Ideology, Discourse, and School Reform (Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series)

Ideology, Discourse, and School Reform ZEUS LEONARDO PRAEGER Ideology, Discourse, and School Reform CRITICAL STUDI...

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Ideology, Discourse, and School Reform

ZEUS LEONARDO

PRAEGER


CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION AND CULTURE SERIES Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education Mark Olssen Revolutionary Social Transformation: Democratic Hopes, Political Possibilities, and Critical Education Paula Allman Critical Reflection and the Foreign Language Classroom Terry A. Osborn Community in Motion: Theatre for Development in Africa L. Dale Byam Nietzsche’s Legacy for Education: Past and Present Values Michael Peters, James Marshall, and Paul Smeyers, editors Rituals, Ceremonies, and Cultural Meaning in Higher Education Kathleen Manning Political Relationship and Narrative Knowledge: A Critical Analysis of School Authoritarianism Peter B. Armitage Education, Literacy, and Humanization: Exploring the Work of Paulo Freire Peter Roberts Critical Education against Global Capitalism: Karl Marx and Revolutionary Critical Education Paula Allman Theory and Resistance in Education: Towards a Pedagogy for the Opposition, Revised and Expanded Edition Henry A. Giroux Social Movements, Civil Society, and Radical Adult Education John D. Holst Knowledge, Gender, and Schooling: The Feminist Educational Thought of Jane Roland Martin D. G. Mulcahy


ZEUS LEONARDO

Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series Edited by Henry A. Giroux

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Leonardo, Zeus, 1968– Ideology, discourse, and school reform / Zeus Leonardo. p. cm.—(Critical studies in education and culture series, ISSN 1064–8615) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–89789–901–6 (alk. paper) 1. Critical pedagogy–United States. 2. Educational change—United States. 3. Postmodernism and education—United States. I. Title. II. Series. LC196.5—U6L46 2003 370'.11'5—dc21 2003042095 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2003 by Zeus Leonardo All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003042095 ISBN: 0–89789–901–6 ISSN: 1064–8615 First published in 2003 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments Series Foreword

vii ix

1

School Reform, Inquiry, and the Problem of Domination

2

Ideology and School Reform: Toward a Three-Dimensional Theory

21

Discourse and the Problem of Change: Toward a Critique of the Sign of Reform

53

Ideology Critique as Method: The Problem of Interpreting Relations of Domination

75

5

The Tropes of Inquiry: Ideology as Symbolic System

87

6

The Evasions of Inquiry: Ideology as Distortion

129

7

The Projections of Inquiry: Ideology as Utopic Vision

185

8

School Reform and the Uses of Ideology Critique

233

3 4

1

Bibliography

245

Index

259

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without grants from the Annenberg Foundation and Donor X. I would like to thank Jeannie Oakes, Don Nakanishi, Renee Smith-Maddox, and Jack Kolb for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. In addition, I would like to thank Michael Peters and Cameron McCarthy for their support of the book and its intellectual project. My good friend and colleague Ricky Lee Allen, provided me with insights over the years that helped clarify my vision for the book. Last, special thanks goes to Peter McLaren, who showed me that social transformation is both possible and necessary. I dedicate this book to my parents, Jesus and Emilia, to my wife, Maggie, and to my baby son, Maxwell. All four people define who I am and what I consider dear.

Series Foreword

Educational reform has fallen upon hard times. The traditional assumption that schooling is fundamentally tied to the imperatives of citizenship designed to educate students to exercise civic leadership and public service has been eroded. The schools are now the key institution for producing professional, technically trained, credentialized workers for whom the demands of citizenship are subordinated to the vicissitudes of the marketplace and the commercial public sphere. Given the current corporate and right-wing assault on public and higher education, coupled with the emergence of a moral and political climate that has shifted to a new Social Darwinism, the issues which framed the democratic meaning, purpose, and use to which education might aspire have been displaced by more vocational and narrowly ideological considerations. The war waged against the possibilities of an education wedded to the precepts of a real democracy is not merely ideological. Against the backdrop of reduced funding for public schooling, the call for privatization, vouchers, cultural uniformity, and choice, there are the often ignored larger social realities of material power and oppression. On the national level, there has been a vast resurgence of racism. This is evident in the passing of anti-immigration laws such as Proposition 187 in California, the dismantling of the welfare state, the demonization of black youth that is taking place in the popular media, and the remarkable attention provided by the media to forms of race talk that argue for the intellectual inferiority of blacks or dismiss calls for racial justice as simply a holdover from the “morally bankrupt” legacy of the 1960s.

x

Series Foreword

Poverty is on the rise among children in the United States, with 20% of all children under the age of eighteen living below the poverty line. Unemployment is growing at an alarming rate for poor youth of color, especially in the urban centers. While black youth are policed and disciplined in and out of the nation’s schools, conservative and liberal educators define education through the ethically limp discourses of privatization, national standards, and global competitiveness. Many writers in the critical education tradition have attempted to challenge the right-wing fundamentalism behind educational and social reform in both the United States and abroad while simultaneously providing ethical signposts for a public discourse about education and democracy that is both prophetic and transformative. Eschewing traditional categories, a diverse number of critical theorists and educators have successfully exposed the political and ethical implications of the cynicism and despair that has become endemic to the discourse of schooling and civic life. In its place, such educators strive to provide language of hope that inextricably links the struggle over schooling to understanding and transforming our present social and cultural dangers. At the risk of overgeneralizing, both cultural studies theorists and critical educators have emphasized the importance of understanding theory as the grounded basis for “intervening into contexts and power . . . in order to enable people to act more strategically in ways that may change their context for the better.”1 Moreover, theorists in both fields have argued for the primacy of the political by calling for and struggling to produce critical public spaces, regardless of how fleeting they may be, in which “popular cultural resistance is explored as a form of political resistance.”2 Such writers have analyzed the challenges that teachers will have to face in redefining a new mission for education, one that is linked to honoring the experiences, concerns, and diverse histories and languages that give expression to the multiple narratives that engage and challenge the legacy of democracy. Equally significant is the insight of recent critical educational work that connects the politics of difference with concrete strategies for addressing the crucial relationships between schooling and the economy, and citizenship and the politics of meaning in communities of multicultural, multiracial, and multilingual schools. Critical Studies in Education and Culture attempts to address and demonstrate how scholars working in the fields of cultural studies and the critical pedagogy might join together in a radical project and practice informed by theoretically rigorous discourses that affirm the critical but refuse the cynical, and establish hope as central to a critical pedagogical and political practice but eschew a romantic utopianism. Central to such a project is the issue of how pedagogy might provide cultural studies theo-

Series Forward

xi

rists and educators with an opportunity to engage pedagogical practices that are not only transdisciplinary, transgressive, and oppositional, but also connected to a wider project designed to further racial, economic, and political democracy.3 By taking seriously the relations between culture and power, we further the possibilities of resistance, struggle, and change. Critical Studies in Education and Culture is committed to publishing work that opens a narrative space that affirms the contextual and the specific while simultaneously recognizing the ways in which such spaces are shot through with issues of power. The series attempts to continue an important legacy of theoretical work in cultural studies in which related debates on pedagogy are understood and addressed within the larger context of social responsibility, civic courage, and the reconstruction of democratic public life. We must keep in mind Raymond Williams’s insight that the “deepest impulse (informing cultural politics) is the desire to make learning part of the process of social change itself.4 Education as a cultural pedagogical practice takes place across multiple sites, which include not only schools and universities but also the mass media, popular culture, and other public spheres, and signals how within diverse contexts, education makes us both subjects of and subject to relations of power. This series challenges the current return to the primacy of market values and simultaneous retreat from politics so evident in the recent work of educational theorists, legislators, and policy analysts. Professional relegitimation in a troubled time seems to be the order of the day as an increasing number of academics both refuse to recognize public and higher education as critical public spheres and offer little or no resistance to the ongoing vocationalization of schooling, the continuing evisceration of the intellectual labor force, and the current assaults on the working poor, the elderly, and women and children.5 Emphasizing the centrality of politics, culture, and power, Critical Studies in Education and Culture will deal with pedagogical issues that contribute in imaginative and transformative ways to our understanding of how critical knowledge, democratic values, and social practices can provide a basis for teachers, students, and other cultural workers to redefine their role as engaged and public intellectuals. Each volume will attempt to rethink the relationship between language and experience, pedagogy and human agency, and ethics and social responsibility as part of a larger project for engaging and deepening the prospect of democratic schooling in a multiracial and multicultural society. Critical Studies in Education and Culture takes on the responsibility of witnessing and addressing the most pressing problems of public schooling and civic life, and engages culture as a crucial site and strategic force for productive social change. Henry A. Giroux

xii

Series Forward

NOTES 1. Lawrence Grossberg, “Toward a Genealogy of the State of Cultural Studies,” in Cary Nelson and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, eds., Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1996), 143. 2. David Bailey and Stuart Hall, “The Vertigo of Displacement,” Ten 8, 2:3 (1993), 19. 3. My notion of transdisciplinary comes from Mas’ud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton, “Theory, Pedagogy, Politics: The Crisis of the ‘Subject’ in the Humanities,” in Mas’ud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton, eds., Theory, Pedagogy, Politics: Texts for Change (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 10. At issue here is neither ignoring the boundaries of discipline-based knowledge nor simply fusing different disciplines, but creating theoretical paradigms, questions, and knowledge that cannot be taken up within the policed boundaries of the existing disciplines. 4. Raymond Williams, “Adult Education and Social Change,” in What I Came to Say (London: Hutchinson-Radus, 1989), 158. 5. The term “professional legitimation” comes from a personal correspondence with Professor Jeff Williams of East Carolina University.

CHAPTER 1


There are grave disparities and savage inequalities in our current educational system. In short, there is oppression in our schools. But not everyone is affected equally. Disproportionate numbers of minority and poor students are failing to graduate high school, let alone enroll in institutions of higher education. For example, Michelle Fine’s 1991 study of high school dropouts finds that the national attrition rate hovers around 25%. In urban settings, the numbers are considerably higher than the national average. In light of the fact that we know which races populate urban centers (e.g., African Americans and Latinos), we also know which groups of students are affected by the high attrition rates. Fine reports that out of 39,350 students in Chicago, Illinois, 20,860 (or 53%) fail to graduate high school. In predominantly African American and Latino populated areas of Chicago, 65% fail to finish secondary education. Out of 100 Chicano/Chicana students entering high school, we can expect 56 to drop out before graduation (Solorzano and Yosso, 2000). Of the 44 remaining in the “Chicano/Chicana pipeline,” 24 pursue postsecondary degrees: 13 to community colleges and 11 to four-year institutions. At four-year institutions, 7 see their third year of college, including 1 transfer from the community college, making a total of 8 at the university junior student status. Finally, 2 Chicano/Chicana students enter postgraduate or professional programs, of which 1 graduates. Only trickles of success reach the end of the “Chicano/Chicana pipeline.” It is clear that school reform is needed in order to ameliorate these conditions and transform school settings so that all students benefit from a good education and a hopeful future. Moreover, it will become clearer that

