is to be learned. The differentiation between the schools is further symbolized by the students as they interpret and variously resists what is presented to them. In Southmoor, students "try" to excel, they look at the teachers as individuals, and end blaming themselves for their failure. There is a strong stigma to being in the Additional Needs classes, these enroll a smaller percentage of the students, and there is a high drop-out rate. By contrast, in Marshall, teachers are faceless enemies, and lower track placement is treated as a smart 'con' of the 'system' (p. 249). There is little stigma attached to the lower track, the classes enroll a larger percentage, and there is little drop-out.
Page emphasizes the multiple paradoxes of such a system. For example, the Marshall 'con' derives from the school's emphasis on letting the students decide for themselves what they want to take: it is called "choice." In Southmoor, the teachers present themselves as professionals highly trained in their respective fields of study who are at a loss about what to do with students who are not responding to what they have to offer. So they end up "baby sitting."
Still, the paradoxes are only such from the point of view of an actor uncertain about how to justify what he will find himself having done next. As teachers in both schools know, but particularly the officially self-critical teachers of Southmoor, what they do in Additional Needs classes is unjustifiable. Even the students can be at a disappointed loss as they wonder both at what is done to them and at their collective resistance. This is not what education should be like, and yet this is the only meaningful educational activity possible at this time and place.
An argument could be made, however, that the system itself is not paradoxical. This is indeed the underlying point to Page's book, even when she uses words like "disorder" or "chaos" to describe a particular situation. In fact there is no chaos or disorder anywhere; there are only particular orders that are themselves transformations of broader orders. The distinction Southmoor/Marshall is in fact but a possible production, at the level of the town as a whole, of the traditional political and philosophical debates within America about education as a humanistic development of one's personality, vs. education as a matter of getting specific skills useful in a directly pragmatic way. The distinction between regular vs. Additional Needs, is itself but a possible production of the prescription for treating each student (each teacher?) according to his or hers unique talent, needs, preferences, etc. while taking into account his or hers actual social conditions.
The problem for the individuals that are caught within parameters organized by the cultural system, and that includes educational reformers and other practitioners, as well as the people Page reports on, is that the system may be too orderly, too self-evident and self-justifying, too encompassing of action, to offer an easy opening for a solution that is not itself driven by the culture. This is, essentially, the conclusion Page offers, and it is not a particularly optimistic one. There is no simple solution, no suggestion that this or that practice might be changed or adopted that would resolve the problems. The teachers are not to blame--even though they are the adult bearers of the culture to the students. More training, sensitivity, creativity, on their part would not resolve the paradox. No psychological intervention with the students that might make them more accepting of the school would change much either. Indeed, the implication of the analysis is that the more teachers are made to focus on the special needs of special students, the more these students will be differentiated from the "regular" students. From the point of view of the system, this is in fact as it should be: nothing would be more un-American than a school that would refuse to entertain differences and refuse to make it possible for the students to display these differences in their collective behaviors.
I may be going a step further than Page might find comfortable, though her call to "understanding" is clearly based on her realization, through her fieldwork and her earlier experience as a teacher, that it is the very cultural system within which we live in the United States that organizes our particular problems. She does not quite either label this culture, as I just did. She does not, however, use the current formulas about "our diverse culture" because she realizes that the problem here is not diversity, but rather the dominance of an America that is inscribed not so much in the minds of the people--like me, she appears to doubt that people would be such cultural dopes that they would not somewhat see through their conditions--as it is in the institutions that have developed in the United States, in particular schools, and in particular classrooms.
There is much here that some will find controversial. Page's argument remains however one of the most powerful one can make about the structure of American education, and she is making a significant contribution to the literature that has been making it. Even those who may find themselves resisting the implications of the analysis will learn much by paying close attention to what she has to say.