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The supervision of teacher candidates: A philosophical/historical perspectiveRichard A. Brosio aa Assistant Professor of Secondary Education in the Department of Secondary, Higher, andFoundations of Education , Ball State University ,Published online: 20 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Richard A. Brosio (1975) The supervision of teacher candidates: A philosophical/historical perspective,The Teacher Educator, 11:2, 25-40, DOI: 10.1080/08878737509554601

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THE SUPERVISION OF TEACHER CANDIDATES:A PHILOSOPHICAL/HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Richard A. Brosio

Most persons who are concerned with the preparation of pro-fessional K-12 teachers probably agree that the student teachingexperience is central to that preparation. In most schools of educa-tion the students devote more time and energy to student teachingthan to courses in the social foundations, curriculum, educationalpsychology or methods. It would be a conservative assumptionto claim that most teacher candidates consider student teachingto be the most crucial part of their preparation.

Because so much time, money and energy is devoted to run-ning the student teaching part of the professional sequence, it isimperative that members of the education school communitymaintain a regular dialogue concerning how to do student teach-ing and student teaching supervision in optimum fashion. Thiswork is being done and presented in the spirit of forwarding thepossibility for dialogue among those persons in the colleges ofeducation and in the public schools who are concerned with thepreparation of professional teachers. Specifically, the focus of thearticle will be on student teaching, as this writer perceives it pri-marily to be, and upon what it might be in the future.

If we are seriously to dialogue about the student teaching ex-perience it becomes necessaiy to clarify what one means whenterms such as "teacher," "education," "student," are used. Whenone seeks to clarify such terms, one is dealing with operationaldefinitions at one level, but more fundamentally the clarificationsare dependent upon philosophical historical and sociological as-sumptions.

I

Our study begins with attention focused upon what this writ-er considers the kind of environment within which good teachingpotential can develop. Implicit within the focus will be a sug-gestion of what good teaching potential is.

Teachers who serve in a K-12 capacity must be committed to theintellectual and emotional development of their students. There

Dr. Brosio is Assistant Professor of Secondary Education in theDepartment of Secondary, Higher, and Foundations of Educationat Ball State University.

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has been, in the twentieth century, an increasing commitment tothe student's emotional well-being, but there has never been astrong commitment, since the coming of mass schooling, to help-ing to prepare the student so that he could come to understand themain contours of the intellectual mainstream of his culture or time.The teacher must be liberally educated if he is to be aware of thecontemporary intellectual mainstream. There are some who donot agree that an intellectual mainstream exists. Be that as it may,any teacher who is to aspire to excellence must be aware of theclaim by many serious thinkers that there does exist an intellectualtradition which is recognizable in the West.

Since the time of Mann and the normal school, the profes-sional schools of education have flirted with the idea that theycould best serve and survive by divorcing themselves from theolder established colleges of literature, science and the arts. Itwould be both reactionary and unrealistic to talk about returningto the time when college education meant the liberal arts. Theclass bias of the historical liberal arts tradition and its aloofnessfrom many of the real concerns of men and women in a democrat-ic society is well-known. There was and is a real need for otherkinds of colleges and traditions within the complex we call highereducation. In spite of the need for complexity, the quintessenceof the liberal arts tradition must be preserved and the colleges ofeducation must not stray far from its central insight. Merle Borrow-man tells us:

In the classical tradition, a liberal art was an art that made men free —free from the dictates of passion and prejudice, free from the naturallimitations of an untutored mind and free from the pressure for immedi-ate production of . . . directly marketable services. (3, p. 2)

It was in the normal schools where a belief in a highly tech-nical program, for which immediate results provide the best justi-fication, was developed. The normal school stressed classroommanagement from the very beginning. The old and honored tra-dition of tension between town and gown, a tension caused byuniversity analysis of the unexamined assumptions and practicesof the townfolk never came to characterize the normal schools inAmerica.