2


school reformers must consider the more important role of schooling as a form of critical education. If schooling is a process of learning, then school reform is the process of un-learning because students and teachers learn ways of being that need to be problematized. Critical reform, like critical education, is the search for emancipatory conditions for learning. In particular, fundamental reform requires a deep engagement of educational ideologies, especially those that are responsible for maintaining chronic inequalities. Immanent critique of reform exposes the ideologies that contribute to relations of domination between the races, classes, and genders. These ideologies often remain intact even after educators introduce new structures into schools. For example, detracking and desegregation efforts have contributed to widening educational access. But without confronting the ideologies responsible for unequal treatment between groups of students, reforming the symptoms leaves the structural origins unchallenged. Ideology critique targets these seemingly intractable problems. The book proposes a theory of ideology that synthesizes its three dimensions: necessary, negative, and positive. The first dimension of ideology is descriptive, or the apprehension of a subject’s worldview; the second is ideology as a form of distortion; the third is ideology’s utopian moment. Avoiding a one-dimensional explanation of ideology in exchange for a three-dimensional theory offers educators a fuller understanding of ideology critique’s potential as an analytic tool (Leonardo, 2003-a). The theory provided in this book constructs a multifaceted portrait of ideology critique. It will not follow Aronowitz’s (1988) otherwise provocative suggestion of abolishing the concept of “ideology” altogether since it cannot help but imply its opposite: disinterested science. It will, however, avoid a one-dimensional explanation of ideology in exchange for a threedimensional theory in order to avoid reducing it to a purely pejorative moment. A three-pronged theory of ideology does not suggest that all three facets must be present in any given unit of critique, but it considers the possibility that an event may be ideological in more than one sense. In this, the book shares an affinity with Raymond Geuss’s (1981) excellent summary of the Frankfurt School project of ideologiekritik. By using a threedimensional theory of ideology, scholars circumvent certain pitfalls associated with using any one of its singular dimensions. It will also become clearer that although ideology critique is indispensable for school reform, educators must work toward complexifying the concept and avoid using it in a reductive manner. THE CONTEXT OF INQUIRY The reform under study, or Inquiry, is a response to the call for educational change. It is a reform effort conducted between university researchers, public school administrators, and teachers to create school


3

renewal. In the mid-1990s, the Washington school district underwent reform at all levels, from elementary to high school.1 The reform protocol was initially galvanized by university researchers and district administrators to ameliorate inequalities found in the schools between white students and students of color, and between the rich and poor. Inquiry was designed, for example, to combat the “two-school phenomenon” where 50% of the failing half—most of whom are African American or Latino students—of one high school have a G.P.A. lower than 2.0. The study documented here takes place at one of the middle schools in the district, Monroe Middle School, during its second and third years of participation in Inquiry. At Monroe’s Inquiry sessions, teachers and administrators make up the majority of the participants. In addition, Patrick, a university professor, plays the role of a “critical friend” who leads the discussions and assists teachers in determining the generative themes that they find significant in their setting. The five-year project of Inquiry was funded by the Annenberg Foundation, its major source, as well as other secondary grants. I documented its second and third years. Seymour Sarason (1990) argues that in order to reform schools and avoid reproducing the pitfalls of past reform efforts, change researchers must confront several, crucial issues: explaining the endemic failure of our schools and their intractability with respect to school reform. In addition, they must deal with the distorting effects of unequal relations of power within schools and between practitioners and researchers. Sarason (1982) also contends that reformers must address the school culture in all of its complexity and recognize that changing one cultural element produces a change effect that reverberates in unpredictable ways. Extending Sarason’s ideas about culture, Andy Hargreaves (1994) encourages educators to scrutinize these relations in their historical context. He suggests that school change failure is partly attributable to anachronistic modernist structures that are incongruent with the cultural conditions of postmodernity. Educational researchers must reform rigid modernist bureaucracies in order to accommodate the flexible postmodern culture. Hargreaves insists that researchers promoting school change must pay closer attention to postmodern conditions because it is at the transition between modernity and postmodernity where school change efforts are currently located. The key for educational change is to recognize the importance of flexibility and context for change, promote collaborative cultures as opposed to contrived collegiality, and respect individuality and difference without losing sight of the collective purpose of change. The condition of postmodernity contrasts with modernity through the increased fragmentation of social life. Unlike modernity’s rigid bureaucratic structures, postmodernity is characterized by local and contingent cultures. As the postmodern crunch compresses time and resources, educators are forced to look for more flexible approaches to schooling.

4


Chubb and Moe (1990) respond with their resounding call for increased school autonomy. Arguing in part with Hargreaves, the authors see the need to debureaucratize schools and create a decentralized administration, through choice programs, like vouchers. As they currently function, schools often respond to public pressure by tightening up procedures and reasserting existing authorities. As a result, schools become hyperrationalized. Chubb and Moe warn that schools will become even more bureaucratized, impersonal, and alienating unless reformers take a radical turn and loosen the chains of administration. Hyperrationalization of schools is fueled by the wishful thinking of some policymakers (Wise, 1977) that—echoing a phrase from the movie Field of Dreams—“if you mandate change, they will follow.” Bureaucratization is sometimes the empty legerdemain with the terms of debate, with “rational planning” replacing “efficiency” and “career education” supplanting “vocationalism” (Wise, 1977, p. 47). Although Wise underestimates the power of the word to produce real consequences, he is right to point out the futility in practicing the appearance of change absent of a coherent theory of change. In addition to decentralizing administrative power, reform participants must share the meaning of reform (Fullan, 1991). The drafting of reform goals and aims cannot descend from heaven to earth, but must be actively co-constructed between the different parties involved. In part, this means that meaning has to be clear and overt. School change efforts must also address the conflicts embedded in the struggle over meaning. Or as Marris puts it, “Any innovation ‘cannot be assimilated unless its meaning is shared’ ” (cited by Fullan, 1991, p. 31). As society’s institutions and organizations fragment, alienation between people increases. In order to combat this condition of isolation schools must work toward real, rather than symbolic, changes, or those arising out of community needs rather than those designed to appease the community. Change that is imposed from the outside is often contested. The value people place on reform ideas depends highly on the clarity of meaning they achieve from them. Often, superficial changes result from reformers disconnected from the school context or from corporate commissions composed of high-status members lacking firsthand experience with schools (Sarason, 1990). In order to promote continuous renewal, school participants must own the process of change. However, shared participation is not enough. At the turn of the century, John Dewey (1916) argued that reform has to be goal-driven. Education is not only a matter of learning, it is a matter of democratic living. Like education, school reform should gravitate toward democracy. It should have a deliberate end and an aim that is directional but flexible toward that end. Education cultivates inclinations, or an active seeking for better conditions for learning. Education is not a means to ends but an end in itself. Its form and content constantly change as the social conditions change. As a


5

logical result, education is always social. For Dewey (1938), school reform should produce pedagogical experience that is more fecund and democratic than the conservative traditions of U.S. education. Focusing his attention on the learner, Dewey asserts that students learn from and through experience. The preferred reform is one that encourages learning as a means to a vital life as opposed to acquisition of information. Seen in this light, learning has a present orientation instead of looking back to the past for guidance. A progressive pedagogy promotes adjustment to a changing world. School reform must, in part, be guided by the dictum that education is not preparation for some future life. It is life itself. How to methodologically accomplish viable, sustainable reform is also another issue in researching change. Andrew Gitlin (1990) encourages research participants to follow a dialogical approach that combats the unidirectional communication flow in traditional educational research, which favors academic sense-making. Historically, educational researchers, and in particular change researchers, have conducted change efforts that devalue the contributions of practitioners. Ironically, practitioners are the very people for whom change efforts will have the daily consequences. Educative research is a mode of protest aimed at combating the knowledge production often monopolized by educational researchers. Critical reform calls for alternative research methods, those that contribute to collaborative work between researchers and practitioners without assuming collaboration a priori. However, this does not necessitate starting over. Reform researchers can conduct their protocols in some of the established ways while reconceptualizing their dispositions to make central the educational problems of race, class, and gender (Gitlin, 1994). Moreover, these alternative dispositions have to work toward ideological and material changes (Gitlin and Russell, 1994). In other words, alternative methodologies must be not only different but transformative. They must create real changes, as opposed to merely the appearance of change. In tandem with a transformative outlook, dialogue cannot be an add-on but a critical part of the research design. Here participant voice assumes more of a central role than it has in traditional reform efforts. Dialogue has to risk knowledge to its uncomfortable limits in order to arrive at new ways of knowing the possibilities of education. As Don Dippo (1994) reminds us: [T]he notion of voice can go far beyond the opportunity to speak; it can be about protest. Understood in this way, voice becomes politicized; its aim is to question what is taken for granted and to act on what is seen to be unjust in an attempt to shape and aid future educational directions. (p. 186)

That is, critical dialogue takes a certain “courage to change” traditional ways of knowing schools (Heckman, 1996). Furthermore, this book pro-

6


poses that these voices be analyzed at their ideological level in order to avoid constructing dialogue as an unconditional good or an end in itself. Dippo (1994) continues: Included in this analysis should be the structures that unnecessarily elevate particular groups and stereotype and constrain others. Voice as a form of protest is directed both outward at the social construction of meaning making and the structures that reinforce those meanings, and inward at the way the individual takes part in the production of certain constrained beliefs, roles, and practices. (p. 186)

School reformers must labor at exposing the social relations that impede liberatory dialogue. A critical study of dialogue peels away the ideological layers of our subjectivities, or those ways of coming to dialogue with our desires already directed. In a book chapter entitled “Critical Inquiry for School Renewal: Liberating Theory and Practice,” Ken Sirotnik and Jeannie Oakes (1986) propose a method for dialogical reform by using Paulo Freire’s and Jurgen Habermas’s contributions to communication theory. Sirotnik and Oakes lay out their method, emphasizing the “three faces” of critical inquiry. According to the authors, critical inquiry utilizes traditional empirical methods, hermeneutic/interpretive approaches, and a sociopolitical critique of knowledge. Examination of beliefs and value systems occurs in a “dialectical process of critical reflection and dialogue” (p. 8). Sirotnik and Oakes suggest that Inquiry dialogues must closely examine school norms as well as the participants’ own values. In addition, they suggest that the content of such dialogues should focus on embedded beliefs and value systems at the school site. Inquiry would then proceed to question these beliefs for their pedagogical consequences, change those that arrest renewal, and improve existing beneficial practices. While reform scholars have given educators valuable insights into school reform, many have also minimized the role that ideology plays in the reform process. In addition, they lack an ideological critique of language, specifically as it is actualized in the reform process. Consequently, these otherwise helpful problematizations of change forsake some potentially critical insights into school reform. For example, Sarason does not critically develop his use of “power” and instead proposes a general version of it. Pierre Bourdieu (1991) suggests that linguistic capital becomes a marker of difference that converts into symbolic power for some and not others (see also Lareau, 2000). Hargreaves arbitrarily separates postmodernity (the condition) from postmodernism (theories about the condition) and forsakes the more radical critique that the language that subjects use to describe the conditions becomes part of the conditions they try to describe. The way teachers use language to make sense of social phenomena becomes part of the phenomena they


7

attempt to understand, otherwise known as the constitutive power of language. Another point worth noting in the change literature is the response to the heightened bureaucratization of schooling. For instance, Chubb and Moe’s market determinism tends to overrationalize the process of choosing. That is, the authors portray people as calculative, objective, and detached when “maximizing” their decisions regarding school choice matters. However, people do not necessarily make decisions about education based solely on their economic evaluations but on nonrational (as opposed to irrational) indicators—that is, value-driven criteria about race, class, gender, and culture. Jean Baudrillard (1988) reminds us: Needs are not so much directed at objects, but at values. And the satisfaction of needs primarily expresses an adherence to these values. The fundamental, unconscious, and automatic choice of the consumer is to accept the life-style of a particular society (no longer therefore a real choice: the theory of the autonomy and sovereignty of the consumer is thus refuted). (p. 37; italics in original)

