Word: sizer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...school policy decisions. Dissatisfaction came to a head in February of 1966 when several ad hoc groups formed to agitate for specific reforms. A group of thirty students asked for two supplementary non-credit seminars on group process and social change, and their request was granted by Dean Sizer. A smaller group began its own study of the problems of urban education, a crucial area which they felt the school was ignoring...
When confronted with vigorous agitation for the privilege of student representation on faculty committees, Dean Sizer recommended that students sit on the Library and the Lectures and Publications Committees. Some students were still dissatisfied with this arrangement. They wanted a say in curriculum changes, and therefore wanted to be seated on the Faculty Committee on Academic Policy. (FCAP) To protect their exclusion, they formed a "mirror" student committee to study the problems and to exert some student influence on the FCAP...
...present system, see no way around the evils of centralization. Pointing to big business, they contend that any organization large enough to educate massive urban populations will be bureaucratized and centrally controlled. Still, more and more experts are pointing out that education is unique. "Big education," says Sizer, "is not comparable to big businesses as the product of schools is not--or should not be--a mass product ... The first and toughest management problem is the protection and nurturing ... of human individuality, and this is difficult to do--impossible to do--from the top in large school systems...
Community participation is not itself a revolutionary concept in American education. In pre-urban times, according to Sizer, the extended family had primary responsibility for educating its offspring. Later the community and the school-teacher divided that responsibility, but with the coming of urbanization and industrialization, parents and community increasingly surrendered their children's education to professionals. This development contributed to the hazards of bureaucracy, but also encouraged the separation of education from life outside the school's walls...
...difficulties. Some decentralization plans give extensive powers to school officials who have have very little before; and there is no insurance that they will be able to handle the new responsibilities. According to one estimate, twelve per cent of New York City's principals are former physical education instructors. Sizer maintains that giving the principal's office new authority will attract better men to the job. But this remains to be seen...