Chapter 12: Troubling Teaching: Learning From Social Media

Toward the end of the 19th century, school—our society's broad spectrum response to the need in a democracy for an educated citizenry—took the format similar to what was being developed in industries. It was designed to efficiently manage large numbers of students learning different subjects in buildings composed of isolated classrooms led by individual teachers (Tyack & Tobin, 1994). Since that time, school as an institution has expanded dramatically as attendance became compulsory, the population increased significantly, schools extended their services to older and more diverse groups of children, and teaching became a licensed profession. In the last 40 years, educational reform has been dominated by an increasing emphasis on standardization, accountability, and academic achievement. The discourse of school focuses on job preparation and global competition. Missing in teaching and learning is a focus on the relational (Bingham & Sidhorkin, 2004) and the relevant, the social processes and connections to people and ideas that are central to educative experience and the evolution of democracy (Dewey, 1966). With intermittent success over more than a century, progressive critics have sought to reexamine and restore or rejuvenate the connection between education and democracy.