Associate Professor of Education Richard A. Gibboney believes that the purported progress of public-school reform is actually a step in the wrong direction--particularly when new technology is involved.

"It's a frustrating thing, to be sure, but true school reform didn't happen in the last 30 years and is not now happening, either," said Gibboney, whose 1994 book, "The Stone Trumpet," carries what seems like a safe subtitle: "A Story of Practical School Reform, 1960-90."

The conclusion of "The Stone Trumpet," however, is not so safe. Gibboney points out that most big reforms undertaken by American public schools since the baby boomers hit the classroom have been failures on arrival.

"The so-called reformers have always had better slogans," Gibboney mused. "But I still try to have one. My slogan is this: Good reform is both intellectual and democratic."

Gibboney's slogan is "a summary of a summary of a summary" of the educational philosophy of John Dewey, the godfather of 20th-century school reform. "I go back to Dewey's theories, which say that good schooling cultivates intelligence," Gibboney explained. "It is wide open what intelligence is. It may be good conversation. It may be art. But it is not just being a slave to statistical analysis and new technology."

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with new technology. The real problem, according to Gibboney, is that educators looking to reform their school systems become enamored of the technology itself, rather than having the students and teachers learn how to make the technology useful to their lives.

"Reforms that are unworthy are those reflecting the technological emphasis," Gibboney said. "They emphasize skills, like how to add a long column of figures, but don't get into thinking about mathematics and its meaning in society. This comes out of the rat-maze psychology, and our love of the machine.

"For instance, schools are buying computers but don't know how to use them. They put them in a room and call it a laboratory. Would you call a book and a pencil a lab? Are we going to teach you how to use a book and program--i.e., write--a book? Well, that is about the book and not about learning. We worship the computer, the machine, not how it can help us intellectually."

In "The Stone Trumpet," Gibboney makes an exhaustive list of major educational reforms since 1960. Of the 34 reforms he cites, only six meet his "intellectual and democratic" standard--like open classrooms and nongraded schools. Many reforms receive heavy criticism. A few get only mild rebukes.

"New math and new science, which became big about 25 years ago, meet the intellectual, but not the democratic, part of the equation," Gibboney said. "They made students think about their subjects, but they were generally only practiced in elite schools."

Gibboney got his start as an educator in a decidedly nonelite school. He began his career in the 1950s as a teacher in a progressive grade school in Ferndale, Mich., a northern suburb of Detroit. "Most of the kids were children of autoworkers," he said. "It was such a great communal teaching experience that we still have reunions of the principal and the teachers."

Gibboney went on to graduate study at Vanderbilt University, where he got hooked on Dewey. Then he went into educational administration on the state level. He was deputy secretary of education in Pennsylvania before taking over the head job, commissioner of education, in Vermont. That went fine until the state tried to regionalize schools, an unpopular move in a state with strong community feeling like Vermont.

"We parted company," Gibboney said.

After leaving Vermont in 1967, Gibboney was recruited to Penn by then provost, Dave Goddard. "I guess I came off as a nonbureaucratic type when I had dealings with him [as Pennsylvania's deputy secretary of education]," Gibboney explained. "Because of my background, I'm out of step half the time in the University and half the time in the field. The field looks at me initially as an egghead professor. The University looks at me as not a typical scholar because of my administrative background. Actually, it's all not so bad. It keeps me looking at both sides."

Gibboney may have a somewhat jaundiced view of the current state of education, but educators don't necessarily have a jaundiced view of him. In 1969, Gibboney won Penn's Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, a prestigious honor bestowed by a University-wide committee. Still, Gibboney realizes that he's not going to win many kudos from those who think learning by rote is a good thing.

"Because we worship any new machine, like computers, this filters over to how we define knowledge," he said. "Is it any wonder we slip into the mechanical mode? Schools take subjects apart. History becomes all dates. This is a mechanistic approach to history, not an interesting story or an unfolding narrative, which is what it should be. It becomes a series of disconnected Northwest Ordinances of 1787 and all those memorized facts."

The best schools, Gibboney believes, rely not on textbooks, but on great school libraries. "Textbooks are merely for overview," he said. "Kids should be reading biographies--real books--not vocabulary-controlled, bland textbooks."

The best classes mix disciplines and allow students to apply subjects in a creative fashion. As an example, Gibboney described a multidimensional course that the suburban district of Cherry Hill, N.J., could offer in which students would learn just by talking about their hometown.

"To think, sure, you have to know facts, but to really think, you have to think about how to use them," he said. "Take Cherry Hill. You'd ask [students] to think about why Cherry Hill emerged in the 1950s instead of the 1890s. You talk about President Eisenhower's programs, the interstate highway system, why people left the cities. You can talk about desegregation. You could study math through the interpretation of population figures; science with land use. You would have them read old newspapers and teach them how to summarize information. You would show how to make appointments to interview someone. This is a mini-liberal-arts education on just that one subject."

But instead of implementing such classes, educators are constantly looking for the next reform, none of which has really worked on a mass scale. Gibboney knows that from personal experience. Between 1984 and 1994, he worked with a dozen school districts using his interpretation of Dewey's theories. "I have to admit, my way of reform didn't change schools miraculously, either," he said with a laugh.

"I define significant reform as 20 percent of the public schools moving in an intellectual and democratic way," he added. "I wasn't any better at that than any of the other reformers. I may have raised the intellectual level of some teachers, but I didn't change a school district 180 degrees."

Yet in spite of the frustration both he and reformers he denigrates have faced, Gibboney still sees public schooling as a place worth perfecting. "Public schools are essential for democracy," he said. "With all their faults, the public schools are our single best hope to cultivate and preserve democratic values in an increasingly anti-democratic culture.

"But unless we are truly democratic--making sure everyone is offered a good intellectual education--we're going to be left dull-witted with our dull machines."

Return to Compass Features for April 16, 1996