Ultimately, Chubb and Moe undertheorize and underestimate the complexity of school cultures. Education is a struggle over choice, and schools are concrete places where people struggle over whose choices will be valued and whose devalued. Chubb and Moe overlook the fact that this process is not autonomous from structural relations of choice, whereby working class parents and families suffer limitations on their choices, which capitalism places on them. With respect to Sarason’s concept of culture, not only do school cultures tend to balkanize (Hargreaves, 1994) and to be “fundamentally conservative” (Firestone and Corbett, 1988), but school culture is also what San Juan (1992) and McLaren (1994a) describe as a historical site of struggle over the production of meaning. School bureaucracies create their own cultures that codify school experiences and meaning. These multiple codes of conduct and ways of perceiving constantly struggle with one another for status and control. In this sense, the notion of culture cannot be taken for granted as inherently positive and at times can be linked with violence (Freire, 1993). Fullan (1991) addresses more the possibility of conflict during the change process, particularly at the level of meaning. However, he underestimates the power of language to affect and structure the meanings people derive from reform. Michel Foucault (1972) has suggested that people experience reform through discourse and the particular claims to knowledge it validates (see also McLaren, 1989). That is, we come to know meaning through the language, concepts, and community with which we construct it. I will have more to say on this point below. For now, suffice it to say that school reform is an ideological event made intelligible through discourse. With the important work being done on discourse, reformers

8


are in a position to examine reform as an ideological language system. In order to understand how language becomes conscripted in larger structures, a thorough understanding of the concept of ideology allows educators to frame issues of change in their political light. One can categorize some of the differences between educational scholars through their association with the concept of “form.” On one end of the spectrum, conservative educators focus on conformity by emphasizing the classical tradition, or the “best” that civil society has accomplished (Adler, 1993; Bantock, 1980; Bloom, 1987). From this perspective, the purpose of schooling is to introduce students to the classics of Plato and other foundational thinkers. An important dimension of education is to conserve and pass down the tradition, rather than open it up, lest we stain it. We can dub conservative critics as conformers. They want U.S. society and schools to follow the form of Western tradition in a prescriptive manner. On the other hand, liberal educators have problematized “the tradition” as discriminatory and segregative. Over the decades, reformers have made it known that there have always been incremental changes to tradition, challenging the notion that it has existed in pure forms (Banks, 1993; Eisner, 1992; Goodlad, 1983). Educational reformers argue for changes to the canon, equal access to quality education, and the widening of school curricula. In contrast to conservatives, liberal reformers find the current form of American education unsatisfactory, and simply looking to the homogeneous past will not prepare students for the diverse present, one that is becoming increasingly multicultural. Schools must be reformed to meet this new “face” of America if the U.S. expects to remain a competitive global force. Against this mainstream backdrop, radical educators question the very fabric of schooling and the social relations that give rise to it. Extending the liberal position on reform, radicals proceed to interrogate the very ilk that reformers want to reshape. Attempting to inaugurate an epistemological break, critical educators want to change the questions that reformers ask in order to arrive at new answers. In short, they are changing the very problematic of education from one based on competency to one based on democracy. Scholars like Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, Michael Apple, and the late Paulo Freire are not satisfied with current reform tenets and search instead for ways to transform U.S. education. As transformers, critical educators do not reshape the existing pedagogical clay, but mold education out of a wholly different medium. For the medium itself inheres limits that inscribe its own possibilities.2 Although radical educators have stressed the ideological situatedness of schooling and thus the need for ideological critique of school change, by and large their contributions have remained peripheral to mainstream school reforms. Change research abounds, whereas ideological critiques of school change are scant. Although they are important in our under-


9

standing of schools as institutions as well as the “how,” or the implementation of reforms, theories of school management and effectiveness have dominated the school change literature. On the other hand, critical theories have played only a marginal role in the debates on school reform. As a result, it is not surprising that many change studies are undertheorized, which is not to say that they are atheoretical. In other words, whether it is made overt or not, these studies are filled with theory, complete with sets of theoretical assumptions about the nature of change; often, theories of management and rationalization are the guiding principles. However, practical concerns, like implementation of reform and the problems associated with diffusing change tenets, are usually privileged over theoretical production. It suffices to say that there is a difference in emphasis. Mainstream change studies emphasize the feasibility of change, whereas critical studies focus on the ideological presuppositions of the change being proposed. Monroe Inquiry participants are guided by important themes, some of which already exist in the literature concerning school reform. For example, Inquiry participants struggle with ideas about assessment, the concept of knowledge, and notions of equality. However, despite the very productive work in the area of school reform, it is still necessary to design an ideological critique of reform language in order to bring to the surface the underlying assumptions informing educators’ constructions of change (Apple, 1990). This point is a recurring theme in this book. Although their insights on the nature of school reform are invaluable, prominent reformers, like John Goodlad, Ted Sizer, and Ernest Boyer, have neglected the contribution of critical scholars (Giroux and McLaren, 1986), especially with respect to the idea that notions of school change are also ideological events known through language. In short, ideology critique is currently unpopular in school reform discourses. Of course, there are exceptions. Sirotnik and Oakes (1986, 1990) consider critical theory central for school inquiry grounded on notions of justice. The authors examine the value-laden nature of schooling and suggest that reform necessitates the “critical view,” or mobilizing critique in the interests of emancipation. They invoke Dewey, Freire, and Habermas, whose ideas about democratic education, dialogical teaching, and communicative action provide models suitable for critical inquiry into schools. Hargreaves (1994) engages and problematizes postmodern theories as an explanatory framework for school reform located in the conditions of postmodernity. Although Hargreaves does not support postmodern theories and speaks from the position of a modernist, he utilizes postmodern descriptions to map out more flexible teacher cultures necessary for the current conditions. These exceptions do not provide the rule when it comes to the intersection between reform and critical theory. In fact, the change literature usually does not include in the “reform circle” scholars

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associated with critical pedagogy. I do not want to trivialize the differences between reform scholars and critical pedagogists. They certainly maintain a critical variance in the issues they address and the language they use to describe them. However, one cannot deny the critical circle’s commitment to school change. Critical pedagogists have stated their position on educational change in unequivocal ways; this is where they agree with the school reform circle. Clearly, both perspectives are critical for building coalitions around change. Notwithstanding the theoretical and wide-sweeping contributions of critical pedagogists to ideology critique, this book encourages critical educators to examine educational reform empirically in order to substantiate ideology as a concrete, as opposed to an abstract, process. And while ideological critiques of schooling processes exist (see Lareau’s analysis of parental involvement, 2000), in general, critical scholars have avoided sustained ideological studies of reform efforts in progress. When they have taken up reform, their critiques have been limited to the domain of reform tenets, literature, and programs (see Gim, 1996). Sustained analysis of the enactment and embodiment of reform is missing in critical educational studies. As a result, critical analyses of school reform generally lack empirical backing, which is not to say that they are nonempirical. They are empirical in the sense that their theories are based on real world evidence; one does not get more “real” than Marxist analysis. But many critical studies are not empirically grounded, or based on empirical studies in the traditional sense. In effect, critical scholars proposing change have neglected one of the most important venues for the study of school change: the reform process. It is here that we see language instantiated as discourse— that is, the transformation from language as an impersonal form to discourse as situated content. In addition, critical studies have emphasized the negative critique of ideology and have forsaken its positive dimensions. The three-dimensional theory of ideology presented here offers an alternative for critical studies. An ideological critique of reform in process teases out the contradictions in the discourse of change, thereby providing empirical data on how ideological discourse, or the realization of language with political effects, both enables and constrains change. It should be made clear from the outset that ideology is not discourse, or vice versa. Ideology designates systems of political and economic practices that undergird, at times distort, our thoughts and actions.3 Furthermore, ideologies can be assessed for their practical consequences and identified as falling within one system of relations or another, as in capitalism or patriarchy. This formulation avoids the classical Marxist definition of ideology as falsehood because some ideologies can be true within a particular worldview while being harmful for social relations in general. For example, teachers may assign high school students the literary classics and forsake alternative texts, believing that radically altering the curricu-


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lum may prevent students from gaining access to future educational opportunities. However, the longer teachers ignore alternative texts, the more they also reify the privileged status of the classics in the curriculum canon. This position does not avoid the notion that ideology is a form of distortion, as in the case of lies and deceptions that maintain relations of domination. However, in addition to ideology’s negative function, a fuller engagement of the concept must consider its necessary and positive dimensions. In contrast to ideology, discourse designates the uses of language in particular contexts, complete with implicit and explicit standards for usage, concepts, and meaning. Discourse can have ideological effects but is different from ideology. Through discourse, ideology is made known as an intelligible process. Inquiry provides an opportune format to study discourse because it stresses communication and dialogical methods. Because Inquiry encourages reformers to address and interrogate the embedded values and norms in their school, an ideological study of Inquiry participants’ value systems is appropriate and warranted. As Eisner (1992) notes, “Norms, after all, reflect values. They adumbrate what we care about” (p. 612). The book examines closely the intersection between Inquiry, a specific discourse on school reform, and critical pedagogy in order to advance our understanding of school reform as an ideological event. By doing so, the book does not search for a consensual model so that educators can understand the commonalities between Inquiry as reform and critical pedagogy as a political agenda. Instead, I am interested in building a project wherein we can further understand school reform through critical theory. In saying this, the study becomes part of a larger praxiological project extending our understanding of the role that ideology plays in school reform. Thus, the book examines ideologically the discourses Inquiry participants use to construct the meaning of school reform. This strategy contributes to a larger goal of assessing the ideological effects of Inquiry discourse (e.g., its limitations and possibilities). Throughout the book, I argue that critical school change starts with a critique of ideology. We know that Inquiry is ideologically inscribed through the language in which it is articulated and constructed. Consequently, this assertion warrants an ideological critique of language, an agenda missing in mainstream reform efforts. An ideological critique of Inquiry language unpacks the participants’ assumptions about educational goals and aims. From here, we can assess the contradictions in language use, critique commonsense assumptions, and search for possibilities. The book does not assess Inquiry’s success rate as a reform effort and readers looking for a blueprint for change will be disappointed. Rather, it explicates Inquiry’s dialectics of reform—that is, how it maintains as well as challenges domination. It is not an evaluation guided by the question “Does Inquiry work?” The analysis is more concerned with Inquiry’s com-

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plex mix of progress and regress. To this end, I do not attempt to study the teachers’ actions as evidence of Inquiry’s influence and success. The bulk of the evidence involves the participants’ discourse as this constructs the experience and meaning of Inquiry. Seen this way, the language of reform is not only a medium for ideas, but one that constitutes part of its essence. Said another way, language is not outside reality, but is internal to our very understanding of it. Ideology critique provides the rationale for the arguments put forth. Discourse is a sign of ideology and language is its carrier. Through an ideological critique of language, we arrive at the possibilities and limitations of Inquiry. Thus, the book inquires into two phenomena. First, it attempts to advance our understanding of ideology by synthesizing theories about it. This is perhaps the book’s most important contribution. Ideology is a crucial, theoretical construct that helps reformers examine the viability of reform because it sheds light on the deep structures that inscribe thought and action. In part, this move is accomplished by providing a concrete context for ideology—that is, Inquiry discourse. To this end, ideology provides the point of reference for the critique. However, in order for ideology critique to be useful, it must be both general and specific. It must be general in the sense that it can encompass a wide range of phenomena within its analytical borders. Using the ideology argument requires a general theory of the concept in order to trace patterns across diverse events that may be grouped under the general label “ideological.” Or to use Ludwig Wittgenstein’s insight, we can group diverse phenomena under the descriptor “ideological” because they maintain a “family resemblance” (cited in Thompson, 1981). As such, we need to define ideology as a worldview, a necessary organizing framework that integrates human subjects into social life. In this manner, ideology helps students and teachers make sense of their experience. However, the generalist approach must also be tempered with specific critiques of ideology. For example, ideology fractures into negative and positive dimensions. First, because people occupy different social locations (e.g., race, class, or gender), ideology, as a meaning-making strategy, mobilizes particular views of the world. Seen this way, ideology is necessary, but in a very different way from the worldview thesis. It is necessary in the sense that one’s position in the world necessitates a loosely corresponding, though not guaranteed, politics about the world. Here ideology is not neutral but may be negative within a given set of social relations, a form of “false consciousness,” as Marx once called it. Second, ideology has also shifted as a potentially positive theory, as in V. I. Lenin’s (1963) notion of a “socialist ideology” or Georg Lukacs’s (1968) projection of a “mature proletarian ideology.” Seen this way, ideology is not merely false, but possibly enabling and revolutionary. The dialectic between general and spe-


