Student vs. Teacher-Centered: the big debate

The main article for this week focused on the difference between teacher and student centered education philosophies and really helped to clarify the two for me.  In an effort to try and prove how the progressive/contstructivist (student-centered) philosophy that dominates schools of education does a poor job of equipping future teachers, author George Cunningham manages to paint a clear picture of both cultures.  There is much discussion about the downfalls of a student-centered classroom, with particular emphasis on how poorly reading and math skills are affected.  While I appreciate Cunningham’s thorough examples that helped me to understand different teaching approaches to both reading and math, I was left wondering about the implications of a student vs. teacher-centered philosophy in the art classroom.  The other main question that kept returning to me during this article was:  Do certain students learn better in a teacher-centered class while others, in turn, function better in a student-centered classroom?  My instinct is to immediately say yes, among the range of learners in this world, there are certainly some who would function and perform better in one type of learning environment over the other.  I am interested to know what you all think about being able to group learners into either category??  While there is an obvious debate over student or teacher centered philosophies and which is better, I have not yet heard talk of accepting a mixture of the two.  Is it simply not feasible to blend the two in the classroom?  It doesn’t seem like a novel idea to me, so I am interested to hear more from actual teachers who are implementing a student-centered classroom and how it is working.
In one of the shorter articles from this week, a chemistry professor writes about changing over to a more student-centered teaching method and specifically, suggests how to incorporate this method gradually.  This leads me to believe that many teachers out there are indeed using some kind of blend of these two education approaches.  I would love to observe a classroom that is truly student-centered and see how I feel about the approach after witnessing it in action.
At this point, I realize I have completely digressed from what we are really supposed to be addressing in response to this article.  Regarding Cunningham’s main points, I disagree.  I do not believe that the progressive/constructivist viewpoint of the majority of education schools is the wrong theory to promote and teach.  While I found his arguments about the documented progress (or lack of progress) in the subjects of reading and math to be particularly thought provoking, I was not wholly convinced that education schools are in the wrong in promoting a student-centered approach, as he repeatedly declares.  While I feel unqualified to comment much on the teaching of reading or math, I think I might feel uncomfortable for example, teaching the approach Cunningham describes in place of long division.  Again, I find myself wondering why a blend of two approached cannot be used here.  Why not teach traditional long division, while also incorporating more applicable “authentic” problems for students to solve.  Apparently, in the debate over teacher vs. student-centered education, one should choose one side or the other.  Cunningham makes it clear he is against the “radical constructivism” of most education schools.  I have to admit, I was somewhat disturbed to read several of his recurring comments that degrade education schools for promoting “critical” and “reflective, democratic teaching”.  He seems to hold student achievement so high that he denounces what I felt was one of the most important things I learned before graduating from high school—how to think critically about information we receive.
I found his extreme criticism of the theories promoted in education schools very problematic.  While Cunningham alludes to his disdain for such theory throughout his article, it became almost comical when he launches into his criticism of the classes at UNC-Greensboro.  After describing some of their courses on critical pedagogy, all I could think was that I wanted to take something like that!  In disagreement with Cunningham’s view, I would ask him for what purpose is higher education, if not to challenge our minds with such ideas as described in the UNC-G Critical Pedagogy course (education and power, crisis of democratic culture etc.)  While these ideas may not be DIRECTLY applicable in the classroom, as he states, they are important issues for future teachers to explore as elements of our larger national education system.  I agree that education students need practical experience and teaching as well, but why isn’t a melding of the two acceptable or even most desirable?  To me, it is.  If we had education schools that adopted strict teacher-centered pedagogy, as Cunningham suggests, we would be giving future teachers prescriptive plans for the classroom, effectively crushing all opportunity for creative, unique, and dynamic teaching.  This is not the teaching environment that I want to inhabit, and I hope most students of education value their future professions enough to disagree with many of Cunningham’s ideas as well.