Category Archives: Education Reform

Education as Enforcement

Routledge has just published the second edition of Education as Enforcement: The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools, edited by Kenneth J. Saltman and David A. Gabbard.

I’m pleased to have contributed co-authored chapters to both editions (with Kevin D. Vinson and John F. Welsh for the second edition).

The first volume to focus on the intersections of militarization, corporations, and education, Education as Enforcement exposed the many ways schooling has become the means through which the expansion of global corporate power are enforced. Since publication of the first edition, these trends have increased to disturbing levels as a result of the extensive militarization of civil society, the implosion of the neoconservative movement, and the financial meltdown that radically called into question the basic assumptions undergirding neoliberal ideology. An understanding of the enforcement of these corporate economic imperatives remains imperative to a critical discussion of related militarized trends in schools, whether through accountability and standards, school security, or other discipline based reforms.

Education as Enforcement, Second Edition elaborates upon the central arguments of the first edition and updates readers on how recent events have reinforced their continued original relevance. In addition to substantive updates to several original chapters, this second edition includes a new foreword by Henry Giroux, a new introduction, and four new chapters that reveal the most contemporary expressions of the militarization and corporatization of education. New topics covered in this collection include zero-tolerance, foreign and second language instruction in the post-9/11 context, the rise of single-sex classrooms, and the intersection of the militarization and corporatization of schools under the Obama administration.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Governing Through Crime and the Pedagogy of Punishment, HENRY A. GIROUX

Introduction to the Second Edition, Kenneth J. Saltman & David A. Gabbard

Introduction to the First Edition, Kenneth J. Saltman

1. The Function of Schools: Subtler and Cruder Methods of Control, NOAM CHOMSKY

2. Rivers of Fire: BPAmaco’s impact on Education, KENNETH J. SALTMAN and ROBIN TRUTH GOODMAN

3. Education IS Enforcement: The Centrality of Compulsory Schooling in Market Societies, DAVID A. GABBARD

4. Cracking Down: Chicago School Policy and the Regulation of Black and Latino Youth, PAULINE LIPMAN

5. Facing Oppression: Youth Voices from the Front, PEPI LEISTYNA

6. Tased and Confused: From Social Exclusion to Shock in the War on Youth, CHRISTOPHER G. ROBBINS

7. Freedom for Some, Discipline for “Others”: The Structure of Inequity in Education, ENORA R. BROWN

8. Forceful Hegemony: A Warning and a Solution for Indian Country, FOUR ARROWS

9. From Abstraction and Militarization of Language Education to Society for Language Education: Lessons from Daisaku Ikeda and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, JASON GOULAH

10. The Proliferation of JROTC: Educational Reform or Militarization, MARVIN J. BERLOWITZ and NATHAN A. LONG

11. Combat Girls: What Single-Sex Classrooms Have To Do With the Militarization of Women’s Bodies, ROBIN TRUTH GOODMAN

12. Education for War in Israel: Preparing Children to Accept War as a Natural Factor of Life, HAGGITH GOR

13. Post-Columbine Reflections on Youth Violence as a (Trans)National Movement, JULIE WEBBER

14. Imprisoning Minds: The Violence of Neoliberal Education or “I Am Not For Sale”, SHEILA LANDERS MACRINE

15. Taking Command: The Pathology of Identity and Agency in Predatory Culture, RON SCAPP

16. Commentary on the Rhetoric of Reform: A Twenty Year Retrospective, SANDRA JACKSON

17. Securing the Corporate State: Education, Economism, and Crisis in the Age of Obama, ALEX MEANS

18. Controlling Images: Surveillance, Spectacle, and High-Stakes Testing as Social Control, KEVIN D. VINSON, E. WAYNE ROSS, and JOHN F. WELSH

19. The Politics of Compulsory Patriotism: On the Educational Meanings of September 11, MICHAEL APPLE

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New book: Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education

Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education
New Perspectives for Social Studies Education

Edited by:
Abraham P. DeLeon
University of Texas, San Antonio, USA
and
E. Wayne Ross
University of British Columbia, Canada

Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education: New Perspectives for Social Studies Education begins with the assertion that there are emergent and provocative theories and practices that should be part of the discourse on social studies education in the 21st century. Anarchist, eco-activist, anti-capitalist, and other radical perspectives, such as disability studies and critical race theory, are explored as viable alternatives in responding to current neo-conservative and neo-liberal educational policies shaping social studies curriculum and teaching.

Despite the interdisciplinary nature the field and a historical commitment to investigating fundamental social issues such as democracy, human rights, and social justice, social studies theory and practice tends to be steeped in a reproductive framework, celebrating and sustaining the status quo, encouraging passive acceptance of current social realities and historical constructions, rather than a critical examination of alternatives. These tendencies have been reinforced by education policies such as No Child Left Behind, which have narrowly defined ways of knowing as rooted in empirical science and apolitical forms of comprehension.

