Sherman Dorn

Ted Sizer's push

It had instant credibility to the vast majority of readers who all probably shifted uncomfortably while reading certain passages, recognizing themselves. And the terms that came out of that project...

Classroom treaties.Tell me if you don't remember an entire class wheedling a teacher or two to change an assignment, to lower expectations a smidgen, and also reduce the teacher's workload. 

The anonymity of the high school student. Tell me if you don't remember the bright classmate hiding in the back of the class, never called on, never pushed to think hard, never affected personally by a teacher.

The shopping-mall high school. That was the title of one of the other books that came out of the same project, and while it had a bit more of an edge, it had the same subtext: we can expect more. 

Exhibitions. Most people call them portfolios, but he wanted them to be exhibitions in a more public sense, to get adolescents to be proud of their work, even if they were works in progress themselves (as are we all). 

I know that I'm going to read laudatory eulogies of Ted Sizer in the next month, and I hope they don't forget his strategic choices in the 1980s, as he put together the project that became Horace's Compromise, The Shopping Mall High School, and The Last Little Citadel. I suspect that while his own books will be emphasized, along with his Essential Schools project, there was a subtle and clever point about his focus on the plurality experience in suburban high schools after World War 2: "I'm talking about you. Not Other People who don't have your advantages. You. Your children. How we're not expecting what we can from teenagers in your life."

His underlying ethic was one of pushing teenagers in healthy directions. It's close to Deborah Meier's point about a small high school: adults are supposed to be "in your face" in the right ways, so adolescents don't disappear into the woodwork. It's a structure to encourage pushing without having to be pushy. "I love you and expect more from you." "No, you can't get away with that." "I know you can do more." It's not without choices, by any means, but the choices have consequences and need to be deliberate, not the first thought off the top of a teenager's head. "That's interesting. How else could you do that?" "How did that affect the people in your lives? What else did you think about doing?" It's about pushing teenagers into thoughtful independence. "Here's the end goal. How would you get there? What would be your first step?"

I'm at the History of Education Society meeting this week, and there are so many here who knew or worked with Ted Sizer, including Bob Hampel (who wrote The Last Little Citadel). Many of the historians of ed who knew Sizer closely have retired, and many of us (including me) are young enough and unlucky enough that we never met him. But we know both his scholarly contributions (the first serious historical work on the high school) and his contribution to serious reform discussions over the past quarter-century.

In lieu of sending flowers, don't let an adolescent get away with sloppy thinking this week. Push.