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cific ideologies allows the critique to move between the macro (systemic) and micro (particular) contexts of ideology. We know the effects of ideology as actualized in language, or discourse. Therefore, we know that language is an important mechanism for our understanding of ideology. If ideology is a worldview, then language is the constitutive lens we use to view this world. It makes intelligible what is an otherwise rudimentary experience of the world. For a study of ideology, language becomes an invaluable window into a subject’s ideological makeup as well as how subjectivity is constituted through discourse. In addition, changing how we view language and its power to alter our constructions of social life creates rippling effects. A critical and self-reflective language is indispensable in light of its transformative potential because institutional changes start with critical understanding. By closely examining Inquiry as discourse, we recognize that change is made known to us as sign, or through a linguistic structure, as a system of meaning. By studying the discursive context, language is deemed problematic because it is never obvious or transparent to its users. It is caught up in interests and struggles that can be both limiting and liberating. The book suggests that reform participants must begin with an ideological critique of their own premises, or the underlying assumptions in their discourse. To this end, the language of reform must itself be reformed. Critical reform is not possible unless the language that participants use to articulate its tenets is held problematic and subjected to the rigors of a three-dimensional critique of ideology. For example, how does Inquiry show the participants’ worldview, or necessary ideologies? How does Inquiry show the participants’ distortions, or negative ideologies? How does Inquiry show the participants’ utopianism, or positive ideologies (Leonardo, in press-a)? The book examines the language of Inquiry as first and foremost an ideological event needing close investigation. Using critical educational and social theories, it unpacks the way ideology inscribes and structures Inquiry procedures, rituals, and discussions. Also, it examines the way discourses position participants in relation to one another through the circuits of language. The study is significant in the way it analyzes ideology at work: how it necessitates, limits, as well as liberates the change process. By highlighting the intersection between school reform and ideology, we understand change as a political struggle waged at the level of meaning. Consequently, school change is never neutral but always-already interested. It projects a world that expresses possibilities but is also partial. That is, the “idea” of change necessitates a worldview, an ideology: how and what schools should educate and what role schools play in society. Ideology is an organizing structure through which school reform assumes a relative sense of coherence. In turn, ideology is made intelligible to subjects through language.

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The book stresses the importance of language in school change. In light of this emphasis, it suggests that school reform is a discursive, in addition to being an organizational, material event. By using a language that is both critical (i.e., overt and politically aware) and self-reflexive, reform participants recognize that any important educational change entails a fundamental shift in the way they construct the meaning of change through language. Moreover, it suggests the need to transform our dispositions toward language from a system that reflects our realities to one that is constitutive of those realities and potentially transforms them. In contrast to language existing as an overarching system of signifiers searching to attach itself to reform, language is part of the reform it attempts to describe. In short, critical change necessitates critical articulation: a language of critique and possibility (Giroux, 1988), a reform language working toward change that is truly democratic. A THEORY OF IDEOLOGY, DISCOURSE, AND DOMINATION The analysis starts from the assumption that at the heart of ideology is the problem of social relations of domination made intelligible through discourse. This takes the discussion into several productive directions. By claiming that “ideology is the problem of social relations of domination,” I am arguing that ideology can be a necessary, negative, or positive response to social relations of domination. Social relations of domination comprise the problem of ideology and depending on the discourse teachers adopt and the political project on which they are grounded, ideology may promote or negate domination. A reform discourse must develop strategies for assessing ideology at this three-dimensional intersection. By saying that “ideology is made intelligible through discourse,” I am claiming that ideology is made known through systems of intelligibility, an important instance being language. This is different from saying that ideology is “enacted” in particular social spheres. Ideology is enacted in political economy. In the Marxist sense, this is where the real process of ideology occurs. But this initially makes marginal sense to subjects. Teachers and students translate this experience in order discursively to mediate it, manipulate it, and perhaps transform it. The political project on which my analysis is grounded calls for a critical analysis of the ways reform participants address domination through discourse. Pedagogically speaking, in order for school reform to be viable it must aid participants in learning new and critical ways of constructing educational discourses. This move requires that students and teachers first un-learn the exploitative discourses that currently shape the educational system. The theory of ideology proposed in this study maintains a critical view of it. But being critical does not suggest simply suspicion; it entails politi-


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cal engagement of teacher constraints and possibilities. Teacher-reformers use ideology to make sense of their world, and their discourse provides evidence for their worldview. Also, teachers are inserted as subjects into the history that interpellates them. This history is inscribed by relations of domination found in capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. In negative ways, teacher ideology bears the contradictions of these oppressive relations. Last, Inquiry participants possess the potential for constructing liberatory discourses. As much as teachers may carry the signs of oppression, they also inhere the possibilities for liberation. With respect to social relations of domination, the following analysis of Inquiry works from a threedimensional theory of necessary, negative, and positive ideologies. John Thompson (1984) starts from the premise that if ideology is the study of ideas and how they are distorted through an idealist framework, then we must consider that these ideas find their articulation in language. It will become clearer that language is a tool not only for communication, but also for domination and liberation. For it is in language that human subjects understand their relationship to relations of power. Opposing the neutral concept of ideology as symbolic systems of thought, Thompson is concerned with “ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domination” (p. 4). That conflict exists in society suggests that domination is structured in language; thus, language becomes a site of struggle over the control of signs and representation. According to Thompson, ideology inheres at least four modus operandi. For our purposes, the most important operations are: legitimation, dissimulation, and reification. First, relations of domination are sustained through modes of legitimation. Max Weber (1978) has shown that in order for domination to continue, it must be seen as a legitimate way of ruling. This characterization of domination makes possible the notion of “surplus power” because claims to authority are almost always less justified than our belief in them. Ideology fills the gap between a leadership’s claim to authority and people’s belief in that authority (Ricoeur, 1986). Second, ideology works through dissimulation, or disguising itself as something other than what it is: relations of domination. Marx’s concept of distortion lays the groundwork for ideology’s pejorative sense as the estrangement of people from their real relations. Third, ideology is a form of reification. It naturalizes relations that are otherwise produced socially and historically. Lukacs’s (1968) original insight on reification provides the analytical tool for disaggregating the real from the real-like. It is at the reification stage where ideology is everywhere yet seemingly nowhere. Thompson’s theory establishes two major points: one, that ideology is a pejorative concept; two, that ideology is signified in language. His theory is indispensable for our understanding of the intersection between ideology and meaning. But faithful to the project of this book, I am concerned with the way ideology works on three levels: negative, necessary, and pos-

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itive. It is for this reason that Thompson’s pejorative theory of ideology appears incomplete because it fails to explain how ideology may not serve the purpose of maintaining domination, but rather resists and contests it. In addition, the theory does not offer an explanation of how a subject may simultaneously struggle against class exploitation (a positive ideology) and commit racist and sexist acts (a negative ideology). For example, Paul Willis’s (1977) classic study in Learning to Labor shows the ideological contradictions evident in students’ resistance to class exploitation in tandem with their own sexism and racism. Notwithstanding these oversights, Thompson’s theory is instructive for our current purpose. Strands of his theory provide cogent suggestions for a critical study of ideology, especially as it concerns the intersection between domination and language. Ideology in its orthodox sense as only distortion is unsustainable. If ideology operates through language as a constitutive mechanism, then ideology partly constitutes the way we live out our social relations through language (Althusser, 1971; Williams, 1994). Language is not the “outside” of real relations, but that which internally organizes the real relations so that subjects may render them intelligible. The problematic for school reformers is to interpret language in a way whereby discourse, or the use of language in real contexts, is interrogated in a critical way for its traces of domination. This mode of analysis may fall under the domain of critical hermeneutics, or an in-depth interpretation of structures of meaning as they relate to the problem of domination, “for it is largely within language that meaning is mobilized in the defense of domination” (Thompson, 1984, p. 35; Thompson, 1981; see also Leonardo, in press-b; Peters and Lankshear, 1994; Ricoeur, 1981). In order to arrive at meanings that sustain relations of domination, a critical hermeneutics finds concrete contexts for language use in everyday life. For a critical analysis of language, a dialectic between the social interaction involving human individuals and the social structures that mediate human subjects paves the way for a critique of how macro structures of race, class, and gender inscribe micro contexts of conversation and expression. In turn, this leads to the understanding that we contribute to global processes through our local practices. To Thompson (1984), this avoids two pitfalls: one found in formalism (recall structuralism) and the other in interactionism (recall speech-acts theory). In the first, Saussurean formalism raises language above the ground of interaction, whence the signified ascends to the heaven of signifiers. In the second, speech-act theorists empower the use of words over their meaning. J. L. Austin (1962) explains this process in three ways: locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary speech-acts. He claims that analysts must look at how actors use words, not what they mean. We “do things with words” above and beyond describing a state of affairs.


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In locutionary speech-acts, we perform an action through the act of saying something. By saying, “I am teaching children,” I perform a linguistic action by virtue of saying it. In other words, I said something that assumes a subject (“I”) and a predicate (“am teaching children”). In contrast, illocutionary speech-acts accomplish an action through the act in saying something. When a teacher tells a student, “I want you to do your homework,” she performs an act with force because she is saying more than just a statement; it has an imperative quality to it. The perlocutionary speechacts differ with respect to the act by saying something. In this third moment, Austin adds the dimension of authority and power. For when a teacher says to a student, “I grant your essay an F grade,” she engenders the power to do so and is able to create consequences in the student, such as apprehension. A verdict on student work becomes a form of exercising one’s power (Kneller, 1984, p. 8). In this context, an essay granted an F by the teacher is an F paper. If formalism neglects the actual uses of language, then interactionism is guilty of endowing social actors too much autonomy from larger forces impinging our language use. Meaning is the cusp between subjective agency and objective constraint. Or as Thompson (1984) puts it, [T]o give an adequate analysis of the relations between language and power, of the relations of symbolic force which are implicit in speech-acts, one must broaden the scope of the inquiry and examine the structures and the properties of the linguistic market within which speakers exchange their expressions. (p. 49)

Speech-acts are articulations of social institutions. Teachers are part of the educational institution that gives them the power to determine the quality of student work. On one level, this is reasonable because teachers have earned a level of expertise in one or more subject areas. But authority works over and beyond expertise and its linguistic translation. It functions through power. One must distinguish two aspects of authority: being in authority and being an authority (Kneller, 1984, p. 7). The first, a form of sociopolitical authority, can be characterized by the right to exercise rules and restrictions, as when a teacher sets the tone for her classroom at the beginning of each school year. The second, a form of epistemic authority, is a matter of competency a person has in a given subject matter, as when a teacher trains in the field of history or math. Thompson’s synthesis of interactionism and objectivism lends educators a framework for school reform, which recognizes that teachers have one foot in tradition and the other foot in self-reflection. Critical school reform, which makes domination a central problem, is the selective process of interrogating tradition without rejecting it while cultivating a critical awareness of social forces: a task facilitated with a language of critique.

