THE DALLAS INSTITUTE
OF
HUMANITIES
AND
CULTURE’S
Cowan Center For Education
Newsletter Summer 2015 • Volume IV, Issue II
On the Spirit of Learning From the Cowan Center Director Dear Colleagues and Friends,
September 25-26, 2015 At LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL
Focusing on what Education could be, not on problems The 2015 Education Forum:
On the Spirit of Learning Where citizens will join educators from all levels of schooling to begin to reimagine education, teaching, and learning Presented by the
Click here to register, or visit the Education Forum page on the Dallas Institute website.
I am very pleased to be able to say that we are approaching the most exciting year in the history of the Dallas Institute’s formal programs for Pre-K—12 teachers and educators. The Cowan Center has reached the next level of its professional maturity. Along with multiple programs requested by schools and districts, we are in the process of registering trademarks for educational models and “training” based on the Cowans’ unique vision of liberal education. This rare and noble philosophy undergirds every program in the Cowan Center—from the Teachers Academy’s nationally recognized Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers to the annual Superintendents Symposium. Trademarks for teacher and administrator “training” are being planned, from the Cowan Teacher™—a Pre-K—12 teacher who has completed both July Summer Institutes— to the Louise and Donald Cowan Master Educator™—a Cowan Teacher™ or above who earns a specially designed Doctor of Philosophy of Letters and Leadership, which will be a truly unique degree program in the country. And if I may digress for a moment, I place “training” in quotation marks because I use the word with great reservation for programs designed for people. Donald Cowan’s ideas have convinced me that language matters a great deal more than we think it does. Indeed, he insists, the “cultivation of language is the real task of education.” I know that “training” is the word we commonly use to refer to programs such as these, but it seems inappropriate, somehow, to associate it with people who stand to gain so much more than additional skills or information. I’m sure that any alumnus who
has been transformed by the Summer Institutes would say that “training” doesn’t begin to get at what happens during those extraordinary three weeks. But now the Cowans’ vision of liberal education will also be the guiding tenet of both the Louise and Donald Cowan Academy™ and the Louise and Donald School of Liberal Arts and Sciences™. These are educational paradigms anchored for both teachers and administrators in an experience of the Summer Institute classes. The Cowan Academy™ is a humanities academy that will be inserted into an existing school in the way that a STEM academy, a finance academy, or an arts academy is introduced to feature classes that specialize in those areas. But because it is designed to promote excellence in the humanities—in English, social studies, foreign languages, philosophy, etc.—a Cowan Academy™ is not only for bright or gifted children. Every student needs a strong foundation in mathematics and science, but in order to use that knowledge and skill for the Good, he or she first needs knowledge and skills in the humanities, which, according to Donald Cowan again, are “those disciplines that seek for wisdom concerning the human situation.” Beginning with our most ambitious Education Forum yet, this year in which we will also see two or even three Cowan Academy™ programs begin their candidacy in local schools will be a year of taking the Cowan Center vision into the “trenches” of the public school arena. And this proving ground, I am sure, will be ample evidence that the spirit of learning is alive and well in education.
To read the Cowan Center Newsletter online, go to the Cowan Center link on the homepage of the Dallas Institute’s website: dallasinstitute.org.