This book comes at a pivotal moment for radical teaching and for critical pedagogy, bringing the radical debate occurring in social sciences and in activist circles—where global protests have demonstrated the success that radical actions can have in resisting rigid state hierarchies and oppressive regimes worldwide—to social studies education.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement: Through Collaboration, All Things are Possible

Introduction: On the Edge of History: Towards a New Vision of Social Studies Education
Abraham P. DeLeon and E. Wayne Ross

1. Anarchism, Sabotage, and the Spirit of Revolt: Injecting the Social Studies with Anarchist Potentialities
Abraham P. DeLeon

2. Embattled Pedagogies: Deconstructing Terror from a Transnational Feminist Disability Studies Perspective
Nirmala Erevelles

3. Ecojustice, Community-based Learning, and Social Studies Education
Rebecca A. Martusewicz and Gary R. Schnakenberg

4. Why have School?: An Inquiry through Dialectical Materialism
Rich Gibson

5. Gumbo and Menudo and the Scraps of Citizenship: Interest Convergence and Citizen-making for African Americans and Mexican Americans in U.S. Education
Anthony Brown and Luis Urrieta, Jr.

6. “The Concrete Inversion of Life”: Guy Debord, the Spectacle, and Critical Social Studies Education
Kevin D. Vinson, E. Wayne Ross and Melissa B. Wilson

7. Critically Examining the Past and the “Society of the Spectacle”: Social Studies Education as a Site of Critique, Resistance, and Transformation
Brad J. Porfilio and Michael Watz

8. The Long Emergency: Educating for Democracy and Sustainability during Our Global Crisis
David Hursh

9. Building Democracy through Education: Human Rights and Civic Engagement
William T. Armaline

10. Critical Reflection in the Classroom: Consciousness, Praxis, and Relative Autonomy in Social Studies Education
Wayne Au

11. The Radical and Theoretical in Social Studies
Stephen C. Fleury

Download PDF of book Introduction, Chapters 1 & 2 here.

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Critical Education launches new series: A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation.

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles and items of interest.

This issue launches the Critical Education article series “A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation”, edited by Adam Renner and Doug Selwyn.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,

Sandra Mathison, Co-Editor
E. Wayne Ross, Co-Editor
Critical Education

Critical Education
Vol 1, No 7 (2010)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/18

Articles
——–
A Return to Educational Apartheid?
Adam Renner, Doug Selwyn

Abstract: Series co-editors Renner and Selwyn introduce a special series of articles focusing on the articulation of race, schools, and segregation. Each of the articles in this series will analyze the extent to which schooling may or may not be returning to a state of educational apartheid.

A Separate Education: The Segregation of American Students and Teachers
Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

Abstract: Despite the obvious connection between the two, student and teacher segregation are rarely examined together. To help fill that gap, this essay explores what is known about the extent of interracial exposure for students and teachers in U.S. public schools. This article reviews evidence underscoring the paramount importance of school integration. A description of the legal landscape governing desegregation follows, as well as a discussion of why current patterns of racial isolation persist. The essay next describes the demographics and segregation of today’s students and teachers. In particular, the essay focuses on the growing segregation of students of color, the lingering isolation of white students, and the ways in which the overwhelmingly white teaching force reinforces patterns of student segregation. We close with a discussion of the implications of these trends.

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Battleground Schools

Please pardon this tooting-my-own-horn moment, but I’m very proud that Battleground: Schools, which I co-edited with Sandra Mathison, has won the 2010 Critics Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Association.

Battleground: Schools, which is published by Greenwood Press, was truly a collaborative effort as Sandra and I worked with—and learned a great deal from—the 118 contributors who produced 93 essays, which provide historically situated descriptions of the most salient controversies in schooling during the past century. Never before has such a pre-eminent and diverse group of scholarly perspectives been combined in one collection. The authors each have demonstrated through their publications and research their prominence in their particular area. Many are award-winning scholars. Some are practitioners. No single ideology prevails.

The essays are arranged alphabetically by topic. Each essay summarizes the nature of the controversy, including major players and events relevant to the topic. In a number of cases, timelines of critical events are included. And each essay concludes with readings for further investigation of the topic. The volume concludes with a general bibliography of works that address the topics covered.

You can download a PDF of the front matter of the book here, which includes the Contents, Guide to Related Topics, Preface, and Introduction to the book.

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Rouge Forum Update: Can Rising Resistance Overcome Repression?

Rouge Forum Update: Can Rising Resistance Overcome Repression?

The core issue of our time is the promise of perpetual war and booming inequality met by the potential of mass, class-conscious, resistance.

