The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Will Hope be Radical?

“What makes hope radical is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is.”
—Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope, 2006, 103

Even with a crystal ball, it would be folly to attempt to predict with any certainty the future of teaching. Yet what can be confidently stated is that teaching will remain central to the well-being of any future society and will remain central to the work of renewal that is foundational to the responsibility teachers hold. Fundamental to teaching, as Howard Gardner (2006) suggests, is its focus on learning and ensuring that the “ensemble of minds is cultivated” (p. 165). As Gardner emphasizes, cultivating children’s skills for thinking, being creative, respecting others, taking ethical action and engaging the knowledge of the disciplines is integral to teaching’s purposes and what distinguishes it as a profession.

Central to discussions about the future of teaching in Alberta are the hope and concerns that teachers express for sustaining qualities and purposes of professional practice in terms suggested above. In the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) monographs Trying to Teach (1993, 1994), Falling Through the Cracks (2002) and The New Work of Teaching: A Case Study of the Worklife of Calgary Public Teachers (2012), teachers expressed both a profound hope for their work and deep concerns about sustaining such hope. In the earlier documents, compelling stories provided a sense of the difficulties teachers faced in response to haphazard policy and administrative changes, increased class size, the complexity of addressing diverse student needs and unpredictable education funding. In the 2012 document, evidence suggests that teachers’ work has become more complex in terms of the time allocated to instruction and the attention necessary for ongoing preparation and renewal, not to mention the challenges of maintaining a healthy and sustainable work–life balance.

Therefore, in contemplating the future of teaching, we need to attend to what makes teaching possible and we must acknowledge good teaching practices. In a debate between the philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre and Joseph Dunne (2002), MacIntyre was acknowledged as having written 40 years earlier that “the moral content of our educational system is simply a reflection of the moral content of our society” and the “task of the educator is to stand against a current which will in fact probably overwhelm him” (MacIntyre 1964, 1). He also wrote, “Teachers are the forlorn hope of the culture of western modernity … the mission with which … [they] are entrusted is both essential and impossible” (MacIntyre 1987, 16).

What is “impossible”? This is a fitting question to emerge from the discussion on the future of teaching. According to MacIntyre, the impossible in teaching includes fragmentation in public education: the inadequacy and inconsistency of resources; demands on teachers’ time and abilities; and, in more complex ways, changes in the social, cultural, economic and technological landscapes that create demands and expectations on schools and teaching (ATA 2011).

Neoliberal approaches by governments complicate further the question of purposes and what makes good teaching possible. For our purposes, neoliberalism is defined as

the agenda of economic and social transformation under the sign of the free market that has come to dominate global politics in the last quarter century. It also means institutional arrangements to implement this project that have been installed, step by step, in every society under neoliberal control. … The most dramatic form of commodification is the privatization of public assets and institutions. (Connell 2010, 22–23)

Sociologist Richard Sennett (2006) argues that such neoliberal policies alter what we have come to know as the public interest. Possibilities for different forms of association and human action become limited to emphases on individual and economic benefits. The dominance of economics is evident in the push for privatization and commodification of educational and other services, and a greater emphasis on quantifiable forms of productivity, testing, competition and narrowed standards of accountability (Ravitch 2010). Under such conditions, teaching is conceived in more instrumental terms, as contributing narrowly to test scores, for example, and less attention is paid to what Gardner (2006) calls a focus on good work: a focus on ethics, care and respect for others and fostering meaningful engagement with the disciplines (p. 142). In terms of thinking about the future of teaching, it is necessary to ask how neoliberal policies distort institutions such as public education, the work of teaching, and possibilities for human flourishing and community (Nussbaum 2010).

In a recent study (Smits 2010; see also ATA 2011), teachers and principals responded to the question: “What is required of teachers in today’s (and tomorrow’s) schools?” The question was posed in terms of the influences affecting teaching as a profession and how teacher identity may change, or need to change, within historically changing circumstances.