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Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence, or the ways that social actors complicitly participate in their own oppression, helps educators understand that discourse inheres social relations of domination (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Symbolic violence works through euphemized forms of power: class accents, gendered gestures, racialized styles of conduct, and so forth. It is the muted form of direct violence and works best when conscripted into an apparently natural form of communication. “Discursive violence” functions through semiotic rituals that position some actors as subjects and others as objects of discourse (McLaren, Leonardo, and Allen, 2000). Furthermore, one cannot ignore the content of such discourse as a locus of critique (Thompson, 1984). Prioritizing style of presentation is tantamount to saying that teachers, for example, grade essays on the basis of style devoid of content. Likewise, discourse is a matter also of “what is said” as much as it is about “how this is said.” As Thompson (1984) states clearly: A linguistic product is not only a socially and historically situated construction which displays an articulated structure, but is also an expression which claims to say something about something; and it is this claim, understood in terms of what is asserted by an expression and what the expression is about, which must be grasped by interpretation. (p. 66; italics in original)

Thus, discourse is a matter of convention and content. Violence is perpetrated as an unjust linguistic proposition about how the world should be, and symbolic violence is the misrecognition of this proposal as an innocent event. A three-dimensional theory of ideology consistently returns the discussion to the problem of power and domination. Specifically, ideology is understood, perpetuated, or challenged through discourse. A study of ideology implicates the problem of language because domination is reproduced as sign. To accomplish this critique, change research must first reserve space for the ways teachers already understand their educational experience, or their necessary ideology. Ignoring this move privileges the researcher’s meanings and contributes further to domination in favor of academics. However, we must also tap into the ways schools reproduce the negative aspects of ideology. Subjects reproduce ideological domination by accepting school conditions as they are instead of how they are constructed and produced. In this manner, schools seem such natural and autonomous places of learning. This is precisely what makes them ideological in the negative sense. Last, the third strand of the theory considers the positive aspects of ideology as they are made intelligible through discourse. Through a positive assessment of ideology, educators understand the ways teachers contest domination. As a positive force, ideology not only has the potential to resist capital, racism, and patriarchy; it also pro-


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jects an alternative world. A dialectical engagement of the necessary, negative, and positive dimensions of ideology paints a fuller stroke of the complex forces that act upon teachers in their attempt to reform schooling. NOTES 1. All names of people and places have been altered to preserve anonymity. 2. For the purposes of this study, I will stay with the descriptor “reform” because this is the more widely used educational term. 3. A more specific definition of ideology will be provided below in the theoretical framework section.

CHAPTER 2

Ideology and School Reform: Toward a Three-Dimensional Theory

Talks of ideology are usually not one of the preferred discussion topics between researchers and educators. By and large, people seem to turn away from them either because of feelings of discomfort about some of their politically charged usage or fears over admitting that some things we do or say are ideological. In fact, considering ourselves as ideological is like habitually referring to oneself as Fatso. Or, we liken ideology to bad breath: It is what someone else has (Eagleton, 1991). Like bad breath, ideology is not something we would want and it is quite embarrassing to reek of either one. In short, there is a general tendency for people to avoid any suggestion of ideology. It is not uncommon to be labeled “ideological” when confronted by someone whose opinion differs from our own. “Ideological” has become a descriptor reserved for doctrinaires and political zealots, or those people perceived as obsessed with advancing their own interests. In fact, Napoleon Bonaparte claims to have invented the term “ideologue” to describe people who went too far in their criticisms, especially with respect to authority and government (Eagleton, 1991; Williams, 1994). Thus in common-sense language, or what Istvan Meszaros calls “anti-ideological ideologies” (1989, p. 60), being ideological is considered to be an altogether bad thing. Academically, however, there is a rich literature on the concept of ideology. Scholars have theorized the concept in three pronounced ways: ideology as negative, as necessary, and as positive. As a concept, ideology was first studied by the French philosopher, Destutt de Tracy. Patterned after the natural sciences and partly as a reaction to metaphysical conceits or idealist constructions of “ideas,” de

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Tracy’s study of ideology purported to be a “science of ideas” (Williams, 1994). Decades later, Karl Marx conceived his own version of ideology with his thesis on false consciousness. To Marx and Engels (1970), ideology was falsehood based on the idealist notion that consciousness produced social life, as opposed to the materialist notion that the production of social life gives rise to consciousness. At this juncture, ideology is less a trait that an individual possesses and more a characteristic of social relations found in capitalism. Whereas the Marxist perspective regards ideology as a distortion of objective reality, textualists consider ideology as an organizing framework necessary for subjectivity (McLaren, 1989). Seen in this second sense, ideology is not something people need to overcome, as in the Marxist notion of false consciousness, but is something necessary to consciousness itself. As a “text,” ideology is made known to social subjects through language. In addition, textuality is a way of reading the world. Ideology becomes a particular position subjects take up and from which they read social life. Ideology is a reading of the world from a particular place in that world. Compared with the Marxist theory on ideology, a poststructural rendition of it as text suggests that ideology is constructed out of discourse, not as a coherent system, but one characterized by contention between discourses. In a third sense, ideology has been used as a positive or enabling concept. Some theorists speak of a revolution grounded on a socialist ideology (Lenin) or a working class ideology (Lukacs). Gramsci has posited the importance of a hegemonic bloc with leadership abilities even before wielding official power. Seen this way, ideology is neither negative nor neutral, but negating. That is, positive ideology negates structures of domination and relations of exploitation. It accomplishes this move partly by building a critique of the social through columns of concepts and then demystifying the “pillars” of civilization, like progress, meritocracy, or objectivity. In the following discussion, I expand on the three dimensions of ideology. IDEOLOGY AS NEGATIVE In his critique of capitalism and its concomitant material relations, Marx was the first social theorist to study systematically the effects of ideology on social relations. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels (1970) operationalized ideology as a form of inversion or dissimulation, a “camera obscura” (italics in original; see also Marx, 1994). They claimed that philosophers hitherto have posited a world based on idealist speculations. Like the lens of the eye inverts the perceived image in order to process it in the brain, idealism turns the world upside-down. It leads people to believe falsely that speculation by way of the mind gives a true reflection of the empirical state of human beings involved in their activity. As phys-

Ideology and School Reform

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ical (i.e., material) as the eyes’ registration of shapes and colors, life cannot be reduced to mental processes and metaphysical conceits; instead, life is reducible to its practical processes. Marx and Engels (1970) write: The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly “world-shattering” statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against “phrases.” They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating phrases of this world. (p. 41; italics in original)

Idealism is here depicted as an illusory, ideological perspective. Rather than examine real people, idealists examine abstract words associated with abstract people. Rather than investigate concrete circumstances, philosophers would content themselves with metaphysical worldliness. Fighting words with words, ideas with ideas, produces neither real knowledge nor historical change. In order to accomplish radical transformation, the material world must become the target of critique. Marx and Engels announced the epistemological break that American reformers over a century later, by and large, have yet to take seriously. Marx and Engels continue: The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men [sic], the language of real life . . . . Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men [sic] is their actual life process . . . . Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. (p. 47)

Idealism is an ideological camera that obscures the material underpinnings of consciousness and the system of production that gives rise to it. Philosophies of consciousness mystify the material weight of existence. Marx and Engels do not reject ideas, but they insist that these should be analyzed as manifestations of the real. Or as Diane Macdonell (1986) clarifies, ideas are not real, but their modes of existence are. Capitalist ideology is reproduced in various ways. For example, it masks its concomitant social relations through the process of commodity fetishism, or the process whereby ideology obscures the extracted labor that goes into commodity production. Marx (1994) writes: A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s [sic] labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour, because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. (p. 26)

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Commodity fetishism imbues objects with human values in order to cloak their material basis, “just as in pre-capitalist societies individuals fetishized natural objects like trees or the moon as divine or supernatural, failing to see that they were simply products of nature” (Kellner, 1989, p. 22). Commodity fetishism provides a diversion from the ideological production of things and their collateral social relations. By endowing commodities with mystical powers, individuals or groups mystify the process of labor exploitation inherent in capitalism. Through commodity fetishism, students are encouraged to bestow human values onto inanimate objects. Social relations among individuals are no longer forged at the level of interhuman relationships but instead are expressed directly through the objects that they own (Baudrillard, 1988). In recent years, this has become even more poignant as news of urban youth killing for Nike shoes graces the headlines. Increasingly, objects signify subject relations; social relations become object relations. Or as Marx and Engels (1970) explain: The object is not simply an object in general, but a particular object which must be consumed in a particular way, a way determined by production. . . . Production thus produces not only the object of consumption but also the mode of consumption, not only objectively but also subjectively. Production therefore creates the consumer. . . . Production accordingly produces not only an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object. (pp. 132–133)

At the structural level, purchasing the market object is less about consuming the commodity and more about reproducing the existing social order. The medium of capital becomes the message. Consuming a commodity becomes the general alibi for consuming the system of commodities known as capitalism. In schools, one can extend the critique of fetishism in various practices. By now, it should be apparent that knowledge is a form of commodity. For example, the production of textbook information perpetuates the distortions of fetishized knowledge by presenting it as objective or a reflection of the way history “actually” happened, as opposed to the different ways history is rendered intelligible. By fetishizing knowledge as something neutral and natural, textbook companies attempt to circumvent the contradictions of capital and the production of historical knowledge (Apple, 1986). This does not suggest that educators should put aside their textbooks. Rather, it suggests that in order for school reforms to liberate current practices from their naturalizing tendencies, reform participants must interrogate the material interests of the textbook industry and the way it produces knowledge. Another concrete way we come to know the fetishization of knowledge is by examining the practice of grading. Currently, we recognize knowl-


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edge by quantifying it, standardizing it in correct forms, and generalizing it from context to context. This is perhaps most evident in the debate over the bell curve whereby a test is reliable if it can reflect a general distribution of the population. The closer the grading distribution is to the bell curve, the more reliable is the knowledge being tested as an indicator of the object being studied. I am not suggesting the end of evaluation. Rather, I am acknowledging that grades also function to stratify and differentiate between types of knowledge. Whose knowledge is worth affirming? And, who benefits from this state of affairs? Marx’s original thesis on ideology is a helpful tool for explaining the problem of class exploitation because knowledge reflects class culture. Through commodity fetishism, objects are inscribed within a naturalistic framework that promotes acceptance of “things as they are” and not as they are produced. As such, all forms of knowledge are problematic. They are produced within a given set of assumptions and are contradictory because they are part of the contradictions inherent in a capitalist social formation. It is imperative that school reformers address the effects that the relations of production exercise on official knowledge (Apple, 2000). The Marxist critique of ideology has been fruitful in education with respect to the concept of work. For instance, Jean Anyon (1980) has studied the differentiated curriculum designed for students coming from different class backgrounds. Students trained for the capitalist class practice more self-reliance, are given assignments that challenge creativity, and enroll in classes that are more intellectually stimulating. Their counterparts, students trained for the working class, practice more procedural drills, are taught to focus on the mechanics of learning (“getting it right”), and as a result, struggle against having to do work. The upshot of her analysis is that not only does schooling prepare students for different relationships with work, but differential amounts of student control over their work reflect a similar curve of fulfillment over the work itself. In short, less control of work correlates with less fulfillment with the work in question. Likewise, Oakes (1985) has found that a differentiated curriculum often tracks students from working class backgrounds in lower tracks than children from wealthier families, even when the two student groups boast similar grades. As one of the nation’s premier institutions, schools become important places of governance. Referring to schools as an “Ideological State Apparatus,” Louis Althusser (1971; see also 1969) is especially helpful in understanding the concept of governance. Seen in this light, schools function to reproduce the class structure of intellectual and material production as well as the social division of labor (Carnoy and Levin, 1985). As an apparatus of the state, schools reproduce the labor imperatives of a capitalist nation. The most classic critique of the way capitalism reproduces social stratification through schools comes from Samuel Bowles and Herbert