The pure normal school has passed from most of the highereducation scene, but many educationists are loyal to its tradition.Clarence Karier writes:

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In the long run, the effects of the normal school on American teachereducation were many, not the least of which was the development of the"normal school mentality" which persists in many teacher educationinstitutions to the present day. Such a mentality is usually reflected inthe demand for an inordinate amount of time to be spent on methodologyand a lessening of the time spent on the more academic studies in thepreparation of the . . . school teacher. (11, p. 62)

The focus of this work is upon the secondary school, and it is well-known that teachers of secondary education have degrees in his-ory, biology, etc.; but the normal school mentality that is beingdescribed here continues to dominate our preparation of teachers,and it especially dominates many student teaching programs inschools of education. In Section II of this work we shall have theopportunity to analyze what John Dewey had to say about the nor-mal school mentality, an attitude which he discerned to be a weak-ness in the preparation of teachers.

In our attempt to outline broadly good teacher potential it isnecessary to demonstrate the kind of educational atmospherewhich is not optimum for its development. The potentially goodteacher must be grounded in an awareness of the main issues ofthe historical period. Being nice to students is important, but theteacher must be a maturely developed person who works in anintellectual way on a regular basis. It is not clear that the "normalschool mentality" has been conducive to promoting the kind ofpotential being favored here.

Mann's haste to secure professional status for the commonschool teacher by establishing separate normal schools may wellhave hastened the development of the teacher's position in Ameri-can life as a technician. The jobs that our teacher candidates willenter are still marked by powerful currents which often preventthe teacher from becoming an authentic professional. One hopesthat we can prepare teachers, who in addition to being technicallygood, are persons who can be creative within the context of intel-lectual principles and paradigms which have general validity.The task of relating liberal education to legitimate vocational as-pirations is admittedly difficult, but it must be done if teacher edu-cation is to keep within the broad outline of what is intellectuallymost central and vital to our culture and time. Merle Borrowmanarticulates the challenge poignantly.

To imply . . . that professional education is essentially different fromliberal education is to suggest . . . that it is technical education. In myjudgement, "liberal" and "technical" not "liberal" and "professional"are the polar terms. (1, p. 49)

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Paul Woodring wrote in 1957 that many courses which havebeen regarded as either liberal arts courses or professionalcourses, may upon closer observation come to be understood asneither exclusively one or the other, when properly taught by aliberally educated professor who is interested in and understandsthe problems of education. He continues: child psychology, thehistory of education and a study of the school as a social institu-tion may well be examples of these kinds of courses. If courseslike the philosophy of education do not contribute to the students'professional competence and if such a course does not aid him inbecoming liberally educated, it is only because the professor lacksthe necessary vision. According to Woodring, if the faculty of aliberal arts college could be brought to recognize the importanceof elementary and secondary education as a part of our total cul-ture, much of what is now considered professional education wouldhave been studied in the liberal arts colleges. On the other hand,if the faculty of colleges of education were educated within thetradition of the liberal arts and humanities, then professional train-ing would not be threatened by the spectre of narrow vocational-ism. (17, p. 60)

Why is it so imperative that professional education remainwithin the broad context of what is considered important withinthe liberal arts tradition? Why is any definition of a good teacherdependent upon that teacher being educated within the liberalarts tradition? It is because the liberal arts has long been the tra-dition within the West which asks its students to reflect upon ex-perience in addition to the mere having of it! The liberal arts tra-dition has been the place where an insistence upon the gaining ofwisdom has been made, and this is especially necessary in an ageof narrow technical "expertise." Thomas F. O'Dea has said, "Toelicit from man the free but disciplined expression of his many-sided capacities has long been the aim of humanistic education."(13, pp. 68-69) Walter Lippmann wrote this central insight con-cerning what it means to be educated:

A boy can take you into the open night and show you the stars; he mighttell you no end of things about them, conceivably all that an astronomercould teach. But until and unless he feels the vast indifference of theuniverse to his own fate, and has placed himself in the perspective ofcold and illimitable space he has not looked maturely at the heavens.Until he has felt this, and unless he can endure this, he remains a child,and in his childishness he will resent the heavens when they are not ac-commodating. (12, p. 187)

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In the movie, Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis' novelcharacters carry on this exchange, which contains within it thehumanities' central insight. Zorba asks the young intellectual, forwhom he momentarily works, "Why do the young die? Why doesanybody die?" The young man responds with, "I don't know."Zorba savagely fires back, "What good are all your damn books?If they don't tell you that, then what do they tell you?" The re-sponse is the only one that could have been given. "They (mybooks) tell me about the agony of men who can't answer questionslike yours."