Several areas of experience emerged from the study. First, issues about personal identity were identified: what it means to be a teacher and the challenges of developing a sense of agency and purpose in one’s practice. Second, all age groups of teachers talked about the challenges of adjusting to the demands of students’ diverse learning needs. Third, respondents spoke about belonging and relationships, and the challenges of fostering relationships with colleagues, students and parents. Many expressed feelings of isolation. A significant finding of the study was that external changes challenge teachers’ skills and their ability to remain efficient.

What is “both essential and impossible” (MacIntyre 1987, 16) revolves around what teachers see as the future of teaching in terms of their responsibilities to children; curriculum; and issues of accountability, diversity and technology. Teachers are often told they have to change in order to conform to the future. But to think about the future of teaching requires that we attend to the deep responsibility that defines teaching as a profession and the conditions that support and sustain it. Hannah Arendt (1969) said working for the future is difficult because the world is always “out of joint” (pp. 192–93). What that means is that we can’t rely on our past or present actions to guarantee future directions. However, we have a responsibility for the project of renewal through our work with the young.

Thinking about the future implies an orientation to “a future goodness that transcends [our] current ability to understand what it is” (Lear 2006, 103). In his evocative case study of the Crow people after their culture collapsed, Jonathan Lear argued that hopelessness arises when everyday language and concepts lose their meaning and connection to changing realities. However, rethinking our concepts and finding ways to meaningfully relate them to practices may occasion radical hope. Lear writes:

Radical hope anticipates a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it. What would it be for such hope to be justified? (p. 103)

Lear’s question is a great challenge for thinking about the future of teaching. Rather than simply hoping for the future, radical hope suggests the need to advocate for defining teaching’s absolute importance in renewing our public well-being and for protecting its integrity as a practice oriented to such work.

“Will hope be radical?” is a key question for thinking about the future of teaching. Promise for the future of teaching lies in the joys and possibilities of creating knowledge, building possibilities for community and generating glimmerings of what it means to take up responsibility for the world, as difficult and daunting as that may seem. Engaging in radical hope suggests practising in the interest of enhanced human action and celebrating the possibilities of living well together in the world. 

References

Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA). 1993. Trying to Teach: Interim Report of the Committee on Public Education and Professional Practice. Edmonton, Alta.: ATA.

———. 1994. Trying to Teach: Necessary Conditions. Edmonton, Alta.: ATA.

———. 2002. Falling Through the Cracks: A Summary of What We Heard About Teaching and Learning Conditions in Alberta Schools. Edmonton, Alta.: ATA.

———. 2011. The Future of Teaching in Alberta. Edmonton, Alta.: ATA.

———. 2012. The New Work of Teaching: A Case Study of the Worklife of Calgary Public Teachers. Edmonton, Alta.: ATA.

Arendt, H. 1969. In Between Past and Present: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin.

Connell, R. 2010. “Understanding Neoliberalism.” In Neoliberalism and Everyday Life, ed. S. Braedley and M. Luxton, 22–36. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.

Gardner, H. 2006. Five Minds for the Future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Lear, J. 2006. Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Boston: Harvard University Press.

MacIntyre, A. 1964. “Against Utilitarianism.” In Aims in Education: The Philosophic Approach, ed. T. H. B. Hollins. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cited in MacIntyre and Dunne 2002, 1.

———. 1987. “The Idea of an Educated Public.” In Education and Values: The Richard Peters Lectures, ed. G. Haydon. London: University of London, Institute of Education. Cited in MacIntyre and Dunne 2002, 1.

MacIntyre, A., and J. Dunne. 2002. “Alasdair MacIntyre on Education: In Dialogue with Joseph Dunne.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 36, no. 1: 1–19.

Nussbaum, M. 2010. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Ravitch, D. 2010. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. New York: Basic Books.

Sennett, R. 2006. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Smits, H. 2010. “The Future of Teaching: Possible and Probable Futures.” Presented to the Alberta Teachers’ Association Planning Meeting, Banff.

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Hans Smits is recently retired from the Faculty of Education, University of Calgary.