Social justice and the school-- radical or practical?

In 1932, social activist and educator Dr. George S. Counts wrote a series of three pamphlets on the state of education and would significantly change the perceived roles of the teacher within this realm. The most notable of these pamphlets was titled "Dare the School Build a New Social Order?" and was given as a challenging speech to the Progressive Education Association in Baltimore. 

His message is simple: Dr. Counts wanted teachers to lead society instead of following society. He wanted schools to become a place of community development instead of a place of community coercion. In turn, schools would become places that fostered an environment for children and youth to become leaders in their own right-- informed, educated, and confident members of society, ready to take on and participate in a true democracy (maybe even a government based on the principals of Democratic Socialism? *GASP*). 

Counts even goes as far to suggest that teachers should not only be concerned with school matters but also political, economic, and moral matters. The latter is certainly a questionable point, but for the sake of brevity I would like to believe that in today's time it would mean to promote true multiculturalism, respect, and tolerance for those of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual/gender orientations, classes, etc. 

Counts believed that Americans schools specifically needed to pay close attention to the struggles of progressive forces such as labor unions, farmers' organizations, and minority groups which were extremely active in protest during this time. Teachers and schools could be at the forefront of joining groups that wanted to help change society, set the example for their students, and help set the stage for solving major issues that would lead to a new social order. Thinking about the global uprisings of 2011, I can't think of a more pertinent time to start thinking about these ideals again (see: "Year of Global Uprisings, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street: A Special Look Back at 2011" http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/2/year_of_global_uprisings_from_the).

I am very passionate about education policy reform, specifically steering education policy in the direction of social justice. By this, I mean that I believe that we should make schools places of welfare for students, their families, and the surrounding communities. Schools should not just be a place where it is mandatory that children go to for six to eight hours a day by law, but more of a family and community center, a place that encourages growth of mind, body, and spirit. I believe that students, to an extent, should be able to take ownership in the classroom (when I say to an extent, I am referring to a case where the child does not want to learn something simply because they don’t like it or find it too challenging). I believe in teaching a broad curriculum, including subjects like arts that allow for self-expression and vocational studies that allow students to learn a trade or a skill (Armstrong and Savage, 2009, p. 266).

This curriculum should be based on worldviews and philosophy, not just content from the Western canon. However, if goals are not put into a tangible plan with some kind of measurable outcomes, the plan for schools to be both a place of education and social welfare can become ineffective. It is very important, therefore, to properly place the roles in the curriculum, classroom, and teacher.  I am in favor that schools are a place to teach critical thinking skills that would help re-shape society, not just a place to “transfer” what knowledge, cultural heritage, and moral values that happen to be considered the norm. In many cases, even if they are not consciously done, this is how prejudice of every kind is taught to children, including but not limited to: racism, classism, sexism, cultural imperialism, etc. Students must be given the space to view their surrounding world and make sense of it on their own terms, so that they might be the most effective vessels of change possible.

Ideally, to make the school a place for community involvement and welfare, the school would begin as a place for the family. When students do not have the support of the family, that's when it becomes of even more importance that the school becomes a center of welfare. While I was living in South Africa, I had a chance to visit and volunteer at such an institution near the VVOCF center (check out my 2008 archived posts for more info). Just as a quick refresher, in 2008 I worked at an orphan care center called Vumundzuku-Bya Vana Our Children’s Future (VVOCF), in Zonkezizwe, South Africa. The center provides a number of services to children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS, such as providing access to clothing, health care, and hot meals. There are also organized activities for the children and youth in the area of English, HIV/AIDS prevention, art, and sports.The main goal of the center is to provide a safe place for the children to let loose and just be kids, as well as have access to essential needs.

I would very much like to follow in the footsteps of George Counts, John Dewey, and Paulo Freire, and explore how schools can become a more integral part of the community as well as how education can both serve as a means to raise critical consciousness among our youth. Future research interests of mine include qualitative studies based on some of my experiences with the aforementioned students. I became very interested in the school system in the country after speaking with my children and youth. Most of the South African students are living in abject poverty, and are made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS somehow in their lives. They are all such beautiful, bright, and energetic children with large hopes and dreams; however, their circumstances in life are making their goals hard to reach.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has had a major influence on every sector in society, but notably a massive impact on South Africa’s education sector. Children and their families are finding themselves turning to schools for help that other social services cannot provide. The school can be a place to learn and grow, to find protection from the problems of every day life. It can be a way to help break the cycle of poverty and disease, and becomes a place that not only nourishes the body, but the soul as well. Those young people who are able to make it through to a higher education have a better chance at helping bringing themselves and their families out of poverty. It is not easy for them because of all their obstacles, but the ones that do the best are ones that have access to schools that act as a part of the community, and provide for the children. I would like to explore how schools can provide for the needs of their most vulnerable children, going past the idea of what a traditional school does, and become a bigger part of the community. My studies would be focusing on some of these potential research questions: How are schools helping these children who are so desperately looking for a better quality of life? What are schools currently doing or not doing in this respect? How does HIV/AIDS get in the way of these dreams, and what are the realities of educational policy today in South Africa? What more can schools do to accommodate learners made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS?