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Gintis (1976), whose analysis of “schooling in capitalist America” starts with a charge and maintains it throughout the text: U.S. schools function to reproduce the division of labor required by the “free” market. The illusion here, they claim, comes from the meritocratic ideals that U.S. education falsely claims to uphold. Accordingly, class traits, not skills and abilities, determine one’s success in schools and access to positions in the workplace. Success becomes a function of the compatibility between one’s class personality and the demands of conformity. Thus, docility is valued over being critical, idiosyncratic over thinking in totalities, and predictable over creative. Although not unproblematic, Bowles and Gintis’s correspondence theory, or the idea that the division of knowledge in schools corresponds with the social division of labor, has shown the way schools reflect market ideology. Ideology is located not only in the field of class interests, but in race relations as well. As Frantz Fanon (1963, 1967) has incisively demonstrated, racial ideology has historically produced binaric relations between white and black subjects where whites are the standard for positivity and blacks for negativity. Black subjects experience their sense of self through doubleconsciousness, or the process of perceiving oneself through the values of white society (Du Bois, 1989). Black consciousness is a product of both self-perception and negative images imposed upon blacks by white ideology and its apparatuses, like the school or media. This “veil” subverts black students’ direct sense of self because it is filtered through the dominant, and negative, perception of blacks by whites (Du Bois, 1989; see also Alridge, 1999; Asante, 1993; Fordham, 1988, 1996; Marable, 1983; Ogbu, 1995; Tatum, 1997). In a famous passage from The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois (1989) writes: After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. This history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. (p. 5)


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Racism has challenged the radical possibility of true black consciousness. Because it prevents black subjects from representing themselves without the colonizing influence of white power, racism does not promote the double move toward black sovereignty and self-determination. This racist helix replicates itself through racial oppression by keeping black selfimage at a tether’s length, despite their resilience to maintain a dignified sense of self. Promoting black consciousness necessitates no less than eradicating racism. As it has evolved, racial ideology is not separate from class ideology (Leonardo, in press-c, 2003-b). After all, the introduction of U.S. slavery (a racist ideology) was cooperative with the nation’s economic imperatives. As McLaren (1997) puts it, “Racism and the exploitation of peoples considered to be ontologically inferior to the Euro-Americans have always been historical allies to the white supremacist, capitalist, and patriarchal hegemony that characterizes the United States” (p. 250). Regarded as racially inferior by the white race, African slaves were exploited as labor power. And whether or not the economy has proved to be the determinant in the last instance, race has evolved as a construct that influences and structures people’s beliefs and behaviors today, both white and nonwhite. For many students of color, racism places limitations on their life chances. The problem of race, or the ideology of racism, is our immediate concern because it “sums up and symbolizes the fundamental relation which unites colonist and colonized” (Memmi, 1965, p. 70). That is, ideology seen through a racial discourse is the problem of racial domination (Leonardo, 2002). The racial formation produces its own version of false consciousness whereby minorities internalize the master discourse and reproduce a colonized subjectivity. In schools, this translates into a double bind for black students (Fordham, 1988, 1996). On one hand, they can resist the privileged knowledge being taught in classrooms in an effort to preserve their own cultural pride. As a result of their resistance to the official school culture, black students risk forgoing the necessary information and credentials that help them attain favorable career or social positions. On the other hand, they can accept the privileged stock of knowledge in schools, position themselves better in the race for credentials, and be more competitive for jobs, yet risk their own cultural identities in the process. Fordham shows us that it is not an either/or situation for black students, but a dialectic between the constraints they face and the way they deal with them. It is not a simple choice between cultural integrity versus academic advancement. Rather, the portrait represents a quandary that becomes an aporia as long as racial hierarchies exist in our schools and society. Currently, mainstream discussions and images around identity revolve around a crude black-white ideology. As a result, Asian American students, for example, are forced to choose a pole with which to associate. Consider Richard Fung’s (1994) insights on one of Spike Lee’s movies:

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In Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), after the angry crowd has demolished Sal’s Pizzeria, they turn to the other symbol of external exploitation, the Korean grocery store. In the heat of confrontation, the owner anxiously defends his business by sputtering “Me no white. Me no white. Me black. Me black. Me black.” In a world divided into black and white, the Asian is asked to choose on which side of the fence he sits. In this film, the Korean shop owner’s claim to black identity seems fueled mainly by expediency and immediate self-interest. Yet it (enigmatically) works and the crowd reluctantly moves on. (p. 167)

In a country where the history of tensions between races has been apparently fixed by a black-white discourse, other races are limited to affiliation status. It suggests that we locate Asian Americans as “some position ‘in between’ [black and white]” (Fung, 1994, p. 168). The black-white dichotomy incorporates Asian American students into some middle index, since “yellow” is presumably a color somewhere between white and black. In addition, the black-white oversimplification assumes too much uniformity within the black and white categories at the cost of difference. This is not to trivialize the historical tensions in our construction of white and black relations. It is not meant to disregard the material oppression blacks have suffered as a result of whiteness as a dominant ideology. Moreover, it does not deny the conflicts between communities of color. It suggests that a discourse on school reform must be able to fracture the simplistic versions of the black-white dichotomy in favor of a more dialectical engagement of it. In order to accomplish that, educators can begin with a deconstructive reading of binarisms in order to expose how white identity, or anything that approximates it, has been privileged. School reformers must part the black and white sea to expose the paths of other people of color without drowning the contradictions found in black-white relations. Boldly speaking, educators can work toward abolishing whiteness as an ideology (McLaren, 1995). This does not equate with abolishing white people, but rather with exposing whiteness as a social construction with a privileged status that produces material consequences. It suggests that a corporate multiculturalism only serves to perpetuate the exchange value of whiteness, a strategy that is challenged by a pedagogy of neo-abolitionism (Leonardo, 2002). Studying whiteness is more than just studying it as a cultural sign; it must include analyzing its economic ties to global imperialism and class exploitation (Frankenberg, 1997; McLaren, Leonardo, and Allen, 2000). Racist ideology is not only a matter of individual acts of hatred, but is symptomatic of the contradictions found in a racist social formation where class and race meet in “racialized class relations” (Darder and Torres, 2000). In addition, this does not suggest studying whiteness on its own as an empowered sign. It entails a critique of whiteness as a racial ideology involved in relations of domination with other races. For studying whiteness without devoting critical attention to dis-


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courses on people of color is like studying acid without awareness of its explosive, unstable state when combined with water. Identity exists in relation with others, and this state of difference from an other gives rise to our sense of self (Leonardo, 2000). Haymes (1995) suggests that a pedagogical assault on white ideologies must include a deconstructive reading of media representations of race. A productive beginning includes a study into popular culture as a semiotically rich venue—that is, how race is signified through a linguistic structure. A critical reading of movies, television shows, and television ads assists students in understanding, for example, the oversexualization of bodies of color. Thus, school reform must labor at exposing the ways that our ideological perceptions of race both structure our interactions and become a product of them as well. A further reading into the language of racial ideologies exposes the contradictions inherent in some of the terms educators use to refer to race. For instance, “people of color” is often opposed to the term “white.” This deployment serves to mask whiteness as an invisible marker by suggesting that white is not a color (Freire and Macedo, 1995). Also, the binarism minority (people of color)/majority (whites) fails to deal with race in its specificity because depending on the location (e.g., in California), whites do not represent the majority. It is more productive to think of minority in terms of power differentials, or relations of subordination, rather than minority as a numerical count (Yetman, 1991). One only has to think of former South Africa, where Africans were the majority in numbers and the minority held power. But there is another parallel way of discussing this issue without dismantling the binary. The law of unanimity is perhaps more dangerous than the law of the majority (Ricoeur, 1986, p. 193). The former is more insidious because the latter at least allows for the possibility of defining the minority group’s rights in terms of the majority. A unanimous whiteness would cease to appear coercive because it claims universality. By salvaging the minority-majority distinction, we at least retain the idea of a standard, albeit a problematic one, and can name the group that we believe creates it and the other upon which it enforces the standard. Since power’s efficiency is proportional to its ability to disguise itself as something other than itself (Foucault, 1978), whiteness becomes the invisible yet ubiquitous standard. White culture achieves this sense of ostensible universality as a transcendental signifier by disguising itself as something other than a historical product. Ironically, one finds fringe white groups such as the Klan and its political conduits, like America’s David Duke, organizing against what they perceive as the oppression of white men due to race-based programs like affirmative action. Here we see certain whites asserting their particularity as white men. The universalist and particularist discourses on whiteness contribute to relations of

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domination because they remain as separated poles in a dialectical relationship. For example, universalists forget that whiteness has both a history and a culture. Meanwhile, particularists claim their unique status as an oppressed group and forget that whiteness, as a social category, enjoys general privilege in America, and other societies. A dialectical engagement of whiteness as both a particular and universal sign avoids the pitfalls of either perspective treated in isolation. However and to recapitulate, it should be made clear that what we are discussing here is not white people, simpliciter. It is more productive to generalize white privilege as a value system in order to avoid the wrong conclusion that whites, as people, are the only ones who perpetuate white privilege. One does not have to be white in order to profit from white privilege. Discourse may construct and position Dinesh D’Souza or Ward Connerly as white men, but it is quite obvious to many people that they are not. As strange as it sounds to American racial discourses, it has also been found that certain Southeast Asian groups construct themselves as having claims to the Aryan race (Mazumdar, 1989). Of course, as Fordham has already shown, it is debatable whether students of color “benefit” from their appropriation of whiteness. It is useful to distinguish between profits and benefits. Although people of color may profit in the short term for perpetuating white privilege, they do not benefit in the long term from such decisions. They may receive immediate returns but subvert their ultimate goal of racial parity. To unpack this racial ideology, reformers need to develop a discourse that enables people of all “colors” to erect a collective project around racial justice. It is important that reformers treat race as something distinct—that is, as having particular issues—without radically divorcing it from other social locations, like class and gender. Our third concern with respect to ideology is gender. Like race, gender issues are not totally separate from class issues. For example, women’s domestic work becomes exploited as a form of nonpaid labor in order for men to work more hours and reserve energy by not cooking and cleaning at home (Jaggar, 1988). In addition, women’s entry into the industries during the Great Depression was a way for factories to pay lower wages because, as part of the surplus army of labor, women worked for less money (Yung, 1995). We can say that, as a materialist, Marx was not ideological in the first sense while, unable to avoid a nonpartisan worldview, he was ideological in the second sense. Thus, it is not just an unfortunate oversight that Marxist concepts are gender-blind and sex-blind (Hartmann, 1993; Nicholson, 1987). Women’s role in the Marxist conception of history is either muted or absent. As the bearers of reproductive domination in the home or family, women’s oppression does not figure strongly in Marx’s worldview—or worse, it is evidence of Marxist chauvinism (McCarthy, 1998).


