engaged intellectuals

This article was first printed in the Atlantic Monthly in June and then reprinted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (where I first read it) on Sunday June 15, 2008. There’s already a bit of discussion about the article on blogs including Education and Class and Mike Rose’s blog so I have to add some here myself.

As you read the article and various comments related to it, think about social class, opportunity, privilege, and marginalization. And don’t forget Power. The anonymous writer who describes himself as an adjunct working two jobs claims he doesn’t want to seem “classist” like the Brits or “sexist” but yet continues to paint a picture of his first-year-college-students (and perhaps first-generation college students) as uneducated, disengaged, and unable to absorb even the most simple concepts from his course. Never once does he consider that it might be his own “deficits” (a word he claims to like) about teaching and learning and his own underpreparedness and miseducation that might have led him to this impasse with the students sitting in his class.

Isn’t it just like the archetype “teacher” in our society to fail at teaching and then blame the students?

Get a grip pal. The second job you took on to pay your bills is one that comes with much privilege and power and it seems you are failing miserably at using yours in the best interest of hopeful, faithful, tuition-paying students who are looking to you for some leadership, guidance, and education. When did teaching stop being inspirational? Motivational? Energizing?

If you just needed a second job, go get one where you’re not messing with people’s lives.

Truth is, you are classist, just like most folks in the U.S., and it sounds like you are doing much more damage than good to the students, their experiences with institutions, and to the institution itself.

Do us all a favor: learn to teach or get out.

And don’t write anonymous articles that only further inscribe society’s classist perceptions of success, failure, and the value of human beings.

This story about the lives of elevators in the New Yorker last week is fabulously written and reminded me of how a simple observation in the world “wow - a man was stuck in an elevator for 41 hours” can turn in to an in-depth inquiry. If I had been conducting this research, I would have incorporated more issues around labor regarding elevators (installation, technicians, operators, etc.) as well as some of the challenges various elevator workers have faced across time and in different parts of the country/world. Alas, it wasn’t my piece, so I found myself content with the incredibly engaging style of writing, the movement between technological information about elevators and the urinating man stuck inside one, and my own envisioning of the animal-like organs always at work inside the steel, wood, stucco, brick, and glass structures we have built around us.

Even kindergarteners can turn a simple observation into a lengthy inquiry…we just have to take the observation seriously and recognize the yet-unearthed understandings waiting to be created from it. Well, and also provide the space, time, and resources for allowing students to do such research

For you folks around the Cincinnati area - the first ever Gender and Education Regional Teacher Conference will be held on Tuesday May 13, 2008. It would be great to see some of you there!

This movie sounds fab!

If I get a chance to see it I’ll post my own tidbit…

Call for Papers
Gender and Education Association 7th International Conference

Theme: Gender: Regulation and Resistance in Education
25-27 March 2009, Institute of Education, University of London

Keynote speakers

Deborah Britzman Raewyn Connell Gloria Ladson-Billings

Plenary Panel 1: Intersectionality, Black, British Feminism and
resistance in educational research

Suki Ali Heidi Mirza Ann Phoenix

Plenary Panel 2: Regulation, resistance and activism: troubling margin
and centre
Bagele Chilisa Sylvia Grinberg Grace Livingston

* How do education and gender regulate?
* How do we theorize, research, talk about and enact resistances
to regulatory practices and gendered power relations in education?

These questions and the conference theme, Gender: Regulation and
Resistance in Education, invite engagement with gender and feminism at
every level of educational practice, including politics, theorizing,
policy creation, research methodologies, pedagogical engagement and
grass-roots activism. The conference draws together an exceptional
range of international speakers working at the cutting edge of
feminist and gender theory and research, and political and
educational activism, including those who are resisting current
contexts of neo-liberal economic reform and increasing global
disparities. Our goal is to create a space for dialogue about gender
and education that spans disciplinary, theoretical, political and
national boundaries.

Proposals

We invite proposals for contributions that critically explore
questions relating to issues of gender regulation and resistance in
education.