Bertrand Russell writes in the introduction to his A Historyof Western Philosophy that the important thing to teach is how togo about living without certainty, and at the same time not beingparalyzed by hesitation. (14, p. xiv) In his Unpopular Essays,Russell tells us the following concerning what teaching, and espe-cially good teaching, means.

Teachers are more than any other class the guardians of civilization.They should be intimately aware of what civilization is, and desirousof imparting a civilized attitude to their pupils. We are thus brought tothe question: what constitutes a civilized community? . . . Civilization,in the more important sense, is a thing of the mind, not of material ad-juncts to the physical side of living. It is a matter partly of knowledge,partly of emotion. So far as knowledge is concerned, a man should beaware of the minuteness of himself and his immediate environment inrelation to the world of time and space. . . . He should see his own agein relation to the past and the future, and be aware that its own contro-versies will seem as strange to future ages as those of the past seem now.Taking an even wider view, he should be conscious of the vastness ofgeological epochs and astronomical abysses; but he should be aware ofall this, not as a weight to crush the individual human spirit, but as a vastpanorama which enlarges the mind that contemplates it. (15, pp. 117-18)

A prospective teacher must be able to come to students with aprofound understanding of the assumptions upon which the cul-ture rests. He must have a macro-view of the society wherein heresides, and this knowledge must enable him to interpret schoolproblems in the language of the broadest and deepest perspectiveof the greater society.

The teacher must be skilled at teaching reading, writing,mathematics, history, etc., but he must never be a narrow practi-tioner. One does not just read, he reads particular things (and con-versely chooses not to read others) and he reads with a certain levelof skill at analysis and comparison. One reads and interprets andappreciates according to certain philosophic criteria. WilliamBoyer has said,

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When educators permit themselves to be merely technicians it is notsurprising that they mirror the society and concentrate on know-how tothe exclusion of know-what. They can teach the "new" social studies bythe use of "inquiry" method without a contextual theory of what needsto be inquired into or what needs to be done in addition to inquiring.Similarly, new math is compartmentalized and separated from the socialand natural sciences and the pressing problems of society, producinganalytic logic games that reward the student who plays without askingif the game is necessary or what it is used for. (4, p. 397)

Thomas O'Dea has had the following to say on the subject of wis-dom and perspective, as opposed to narrow vocational problemsolving. He explains that,

In the West, the problem-solving mentality, the product of science andpragmatic effort (this writer thinks that O'Dea misunderstands Dewey,as the reader shall see in Section II of this paper), finds itself capable ofsolving any problem. . . . (but the problem-solving mentality) adapts it-self to the initiative of circumstances and the caprice of events. . . . With-out an orientation to being, modem man cannot put himself togetherinto a whole. Having lost transcendence, he finds himself without practi-cal leverage in effectively changing the world . . . he no longer knowswhat it means to be man, and hence cannot utilize his enormous capac-ities to humanize the conditions of his life. (13, p. 73)

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner have said that thereis a difference between literacy and "letteracy." Educated per-sons are literate. Good teachers must be educated persons. Post-man and Weingartner tell their readers that literacy means havingthe competence to analyze linguistic propositions» evaluatingthem, and then correlating them to reality. The purpose of instruc-tion in literacy is to open the young person's mind to the wondersand riches of the written word; to give him access to great fiction;to permit him to function as a citizen of the polis - and lastly, to en-able the student to find out that reading the great works on theshelf is pleasurable! Letterate people are those who have beentaught to read directions; the sports page; and the governmentalbriefings that never suggest that there may be a viable alterna-tive to the official reality of the transitory status quo. Letteracymeans the ability to read the catalogue and buy even the kinds ofthings which no enlightened person would think he wanted. Theliberal arts tradition has always spoken of literacy, and teachereducation must be sure that its candidates become superbly literate.

