IGNORANCE ABOUT SOCIAL ACTION IN EDUCATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP

One crucial problem for educational scholarship is our lack of knowledge and practical understanding of (at least) three key issues relevant to democracy and social action in education.

OUR IGNORANCE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL ACTION IN AMERICA

Few of us know much of anything about the rich traditions of social action and community engagement that emerged over the course of the last century in the United States. There is a tendency in the literature to refer only vaguely to these different movements, especially the efforts of different civil rights organizations in the 1950s and 1960s, and to describe them, generally, as examples of Deweyan democracy. (see, especially, Maxine Greene’s influential writings).

A closer look indicates that efforts in unions, civil rights, second-wave feminism, etc., drew from an extremely broad range of different practices of collective action and empowerment. As Manning Marable has pointed out, for example, the history of black struggle in America is not a single narrative but instead has involved a continuing and often quite contentious debate about how to proceed. Dewey’s vision of collaborative democracy—especially in his focus on the actualization of individuals—is not at all the dominant approach in these different groups. In fact, one finds that the general model of Deweyan democracy that dominates educational scholarship tends to emerge almost exclusively in organizations dominated by the middle class (and not always even in these). Actual contexts of social action generally involve a complex alchemy of class, race, gender, and more. (And, of course, discussions of more working-class models of collective action, in unions and in some civil rights organizations, for example, are especially lacking in the educational literature.)

Unless we start to look beyond our cherished visions of collaborative Deweyan classrooms and towards other models of organizing groups against oppression, our discussions of practices for democratic education will continue to have limited relevance to the needs of working-class children and their communities. The point is not that we need to leave Dewey behind, but that we need to supplement his vision with a range of perspectives and approaches that often conflict with it.

OUR IGNORANCE ABOUT ENGAGEMENT WITH IMPOVERISHED COMMUNITIES

Few of us know much of anything about the wide range of strategies for fostering community empowerment currently being pursued in communities across America. In areas of urban poverty, especially, educators and educational scholars generally look at the community (when we think of it at all) through the filter of the thick walls and hurricane fencing of schools, especially in areas of urban poverty. Our positioning inside schools, I think, fundamentally distorts our understanding of urban communities and their social processes.

In fact, in an article currently under review, I argue that we have developed _no_ general models that seem capable of systematically fostering anything like equitable collaborations between schools and their local communities in oppressed areas. Because they are dominated by middle-class professionals, schools have proved largely incapable of truly collaborating with the communities they serve. While I describe a number of models of community-school engagement based _outside_ of schools that seem at least somewhat effective at facilitating participation, few educational scholars have any experience with or knowledge of these approaches.

We are schools of education, not schools of schooling. But most of us generally see our duties as ending at the edge of the schoolyard. As long as we continue to limit our analyses to schools, and to analyses of families from the perspective of schools, we will continue to fail to understand how to foster truly collaborative relationships between schools and impoverished communities.

OUR IGNORANCE ABOUT TEACHING PRACTICES OF SOCIAL ACTION TO YOUTH

Some have argued that it is simply impossible to teach strategies of collective action in a public school. In fact, however, there are models, like Public Achievement (publicachievement.org) that currently operate out of schools in multiple states. The important task is to teach students how to act collectively against oppression, but these practices can be learned as a part of seemingly innocuous projects that are unlikely to generate resistance in the general public. One of my favorite examples is of an elementary school class that lobbied for, and achieved, a new law regarding child restraints in their state legislature.

The fact is that opportunities to learn skills of social action are almost entirely missing from schools, both public and private. Because of this, even very small increases in the number of sites where these skills might be learned would represent, in percentage terms, an enormous move forward. Imagine if only 1% of all high-poverty schools in America pursued robust efforts to teach their students to act collectively against oppression. I believe this could make a significant impact on the present and future empowerment of them as individuals and of their communities.

