Meaning Loss

In Meaning Loss, Sanje Ratnavale has written a practical and timely contribution to an important debate that all schools should be having. It’s about curriculum and reimagining the sense of purpose that has too often become mired and muddled by ideological squabbles and all-out hot button culture wars. 

But first – a digression: 

Consider the now familiar tale of a school meltdown as related with varying degrees of relish and gravitas by newspapers or watchdog groups and individuals such as Parents Defending Education, and Undercover Mother.

Shock, Horror, Outrage

In the case of independent schools, the lurid versions usually have a script that labels the school ‘elite’ and ‘tony’; highlights the tuition price tag and head’s salary; give a short list of celebrity alums, and have a photo of the front of the school building.

Reference to any past lawsuits, scandals, and drama is a journalistic bonus. 

When it’s not sexual misconduct or financial shenanigans, the plot can usually be filed under DEI.

It often includes conflict between the school and some of its constituents over matters related to conduct and curriculum: A teacher fired for wrongthink; a program alleged to be anti-semitic; a policy deemed to be racist; a lawsuit alleging discrimination; a sexually charged curriculum promoting identity theory.  Someone usually accuses someone, or something, of being Orwellian. Basically, it’s upset people behaving badly or with justifiable outrage depending on your perspective.  

Hot Buttons

These stories erupt when underlying tensions break the surface. The headlines focus on perceived overreach by schools on hot button topics of the culture wars –  often featuring DEI initiatives around race and ‘gender’. They are designed to generate strong emotional responses and drive clicks.

Sometimes these eruptions happen when there is a mismatch between the good intentions of a DEI initiative possibly ill-conceived and the ideology –  perhaps unspoken-  of the school’s curriculum. Sometimes, of course, it is activist overreach allowed to run amok. 

The inevitable eruption is like a healthy host rejecting a foreign body. Or vice versa. But no school wants that publicity. 

Enter Meaning Loss

Sanje Ratnavale’s book is not about those stories. It’s not a book about damage control, public relations, crisis management, or staying below the scandal sheet radar. It’s about the background story – how schools can lose their way and how they can get back on track. It’s about schools and their purpose. 

His focus is curriculum and the assumptions that underly the choices schools make. It’s about the intended outcomes behind educational approaches and the thinking – sometimes unexamined and unacknowledged –  that drives those choices about what to teach and how, assessment, the role of the learner, and the purpose of the enterprise. 

He starts with the history and outlines four major curriculum strands of thinking that undergird the American school curriculum. 

Four Curriculum Models

Scholar Academic, Social Utility, Learner-Centered, and Social Justice

Each has a different set of interactions with knowledge, the role of the child, the role of the parent, the role of the teacher, the kind and purpose of evaluation, the kind of skills impacted, and more. Each has a distinctly different purpose.

The Scholar-Academic Model

Many look to the  Committee of Ten report 1893 as the influential bedrock of the traditional academic model of American schooling. Established by  the National Education Association (NEA), this group of educators was tasked with creating a standardized national high school curriculum. It was chaired by Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard and its  primary goal was to define and recommend a uniform, rigorous secondary education that would prepare students either for college or for life as informed citizens.

Its key recommendations included a uniform curriculum, a subject-centered approach, teacher-led instruction, and a curriculum designed to align closely with the entrance requirements of major colleges and universities.

It emphasized intellectual rigor, subject matter expertise, and a content-focused curriculum rooted in the belief that education should prioritize the mastery of academic disciplines, and that students’ intellectual development occurs through immersion in rigorous, scholarly knowledge.

The Committee of Ten’s recommendations laid the groundwork for much of the traditional academic structure that shaped American education. 

It’s easy to see the enduring impact of this model even as other influential models and thinking gained traction. 

 Learner-Centered and Social Justice

John Dewey (Learner-Centered and Social Justice) is a key figure of course. His work made a major contribution to the shape of the debate. His central idea was that education should be grounded in the experiences and interests of the child, making learning relevant and meaningful to students’ daily lives. Dewey advocated for active, experiential learning that fosters curiosity and critical thinking. His “learning by doing” highlights that education should be a process of personal discovery rather than mere transmission of information.