June 12, 1963: Medgar Evers Assassinated
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Little Red Schoolhouse:

CSU Bosses Demand Another Fee Hike–Students Betrayed by Rep: “The proposal would hike fees by 5% for undergraduate students and those in graduate business programs and 10% for doctoral education students. For full-time undergraduates, that translates to a $204 increase, bringing the total university fee to $4,230 for the 2010-2011 academic year. With campus fees included, the cost for an undergraduate to attend CSU would rise to $5,097. The plan also would eliminate the cap on nonresident tuition, with out-of-state students paying $16,257 for 30 semester units rather than the current $11,160…The CSU Board of Trustees will take up the proposal at a special meeting June 18. Last fall, undergraduate fees rose 32% after the board passed two separate hikes……Though students would prefer no fee hikes, a 5% raise is the best-case scenario, said Steve Dixon, president of the Cal State Student Assn.”

Detroit Mayor Moves to Take Over Schools: “Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is ready to take over city schools when Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb’s contract expires in March.
But the mayor is not going to make any such move without voter approval. A group of community activists and parents are preparing petitions to get the matter on the November ballot.

So Long Neighborhood School–Detroit Closes 32: “DPS, still the largest district in the state, has been hard-hit by continuous enrollment declines throughout the decade. District officials predict enrollment will drop from about 87,000 this year to 79,000 next year and continue to drop to below 57,000 by fall 2014.”

Denby High’s Mini-Thug Principal: “First-time principal Kenyetta Wilbourn, who is 4 foot 11, patrols the halls with a bat called “the Equalizer.” Her tactic came to light April 19 in a Detroit Free Press report. As a result, Denby High School students may venture out into the world with the perception that as a child it is not appropriate to use violence, but as an adult it is appropriate to utilize a bat to terrorize other individuals. Wilbourn’s behavior is inappropriate because it violates the school code of conduct, promotes violence, is a form of child abuse and, most of all, is illegal.”

George Washington (yes) vs Bob Bobb: “Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb said in court today he believed he had the power to forgo feedback to the school board on their academic plan and instead write his own.”

Supremes Love NCLB: “The Supreme Court has turned away a challenge by school districts — led by the Pontiac Public School District — and teacher unions to the federal No Child Left Behind law. The court said without comment Monday that it will not step into a lawsuit that questioned whether public schools have to comply with requirements of the law if the federal government doesn’t pay for them. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit and a federal appeals court split 8-8, leaving the judge’s ruling in place.” From The Detroit News:

How the Young of the Other Half Go to College: “When Allison Frisch goes shopping this summer for furnishings to decorate her freshman dorm room at Stephens College, she will be looking for a comforter for herself — and a matching doggie bed for her roommate.”

RaTT Attacked from the Right (Fish-ing–Pluralism is Crap): (Students should be brought “to see themselves as members of a heterogeneous nation . . . and a still more heterogeneous world, and to understand something of this history of the diverse groups that inhabit it.”

Read the full RF Update here.

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BC Liberals speaking with forked-tongue, again. This time when it comes to “advocacy”

The Vancouver School Board is not giving in to the demands of the BC Ministry of Education to shut up and make $17 million dollars in budget cuts that will result in closed schools, cancelled programs, and teacher layoffs.

The board says it has balanced its budget, as required by law, but to do so it had to make brutal cuts to education programs because its budget of about $480 million is not sufficient to cover rising costs, including salaries, pensions and MSP payments. It estimates its shortfall is about $17 million. But Wenezenki-Yolland concluded the board has sufficient resources to deliver a quality education program but has wasted money through poor governance, a lack of strategic planning and missed opportunities. She suggested several actions to improve the bottom line — including raising rents, cancelling non-core services such as junior kindergarten and closing schools — but Bacchus said the board was already considering such actions.

One of the primary criticisms levelled at the VSB in the Comptroller General’s report is that trustees spend too much time, energy, and resources on “advocacy,” that is lobbying the government for increased funding that will improve teaching and learning conditions in Vancouver schools. The Comptroller General and Minister of Education want the trustees to make “cost containment” their number one priority.

Fiscal responsibility and advocating for adequate funding is not an “either/or” choice. VSB chair Patti Bacchus and the majority of trustees understand this. But as this piece in the Vancouver Courier makes clear, the ministry wants the trustees to act like bureaucrats and just do what they’re told. For some reason government (and at least a couple of the trustees) think there’s no place for advocacy or “politics” in education. That’s either an extremely naive or disingenuous understanding of what democracy is all about, as Paul Shaker and I point out in our comments to the the Courier.

So, BC Liberals castigate the VSB trustees for doing what many promised in their election campaigns—advocating for the district by resisting chronic underfunding of the education system and downloading of costs. While at the same time BC Liberals spend billions of taxpayer dollars on propaganda about how their neoliberal economic policies (that allow a handful of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit) are good for the rest of us. There’s more than a little irony in the decision by Elections BC that the government’s HST propaganda violates the law.