References: 

Armstrong, D. G., Henson, K. T., Savage T.V. (2009). Teaching today: An introduction to education (Eighth ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

  

Dare the School Build a New Social Order on Google Books-- http://books.google.com/books?id=834RmjyjK6MC&dq=isbn:0809308789

No Child Left Behind up for revision in 2011... what does it mean for our most vulnerable students?

In 2002, the realm of education, which is usually considered a state's right to fund, regulate, and implement was met with a federal mandate. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) became a very important piece of federal legislation that would change the way the American school system functioned throughout the decade up until the present. NCLB required school districts to measure the achievement of their students in several different ways, aggressively encouraging individual schools to meet state standards with penalties for not making yearly progress (Armstrong, 2009, p. 72-73). Such penalties include reducing funding given to schools, allowing parents to take students out of the public school and move them to another school at the previous school's expense, the termination of “unqualified” teachers, among others (Armstrong, 2009, p. 73). The legislation sounds reasonable enough--weed out “bad” teachers, hold schools to higher academic achievement standards, and provide every student with the opportunity to get the best education possible; however, as the years unfold, this is not always the reality.

Great opposition toward NCLB policies have manifested since its inception due to the negative affects is has not only on state education systems, but individual schools and classrooms as well. The many studies done over the past nine years show the same results: NCLB takes very little into account when it comes to students considered to be racial, ethnic, and cultural minorities (Armstrong, 2009, p. 72). These students are the ones suffering the most as their schools are consistently getting their funding cut, the salaries and therefore the moral of many teachers cut, their reputation slandered, and consequently, these students are the ones not so ironically left behind. It is no secret that the darker your skin color, the more likely you are to live in poverty, thanks to the economic system of capitalism and its fatal relationship with racism (I would highly recommend this article for those of you who are curious: www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/racismcs.pdf). NCLB and its funding cuts, which are mainly in underachieving schools, which are mainly located in areas of great poverty, are further putting children who come from any sort of racial, ethnic, or cultural background behind in their, extenuating the vicious cycle of poverty into which they were born. The results of this are unacceptable, and I cannot stress the urgency of revision and consideration of this matter when NCLB is undergoing review this year. The policy is hurting the very children it is supposedly designed to help. 

The Center on Education Policy (CEP) (2010) analyzed U.S. Department of Education data from all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and reported that 33% of the nation's schools and 36% of the nation's school districts did not make the adequate yearly progress (AYP) NCLB required in 2009 (p. 1). It was a slight increase from 2006, but a decrease from 2008 (CEP, 2010, p. 1). The report also found that the percentages of schools as well as districts that did not make their adequate yearly progress fluctuated within states and across the nation; a curious finding considering NCLB aims to increase these numbers yearly by 2014 (Armstrong, 2009; CEP, 2010). Such variation in numbers could be due to a number of reasons. 

The debate over No Child Left Behind continues, as it is up for revisions and reauthorizing. It leaves one with many questions: What right has the federal government to create and implement legislation like NCLB if education is a state's right? If NCLB is federal, how does that translate into having to meet "state standards?” Who gets to decide these standards for states and individual schools? If the majority of findings are showing that NCLB is not an affective tool for educational improvement, why would it be reauthorized? And ultimately, will the changes that are being applied to the legislation be adequate enough to justify said reauthorizing? The discussion is happening now, with limited input allowed from states, school districts, schools, teachers, and students alike. Will the new No Child Left Behind be a democratic, all-inclusive educational policy, or will it continue to eat away at the American educational experience? How will our students, despite racial, ethnic, religious, gender/sexual orientation, or physical ability, fit into the new plan? We must be sure that these children's needs are accommodated so that they are able to achieve academic excellence, anything short of that is unacceptable.

Policy makers and stakeholders in education, beware. The people are listening, and we won't stand for mediocre decisions regarding our children, our future, much longer!

References:

Amrein-Beardsley, A. (2009, June 22). The unintended, pernicious consequences of "staying the course" on the United State's No Child Left Behind policy. International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership, 4(6), 1-13.