On the Spirit of Learning O
n Friday, September 25, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM, and on Saturday, September 26, 2015, from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, the Dallas Institute’s Cowan Center will conduct a program in which we will dwell, not on the problems in education but on what education could be. We have lived so long in “crisis” that one of the primary challenges in education now is the mode of crisis itself. Of course, we face serious difficulties at every level of schooling, and we must strive to improve our educational system so that every student can receive a quality education. But since 1983 and “A Nation At Risk”—and perhaps especially in these last fifteen years—our mode has prompted crisis tactics and has resulted in systems and programs designed to “fix” education while we have all but forgotten the equally important work of continuing to think deeply about an American education, its purposes and its value. The 2015 Education Forum is designed to begin that conversation. Educators from all levels of schooling will be joined by citizens for an evening and a day to get reacquainted with the ideals of a liberal education, an education suited to a free people (from the word liber, meaning “free one”). Instead of focusing on the challenges in education, we will immerse ourselves in considering what education in our day and in our cities ought to be. The tension between a “college prep” (liberal) education and vocational training is not new. It was the argument that concerned the African American community more than one hundred years ago, one that placed Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois on opposite sides of the issue. It has been a central concern in American public schooling since its inception, and it is one of the most important yet unexamined philosophical issues currently fueling the conflict between education “reformers” and those who oppose their ideas. We believe that every child in America
deserves and needs an education suited to a free person. But what does a liberal education look like in our day? What are the features of a liberal education that need to be available to all students in order to provide every child in America with the opportunity to live and thrive as a citizen and as a human being? Friday, September 25, 2015, 6:00 PM The program will begin with the speakers discussing Dr. Donald Cowan’s chapter called “The Spirit of Liberal Learning.” The text is also available to those who register to attend. This panel will be followed by a brief talk by Dr. William Deresiewicz on liberal education and culture, and a keynote address by Dr. Diane Ravitch, who will lay out a brief history of liberal education in American public schools. Following the talks, book signings will complete the evening, concluding at 9:00 PM. Saturday, September 26, 9:00 AM Dr. Elizabeth Samet and Dr. Andrew Delbanco will give brief talks about liberal education at the university level followed by a brief moderated panel. Another brief panel and round of talks given by Dr. Matthew Crawford and Dr. Diana Senechal will follow in the next hour, focusing on the role of philosophy in liberal education at both the university and high school levels. After lunch, the final set will feature Dr. Ben Olguín and Dr. Dan Russ, who will discuss the role of poetry and literature in liberal education at all levels of schooling, including how to reach “at-risk” students with the wisdom and empathy of the humanities. The day will end at 4:00 PM, with a summary panel by the speakers followed by a brief address by Dr. Louise Cowan, who will articulate for us the unique vision of liberal education that she and her husband shared. This is a vision that is the foundation of every Cowan Center program, one that we’re suggesting can provide the foundation for an education worthy of a free person for every child in America, not only those who attend elite private schools.
September 25-26, 2015 At the Dallas ISD’s Lincoln High School Meet our speakers: Dr. William Deresiewicz “What the habit of reflection will enable you to do —while maintaining contact with art and history and philosophy (or for that matter, if you do go into the humanities, with the natural and social sciences)—is bring the full range of human experience, of your experience, to bear upon your work. If you become a doctor, it will make you a healer instead of a pill-pusher, someone who treats people, not diseases. If you turn out to be a professor, it will mean the difference between become a pedant, who teaches course, and a mentor, who teaches students.” From Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
Dr. Matthew Crawford “The nascent two-track educational scheme mirrored the assembly line’s severing of the cognitive aspects of manual work from its physical execution. Such a partition of thinking from doing has bequeathed us the dichotomy of white collar versus blue collar, corresponding to mental versus manual. . . . The best sort of democratic education is neither snobbish nor egalitarian. Rather, it accords a place of honor in our common life to whatever is best. At this weird moment of growing passivity and dependence, let us publicly recognize a yeoman aristocracy: those who gain real knowledge of real things, the sort we all depend on every day.” From Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
Dr. Andrew Delbanco “The American college has always differed fundamentally from the European university, where students are expected to know what they want (and what they are capable
of) before they arrive. . . . The era of spiritual authority belonging to college is long gone. And yet I have never encountered a better formulation—’show me how to think and how to choose’—of what a college should strive to be: an aid to reflection, a place and process whereby young people take stock of their talents and passions and begin to sort out their lives in a way that it true to themselves and responsible to others.” From College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be
Dr. Ben OlguÍn “After fighting to shake off red leather gloves into another boy’s face, the pain comes back again because your hands are wrapped too tight, so tight it hurts to stay still. This is why you hit so hard. There is nothing more to do but wait, arms at your side silent, head down, determined to decipher the mathematical formula that keeps shoelaces from coming undone.” Stanzas one and two from “Red Leather Gloves” in Red Leather Gloves: Poems by B. V. Olguín
Dr. Dan Russ “We teach our students to think mathematically, chronologically, scientifically, musically, and analogically, and later sociologically, psychologically, philosophically, and so it goes. As they are led through the journey, their courses of learning match their abilities to study, learn, and love the complexities of the world. . . . We teachers are a hopeless lot who never lose hope that every student we encounter is somebody and can become somebody who matters in the world. To do so we often abandon other possibilities: to become wealthy, famous, influential, and otherwise ‘successful.’ We deal at the deepest level in passing on to these young ones the knowledge, skills, and wisdom that makes possible the flourishing of persons and cultures.”
Dr. Elizabeth Samet
Dr. Diane Ravitch
“As I read the Iliad with the plebes—this was about four months before September 11—the part I found most moving was Hector’s departure from his wife and son at the end of book six. In the three years since, its power has grown; I find myself returning often to the Trojan hero’s valedictory to his family and his city. . . . In Hector’s wish for his son, I read the perdurability of war’s romance, but I also like anachronistically to see a prototype of the citizensoldier. Unlike Achilles, Hector isn’t a killing machine, and his martial ambitions always seem to me bound up with the survival of the city and the culture he defends.”