It goes without saying that one cannot teach historical analy-sis or literary appreciation if one does not himself do these things.One cannot accomplish these things if he is unaware of the facts

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and themes of western civilization. One cannot teach young per-sons how to do the scientific method unless the teacher is com-mitted to a life based upon assuming a tentative position vis-a-visthe problematic. If one engages in the quest for certainty,* it is in-conceivable that he can really teach the inquiry method in theclassroom. Perhaps it would be possible to teach about the historicinquiry method, as one of the various epistemologies. Teacher can-didates would profit from reading Katherine Camp Mayhew andAnna Camp Edwards, The Dewey School (New York: AthertonPress, 1936) on the whole question of what it means to be a goodteacher in a thoroughly professional way — in a manner that weldsprofessionalism into the whole great tradition of the liberal arts.

Our current method(s) of running student teaching programsdoes not, on the whole, offer a very good chance that the prospec-tive teacher will student teach with a person who is committed tolearning about the cultural heritage, as that has been historicallyunderstood in the liberal arts tradition. Oftentimes, the real roleof the student teacher is to learn the trade, in a narrow methodolog-ical way, from a person called a critic. Seldom is the college pro-fessor, who supervises student teaching, assured of working witha critic who is part of the same intellectual tradition that he hasbeen educated into. The student teacher misses the all-importantsupervision of adults who can dialogue within a professional con-text which presupposes the existence of a broader, common worldof ideas.

In too many cases, student teachers are placed with classroomteachers who have a "production" rather than a "craftsman" (8,p.72) orientation. They conceive of their basic task as helpingtheir students learn the skills and knowledge prescribed in theirschool system curriculum. The "production teacher" takes ad-ministrative directives as the definition of the task and then seeksways to transmit those required skills and knowledge to the class.Harry Gracey tells us in his Curriculum or Craftsmanship that,

Politeness, courtesy, and "getting along with others" were mentionedas important goals by a number of teachers with the production orienta-tion. They basically involve problems of classroom management — ofdisciplining children to behave. . . . Because the subject matter is ex-ternal to the children, for the most part, not coming from any interest oftheir own, all these teachers have to be concerned with developingsocial control mechanisms in the classroom. (8, pp. 83-84)

*See Dewey's The Quest For Certainty, New York, G. Putnam's Sons, 1929.

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It has been the purpose of this section to sketch, in broadstrokes, what this writer considers the proper atmosphere withinwhich to develop good teacher potential. We have seen that toteach, and especially to teach well, means to be conversant withthe cultural and historical tradition of which we are all heirs. Onemust help the young person to grow into maturity within the broadcontext of the issues and the reality which have been perenniallyraised by the liberal arts tradition. It is not a slavish acceptanceof the cultural tradition which is being advocated here, but if teach-ers and students are going to analyze and criticize — and come tounderstand — they can only do it against the backdrop of the onlyculture which they are a part of and have. The very terms of rebel-lion must come from the great cultural store of which they are apart. Teaching, as a profession, must never stray very far from themainstream which has always insisted upon keeping the culturalrichness fresh for the use and enjoyment of contemporaries. Goodteachers' effectiveness must be ascertained within the context oftheir ability to work within, understand, enjoy, criticize and adaptthe cultural tradition which is the West.

II

It was stated at the beginning of Section I that if an adequatedescription of the kind of environment needed to nurture goodteaching potential could be established, and if good teaching po-tential itself could be broadly sketched, then it would logicallyfollow that an analysis of the best teacher preparation approachcould be made.

Before we get into what should occur, let us turn our attentionto what in fact happens now in too many instances. So often, thesupervisory visit can be characterized as follows: the teachers col-lege professor sets out to visit a student with whom he has had littlepersonal or intellectual contact. The student teacher is eager to besupported by the representative from the college (sometimes it isa teaching fellow and not a professor), but he knows that his per-formance in the classroom is primarily evaluated by his critic. Thecollege professor is usually burdened by a load consisting of toomany student teachers, and all too often those students are scat-tered over a large geographic area. The professor must leave themain campus, a place whose atmosphere originally attracted himto college teaching, and then drive to widely scattered sites whichare far from the library, bookstore, office and colleagues. When hegets to the site, he visits a teacher candidate who has not had theopportunity to have studied for very long in a professional se-

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quence within which the professor could have gotten to know himvery well. It is almost certain that the college professor has nothad the opportunity to have wrestled with the student whom hevisits. Not only is the professional sequence short, but little of itis done in the spirit of the intellectual tradition which we haveattempted to describe. We have already discussed the likelihoodthat the critic teacher and the professor have not come out of thesame broad cultural and intellectual tradition. The kinds of com-ments, feedback and evaluation that are likely to come out of suchvisits are mainly going to be at the level of talking about classroommanagement. In a word, the conversations are all too often at the"tricks of the trade" level. The student knows that he must pleasethe critic, but pleasing all too often means getting along at a levelwhich has little to do with authentic dialogue within the contextof perennial questions in school and society.