These may include the following:
* Power/Governance
* Politics/Policy
* Neo-liberalism/

Neo-Conservativism
* Standards agendas in education
* Histories, genealogies of gender
* Religion, nationality, citizenship
* Globalization /Marketization
* Community /Activism/Struggle
* Agency/ Structure/Subjectivity
* Pedagogy and curriculum
* Primary, secondary schooling
* Higher, further education
* Intersectionalities, race, class, gender, age
* Psychosocial approaches
* Gender, disability, inclusion
* Sexuality and queer theory

The papers might engage with these themes from a variety of fields and
areas of study:

* Feminist Studies
* Women’s Studies
* Queer Studies
* Sociology
* Health
* History
* Literature
* Philosophy
* Cultural Studies
* Media Studies
* Postcolonial Studies
* Development Studies
* Social/Educational Policy Studies

Session Formats
We are interested in a diverse range of formats and welcome proposals
for:
* Papers
* Symposiums
* Interactive Sessions
* Performance pieces
* Roundtables or Posters

Workshops

We are also interested in hearing from anyone who wishes to organise a
stream/theme that runs through the conference.

Education Practitioners

We are keen to include education practitioners in the conference as
presenters and participants. We will be pleased to receive proposals
from education practitioners for standard conference format sessions
(such as papers and symposium) or for more innovative/interactive
sessions such as roundtable discussions and workshops. We are also
looking for proposals for sessions that will be of interest to
education practitioners.

Students

We will be holding a student networking session, for student teachers,
undergraduates, graduates, postgraduates, postdocs and researchers.
The session will address concerns around doing gender research and
finding career paths in gender and education. This session will have a
question/answer component with leaders in the Gender and Education
field in collaboration with the student and postdoctoral reps at GEA.

Submitting proposals

Proposals should offer a summary of the presentation/session being
proposed, including a short rational for the focus and indicting any
conceptual framing and empirical material to be covered or activities
to be undertaken. Proposals for single papers, posters, roundtables,
etc should be no more that one side of A4 (approx 300 words).
Proposals for larger sessions, such as symposium or workshops may be
up to 2 sides of A4 (approx 600 words). We anticipate a standard
allocation of 20 minutes per presentation and 80 minutes per session,
however, we are open to proposals that suggest alternative uses of
time - please state this clearly in your submission.

Please include:
title; author name(s);
institutional affiliation/country; technical requirements.

Closing date for abstracts: 30 September 2008
Send submissions to: genderandeducation09@ioe.ac.uk
Further details are available at: www.ioe.ac.uk/

fps/genderconference09

I was in a kindergarten classroom this morning where children are not allowed to make any noise for two and a half hours each day for three days for fear of disturbing the testing classrooms next door. Instead of their usual greetings, sharing, mingling during their creative projects, and moving about the room - the way kindergarteners and other students need to do - they are watching videos. Instead of engaging in rich curricular work, they sit silently at tables.

Kindergarten is not tested in this school.

But the kindergarteners are. Their experiences are yet another one of the “unintended consequences” of a high-stakes testing regime in our country. And they know the “big kids” are taking a “big test” and everything needs to be silent. So the kids taking tests can’t think of anything but the tests - and the kids supporting the “silence” for the test takers can’t think of anything but the tests.

More “collateral damage” done by the billion dollar testing machine wreaking havoc in our schools and on our future as an educated, engaged democracy.

We know tests are biased and advantage students from English-speaking, White middle-class and affluent homes.

We know schools and teachers have narrowed curricula to focus explicitly on the high-stakes test-preparation areas of reading and math often leaving behind science, social studies, language development, fine arts, physical education, and project-based experiences.

We know children vomit on testing days, teachers have insomnia, and principals are stressed to the max.

We know children, teachers, principals, and parents cry when a score comes back only 1 or 2 points below proficient.

We know test-preparation has dumbed down curricula and bored our students (and teachers) to death.

We know so much  more…

WHY DO WE KEEP DOING THIS?!

