Carlson, Dennis (2002). Leaving Safe Harbors: Toward a New Progressivism in American Education and Public Life. New York, NY: RoutledgeFarmer. 218 Pages $21.95 (Paper)     ISBN 0415933781 Reviewed by Richard J. Marchesani Elmira College July 12, 2004 The volume of books written on the topic of school reform is so vast, that one might pause to wonder how many more it will take before someone heeds the cry? It may be, however, that the cries themselves are too strident (Chester Finn), too abstruse (Henry Giroux), too ideological (William Bennett), too truthful (Jonathon Kozol), or just too indigestible (Alfie Kohn). The Progressive Education Movement of yesteryear that was built upon the Deweyian concept of knowledge and ideas emanating from social organization and morality, or possibly on G. Stanley Hall’s belief in developmental influences on education (Ravitch, 2000), died on the shores of national and political events of the 1950s. The Movement is still being cited as the cause of today’s school ills in the form of grade inflation, dumbed-down curricula, and children as educational consumers rather than as students (Morris, 2000). Dennis Carlson suggests that a new progressivism is asking us to leave safe harbors, a place where we find ‘members of the dominant culture or the ‘Other’ [who] are given space at the margins (Carlson, 2002, p. 2).” He sees it as resurfacing in leftist political culture where the purer forms of democratic ideals are leaking into schools and colleges, presumably by a new wave of socially active and enlightened teachers. The metaphor is quite apt, as leaving the safe harbor of traditional instruction tucked neatly into the conservative pouch of Hirschian knowledge, packaged, external and edible, will take courage and vision. For reform-minded educators and concerned observers of our educational system, Carlson offers a trade route that might lead to a progressive navigation of the sea of education with all of its mysteries from reform to ideology. By taking us through an analysis of three philosophical mythologies, he hopes to awaken our progressive perceptions to recognize the myths that forge our actions and evoke a perception of our schooling structure as one that can possibly be reformed to offer our children a level of enlightenment that transcends what he calls Ammon-Ra, the patriarchal pedagogue (p. 196). Beginning with Plato’s cave myth, Carlson defines the terms mythos and logos with the latter being knowable only when one has left the myth of culture through the use of our “scientific, mathematical and philosophical attitudes.” Offering Plato’s view of hierarchical privilege from mythos to logos as being from the lowest animals and mythological creatures to the ultimate being of a god in the cosmos, he compares this to our system of education that is also “patriarchal, Eurocentric and classist” (p. 4). The analogy strikes directly to the core of reform-minded educators who decry the wanton use of meritocratic instruments to perpetuate the myth of excellence as indicated by the decorous awards-ritual awash in our schools. Carlson gives an insightful analysis of how logos became patriarchal in Greek culture which evolved into Christianity’s logocentric hegemony that would rule over the faithful (p. 31). Through a series of examples from Jung’s metaphorical dream cave to the ‘origins of art’ on the walls of the Lascaux cave in France, he lays down a strong argument for the prevailing spirit of Eurocentric and patriarchal regimen that frames our students into the perception of going from lower to higher levels of intelligence. It reinforces the concept that as a society we are on levels of achievement as evidenced by our status and the affirmation of a social atmosphere ground, in a belief that we live on a continuum from the unintelligent masses to the intelligentsia – Platonic to the core. The second philosophical myth that Carlson explores is that of the master/slave relationship underpinning social and education systems. Citing Hegel’s account entitled the “The Lord and the Bondsman,” he tracks how the concept of master in the Freirian sense of dominant culture versus the oppressed, establishes the belief that knowledge is something that is given to the masses – not initiated by them (p. 71). This is reflected in Freire’s ‘banking system’ of education where he describes students as the depositories of knowledge, empty vessels to be filled, but most importantly, unable to learn without the master, who rules their universe. Carlson then introduces the expanded metaphor of the pot and the potter as a means for the slave to create a ‘thing’ that is objectified, yet part of a conscious expression of the self. Here, he looks at the multitude of pot/potter metaphors in history from the Biblical sculpting of Adam and Eve, to Pygmalion, to the piecing of the AIDS quilt, which is a “’thing’ that invites multiple readings, that opens up discussion about a number of important issues….” (p. 79). The creative expressions of the slave become Hegelian in tone as we now view the oppressed, seeking its own language, remaking the master’s language into one that self-identifies the individual separate from the master, but still derived from him. It is this dichotomy, possibly, that inhibits the progress so often desired. Freire warns us that once the oppressed are free, they must not in turn become the dominant culture nor use the master’s tactics (Freire, 1989). This dichotomous action is highlighted in Carlson’s example of Molefi Kete Asante who coined the word ‘Afrocentrism,’ which strives for an identify for the African-American separate from the dominant Eurocentric white culture, but whose very essence is derived from the historical struggle within that culture (p. 81). In this case, the language of the master is integrated within the Afro-American culture and cannot be teased from it without the loss of some piece of identity. Here, I believe, Carlson has struck a sharp chord that resonates for those seeking ways to overcome African-American distrust and unease with the public school system, and white society in general. Until we can find strategies to help children discover their identities of heritage while still working within the dominant culture’s meritocratic structure, their schooling will continue to be a type of schizophrenic journey of traditional and progressive measures. Carlson cites Freud’s famous story of how he awoke on a train to find a man in his compartment staring at him. The man was himself reflected in the mirror on the door, a reflection he did not particularly like. This description of the Other is one where we may be conflicted as to liking or disliking what we are or have become. Carlson takes this theme into gender as he cites examples from two films, Tootsie and Kramer vs. Kramer, both starring Dustin Hoffman. In these films Hoffman challenges