Armstrong, D. G., Henson, K. T., Savage T. V. (2009). Teaching today: An introduction to education (Eighth ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
 

Braun, H., Chapman, L., & Vezzu, S. (2010, September). The black-white achievement gap revisited. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 18(21), 1-42.

How many schools and districts have not made adequate yearly progress? Four-year trends. (2010, December). Center On Education Policy, 1-10.

U.S. Department of Education. (2009, July). The effects of teachers trained through different routes to certification. In National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.

Bias and Social Psychology in Education and Life... where is the balance?

I was recently asked a question by a collegue of mine that got me thinking quite deeply about the issue of "racism," and what it really means in today's society. With so much confusion surrounding terms like "equal opportunity employer," or 'affirmative action" and a growing idea of being able to use race as an excuse to get away with just about anything (note: this statement is not representive of an entire group of people, but individuals who happen to identify with one group or another that are invoking ideas of special entitlements due to their race), I think it's important to address that each of us are responsible for our own success in life. It is also crucial that we understand that certain groups of people, especially racial and ethnic minorities, are systematically held back from "pulling theselves up by the bootstraps" for lack of a better term by systems of racism and classim. The challenge is how we overcome these barries to ensure everyone equal footing in life.

The question, including a brief story putting the question into context was as follows:

"I agree with you, Nicole that 'Blackness' isn't just skin color but, rather, ideology and oppression. The negative thing about being black in the US isn't the skin color but the oppression. Sadly, there are some people (of all skin colors) who don't really want to take responsibility and, when things don't go their way, they blame it on their skin color/gender/age/disability and so on. I was head of a university's Special Ed department a few years ago and after I denied entry to one student, he came to my office and started shouting at me for being racist. He said that I'd have let him in if he'd been white. I told him I'd lived (very happily) in Africa for a few years and his response was that I was probably only there to learn how much I hated blacks!! He had a very hard time accepting that he was denied entry because his GPA was too low.

One of the problems is that prejudice exist and there are many instances when people from different cultural groups ARE discriminated against. How do we teach students to take responsibility for their own success and balance that with the fact that, sometimes, people stand in the way of them succeeding because of prejudice and not ability?"

My answer:

To answer the question, well, the truth is, there is no easy answer. Unfortunately, most of that social conditioning comes from outside of school. When a child is surrounded by that kind of thinking constantly-- one of entitlement and a misunderstanding of racism-- in their neighborhoods, with family, and with friends, it is so hard to reverse. I've actually done a lot of thinking about this, because I may encounter it in my classroom someday with I met up with this kind of thinking from the young African American men I helped mentor from Malcolm X academy in Detroit, Michigan. We mentors tried to work alongside the school and its tradition of teaching racial consciousness and responsibility for one's own success, but I can tell you, it was not easy to get through to some of the young men.  It was even harder for me, a white female born of privilege to have the kids see that I was there for the right reasons. I wasn’t there to “save them.” I was there to share what privilege I had, i.e. knowledge and education to empower them to make a life of substance for themselves.

What I found was most useful actually, was teaching the history of social movements, and the history of struggle African Americans faced. Many of the kids were ignorant of that history, and when it was taught to them, I could see their thought patterns switch. They began to realize how much so many people scarified to help them get the rights they have today. They also saw the theory behind what these revolutionaries were doing-- they did not want entitlement or special treatment, they wanted the respect that was due to them as human beings. They were demanding that their basic needs be met: that of food, water, shelter, education, and health care, etc. The students began to respect that more and more, and helped them build tolerance and respect for all people, because essentially we are all striving for the same things. Our lessons also focused on the fact that certain groups in society have unearned privileges, especially those who are considered “Caucasian” or “White.” There are constructive ways to deal and interact with people who are privileged in those ways that do not have to include disrespect or intolerance, which in reality just exacerbates the vicious cycle of racism and reverse racism between everyone. Those ways are based in the theory of properly understanding the nexus between racism and capitalism, as well as helping students understand that not everyone is “out to get them.” I am a strong believer that if one knows where they have been (and in this case, ‘they’ can mean the predecessors of the racial, ethnic, etc. group that the individual identifies with), one will have a better sense of where one is going and where one can go.

The problem… this kind of critical thinking isn’t taught in most schools, whether they be public or private. How do we get more of that put into the curriculum, and how do we train more teachers to help them understand the value of adding such conversations to the classroom? Also, how do we incorporate this kind of learning to fit the needs of all students who fit under the “multicultural” category?