I modestly propose three steps toward change:

1. Find colleagues and community members to read and discuss Collateral Damage

2. Contact your local, state, and federal representatives and encourage them to read Collateral Damage (perhaps we could even buy an extra copy to send out to folks - or photocopy the first chapter and mail to them)

3. Start a local, grassroots campaign to “End High-Stakes Testing and AYP Sanctions”

Find some others concerned about the same issues:

No NCLB

Susan Ohanian

Anti-NCLB Legislation

Awesome Anti-NCLB merchandise

Only recently have I turned my ear toward the discourse of “why” students need or should want an education. I’m stunned, however, by the saturation of the topic with the “to get a good job” discourse.  Most of you out there are likely reading this wondering what rock I’ve been hiding under…but here I am shaking my head in bewilderment wondering what business second graders, fourth graders, sixth graders have thinking their whole life of schooling is for a “job.”

After being in many classrooms, talking to teachers and my university students about what education is for, and hearing many parent-child and teacher-student conversations like “stay in school…get a good job” from all social class backgrounds, I’m trying my best to insert some equally-important options within this otherwise authoritative discourse on what education is for:

What about creativity? Can education be about learning to create? Learning the possibilities of what a creative mind and body can do?

What about social action? Can education be learning about social injustices and working to organize and change those injustices?

What about self-fulfillment? Can education be finding something that makes us happy, filled with passion, willing to work and work at it because it’s fulfilling in and of itself?

What about the journey of becoming a whole person? Can education be about learning and doing in ways that helps me continue on the journey to become a whole person, with knowledge about myself, my history, my shared experiences with others, my interests, my dreams - and the know-how to follow those dreams (whatever they may be)?

What about freedom? Can education be about studying, researching, gaining knowledge and multiple perspectives of that knowledge to be emotionally and intellectually free from the oppressive structures in our society? And to work against anti-freedom practices, beliefs, structures.

These are just a few possibilities off the top of my head - I’d love to hear about others that have been, and can be, overtly inserted into the discourse of education. It would be great if children, teachers, adults, and all of us could have a robust vocabulary around what education is for…beyond getting “a good job.” All good jobs, my friends, don’t lead toward feeling whole, fulfilled, powerful, etc. In fact, many jobs don’t. So let’s let education be a place where the “job” doesn’t restrict ideas of what a person can be.

Karen Spector gave a fabulous invited talk to students in my undergrad course (integrated curriculum) at UGA last week. Two days before her talk we viewed Paper Clips, the popular documentary about a school in Tennessee that engaged the Holocaust for four years and included a school-community, local-global social action project resulting in a permanent memorial being constructed at the school. The memorial is now used as a site for educational tours which are planned and guided by middle school students.

As a class we were looking at the film from the perspective of an integrated curricular experience that lasted a long period of time and we asked questions about what subject areas were integrated and how, what further integration might have taken place, whose perspectives are represented in the Holocaust study and whose perspectives were missing, what tenets of critical literacy were apparent, how the students came to study the Holocaust, etc.

Karen offered us more questions to ask ourselves:

Why are the “ghosts of the Holocaust” regularly awakened for “us” (whoever that may         be) to learn about tolerance?

What might have been learned if the students had moved their study of intolerance and         hatred to their local contexts and researched the community to better understand             why there weren’t Jews, Catholics, African Americans, or Latinos living there?

What might have been learned if the students studied the history of Anti-Semitism in             Christianity?

What symbolism is employed in the film (crosses, paper clips, rail car, etc.), and how                 can that symbolism be read from multiple perspectives?

One of the questions, “Why are the ghosts of the Holocaust regularly awakened…for the study of tolerance?” has stuck with me for some time (Karen and I are friends, so I’ve heard this before;). Some of my undergraduates had fabulous insight when responding to the question including thoughts such as the U.S. can be portrayed as a “savior” of sorts since many soldiers were involved in the liberation of many concentration camps (albeit 6 million people too late), that the hatred and intolerance of the Holocaust can be couched as historic and therefore a lesson we’ve already learned (ignoring ongoing genocide and human rights violations around the world…including serious hatred and intolerance in our own country), and an overall furthering of “us” versus “them” who would allow such tragedies to take place to begin with.

So…why is it that the Holocaust is awakened for our own purposes? And should we continue to do so?

The French President seems to believe the ghosts of the youngest victims should be awakened in ways that would mark the education of every fifth grader in France.

And other stories have been asking for years what we’re doing about the present-day holocaust in Africa. Perhaps much like the Jewish Holocaust, stories of murders by the millions remain “Buried by the Times” while we educate our children about the horrible tragedies that happened long before their births.