Outside of schools, increasing numbers of organizations are springing up around the nation, working to foster youth action and organizing. Again, however, as long as the vast majority of us continue to limit our focus to schools (and not education more broadly) these efforts will remain largely invisible to us.

There are a few examples of efforts to understand more systematically how to engage youth in collective action efforts, including an emerging literature on youth organizing (http://www.fcyo.org/), and the work of Jeanne Oakes and John Rodgers’s team at UCLA (http://www.idea.gseis.ucla.edu/).

In my own department, I have been working with a large collaborative research team to examine the Public Achievement model for facilitating student social action. Over the last semester we facilitated eleven different Public Achievement groups (about 10 weeks of work with each group) in a local, inner-city charter high school. We collected detailed fieldnotes about each weekly meeting. This semester a colleague and I are working with the students to analyze the enormous stack of data this generated in an effort to understand what happened (and didn’t happen). Next year we will repeat this effort, altering our approach in response to what we have learned in our first attempt.

CHANGING THE FOCUS OF EDUCATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP REQUIRES CHANGING THE STRUCTURE OF OUR ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS

If we are serious about fostering social action, public participation, and empowered democratic citizenship in schools, I believe we cannot avoid rethinking the current structure of schools of education. Because our institutions are almost entirely focused on supporting schooling, we generally lack scholars whose interests might help develop and disseminate knowledge about social action and community empowerment. It would help immensely if other departments besides my own could begin to offer programs for non-school community educators, programs that could provide a long-term enrollment base to support such scholars. In any case, until we begin to bring in and support a new generation of scholars who are willing to grapple with these issues, we will continue to remain largely ignorant of them. Whether such a change is actually possible, I don’t know.
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OTHER SOURCES
Jean Anyon’s new book _Radical Possibilities_ gives a nice overview of a range of different community action approaches. Dennis Shirley’s _Community Organizing for Urban School Reform_, published almost a decade ago, remains the only comprehensive and sophisticated study of relationships between community organizing groups and schools. See also, however, a range of reports about community organizing and schools increasingly emerging from a range of private foundations, non-profit organizations, and a few university research centers (e.g., www.edfunders.com/downloads/edorgbibliography.doc). David Levine’s blog (http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/) provides a thoughtful overview of current research on civic education in the United States and beyond, although little of what he discusses addresses the kind of issues I examine, above. Fred Rose’s book, _Organizing Across the Class Divide_, provides the best discussion I have found about the relationship between social class and preferences for particular practices of social action.

Foundations of Fascism?*

Where does one look in the major American print media for coverage on the insidious new form of McCarthyism that is having a chilling effect on free speech in American classrooms, both high school and college? Answer: Nowhere.

You have to go outside the country to find a substantive piece like this one in the Guardian by Gary Younge:

Few would argue there are direct parallels between the current assaults on liberals in academe and McCarthyism. Unlike the McCarthy era, most threats to academic freedom - real or perceived - do not, yet, involve the state. Nor are they buttressed by widespread popular support, as anticommunism was during the 50s. But in other ways, argues Ellen Schrecker, author of Many Are the Crimes - McCarthyism in America, comparisons are apt.

"In some respects it's more dangerous," she says. "McCarthyism dealt mainly with off-campus political activities. Now they focus on what is going on in the classroom. It's very dangerous because it's reaching into the core academic functions of the university, particularly in Middle-Eastern studies."

. . . . These issues are not confined to university campuses: it is also happening in schools. Since February, the normally sleepy, wealthy district of Upper St Clair in Pennsylvania has been riven with arguments over its curriculum after the local school board banned the International Baccalaureate (IB), the global educational programme, for being an "un-American" marxist and anti-Christian. During their election campaign, the Republicans of Upper St Clair referred to the IB, which is offered in 122 countries and whose student intake has risen by 73% worldwide in the past five years, as though it was part of an international communist conspiracy, suspicious of a curriculum that had been "developed in a foreign country" (Switzerland). "Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values and we have to be careful about what values our children are taught," said one Republican board member. Similar campaigns have also sprung up recently at school boards in Minnesota and Virginia. . . .
however many people are involved, the attacks do make a difference, claims Gilroy. "Of course it has an effect," he says. "There's a pre-written script you have to follow and if you chose not to follow it, then there are consequences, so you become very self-conscious about what you say. To call it self-censorship is much too crude. But everybody is looking over their shoulder".