The visit has been made. The student has seen the collegerepresentative. The critic and the professor have talked briefly.The principal has seen that the college of education does careabout the students that it sends out. The hardworking professorhas a sense of having done his job.

Without questioning the possible necessity of this supervi-sory model — considering the lack of an integrated professionaland liberal arts program and the unreasonable numbers of stu-dents to be supervised — is this the model that we should acceptas optimum in the preparation of teachers?

John Dewey did not think the model being outlined abovewas the best possible, when he wrote specifically on the subjectin 1904 in his The Relation of Theory to Practice in The Educationof Teachers. One is always gratified to find how central Dewey'swork is to American education. It seems as though, whenever andwherever one looks in a study of American education, Dewey hasbeen there and has staked out the terrain. Even when one dis-agrees with Dewey, it is dangerous to proceed as though his workhad not been done. The little book that Dewey wrote circa 1904,like most profound writing, speaks to contemporary issues in freshand relevant terms.

Dewey admits that the proper preparation of teachers cannotbe all theoretical. The question is — what kind of practical train-ing is the candidate to have? The professional school does best forits students when it provides them the chance to learn how to con-trol the intellectual methods required for mastery. Dewey tells usthat this kind of intellectual mastery involves a postponement ofthe teaching and learning of technique. According to Dewey, theflaw in the apprentice-master student teaching model is that the

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practice site is not really reflective of what the actual situation willbe when the teacher is on his own. Dewey knew that the prepara-tion of student teachers was not, and never could be, an experi-ment in the hard sciences. The student teacher is observed andcritiqued for performance and behavior that is sui generis to theplace and time where he is assigned. It is well-known that muchof what is learned by the apprentice in this kind of situation is toplease the master. If all the critics were masters, then the currentmodel would be more defensible — but as Dewey realized threequarters of a century ago:

The student adjusts his actual methods of teaching, not to the principleswhich he is acquiring (if in fact he acquired them at all), but to what hesees succeed and fail in one empirical way from moment to moment: towhat he sees other teachers doing who are more experienced . . . in keep-ing order. . . . In this way the controlling habits of the teacher finally getfixed with comparatively little reference to principles in psychology,logic, and history of education. (7, pp. 149-50)

Allow me to tie specifically Dewey's observation to my own,which was made on 25 October 1973, while preparing a positionstatement for the Department of Secondary, Higher and Founda-tions of Education at Ball State University. My task was to readfirst year teacher responses in the area of social studies from amonggraduates of our Teachers College. Here, in essence, is what Iwrote at that time. The teachers want to learn how to disciplinetheir students more effectively. They wish that they had more ex-perience "in the field" while at Ball State. They keep talking abouthow Teachers College should have provided for more "realistic"experiences than were allegedly had. There is the shopworn cryfor "relevance." The responses that I read in 1973 can be charac-terized as the writings of unconscious radical-empiricists. Theseyoung teachers seem to think that sensory knowledge is the onlykind to be had and trusted. They see little or no need for theoreti-cal tools with which to make sense out of raw data. There is a dis-turbing sign of anti-intellectualism and anti-book bias in theircollective responses. I concluded my response to the Departmentwith this recommendation: I hope that our Teachers College willnot abdicate its responsibility as a collective of professionals bygiving in to students whose requests ask us to become less aca-demic. It is the professor's job to demonstrate to our students thatexperience can be immeasurably richer and clearer for those whodevelop theoretical tools which enable persons to make sense outof what is undergone.

