RECONSTRUCTIONISM

Although reconstruction finds some of its roots in existentialism, it is primarily grounded in the work of pragmatists. The commonalities are found in the beliefs that everything in the world is relative and that human beings process that world in order to understand and change it. Reconstruction differs from progressivism in the area of educational roles. Unlike the perennialists, who emphasize the transmitting of the knowledge of the existing culture, and the progressivists, who emphasize evaluating the existing culture, the reconstructionists want to transform the existing culture based upon their analysis of its inequities and fundamental flaws. They are critical of contemporary society and are viewed as social activists who address international as well as national concerns. If human beings are to become change agents, they must be equipped to do so; reconstructionists believe it is the responsibility of the school to provide them with the tools that will enable them to transform the contemporary world.

Most of the reconstructionist literature is found in the works of George Counts, Theodore Brameld, and Ivan Illich, and Paolo Freire. The work of Counts provided the key issue for reconstructionism when he posed the question, "Dare the school build a new social order?" His concern that America's schools did not serve the needs of most of the children arose from the impact of the Great Depression in the 1930s and his belief that only a small, favored group was being prepared for the challenges of a technological and global future. One could argue that Counts was well ahead of his time when he wrote in 1952:

The supreme task of the present and the coming generation in all countries, surpassing any domestic issue, is the development of the institutions, the outlook, the morality and the defenses of a world community. All geographical barriers, including distance, have been surmounted. Retreat into the past is impossible; perpetuation of the present means chaos and disaster.

He further believed that teachers play a critical role in shaping culture, for if they are interested in the lives of children--the central responsibility with which they are charged by the state--they must work boldly and without ceasing for a better social order.

Brameld championed the educational role of transforming the existing culture and the need for students to be able to establish useful goals. In his work (1950), Education for the Emerging Age, Brameld suggested that we "give (goals or objectives) not for the sake of credits or even knowledge as such; we give them so that people of all races, creeds, classes, and cultures may realize a more satisfying life for themselves and their fellows. Knowledge, training, skill -- all these are means to the end of such social self-realization."

Illich's contribution is found in his class work Deschooling Society (1970). Illich was a worldly man who had been educated in Europe and had worked in Puerto Rico, the US, and Mexico. His experiences led him to question whether the world could afford schools that, in his opinion, excluded most of its children, made dropouts of the lower classes, and served as straitjackets for thinking about education. In Deschooling Society, he answers this question by showing that the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence: three dimensions in a process of global degradation and modernized misery. Therefore, Illich's contribution to the reconstructionist movement is not an attempt to abolish schools but is an effort to deinstitutionalize the educational experience.

Finally, in the world of Freire, we find a method that provides the tools with which common people can transform the existing culture. Freire saw a connection between language and power and believed if people had a command of language and a high degree of literacy, they could become agents of change. Working mostly in Brazil and Chile, Freire developed a central argument, expressed in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1995)which stated that the important thing, from the point of view of libertarian education, is to develop people's ability to identify and question their own assumptions about the nature of the world through dialogue and discussion.

Example of a Reconstructionist Class Activity

Ms. Long and her high school civics class have been studying the impact of local ordinances on their community. One ordinance that has caught their attention gives the county commission the power to sell vacant public land to developers. The students want to see a vacant lot near their school made into a park instead of being used to build a parking garage. They study the issue and decide to write a letter to the county commission asking for time to speak at the next county commission meeting. Students work in small groups to research their arguments, get feedback from community residents, and select a group of students to make a presentation, complete with a model of their ideas for the neighborhood park.
Adopted from Robert Rowe, PhD