SCATTERGOOD'S HISTORICAL
AND CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS
THE CURRENT EDUCATION DEBATE
Reck Niebuhr
Let us begin with the contemporary context of the American education debate. We are all
creatures of our time and close to its issues. If we better understand the current issues
perhaps we can come to the historic context with sharper eyes and better appreciate the
contribution of our predecessors.
If we take the 1983 A NATION AT RISK Report as a recent benchmark we have all lived
through fifteen years of effort to improve American education. The results have been
marginal. How can that be? Perhaps the singular emphasis on the school in this and
subsequent reports provides a clue. Is the school the only or primary source of human
learning? If we reflect on the sources of our own learning we will quickly acknowledge
that home, community, peer group, church, library, media, workplace, etc., are vital
learning settings as well. Indeed a half century of educational research tells us that the
best predictor of school success is the quality of the "home curriculum".
If all of us "know", after a moment's reflection, that LEARNING OCCURS IN MANY
SETTINGS why does the national debate restrict itself to "schooling"? The short
answer is that we do not have the vocabulary or conceptual framework to describe all that
we learn and the many settings in which we learn. Additionally we have no institution or
profession whose assignment it is to understand or guide the aggregate learning process.
We remain focused on the 19% of waking time spent in school and remain oblivious to the
81% of waking time spent in the other settings.
Lawrence Cremin, the education historian, wrote about the American "ecology of
learning", describing the contribution of the multiple learning settings. James
Coleman applied the metaphor to his study of Catholic education in which the close
collaboration of church, school, community and family made for an effective learning
process. But the education profession never adopted this perspective and, as a
consequence, the nation remains trapped in the "school-only" model.
It was in the light of the deeply flawed national debate that Scattergood began to
understand its assets in a new light. As a Quaker boarding school Scattergood IS a
community, IS a faith community, HAS a peer group culture, NURTURES family-like relations
between and among students and staff as well as IMPLEMENTING a college preparatory
academic curriculum. In essence Scattergood comprises a rich "ecology of
learning".
Several questions flow from this simple and self-evident insight. Like any good school
Scattergood approaches its academic curriculum with an intentional and critical mindset,
looking to the body of contemporary knowledge and research to guide continuing improvement
of the academic curriculum. But we have to acknowledge that we have been
less-than-intentional or critical about the community "curriculum", the peer
group "curriculum" or even the faith community "curriculum. To be sure each
of these contexts has been lots of thought but we believe that we can sharpen our
understanding and guidance of these contexts if we see them as "intentional learning
settings" each with a "curriculum" that can be objectively evaluated.
Secondly, if it makes sense to begin to understand the American "ecology of
learning" and begin to work, as a nation, on the strengthening of the
"outside-of-school" learning settings does it also make sense to begin to
understand the Quaker "ecology of learning" within the larger societal
"ecology of learning"? We believe that such a framework, which we shall call the
Quaker Learning Process, must be understood as a fundamental context for both the School
and indeed the Quaker community. We will explore that framework as we turn to a sense of
history of American education and the birth of Scattergood Friends School.