*This is originally posted at Schools Matter.

Education and Teacher Education for Democracy

Every year for a month or two at least, we commemorate the struggles for freedom, social justice, and peace that were embodied in the short, remarkable life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who have fought to realize the ideals of equality on which the political philosophy of the Republic was founded. They are the politics expressed by Dr. King, himself, when he said “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” They are the same politics celebrated recently by those attending the memorial service for Dr. King’s late widow who, as Rev. Lowery reminded us, “opposed discrimination based on race—she frowned on homophobia and gender bias.” They are the same politics urged by President Clinton, when he made this challenge to all of us: “You want to treat our friend Coretta like a role model? Then model her behavior.”

They are the same politics that, unfortunately, are now scrutinized and savaged by the representatives of a radical minority of educational and social fundamentalists, who would turn back the clock on social progress by making a commitment to social justice irrelevant to good teaching. These conservative critics, including Geoge Will and Fred Hess and the Fordham Institute, would have us believe that racism and injustice is no longer a concern for the classroom, and that all attention should be placed on education as economic preparedness. They would, indeed, turn a commitment to social justice into a partisan value, something that liberals do, and thus something that should be avoided like any form of indoctrination in the classroom.

These critics have gone on the attack recently against the professional preparation programs for teachers that make dispositions toward caring and social justice and equity central components in assessing the preparedness of their teacher candidates to teach in the classrooms of America. These radical rightists see no place in the university classroom for preparing teachers who share the values of Dr. King, or any of those Republicans and Democrats who rose at Coretta Scott King’s memorial to remind us of the Kings’ unfinished legacy of non-violent resistance to bigotry and oppression.

The political logic of the new critics reflects some very old sentiments that most of us, fortunately, have chosen to leave behind. In sacrificing the goal of social justice in favor of a feigned political neutrality, it no longer matters if Johnny’s teacher embraces the values of skinheads or Klansmen, just as long as she is able to get Johnny a passing grade on his proficiency exam or his AP test. Nor does it matter, in this twisted logic that makes the promotion of democracy a partisan issue, if Johnny’s teacher rejects the values expressed in our Constitution or Declaration of Independence, just as long as he gets Johnny interested in contributing to an economic future that includes the studied oversupply of engineers, scientists, and technicians.

While fitting these blinders onto teacher educators, teachers, and American children may serve those who wish to conflate political freedom, moral freedom, aesthetic freedom, religious freedom, cultural freedom, and intellectual freedom into a selective and self-serving version of economic freedom, such a plan will never work to engender a free and responsible citizenry capable of sustaining the continuing struggle for a true democratic republic, one that places human rights and civil rights at the forefront of all societal decision-making.

Although I would argue that every human is born with a preference for autonomy and liberty rather than for repression and enslavement, that preference only becomes a living ethical value through modeled teaching, plenty of questioning and practice, and commited professional guidance in that practice. The intellectual chain gangs for the poor or the socially-inert IB or AP classrooms for the middle and upper classes, however, remain the models that for those neo-traditionalists who would try to convince us that a commitment to freedom and democracy are partisan values that are unimimportant to teaching in American schools.

What the social antiquarians and the new wave of school room scientizers disingenuously argue is that we, as a nation, must choose between a narrow intellectual competence for economic competitiveness, or a broad social consciousness for cultural understanding and critical awareness. I believe that most Americans view this either-or proposition as the divisive and false choice that it is, and if given the chance to decide, there is still a good chance that they will choose to re-invigorate their public schools toward all of these important purposes for all of our people, not just the ones who can afford to remain neutral.