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School reform efforts have to consider the way schooling has discriminated against not only girls and women, but also the perspectives associated with them (AAUW, 1992; Sadker and Sadker, 1994). Women are not the only inheritors of gender oppression despite the fact they bear the ugliest forms of it; people and perspectives seen as unmasculine, emotional, and relational also suffer from patriarchy. Notice the emasculation of the East when compared to the West. Notwithstanding the importance of the intersections among race, class, and gender, reformers must confront the conceptual issues specifically articulated in a study of gender. For a discourse that combats ideological domination must deal with its many faces. The third relation of negative ideology is gender domination. Feminist educators have paved the way for a critique of patriarchal relations. Kathleen Weiler (1988) has exposed the male common sense that leads a man into thinking he rarely has to justify his position as an individual of a certain gender. Or as Simone de Beauvoir punctuates: “It goes without saying that he is a man” (cited by Weiler, 1988, p. 57; italics in original). Patriarchy functions not only through sexual domination, but also through normativity, through the normalization of masculinity and men. This logic often finds its way into schools relatively unquestioned. For example, Emily Martin (1992a) excavates the language that textbooks normally use to construct the idea of conception and finds sexist themes of sperms “assaulting” the “passive” egg in the “hostile environment” of the vagina. This militaristic image correlates with the way patriarchal relations construct women as weak and need men for protection. More important, this schooling of the body represents a form of male control over women’s bodies through control of the meaning of reproduction. In short, school discourses on gender correlate with larger structural perceptions of women in general (see Martin, 1992b). In an equally decisive move, Valerie Hartouni (1991) deconstructs how one San Francisco Chronicle article entitled “Brain-Dead Mother Has Her Baby” naturalizes motherhood as co-extensive of womanhood. Deserving to be quoted at length, Hartouni writes: It is only within this narrow, ideologically biologistic understanding of the term mother that the headline itself actually makes sense. . . . Motherhood is something, it suggests, that simply happens and that can be sustained by mechanical means and a continuous infusion of chemicals even if there is no subject, no agent, to sustain it. The subject that knew herself as Marie Odette Henderson, after all, is dead; she is not present, nor for that matter is she represented except as absence or trace. Consider an alternative understanding, one that, for example, regards pregnancy as a biosocial experience and motherhood as a historically specific set of social practices, an activity that is socially and politically constructed and conditioned by relations of power, and that differs according to class, race, history, and

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culture. In this formulation, “being a mother” is not something women “are” by nature, instinct, or destiny, or by virtue of being female or pregnant. Rather, it is something women (among others) do: it is conscious and engaged work in the fullest sense of the word and an activity that is still but need not necessarily be gender specific. (p. 31; italics in original)

Hartouni argues convincingly that ideologies are gendered and sexualized. Sexuality is something people “do” or “become” as opposed to a way of being (see Wittig, 1993). So whereas femaleness is a biogenetic construct, Hartouni reminds us that womanhood is a social construct that changes over time and space, not absent of subjects but terminating in them. In Harding’s (1991) terms, womanhood is a perspective, even a birthright, whereas a standpoint, such as a feminist epistemology, is earned and over which people struggle (also see Elliot, 1994). School reform can begin to fracture patriarchy by asking fundamental questions about why girls and women are fairly absent in the sciences, why they are dissuaded from math-oriented careers, and why emotion is regarded as a distortion to clear thinking. Moreover, reform participants must examine the standpoints from which they speak and assess the kinds of educational projects they engender toward girls and women. There is much to suggest that gender oppression shares common themes with racial oppression and class exploitation, or that they form a matrix of domination where they mutually inform one another. That said, gender domination, or the ideology of patriarchy, manifests itself in historically specific ways and constitutes itself in particular practices. For example, although we know that gender oppression is assimilable into Marxist discourses, they fail to explain why men and women fill the empty places in the economy the way they do (Hartmann, 1993). Much of the same can be said about race relations as well. That is, Marxism does not convincingly explain why men, not women, fill the spaces for industrial labor. Feminism is able to explain the sexual basis of domination through men’s control over women’s bodies. Prostitution, the cosmetic industry, and marriage are only a few instances of patriarchal relations that serve the interests of men and limit women’s. A purely economistic analysis betrays an important, if not essential, portion of women’s and girls’ experiences, especially those concerning reproductive and domestic labor. It is true that prostitution represents an economic sector, but the fact that women bear the brunt of sexual exploitation needs explaining. If the sex industry is devoid of gender oppression, as an organizing principle, we should expect that both men and women would be equally affected, resulting in a more equal distribution between them. Likewise, a purely racial analysis betrays another simplification because it cannot explain the role of violence, such as rape, as a form of social control over women’s lives. It is true that the myth of the black male


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rapist also controls the lives of black males and this is where a textured analysis teases out the racialized aspects of sexuality (Davis, 1981). It is also true that men in prison fear being raped by other men as a significant threat to their everyday lives. What remains to be said about this situation is that male-to-male rape and male-to-female rape both serve the interests of patriarchy and sexual domination of women. For instance, we can note the popular references to the victim of prison rape as an inmate’s “wife,” “bitch,” or “girlfriend.” Thus, male-to-male rape mimics male-to-female violence. In schools, there should be no doubt that male-to-female harassment occurs daily. The only question seems to be the magnitude and nature of the violation, acts that can be perpetrated by male peers or adults (Sadker and Sadker, 1994, 1995). This is made possible by a culture of violence against women, beginning with common sense. The rule of masculine right is an integral part of what Pateman (1988) calls “the sexual contract.” In other words, patriarchy or patriarchalism is not only the rule of men over their families or women in their lives; it is a system of male, structural advantage buttressed by male ideology. The system of patriarchy is a double helix of structures and the meanings that give them form (McNay, 1992; Scott, 1990). When girls learn that they are the weaker sex, or what Simone de Beauvoir earlier called “second sex,” they are disciplined through regimes of meaning that are objectified as “truth” by institutions of schooling. Meanings without institutional sanction lack official power; meanwhile, institutions organize systems of meaning to create the appearance of legitimate power. When domestic labor is dubbed “home economics” in schools, this is accomplished through a differential structure of meaning where male labor is simply signified as “economics.” Women assume the duties of home making whereas men make history. Along the same lines, students learn that industrial labor is male domain and “going into labor” is women’s destiny. Production is male activity and reproduction a female vocation. These naturalized and reified attempts at fixing the meaning of gender unleash a common sense that represents the bugbear for feminists whose goal is to disrupt male hegemony. Thus, relegating patriarchy to the private sphere of family life with the implicit assumption that the public sphere, such as education, is fair and meritocratic misses the general and pervasive mark of male social advantage. There is no general ideological agreement between feminist scholars about the nature of women’s oppression. Though they may agree on the issue of male advantage, there is no consensus about the structures that give rise to such a system. On one hand, materialist feminists assert that patriarchy is secured first by the capitalist system of production, circulation and maldistribution of resources, and division of labor (Ebert, 1996; Hartsock, 1987; Hennesey and Ingraham, 1997). These contradictions are

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resolved through a dialectical materialist education and the establishment of a socialist society. On the other hand, Radical feminists trace male domination through the control of women’s bodies, especially methods that alienate them from their own sexuality and reproductive rights (Bunch, 1993; Firestone, 1984; Wittig, 1993). With respect to education, they suggest that sexual experimentation should play a larger role in exposing boys and girls to alternative practices, such as lesbianism, which to Wittig is the creation of neither man nor woman, but a reconciled subject of history, much like Marx’s proletariat after the revolution. Using dialectics, Wittig and Firestone argue that the primary social contradiction rests between the two sex classes of men and women, rather than between the economic classes. It should also be noted that Radical feminists assume that, through both biological and social development, men and women become radically different from each other (Chodorow, 1993; Gilligan, 1993). Or said another way, women share a universal experience with one another; this distinction makes Radical feminists different from Marxist feminists who divide society into bourgeois and working class women, two groups with oppositional political interests. Although not usually touted as a Radical feminist, Nel Noddings (1984, 1995) shares the conviction that men and women differ radically in their orientation toward caring for others, promoting what she calls a “feminine” ethic. Poststructural feminists part company from the previous schools of thought by positing the problematic of language, or more specifically, a critique of humanist-liberal discourse’s ability to position women’s subjectivity in a way that appears to be fixed and settled, rather than fluid and historical. Again, the theme of difference reappears but this time as a constitutive function of the play of language. That is, poststructural feminist educators accept the basic assumption of Saussurean linguistics that words and concepts achieve their sense and meaning through their difference from other words and concepts that precede or follow them. Women’s oppression is defined here through the ability of men to control the labor of meaning, to fix the play of language through metanarratives that take on the appearance of brick and mortar Truths, and to construct discourses that function through antagonistic dichotomies with the feminine term often taking on what Spivak (1988) calls the “subaltern” status (Gore, 1993; Lather, 1991; Weedon, 1997). Poststructuralists reject binarisms, such as men/women, bourgeois/proletariat, and myth/truth. The notion of difference continues into feminist discourses that argue for an intersectional analysis of race, class, and gender (Andersen and Collins, 1992; hooks, 1984). Committed to a form of education that “teaches to transgress” (hooks, 1994), intersectional feminists consider race, class, and gender oppression to be mutually reinforcing systems. They politicize and position difference in order to build an anti-essentialist pedagogy (a trait they share with poststructuralists). For example, we


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learn that playing the game of “oppression lottery,” wherein a group claims to possess ultimate victim status, prevents students from reflecting critically about their relative power, privileges, and sometimes complicity with relations of domination. Intersectional feminists question essentialist claims to identity politics that position female and minority students as only victims, but without denying the reality of their victimization based on their identities as, for example, women of color. They promote a multiperspectival discourse that problematizes the conservative consequences of positing an essential women’s nature, a primordial black consciousness, or a class-based movement devoid of deep concerns for gay and lesbian politics. In short, as Collins (2000) suggests, intersectional feminism offers one of the most radical alternatives in recent social theory. It is radical (not to be confused with Radical feminism) in the completeness of its uptake of the multiple forms of oppression and matrix of domination. IDEOLOGY AS NECESSARY As already noted, ideology is problematic. In light of Marx’s pejorative sense of ideology as the bedfellow of domination, it is clear that school reform must confront the role that ideology plays in inscribing our notions of change. In his interrogation of the orthodox position on ideology, McLaren (1989) takes up the debate, offering an explanation of ideology as a product of discourse. This position does not suggest that the Marxist position must be rejected. On the contrary, the Marxist theory on ideology is crucial in our attempts to distinguish different kinds of discursive contexts, false consciousness being one of them (Eagleton, 1991). For I could easily be mistaken about my world and find this state of affairs necessary. However, by itself the concept of false consciousness becomes problematic because it assumes a consciousness that is essentialist, unambiguous, and undistorted: a true consciousness. In fact, it is possible that all forms of consciousness are already alienated when subsumed under the sign of labor. According to Baudrillard (1975), this is what Marx essentially overlooked. He forsook the radical critique that labor is itself ideological and production its unreflexive discourse. As a result, Marx inaugurated the ideological mirror of production by substituting one mode of production (communism) for another (capitalism). Not much of a difference, as far as Jean Baudrillard is concerned. If ideology as a negative phenomenon can be caricatured as chronic halitosis, then ideology as necessary is like paying taxes: You can’t seem to avoid it. Seen this way, there is no way out of ideology. It becomes a necessary network of sense-making strategies that enables people to establish meaning from their lives. Ideology is composed of the discursive repertoires that teachers and students take up, first to create their worlds and then to gain meaning from them. To Giroux (1981), ideology is an

