Dean’s Message

Welcoming Remarks to the Class of 2007/2008

Dean Rosa Bruno-Jofré

4 September 2007

In my capacity as Dean of the Faculty of Education, I welcome you personally and on behalf of the Faculty to the new academic year. Today you are taking the first step in a life-long journey, a formative journey that I believe we are undertaking together, for I hope that you will view the Faculty of Education at Queen’s as your professional home throughout your career.

The process of becoming a professional educator demands that you develop an ethically defensible vision of education. This vision should permeate not only short term objectives, but also what Nel Noddings refers to as the educational aims that lead to the development of intellectual habits of mind.[1]These habits of mind will provide your students with the framework that gives meaning to new knowledge. An ethically defensible vision of education of necessity includes an understanding of what is desirable and good in education.

I am sure that you have already begun to think about the attributes, dispositions, habits of mind, and virtues that will make you a good educator. Of particular relevance are one’s disposition to learn and one’s ability to cultivate humility, a virtue understood as openness to revise and transform oneself. Not less important is the habit of being attentive that would help to develop a sense of connection with students and parents. These are also necessary conditions to engage in meaningful professional reflection and to develop practical wisdom.

It is difficult to think of any educational process without also considering the enactment of a dialogue, of a fluid pedagogical moment in which the emotional, the intellectual, and the existential converge in the pursuit of learning. Such dialogues feature the relevance of learning from others, and thus dialogue enables teachers and indeed students to fully engage with different points of view and experiences. Dialogue presupposes good listening, a disposition that has an intellectual as well as a moral dimension. However, we often neglect the pedagogical value of silence as a source of self- knowledge, or as a space to engage in self-criticality in one’s search for wisdom. It has been argued that by disregarding silence we run the risk of not listening to each other, of not connecting with our inner-self, and of course, of failing to integrate the emotional and rational aspects of our work as teachers.

In light of the relevance of developing a vision of education and certain habits and dispositions defining an educator, I would like to reflect with you on excellence. This concept has great currency in educational literature and we often neglect to consider that its meaning is historically mutable, politically sensitive, and grounded in purposes and values. Because education is a moral practice, it is important to question where we are going and to reflect on current trends. This goes with our ethical responsibility as educators to act in the world in a normative, justified way.

One can ask why we have such debates regarding excellence. The goals of excellence have to do with the underlying vision of education and concomitant purposes and values. It is not surprising then that the central issues in the debates revolve around tensions between, on the one side, the role of formal education in relation to socio-economic needs and, on the other side, the educational and political ideals of personal development, equity, and full participatory democracy. The tensions increase because a rather dominant definition of excellence is relative to the performance of others. Thus, students and schools will be in competition for excellence. However, excellence could also be defined as criterion-based, relying on a desirable standard that every one can attain.[2] Both definitions are often combined because the debate on education and excellence intersects not only with the economic agenda influenced by business and leading corporations but with the claims deriving from major social and civil movements and the reactions to those movements. Consequently, in many documents the discourse of excellence often acquires a hybrid character and uses a language that promises what cannot easily be delivered. A case in point is the well known American Act of 2001, No Child Left Behind, that aimed at closing the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice. Another example is provided by reform legislation in various Canadian provinces in the 1990’s onwards.

Furthermore, the dominant conception of excellence is based on an utilitarian interpretation of human capital theory.[3] We try to create human capital; for example, we want schools to be able to generate competitive human beings in the world market. This may not be necessarily wrong. However, there are two main issues at stake here. One is the difficulty in balancing issues of justice and equity with the concern for efficiency. The other is the dangerous assumption that education is a sort of causal practice linking research/evidence and practice as truth that can be translated into rules for action to be followed by practitioners.[4] The main issue here is that professional judgment, which is central to educational practice, is moral rather than technical although, as Biesta said, it does not imply that this judgement is not informed by the outcomes of educational research.[5]

My call to you today is to invite you to question the notion of excellence that has been overused in policy documents in the last three decades in most western countries. I also invite you to think of the different kind of classrooms that the pursuit of excellence may nourish. The obsession with outcomes as a sign of excellence has been described with dramatic overtones by Jonathan Kozol. He describes one of those moments as follows: “Except for one brief giggle of a child sitting close to me, which was effectively suppressed by Mr. Endicott [the teacher] nothing even faintly frivolous took place while I was there. No one laughed. No child made a funny face to somebody beside her. Neither Mr. Endicott nor his assistant laughed, as I recall. This is certainly unusual,” he wrote, “within a class of 8-year olds.”[6] This was a class in the Bronx where there was a formal name for every cognitive event within the school: authentic writing, active listening, etc. Late in April 2007, I visited a classroom, in a school placed in the core of Mapuche communities in the outskirts of Temuco, southern Chile. The elder was there along with the teacher. I asked the children of an early elementary classroom, what was the most beautiful feature of the Mapuche people. One of them stood up and said to me, that we all work together, we live together. Supportive comments came from every corner. A few minutes later, the children in the classroom taught me all kind of things about their lives as small farmers and their work after school. In another classroom, the children tried to teach me the language of the community. They shared their dreams for the future with smiles of hope and confidence. The school is concerned with standards and the children are familiar with processes of assessment and evaluation. However, the pursuit of excellence in this classroom was not based on the need to place every piece of knowledge under specific rubrics or on the need to compete with other Mapuche schools or with other public schools. It was grounded on an ethically defensible vision of education and society upheld by the community. The purpose and set of values are different in the two classroom situations I described. These values imply different views of education, identity formation, and citizenship formation.

Once you graduate, we hope that you will become proud and active alumni, and that you will remain in touch with us to continue renewing and building the Queen’s educational community. The Alumni Group is enthusiastic and active. In past years, the Faculty’s homecomings have been extremely successful. This year, on September 7 , we are planning a presentation of Rulers by the Limestone Teachers Theater Company. The homecoming dinner, to which your leadership will be invited, will be held on October 12th and will feature a presentation by Dr. Nel Noddings, the best known philosopher of education of our times. Her talk is entitled Critical Lessons for Critical Thinking. Mr. Wallace Edwards, children’s book illustrator and friend of the Faculty, winner of the Governor General’s Award (2002) for Alphabeasts, and Ms. Joan Jardin, alumna and friend of the Faculty, teacher at Bayridge Secondary School, leader, advocate for the teaching profession, will both receive the Outstanding Service Award. I would like to close by reiterating what I have said in previous years regarding the teaching profession. You have decided to enter the most precious of professions, one that gives you the possibility of filling an inspiring role in the lives of many. But education is not neutral, and as Paulo Freire said, it is a political act. Let me share with you that I strongly believe that courage is a fundamental virtue that defines the life of an educator: courage to question, courage to build a democratic community in our schools, courage to imagine the future, and courage to love our students in the uniqueness of their life situations.

As your Dean, personally, and on behalf of the members of the Faculty of Education, I wish you success in all your endeavors, and I look forward to working for and with you. I promise for all of us that we will do our best to meet your expectations and your needs.

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