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VSB v. BC Ministry of Education or how neoliberalism operates in your own backyard

“Think globally and act locally” may be trite catchphrase, but thinking globally can give us insight into the current feud between the Vancouver School Board and the Ministry of Education.

Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the VSB criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. [Download the special advisor’s report here.]

What kind of governing principles demand “cost containment” as the prime concern of those charged with meeting the educational needs of our children? It’s called neoliberal globalization. It is the prevailing economic paradigm in today’s world and references something everyone is familiar with—policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit.

The main points of neoliberalism will sound familiar to anyone who has paid attention to provincial government decisions on B.C. Rail or the HST:

  • Rule of the market, that is, liberating free enterprise from any restrictions imposed by government, no matter the social damage that results;
  • Cutting public expenditures for social services;
  • Reduction of government regulation that might diminish profits;
  • Privatization, selling government-owned enterprises to private investors; and
  • Concepts of “the public good” or “community” are eliminated, replaced with “individual responsibility.”

The structure of the provincial funding model for education follows from these basic tenets.

The VSB, indeed all school boards and other social services in the province, are now subject to the rule of the market, thus justifying “cost containment” as the first priority of those mandated to deliver education to the public. In this context, education is treated like any other commodity. Free market competition is viewed as the route to assure a quality product. And “efficiency” or “cost containment” is prized.

In B.C., government retains its authority over public education, but no longer undertakes the responsibility of assuring the educational well-being of the public. Instead, this responsibility is devolved to individual school boards.

It is no accident that when the province appointed the special advisor to examine the Vancouver board’s budget processes, it specifically excluded the key issue raised by the trustees and every other school board in the province, the structure of the provincial funding model for education.

School boards are now expected to become part of the market by relegating the educational needs of their communities and making the financial bottom-line the first priority. The recent trend in B.C. educational policy makes this point clear. School districts have been encouraged to create business companies to sell the Dogwood diploma overseas. Lack of provincial funding has forced school and district PACs into extensive funding-raising, accounting for almost 2 per cent of district operating budgets province-wide. International student tuitions are such a major source of income growth for some school districts that government has assigned a deputy minister to coordinate the sale of B.C. education internationally.

And now the special advisor’s report recommends that the VSB close schools, cancel programs, fire teachers, and raise rental rates on non-profit organizations that provide services, such as after-school care, which are in short supply.

The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in B.C. reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs.

[For an informative overview of how neoliberal globalization works in schools see: Schuetze, H. G., et al., (2010). Globalization, neoliberalism and schools: The Canadian story. In C. A. Torres, L. Olmos, R. Van Heertum (Eds.), Educating the global citizen: Globalization, education reform, and the politics of equity and inclusion. Oak Park, IL: Bentham eBooks. Ross, E. W., & Gibson, R. (2007). Neoliberalism and education reform. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.]

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Anarchism in the academy

9780415474023

Education Review has just published Cory Maly’s review of Contemporary Anarchist Studies edited by Randall Amster, Abraham DeLeon, Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, and Deric Shannon.

I highly recommend the book and Maly’s review, which frames the book quite well in relation to current issues and debates on education reform. I used parts of Contemporary Anarchist Studies in my curriculum theory seminar this past year and was really pleased by the depth of debate and discussion it stimulated.

Obviously anarchism is gaining some traction among a small, but growing circle of education scholars. As evidenced by this book and several new or recently announced projects including:

Critical Education‘s series on “The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research”, which is edited by Abe DeLeon has published two articles in the past several months, with more in works.

DeLeon is also guest editing a special issue of Educational Studies titled “Anarchism…is a living force with our life…”: Anarchism, Education, and New Possibilities. Download the call for papers here.

And, Robert Haworth (U of Wisconsin, La Crosse) has recently circulated a call for chapter proposals to be included in the book, Anarchist Pedagogies to be published by PM Press

This edited book calls on international scholars (15 single authored or collectively authored chapters) in anarchist studies to critically reflect on historical and contemporary experimentations in anarchist pedagogies. Scholarly efforts will focus on what we have learned from past anarchist experiences and current transformative learning environments — where individuals are engaged in collective, participatory, voluntary and mutual efforts that contest global capitalist structures.

The edited collection responds to the need to reflect on anarchist pedagogies and will highlight three major themes. Authors in the first section will be encouraged to focus on historical discussions surrounding anarchism and education. The authors will give introspective critiques of historical practices, including theories of teaching and learning and alternatives to compulsory public schools. Authors in the second section will construct philosophical and theoretical frameworks evolving from contemporary anarchists, particularly through individuals participating in cooperatives, independent media collectives, infoshops, political zines, open source projects, DIY, direct action networks and other autonomous and cultural spaces.

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