Dewey also believed that education was inherently social and that that schools should be sites of democratic engagement. He argued that education should empower individuals to participate actively in social change, thereby contributing to a just and democratic society.

Those arguing now that schools need to be advocates and activists for social justice have a predecessor in George Counts. He argued that education should not only reflect society but actively reform it. His 1932 book Dare the School Build a New Social Order? called for educators to challenge the status quo and help construct a more equitable and socially just society. He believed education could be a force for empowering oppressed groups and reducing inequality. Counts agreed with Dewey on many points but he criticized him for being too vague about the role of schools in addressing social injustices. Counts argued for a more direct and confrontational role for education in transforming society. He was a social justice warrior. 

Social Efficiency

The social efficiency model of schooling had a pioneer in Franklin Bobbitt who promoted the idea that education should be scientific, efficient, and focused on preparing students for specific roles in society.

In The Curriculum (1918), Bobbitt emphasized that schools should be designed much like factories, with clear objectives and measurable outcomes. He believed in breaking down the curriculum into a series of specific tasks that would efficiently prepare students for adult roles, especially in an industrialized society. Bobbitt’s approach often involved standardization, testing, and accountability to ensure that education was practical and goal-oriented.

That’s a compacted and nutshell version but it is enough to spotlight the idea that the school curriculum is driven by how we conceive of the purpose of schooling.  Different assumptions about purpose lead to different decisions about what and how to teach, about assessment and what matters most. When those assumptions are unexamined and unacknowledged all kinds of contradictions and muddles can arise. 

Time and Influence

The book includes two diagrams of the rise and fall of the influence of these models as tracked over time and shows how political events, societal needs, crises, and social movements (the Depression, WW2, Sputnik etc) impact conceptions of the purpose and practice of school. 

That was then. This next chart is helpful in identifying the more recent thought trends, tensions and social events that are now playing out in school including the civil rights movements, multiculturalism, critical race theory, gender identity theory, and intersectionality.

Frame of Reference

Part of my frame of reference for understanding all this is the history of English as a school subject and the book reminded me of Arthur Applebee’s Tradition and Reform. It’s years since I read it, but my copy was once well-thumbed. I took another look.

Ratnavale covers some of the same ground and draws out the various competing and overlapping ideologies that have ebbed and flowed through the decades and the individuals who played a key role.

The impassioned debates of the1930s about the role of education and the teaching of English can serve as useful backdrop to our own age of contention. 

When it comes to these issues, we have been here before.

Education version indoctrination
School as the means to effect radical social change
Teaching not what to think but how to think
Class warfare and social reform
The individual child versus world solidarity and international understanding
Crusading for peace and social justice
Commercialization and propaganda
Pressure groups and insidious influences
Classrooms invaded with viewpoints inimical to public welfare
Deeper values in danger.

To see what I mean take a look at this extract from Applebee He describes the tensions and ideological battles of the 1930s and all of these issues are in hot debate. 

A Way Forward

Meaning Loss offers a framework and a tool to help schools and individuals identify where they align within the competing  strands that have historically shaped the curriculum: Schools usually incorporate elements of all them in varying degrees. By taking a look and identifying the underlying belief systems that undergird a school’s curriculum—or the personal convictions driving an individual’s choices—it becomes possible to understand why tensions and conflicts arise and – potentially – to head them off or resolve them.

Ratnavale suggests a focus on skills. Community agreement around a set of shared skills can help provide a transparent  organizing principle for the curriculum that allows for flexibility and ongoing assessment. By skills he is thinking of big concepts such as collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, cultural competence, caring etc.  if a school agrees on the skills it wants its students to develop, it can build a purpose-driven and coherent curriculum that can accommodate the good intentions that drive the best of diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Finding this alignment and understanding can –  with luck – help resolve conflicts before competing tensions tear a community apart. Meaning Loss proposes a reflective and analytical process that serves as a proactive tool, enabling schools to address curricular and ideological conflicts before they escalate to breaking point or hit the front page. 

Sanje Ratnavale is the President and founder of OESIS and much of the material in this book has appeared in various of his articles in IntrepidEd News. Meaning Loss brings those ideas together . The book is a highly readable and practical contribution to an important discussion.