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It could be argued that our current practices are radically em-pirical, or as Dewey labelled such practices, "blindly experimen-tal." Dewey believed in the unity of theory and practice, but heinsisted that praxis is practice which is informed by a whole systemof theoretical insights. I have written in another place, that,

For Dewey . . . there is a profound difference between experience andthe undergoing of and being buffeted by events. An experience (as con-trasted to a simple undergoing) is had when proposed actions are seenin terms of possible and anticipated consequences. A technical definitionof experience, and of education, is that particular reconstruction of mereundergoing which adds to the meaning of what has occurred, and whichincreases one's ability to direct the course of subsequent events. Whenthat reconstruction occurs, then an experience can be said to have beenhad. . . . Theory is the placing of what is undergone into a broader andlonger course of events. In order to have an experience one must by ne-cessity integrate theory and practice. . . . For Dewey . . . the reconstruc-tion of occurence into experience is education. (1, p. 59)

Dewey was aware that the advantage may at first seem to be-long to the radical-empiricist. He tells us that the teacher whograduates from the education school with the skill to manage aclass of pupils may appear to have an advantage during the firstyear, as compared to another teacher who has a command of "thepsychological, logic, and ethics of development." But, the formerwho seem to have the initial advantage are not students of teach-ing, according to Dewey. Unless a teacher is such a student, hemay improve in the mechanics of good school management buthe cannot grow as a teacher — he cannot become "an inspirerand director of soul — life." (7, p. 151)

Dewey asks why so many teachers (in 1904) seem to turn outas mediocre professionals. He suggests that part of the answermight be attributable to the premature stress laid in early practicework — upon stressing immediate capability in teaching mana-gerially. In the early part of the century, Dewey thought that teach-ers lacked intellectual independence, and he suggested that partof the reason might be due to:

. . . the willingness of our teacher corps to accept without inquiry orcriticism any method or device which seems to promise good results.Teachers, actual and intending, flock to those persons who give themclear-cut and definite instructions as to just how to teach this or that. (7,pp. 151-52)

I wrote in this journal (Spring 1974) that survival questions arethe ones most often asked of education school professors. Thecourses which seem to answer the questions concerning survival

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are popular on campus. Schools of education continue to churnout methodological panaceas in order to shore up students whosefirst second and perhaps even third exposures to methods of class-room management were not able to elevate them to the status ofgood or effective teachers. (5, pp. 10-11) My teacher at the Univer-sity of Michigan School of Education has written:

Teachers in preparation, as well as those already practicing, find littledifficulty in enumerating the things they really want to know about. .. .All teachers want to know in general what is expected of them, whatobjectives they are supposed to achieve, and how their work will beevaluated by the administration and . . . by the community. It would bepossible to make a similar list of the practical concerns of educationaladministrators. The administrator's mind-set of practicality is not fun-damentally different from that of the teacher, nor is there any reason tobelieve that his attitude towards educational theory is really any differ-ent. (16, p. 5)

One of the criticisms which has been effectively levelledagainst educators who decry the movement toward narrow voca-tionalism is that theory is not useful unless the teacher or studentcan immediately apply the theory to the teaching situation; or,that only the immediate possibility for practice will give sufficientmotive to the study and learning of theory. It is argued that under-graduates cannot profit from the mastery of theoretical learningbecause they have nowhere to apply it, and because they havenot yet had enough experience in the schools. Dewey faces thiscriticism directly when he writes:

It is not infrequently claimed . . . that students will not have a profession-al stimulus for their work in subject-matter and in educational psychologyand history . . . unless these things are immediately and simultaneouslyreinforced by setting the students upon the work of teaching. But is thisthe case? . . . In the first place, beginning students have without referenceto immediate teaching a very large capital of an exceedingly practical sortin their own experience. (7, p. 152)

Dewey was convinced that it was untrue to claim that theoreticalinstruction is merely abstract unless students are set at once intopractice teaching. When theory is presented in reference to wherethe student is, one avoids the error of teaching the student that theschool is a separate reality from the society. The same theoreticalconstructs and insights apply equally to the school and to the soci-ety.