“As a nation, we need a strong and vibrant public education system. As we seek to reform our schools, we must take care to do no harm. In fact, we must take care to make our public schools once again the pride of our nation. Our public education system is a fundamental element of our democratic society. Our public schools have been the pathway to opportunity and a better life for generations of Americans, giving them the tools to fashion their own life and to improve the commonweal. To the extent that we strengthen them, we strengthen our democracy.”
From Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point
Dr. Diana Senechal “There’s the paradox: each of us has to find solitude alone, yet we find it through others’ shapes. We learn from our guides, but at some point we part ways with them. The greatest honor any of us can show a teacher is to take off and set up shop on our own, even with gratitude, even with regret, even with a tremor, even with doubts over our tools and hands. There is no good mind that does not at some point make a break with its instructors and guides. That is its motion and life. But going forward, forward, forward, is not its entire nature. It also comes back, rereads, remembers; it recalls teachers and the things that were taught.” From Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture
EDUCATORS: Follow-up programs in the 2015-2016 school year include:
From “The Teacher as Mentor: the Storied Life”
“If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans, but not in nature, men.” W.E.B. DuBois From “The Talented Tenth”
DuBois’ “Talented Tenth” or Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise”? Educating Students Today Reaching the Student “At Risk” by Closing the “Achievement Gap” Follow-up programs will feature local educators.
From The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education
Dr. Louise Cowan
“Throughout the ages, teachers have followed the lead of the Titan Prometheus in becoming a thief of divine fire so that even the least gifted of their pupils can attain knowledge. The great teacher Socrates spoke of himself as a midwife, bringing learning to birth in others. But he could thus induce learning because he believed in the riches of the mind— ideas, qualities, relationships, invisible realities that change lives. He himself did not possess this realm; he could not merely transfer the knowledge of it to others. But he could lead his pupils to it so that they could see for themselves. And this is the constant task being performed by teachers throughout our nation. Teachers are witnesses; they believe in learning as a transforming power.” 3
The 2015 Lyric Tradition I Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers Nestled in the garden of the Dallas Institutes’ most recent acquisition—the elegant Stroud House—teachers and faculty gathered for the week of June 15-19 to study the paradigm shifts of the Western tradition of English–language poetry from their foundations in the songs and laments of the biblical Psalms, to Shakespeare’s sonnets, to the Romantics and up through W. B. Yeats. Recitations of Shakespearean sonnets and a champagne reception closed the class. The teachers spoke eloquently about the kind of learning experience that is only to be found in a Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers. Representative of a sense of the impact of the class, Camille Cain, veteran middle school social studies teacher, reflected further on her week in the program: “I came into the Lyric I Summer Institute knowing absolutely nothing about lyric poetry. I appreciated the fact that these paradigms were laid out in chronological order—this appealed to my history teacher’s mind. I was also appreciative of the lesson on great poetry and bad poetry, as this has provided me with a set of guidelines that I can carry with me for the rest of my days. It puzzles many of those who are close to me or who have known me a long time, that I keep coming back to the study of literature in order to be a better history teacher. Until recently, I’ve not really known how to explain this myself. This week, however, I gained a certain clarity. When I woke to the news on Thursday morning, that an American terrorist had attacked one of the oldest African-American churches in the country, I was immediately struck by the political and historical significance. This is what my mind has been trained to do. I was stunned to learn that the church was co-founded in 1816 by a slave, one who would later go on to organize a slave revolt from the protective walls of that very church. This information also appealed to my thirst for historical knowledge. However, this is a matter of the ‘head’ and does not address the ‘heart,’ which, I found, is the realm of the lyric. 4
“It puzzles many of those who are close to me or who have known me a long time, that I keep coming back to the study of literature in order to be a better history teacher.” Sunday morning (6/21/2015), the matter of the aching heart was addressed when I saw a video of the first service at “Mother Emanuel” AME Church. The visiting pastor opened the service with a resounding call from the Psalms: “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us REJOICE and be glad in it!’ Here were the Psalms that had grounded our study of the Lyric Tradition the week before! As I watched and listened
to the revival of the congregation’s spirit, I could see the very ‘numinous presence’ about which we spoke in the Lyric I class all last week. Fueled by love and conquering hate, the ‘Lyric Universe’ was alive and well here and in its full glory. It was at the moment that I came to the full realization that our world, this nation, and each of us are in desperate need of more lyric poetry in our lives.”