Authority, Intellectuals, and the Politics of Practical Learning

We live at a time when democracy is in retreat. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the current debate surrounding the relationship between schooling and authority. As is the case with most public issues in the age of Reagan, the new conservatives have seized the initiative and argued that the current crisis in public education is due to the loss of authority. In this discourse, the call for a reconstituted authority along conservative lines is coupled with the charge that the crisis in schooling is in part due to a crisis in the wider culture, which is presented as a “spiritual-moral” crisis. The problem is clearly articulated by Diane Ravitch, who argues that this pervasive “loss of authority” stems from confused ideas, irresolute standards, and cultural relativism.’ As a form of legitimation, this view of authority appeals to an established cultural tradition, whose practices and values appear beyond criticism. Authority, in this case, represents an idealized version of the American Dream reminiscent of nineteenth-century dominant culture in which the tradition becomes synonymous with hard work, industrial discipline, and cheerful obedience. It is a short leap between this view of the past and the new conservative vision of schools as crucibles-in which to forge industrial soldiers fueled by the imperatives of excellence, competition, and downhome character. In effect, for the new conservatives, learning approximates a practice mediated by strong teacher authority and a student willingness to learn the basics, adjust to the imperatives of the social and economic order, and exhibit what Edward A. Wynne calls the traditional moral aims of “promptness, truthfulness, courtesy, and obedience.“’ What is most striking about the new conservative discourse on schooling is its refusal to link the issue of authority to the rhetoric of freedom and democracy. In other words, what is missing from this perspective as well as from more critical perspectives is any attempt to reinvent a view of self-constituted authority that expresses a democratic conception of collective life, one that is embodied in an ethic of solidarity, social transformation, and an