During my own experience of supervising students in a pre-student teaching practicum, I have steadily worked in the direc-

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tion of talking to the student within the context of learning prin-ciples and of the sociological reality of K-12 students in America.I have deliberately spoken as little as possible of what the studentshould specifically do in someone else's class. When I visit thestudent, usually upon the student's specific invitation, so that Isee him "in action," there is little attempt on my part to structurethe follow-up discussion around what happened (or did not hap-pen) during the visit. If the candidate learns the concepts, he willput those ideas into practice on his own when he is in his own class-room. The critic teacher's arena is not the same as what his owninimitable classroom situation will be; therefore, it is most practi-cal to teach the candidate the conceptual and paradigmatic mate-rial that has been studied by generations of scholars in higher ed-ucation and in the greater society. Dewey is harsh in his criticismof the model whereby the candidate teaches a number of lessonsunder close supervision and then is criticized at the end of eachlesson. Dewey tells us that such a method of supervision may bewell adapted to giving a candidate command of the tricks, of thetrade, but are not likely to help develop a thoughtful and intel-lectually independent teacher. (7, p. 168) Although Dewey be-lieved in teaching candidates specifically about pedagogy, hemaintained that, " . . . scholarship per se may itself be a most ef-fective tool for training and turning out good teachers." (7, p. 159)

Dewey was committed to scholarship and the inquiry methodfor solving problems for all of his long adult life. Many of his de-tractors, and all too many of his self-appointed supporters, havenot bothered to study his work. In spite of Dewey's laboriouscriticism of nineteenth century ideas concerning "non-useful"ideas, he always criticized this social class concept of nineteenthcentury America of the gilded age in the name of a more profoundand more democratic commitment to scholarship. He tells that,.

Only a teacher thoroughly trained in the higher levels of intellectualmethod and who thus has constantly in his own mind a sense of whatadequate and genuine intellectual activity means, will be likely, in deed,not in mere word, to respect the mental integrity . . . of children. (7, pp.160-61)

Dewey has spoken approvingly of those who "violate every lawknown to . . . pedagogical science (because).. . they are . . . so fullof the spirit of inquiry. . . ." (7, p. 162) He approves of these kindsof people because he knows that they are sensitive to every signof the absence of the spirit of scholarship and authentic inquiry.

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To conclude this section it would be useful to hear what Dew-ey said, at the beginning of this century, about the proper empha-sis and chronology in student teaching.

Nothing that I have said heretofore is to be understood as ruling outpractice-teaching which is designed to give an individual mastery ofthe actual technique of teaching and management, provided school con-ditions permit it in reality . . . provided, that is, the student has gonethrough a training in educational theory and history . . . in subject matter,in observation, and in practice work of the laboratory type, before (thiswriter's emphasis) entering upon (student teaching). . . . (7, p. 169)

III

Robert Hutchins has suggested that if we are to follow JohnDewey, we shall attempt to allow the child to develop all of hisintellectual powers. If we are to take Dewey seriously, then weare committed to nurturing the proclivity in adults to continue thedevelopment of their intellectual powers. Hutchins has read Dew-ey carefully enough to know that Dewey was not talking aboutnarrow vocationalism. Dewey's aim was to encourage education-ally the person to become a complete human being, a wise citizenand a good man. Hutchins tells us specifically

What we are looking for is a new definition of liberal education. We needa definition of it appropriate to the world we are now entering, one char-acterized by . . . vast stretches of free time . . . by the urgent demand forwise citizens and good men. We have to make the effort to help every-body achieve this education. . . . When what are called "the masses" be-gan to enter the education system, liberal education had to be dilutedto the point of insipidity. It is almost non-existent in this country today(and this is not the fault of the schools of education). . . . Since the greatmajority of the population is alleged to be too stupid to profit by liberaleducation, the minority that could profit from it must be deprived of it.These notions have transformed the slogan, education for all, into theidea of inferior education for all. . . . No doubt the institutions dedicatedto liberal education here and elsewhere were started as elite schools.. . . These schools made not pretense of being democratic. . . . So whenwe talk about liberal education today we are plagued by reminiscencesand overtones of elitism, aristocracy, and snobbery. .. . But I suggest(and this writer agrees with Hutchins especially on this point) that truedemocrats are those who believe that everybody must be educated forfreedom, and anti-democrats are those who think there are two kinds ofpeople, those who can be educated and those who can be trained. (10,pp. 4-5)

In the first section of this paper we analyzed what this writerconsidered good teaching potentially to be, and the environmentwhich nurtures it. It was suggested that if such a concept was firmly

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established, then Section II could be devoted to describing thebest possible teacher preparation program. Now, in this third andlast section, the point is being made that one's definition of whatis good teaching and good teacher preparation really depends up-on one's definition of a good society and upon one's descriptionof good citizenship for the polis. (6, pp. 144-45) Ultimately onemust ask the ontological question with regard to the nature of man.The ontological question will not be wrestled with in this shortpiece, but lurking inevitably behind this discussion is the unavoid-able question of the nature of man.