There are so many ways to study, understand, and do something about hatred and intolerance - both local and global ways - and this website offers some great ideas.

Fight hatred.

Fight bias.

Fight.

Turning Assumptions into Inquiries
Kyle’s teacher has had much training (both socially and, perhaps, through formal education) in recognizing “problems” with students, diagnosing those problems, and remediating those problems. For his teacher, a lack of engagement in school reading and writing was immediately read as a coping strategy for a learning disability that was yet to be diagnosed and remediated. To further complicate things, recent media attention to violence in schools had placed pressure on teachers to analyze student artwork and writing in particular to recognize and flag any indication that a student may have psychopathic tendencies that may, hypothetically, result in some kind of violent behaviors. Kyle’s teacher, then, has been persistently positioned as someone who must be on the look-out for problems.
The simple question, “What does Kyle say about his drawings?” aims at turning-around a teacher’s positioning, to go to students for information about what’s going on in their schooling experiences rather than relying on outside forces to “frame” and then label a student’s performance in a classroom. This turning around of a teacher’s positioning toward inquirer of students can lead to turning around classroom pedagogy, which can lead to turning around a student’s trajectory as a reader that is headed in the wrong direction.

The following Wednesday this same concerned, frustrated, well-intended teacher on the verge of reporting a student for violent tendencies in his drawings and going to special educators to begin a process to have him identified as learning disabled, came prancing into her professional development group with a writer’s notebook in her hand. Smiling from ear to ear she reached the notebook to me and enthusiastically said, “He is totally into Anime.”

“Ohhhhh,” I said, knowingly.

“And when I told him I didn’t know what that was, he couldn’t believe it. He wrote a fourteen-page informational narrative all about Anime.”

“Ohhhhh?” I said, raising my eyebrows and smiling.

This fifth grade teacher experienced, in her own words, a great epiphany during
her conversation with Kyle: “I am making assumptions about students I don’t really know.” Turning her position around from problem-finder and problem-solver to that of inquirer, interviewer, curious investigator changed this teacher’s perception of herself, her job, and her students.

Kyle: Learning from a fifth grade reader who can’t find space for his interests

Kyle, a quiet and thoughtful fifth grade African American boy in an urban public school, drew in his writer’s notebook every day. In fact, while the other thirty-three students in his classroom were busy writing something in their notebooks each day, Kyle continued to draw page after page of human-like figures in various poses and wearing various kinds of attire. He was a prolific artist and demonstrated so in his notebook without a single written word accompanying his drawings. His fifth grade teacher was frustrated with him and his lack of engagement in writing (which crossed over to reading as well) and in a conversation with me as a staff developer in her school she reported that Kyle was “resistant” and was probably trying to mask a “learning disability” by focusing on his artwork instead of writing because he also “struggled” in reading. Additionally, the teacher reported that she was considering reporting Kyle and his artwork to the principal because she perceived them to be violent in nature. Kyle was drawing semi-human, cartoon-like characters with swords, blood dripping from the occasional wound on a body, and the characters were often in sparring-like stances with fists clenched and feet ready to kick. The teacher said that though Kyle had never exhibited any violent tendencies in class that this artwork may be the workings of something going on inside him, and that these terrible thoughts should be officially reported to the principal, the psychologist, his family, and maybe to the local police. In addition to Kyle not writing a single word during the first month of school in writing workshop, he had drawn himself into a pathology – one that was being read by his teacher as struggling academically, resistant to reading and writing, an unidentified learning disability, potentially dangerous, and reason for official reporting.

And then came the turn-around for Kyle’s teacher…

When that concerned, well-intended, frustrated teacher finished telling me about Kyle she waited with wide eyes, hoping that she had found the person with a magical answer to all the problems she saw in Kyle and his classroom practices. Instead of offering a solution I asked the first question that came to mind: “What does Kyle say about his drawings?”
The young teacher looked at me quizzically, “I don’t know.”
Genuinely surprised I asked, “You haven’t asked him?”
The teacher responded, “No. Should I?”
“Of course. We can’t know where to go from here until we start to understand what this artwork is doing for him.”
Kyle’s teacher agreed to have an open-ended conference with him during the week and bring what she learned back to me the following week.