budding scholar

First, we drank grapefruit mimosas, called “lilosas”, standing around the bar at my house while I finished making the salad. It was hot yesterday, unseasonably hot, and everyone was parched and worn out from the week when they arrived. Six women in grad school, aged 26 to 31, coming together on a Friday evening to study for orals exams. There was a moment of heady, champagne-induced giddiness when, laughing, we considered not studying at all, just spending the evening like this. But then we settled in to take on the task, feeling the weight of responsibility hang heavier than the need to have fun together.

We talked through topics we’ve studied this year, discussing how the theories and articles we read fit together, what they tell us about the larger themes and historical tapestry of American education. What distinguishes the Common School Movement of the 1800s from the Progressive movement that came after it in the late 1800s and early 1900s? How do the theories we’ve learned this year vary, and how are they similar? Going forward, what do we need to know about class conflict theory, Durkheim, and rational utilitarian theory? What vision of the world does each of these theories represent, how do they explain society and education’s place in society?

My assignment is to look at the history of the Common School Movement and compare and contrast it with the Progressives. Much of the foundation of what our education system looks like today was laid back during these two major periods. Stay tuned, as I’ll work through the ideas here!

Today we had a student panel come to our first year Ph.D. seminar to answer our questions about going through the program, meeting milestones, keeping life lively, and generally managing grad school. They had some very helpful points for working through the first years and moving to areas of specialization and dissertations, including:

• Think about what you really want to know, what you care about. What are your questions? What will you need to know to move towards a dissertation in your area?
• The areas of specialization should grow naturally out of what you’re interested in, but remember that they don’t have to be reflective of everything you’re interested–they’re just a way to move you forward to prepare for orals and the dissertation.
• Stay connected with your cohort beyond the first year; graduate school can be isolating in the later years when you’re focusing on your own work. Staying connected with colleagues in the program helps keep the momentum going from milestone to milestone.
• The dissertation might be 3 papers of publishable quality, rather than one enormous paper. This can be a more manageable alternative, and a really good choice for people who want to go into academia or another job where journal publications matter.
• In defining interests and research focus, you vote by what you feel passionate enough about to write a paper on. Think of class papers: which would you write again? For me, this would be the immigration papers I’m writing this semester, and the language papers I wrote last semester.
• As a way of learning about conferences, look at people who you’re interested in, check out their CVs, and see where they’ve presented their work.
• It will always be the case that there are more useful or interesting opportunities than you can take on.

It was striking to me both how far I have to go, and how well my current job and Master’s have prepared me to get there. Given that this program is so research focused, it really helps to have had several years of research experience. Yet there is so far to go, and the only way to learn it is to keep taking on each bit on a daily basis and trying to learn what I can to move forward. With many things, I’m aiming for some level of mastery, which raises the bar…especially with statistics and other methods and analysis topics!

These are the thrilling moments of grad school (seriously!). You spend so much time thinking about interests, how to bring together what you’re interested with what’s feasible and smart to do. For me, this is some mix between my longstanding interest in language, immigration and schooling, the work I’ve done at SRI, and Spain, among other things. I’ve decided to use the “CILS” (http://cmd.princeton.edu/cils%20iii.shtml) dataset for my statistics project because I want to explore a question about immigrant groups and higher education, and browsing around on the Center for Migration and Development website, I came across a description of a new CILS in Europe, with the initial study happening in Spain! They have a working paper on the preliminary data they’ve found in Huelva, which I’ve started to read, and I immediately emailed Estrella Gualda, the author of the paper, asking for more information and expressing my interest in the work.

The really exciting thing is that this seems to be just getting started. The larger CILS, with 3 different points of data collection in Miami and San Diego, ended a couple years ago, and on the website, they describe this new study as taking the CILS to Europe. Who are the people working with Alejandro Portes and his group at Princeton? Where are they housed in Spanish and other European universities? What possibilities might there be to work with them? Richard Alba, a sociologist that I saw speak at Berkeley last week, also studies immigration in the U.S. and Europe. I think there could be a real place for me to study immigration and schooling in the U.S. and Europe.

How are the schools responding to the influx of immigrants in Spain? Does Gualda’s working paper discuss this? How is the immigrant second generation faring in Spanish schools? Are they transitioning to higher education at rates similar to native Spaniards? If it is too soon to tell, this could be something to study in 10 or 20 years when I’ve built my career in this area.

The possibilities all of a sudden feel much more open. Other people are interested in what I’m interested in studying, and they already have a project going. I’m thrilled to find out more about this effort.

Every Sunday is the same: an avalanche of reading for the next day. My three big reading classes are all on Mondays: History of Education from 9-12, Advance Policy Analalysis focusing on Policy and Pluralism from 12-3, and a Sociology class on Power and Inequality in Higher Education from 4-6. It’s now 11:28, and I’ve got a good chunk of it done, but as is often the case, not as much as I ‘d like to. Maybe sometime next year when I’m almost done with coursework I’ll reach a point where I can watch television or bury my head in a novel on Sunday nights.

The truth is, the reading is endless in graduate school. If it’s not the reading for class this week, it’s reading for upcoming papers or reading to study up on areas of the field. Or going back to readings from earlier classes. The stacks of books on my school bookshelves are growing. I’ve started buying books on Amazon that come up again and again in my work, and seem like works I should have, and as a result the books I’d like to read and haven’t yet keep staring at me daily. Like Annette Lareau’s “Unequal Childhoods”, which is a rich ethnographic portrait of class and its impact on how families interact with the institution of schools. Or Guadalupe Valdes’ “Con Respeto”, which is another ethnography of 10 Mexican families living near the U.S.-Mexican borders, and their experiences with schools. Or David Tyack and Larry Cuban’s “Tinkering Toward Utopia”, which is all about the past century of school reform and the lack of progress we’ve made.

Can’t get to these tonight. Instead, back to Historical Perspectives reading for tomorrow morning. Learning about how the modern debates we have about curriculum go back to the late 1890s. The question for my short history paper for tomorrow is “What legacy, if any, did the nineteenth century bequeath to contemporary American schools?”. Much of the structure of our modern schools in fact seems to go back to the 1800s. Dividing into grades with segmented curriculum at each level. Linking college to high school. Fighting over work-preparation goals and knowledge for knowledge’s sake goals for the curriculum.

Reading this history brings up an important question for me. To what extent was the schooling experience of kids around the country (immigrant, rural vs. urban, non-English speakers…) uniform? Was there a lot of variation in the kind of schooling experience kids had? Did school look different? At what point in our history did school start looking so much the same?

This will be a space to take the questions, notes, peoples’ names, etc. that I am scribbling down daily in my notebook and make further meaning of them. A place to explore what I’m interested in, to weigh what is important in my studies, to grapple with questions and develop my thoughts on topics in my field. It will serve as a record of the names and studies I need to read, the scholarship that is fundamental to understanding education policy. A sampling from my notebook:

9/18/06 What topics would serve me well in Spain? Immigration? Evaluation? European integration?

10/9/06 Does business have as much voice in education in other countries?

1/29/07 Think about the relationship between democracy, language and nationalism. Also, we need longitudinal studies of 2nd language development and bilingual education.

2/12/07 Issue of putting all our hopes for fixing society’s ills in schools. Need to read Richard Rothstein!

My idea for the blog is that it will be a place to think more about these things I write down throughout my days at school and work. A place to test out my opinions on topics. I’d like to go back in time through two notebooks and pick out pieces I want to remember and build on, and write on them. It would also be neat to get conversations going with classmates on the topics we’re dealing with in school. And take it beyond school to others who work in education and education policy.