The problems in the institutional school cannot be divorcedfrom the larger battles that are being fought in the society as a whole.We live at a time in history when no enduring orthodoxy seemspossible. We live at a time when this country is struggling to gainsome new consensus within which the rule of civility can prevailwhen human interchange occurs. In the institutional school theramifications of that larger battle are being fought over questionsthat seem curricular or programmatic on the surface, but which,when the questions are studied in depth, are really questionsconcerning what kind of society we really want. The analysis ofwhat is a good student teaching program must be made against thislarger backdrop of events and struggles which have gone on his-torically, and which continue to occur and be waged. Irving Howehas succinctly put this problem into perspective when he writes,

We are faced now, as we have been and will be for some time, with twokinds of attack: from the vulgar populists who would disintegrate thecurriculum, deny the relevance of standards, and assault the power of theclassics, and from the resurgent elitists who would dismiss the effort atdemocratized education as a mere delusion. (9, p. 9)

Norman Birnbaum writes in the same vein when he says, "Is itreally serving the students in community and state colleges, andin many of the state universities, to tell them in effect that a gen-eral and liberal education is reserved for an elite; that they, on thecontrary, had better do something practical?" (2, p. 16)

This analysis of student teaching preparation has intention-ally gone far beyond the boundaries of the programmatic. If we areto speak of teacher preparation, we had better study what it meansto be a good teacher. The question of what good, or bad, teachingis, becomes in the last analysis a political, an ethical, a religiousor an ontological one. Although one can get quick results whenone studies problems with an in-house focus, I suggest that the"solutions" are not really substantial, as a result of the superficialkinds of questions posed.

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The analysis in this paper is not intended to be definitive norprescriptive. The study will continue and more will be written inthe future on this thorny subject of how to prepare teacher can-didates. I invite my friends and colleagues from the education pro-fession and from the liberal arts to join with me in debate and dia-logue concerning this and other important issues facing all of usin the school and the society, during this last quarter of the twen-tieth century.

References1. Birkel, Lane F., Richard A. Brosio, and Patrick D. Daunt "A Paradigm for

Teacher Education." Illinois School Journal, LIV, 1 and 2, Spring andSummer 1974, 59.

2. Birnbaum, Norman. "Higher Education's Self-Portrait." Chronicle of HigherEducation, X, 11, May 5, 1975, 16.

3. Borrowman, Merle L., ed. Teacher Education in America. New York, 1965.4. Boyer, William H. "Toward an Ecological Perspective in Education: Part II."

Phi Delta Kappan, LV, 6, February 1974.5. Brosio, Richard A. "An Alternative Mood for Teacher Education: A Minority

Report" Teacher Educator, IX, 3, Spring 1974, 9-14.6. —; . The Relationship of Dewey's Pedagogy to His Concept of Community.

University of Michigan Social Foundations of Education MonographSeries, Ann Arbor, 1972.

7. Dewey, John. "The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education." TeacherEducation in America. New York, 1965.

8. Gracey, Harry L. Curriculum or Craftsmanship. Chicago, 1972.9. Howe, Irving. "Beyond Turmoil, Beyond Torpor." Chronicle of Higher Edu-

cation, IX, 17, January 27, 1975, 9.10. Hutchins, Robert M. "Permanence and Change." The Center Magazine, I, 6,

September 1968, 4-5.11. Karrier, Clarence J. Man, Society and Education. A History of American Edu-

cational Ideas. Glenview, Illinois, 1967.12. Lippmann, Walter. A Preface to Morals. Boston, 1929.13. O'Dea, Thomas F. "Three Faces of Western Man." The Center Magazine, II,

3, May 1969, 68-69.14. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy. New York, 1945.15. . Unpopular Essays. New York, 1950.16. Wingo, G. Max. Philosophies of Education: An Introduction. Lexington,

Massachusetts, 1974.17. Woodring, Paul. New Directions in Teacher Education. New York, 1957.

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