the traditional masculine role as he performs in both roles according to the situation. Is gender a performance? Carlson sees this possibly as the path to androgyny, agreeing with Judith Butler that once we find our identity, we lose it, and that to reconcile this, we must reforge it anew within the politics of our lives (p. 87). The theme of finding identity in performance continues as Carlson describes films such as Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, and Bamboozled where the identities of blacks as a race are so boldly portrayed. We don’t like to feel uncomfortable about race, even when this discomfort can produce action to remediate the wrongs of racism. Therefore, we identify with the Hegelian spirit of losing and finding ourselves – stoicism vs. skepticism; taking the philosophical meaning of stoicism as one who accepts the events of the world as they happen with a skepticism of deconstructing the truths of the moment. Carlson sees this process as flawed because it is one without vision, without a basis to move forward and reconstruct, but nonetheless one that is prevalent. Carlson opens the final myth allegory with quotes by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., and Allan Bloom, both of whom sharply criticized American education as having abandoned intellectual fervor to liberal nihilism and the celebration of Dionysus. He critiques these exhortations through the words of philosopher Richard Rorty who surprisingly agrees with the deterioration of intellectual excellence, but for separate reasons. Rorty believes that time-honored Platonic truths have been replaced with politically correct truths, but to inculcate either of these in our students of higher education should not be the goal of either the essentialists or progressivists. He believes that higher education must ‘instill doubt and incite imagination’ (Rorty, 1989). This thought of changing how we view our world is reflected in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra myth, with the camel representing obedience to the dominant culture, the lion opposing and destroying the culture’s truths, and the child representing re-creation of a new culture. This overlays with Hegel’s theory of thesis, antithesis and synthesis where conflicting ideas evolve into new ideas. Carlson (p. 100) notes that Nietzsche is the prophet of postmodern thought demanding critical thinking versus a systematic unification of all truths – nicely packaged. This latter thought underpins the order and structure of our school system in the United States. Now more than ever, our schools are gathering to the unification concept of instruction as districts demand ever greater alignment with learning standards, and testing becomes an almost sacred ritual of meritocratic identification. Instead of moving away from the Platonic and Aristotelian thought of knowledge that is acquired, learned, poured into our children, we are enveloping those concepts with the practical one of accountability. Zarathustra’s belief that self-education comes when the slave becomes critical of the dominant culture, where the camel becomes the lion, is a metaphor that finds less and less meaning in modern American thought. We have come from the lion-inspired years of the Sixties, where questioning the dominant systems was a movement towards more sanity in both government and education, to the docile and conforming camel days of the millennia where defying the role of government and education is considered unpatriotic. Here, Carlson takes a rather deft step in reverse to make his point, by citing the cave sequence in the film Dead Poets Society (p. 116). The English teacher, Keating, brings his students to levels of nonconformity, challenging them to think for themselves by experiencing rather than memorizing poetry. And yet, with the cave as a symbol of their hidden rituals, ironically they must descend into the cave to find their ideal reality which is in contrast to the world of their fathers. Eventually the boys who seek to find this hidden self, who engage in the lion’s work of deconstruction, are crushed by the reality of the world’s authority, of the dominant culture’s tenets of obedience and conformity. The final stage of Carlson’s journey from safe harbors is less direct and more esoteric, I think, for the modern educator. He provides an analysis of Donna Haraway’s work Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, that looks at three boundaries separating man from animal, organism from machine, and real from virtual (p. 165). Although certainly this strikes hard at modern thought, or at what modern thought is becoming, it detracts from the sense of direction he has offered through our understanding of how we have evolved from the postmodern concept of knowing myth from praxis. Using images from popular movies such as Blade Runner, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Carlson takes Haraway’s definition of the cyborg as the new technê that shapes and reshapes our culture. Taking meaning from the idea of our children becoming cyborgs in this new age of computer technology, lacking autonomy and individual judgment (p. 169), he suggests that we must recognize how we have all become cyborgs. It reinforces his theme that leaving safe harbors means discovering our identities within the present culture, at this moment. Virtual is not just a facsimile of real; it can become reality if it has impact on the human condition, and if it becomes, for a time, the reality by which we live. In this book, we are enjoined by Carlson to leave the cave, encounter our masters, and recreate our culture within a new order that both embraces and yet controls the technology that prevails itself upon us. We are asked to seek our identities in the light of knowing how difficult it is to find an identity in a world so ephemeral, so complex, and so self-defeating. He succeeds in culminating to an understanding of the trials we will encounter to promote a progressive education for our children, to break through the borders that keep us uninformed, unenlightened. He does this with a clarity not found in the writing of Henry Giroux; but like Giroux, he also becomes enmeshed in his analysis to the point that we lose the educator for wanting to understand the philosopher. And yet in his conclusion, we do get a clearer picture of where we are, and maybe we can believe that becoming cyborgs, recognizing Ammon-Ra in our structured principles, locating ourselves between mythos and logos, knowing who are the masters and who are the slaves, comprehending the overwhelming effects of media and the semiotics that define our roles, will bring us finally to the cave of life. References Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Morris, C.R. (2000, December 2). Left behind. America. 180(18). Rorty, R. (1989). Education without dogma. Dissent. Spring.