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unavoidable “constitutive medium” that organizes experience. As a pedagogical tool, ideology critique leads to an understanding of how teachers and students negotiate the school’s tendency to reproduce dominant meanings (Giroux, 1988). However, ideology also creates the possibility for subjects to resist such domination in the name of emancipation (Giroux, 1983). Continuing Althusser’s legacy, Stuart Hall (1996a) takes on a “necessary” sounding definition of ideology. He writes: “By ideology I mean the mental frameworks—the languages, the concepts, categories, imagery of thought, and the systems of representation—which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out and render intelligible the way society works” (p. 26; italics added). Within this framework, no one is necessarily being duped by reified social relations, as in false consciousness. In essence, before we can judge a form of consciousness as either distorted or affirming, we must come to grips with its value system, context, and the world it projects. However, such a benign sounding theory of ideology leaves out the problem of manipulation and the distortion sometimes inherent in ideology. Although it would be inaccurate to suggest that Hall neglects relations of domination in his scholarship, his particular definition of ideology sidesteps the problem of domination (Larrain, 1996; see also Larrain, 1991). Hall’s theorization is consistent with cultural studies’ attempt to rehabilitate the orthodox conceptualization of ideology without purging it completely of Marxist traces. In this sense, Hall’s critique of domination is dependent on a critique of ideology. Claims by positivistic reformers of an objective truth removed from culture, context, and subjectivity (i.e., nonideological) must themselves be labeled as ideological because these claims attempt to construct a presocial world waiting to be discovered. For as postpositivism has shown us, school data do not just make themselves known to the observer; they are constructed and reported, not abstracted and recorded (Hesse, 1994; see also Phillips and Burbules, 2000). The models we use to make sense of things-in-the-world shape what we see and recall the structures-in-theworld (Longino, 1994). Ideology is a system of interests that creates dispositions and is organized into “agendas.” Like ideology, agenda is something everyone possesses. Just as educators often react negatively to talks of ideology, talks about agenda suffer a similar fate. Admitting that we have an agenda is now as bad as confessing that we occasionally watch the television shows Survivor or Baywatch. In fact, agenda has become the red-headed stepchild of ideology. Polemical thinkers, like Marx and Marable, are said to have a political agenda, but Kant and Klimt produce objective art. Ideology critique proceeds to lift the veil of common sense in order to arrive at political interests. Some statements scholars make concerning ideology now seem untenable. For example, in his attempt to universalize critical thinking (or Rea-


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son’s educational cognate), Harvey Siegel (1990) argues that reasons precede ideology since ideologues depend on them in order to formulate their objections to the primacy of rationality. Therefore, ideologues are caught up in circular thinking and contradict themselves. Reasons, not ideology, are fundamental; they transcend political predispositions. Siegel writes: Thus it is rationality which is basic, not ideology. . . . The ideology objection thus presupposes a commitment to rationality. . . . Rationality must therefore be conceived of as autonomous from ideological constraints, and indeed as providing the ground from which alternative ideologies can themselves be evaluated. . . . Rationality transcends ideology in the sense that any worthwhile analysis of ideology presupposes standards of rationality and the recognition of the cognitive force of reasons. (p. 73)

Any attempt by ideologues to object to the universality of reasons must first reckon with the reasons for their position. However, thinking always requires content and is a prerequisite for it. How is thinking critically in Siegel’s perspective to be differentiated from thinking generally? All people have reasons for the way they act. Some of them may not be good or ethical reasons, but they are reasons nonetheless. Siegel’s bone of contention is with ideological fundamentalists, some of whom may be too concerned with totalizing the role of ideology for their own promotion. However, the “everything is ideological” thesis does not necessitate that “ideology is everything.” Our choice is not simply total ideology or indeterminacy. In its totality, social life is characterized as neither some ideological conspiracy between a few elite people nor a state of affairs for which no one is responsible. There are spheres of influence— such as the principal’s office or the superintendent—that make more difference than others in the way schools are run. However, schools are not the way they are because of superintendents or principals. Rather, ideology creates dispositions or habitus that structure our responses to the environment in very patterned ways (Bourdieu, 1991). That said, ideology is not some monolithic entity that drives all facets of our thinking (e.g., class ideology). It fragments according to context (e.g., male ideology, ethnic ideology, religious ideology, or racial ideology). Ideology never stands on its own but is involved in relations with other ideologies. It is never complete but is instead evolving and modifying itself. By “worldview,” we emphasize the most general and necessary dimension of ideology. Seen in this sense, ideology is a necessary organizing process. Worldview is like an opinion: everyone has one. It is the way people mediate their social life and achieve meaning from it. In this process, they develop a view of the world in light of their experiences. Yet, a worldview can be a product of false consciousness, which may be a particular way of

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viewing the world. Worldviews can certainly be distorted. As such, we must avoid thinking of worldview as “neutral.” It is always forged with subjects in mind, who apprehend social life in particular ways. Worldview should be regarded as “necessary” because subjects depend on it for functional reasons. Moreover, because educators exist in a social formation characterized by asymmetrical relations of power, it makes little sense to call ideology “neutral” since power skews our worldview one way or another. Even making sense of the world is necessarily imbricated with issues of power and therefore is a process implicated in relations of domination. It is almost a moot discussion to speak of a worldview that does not promote or protest a certain way of being-in-the-world. This is a theoretical distinction. In terms of practice, teachers and students find it necessary to traverse their daily life with the sense of efficacy that their worldview provides them. However, if we are concerned with reforming schools, then educators must forge a language of critique around not only how students and teachers forge their meanings, but how these meanings in turn forge their subjectivities. The debate around ideology suggests that Marx’s initial concept of false consciousness has to be reworked and reapplied to current conditions. Many reworkings of the concept have produced multiple meanings. Perhaps the most important theorist on ideology in our era, Louis Althusser (1994) resituates Marx’s notion of false consciousness by deploying Freud’s theory of the unconscious. Like the unconscious, ideology is eternal. To Althusser, ideology is neither false nor true; it is a necessary structure realized in discourse. He writes: “Ideology, then, is the expression of the relation between men [sic] and their ‘world,’ that is, the (overdetermined) unity of the real relation and the imaginary relation between them and their real conditions of existence” (p. 89). Ideology is the relations that subjects live out, whatever forms these may take. It is determining of us and is determined by us. Ideology both structures and is structured by our social practices. We act because of our prior ideological commitments, but as we act, we constitute ideology as a lived relation to our social world. Real relations are represented to subjects via symbolic structures. According to Althusser, appropriating from Lacan, we do not live out real relations as such, but instead their imaginary form. Something gets in the way between our understanding of the lived relations and the real relations in the classical Marxist sense. The imaginary relations, those forms of recognitions that are simultaneously illusory, intervene. We misrecognize our lived relations as the real relations. Seen this way, worldview is always distorted because social life appears to us in phantasmic form. Moreover, distortion appears in the second order of the imaginary relations, where symbols are distorted, and not in the first order of the real relations (Ricoeur, 1986, p. 145). Althusser makes it clear that our imaginary relations produce material consequences because subjects live their relations


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“as if” they were real and act accordingly. Weedon (1997) agrees when she writes, “The crucial point for the moment is that in taking on a subject position, the individual assumes that she is the author of the ideology or discourse which she is speaking. She speaks or thinks as if she were in control of meaning” (p. 31). Imaginary relations do not exist outside of reality, especially in its humanist variety. Subjects of ideology exist as products of discourse in their institutional form. In short, ideology is anchored in real practices and institutions, like schools. Although ideas may not be real, their modes of existence are (Macdonell, 1986). The Ideological State Apparatuses include the school system whereby the State functions through ideology, as opposed to violence or repression. The school is an important site where individuals are produced as subjects of the State for the division of labor. It is also a place where ideology reproduces itself through countless hierarchical rituals: those that produce subject positions, such as workers, middle managers, and capitalists. However, subjecthood should not be confused with the real. Subjectivity is an effect of ideology. It interpellates subjects, or hails them, into the social formation in order for ideology to reproduce itself. Here “subject” takes on the double meaning of “subjectivity” and “subjection” (Ricoeur, 1986). Teachers and students become subjects through discourse as they take up positions within and between statements: hence, subjectivity. But as they do this, they also become subjects of the division of labor: hence, subjection. Ideology recognizes individuals as alwaysalready subjects because it recruits them into social life for the division of labor (see Poulantzas, 1994). In turn, subjects internalize ideology to the point that it escapes them. As opposed to ideology being an issue about distorting real consciousness, as it was for Marx, to Althusser ideology is very much within the realm of the unconscious (see Fritzman, 1998). It thoroughly eludes us to the point where a person thinking through ideology cannot think outside of it. Thus, ideology “has no outside.” We witness the effects of ideology on subjects through discourse, not ideology itself. Questioning Althusser’s Marxist credentials, Jacques Ranciere (1994) charges that Althusser has bent the ideological stick too far in the other direction. In contrast to Marx’s original thesis on ideology as distortion, Althusser has offered a sociologistic explanation of it, by way of the work of Comte and Durkheim, as a functional mechanism that integrates individuals into the social. In other words, Althusser cannot have his Marxist cake and eat it too. Either he must believe that ideology maintains its specific distortive function and call himself a Marxist or he must opt for a general, integrative explanation of it and dissociate the theory from Marxism. On the other hand, Paul Hirst (1994) finds that while certainly not unproblematic, Althusser succeeds in advancing our theories of ideology in profound ways without abandoning Marx.

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One, through Althusser we understand that class subjects occupy social spaces and that these locations produce experience-effects: for example, discourse patterns. Ideology critique begins by examining the subject’s misrepresentation of the real through her position in the real as a worker or capitalist. Therefore, the concept of distortion is preserved, but this time generalized as the subject’s futile attempt to represent the slippage of the real relations. We can only arrive at the representation of the real relations and not the real relations themselves. Two, the subject’s position in the real is determined by her practices. This suggests that ideology is not only in the realm of the ideal, or as McLaren (1989) puts it, “pure ideality,” but is grounded in real practices and social institutions. Ideology is constituted in the very idea of the world it tries to represent through discourse. Yet ideology is not our reflection of the real relations, but a necessary misrepresentation of them, the imaginary relations. This is not an illusion, but part of how we live the imaginary “as if” it were real. One could say that social theory has come full circle to ideology. In the beginning, de Tracy defined it as a scientific study of ideas about the world. Now, ideology is once again a representation of that world. It appears to us as tropes, metaphors, and cultural concepts in discourse. To Clifford Geertz (1994), ideologies are symbolic systems that are extrinsic sources of information in terms of which human life can be patterned— extrapersonal mechanisms for the perception, understanding, judgment, and manipulation of the world. Culture patterns—religious, philosophical, aesthetic, scientific, ideological—are “programs”; they are a template or blueprint for the organization of social and psychological processes, much as genetic systems provide such a template for the organization of organic processes . . . it is through the construction of ideologies, schematic images of social order, that man makes himself for better or worse a political animal. (pp. 286–287)

Ideology-as-symbolic system precedes ideology-as-distortion. For distortion to occur, this assumes that there is something to be distorted: the symbolic order (Ricoeur, 1986). The symbolic order is the soup in which the real swims. It functions under the sign of integration rather than dissimulation because it is here where people represent themselves and their world. So, how could this be false? To Marx, ideology was pejoratively associated with ideas; now it is again linked with a subject’s ideas about her existence, not in a negative way but as a necessity. It is clear from this explication that there is no “end to ideology.” As a system of meanings that subjects create in order to function in the social stream, ideology is necessary. A critique of ideology is then a tautology. It falls within a worldview, which by definition is ideological. As Ricoeur (1986) puts it, “Perhaps when we denounce something as ideological, we are ourselves caught in a certain process of power, a claim to be powerful”


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(p. 161). If school reformers are going to achieve any practical use from ideology as a necessary tool, then this must be linked to a critique of how the apparently natural and necessary ways we make sense of the world are motivated by larger forces outside of our personal ability to use language in everyday life. Our representations of the world through language and the real state of affairs are not a tight fit, but instead are “loosely coupled.” There is a fundamental gap in our understanding of the world and the world as it exists in the real. Although this does not necessitate a false perception of social life as such, it does slingshot the discussion back to the problem of domination. Ideology is less about truth or falsehood and more about liberation from exploitation and oppression. Ideology functions not merely through distortion, but also through disposition. In schools, children learn much-needed technical skills, but they also learn to fit into the available positions in the production system in and out of the classroom. Take this long description from Althusser (1971): What do children learn at school? They go varying distances in their studies, but at any rate they learn to read, to write and to add—i.e. a number of techniques, and a number of other things as well, including elements (which may be rudimentary or on the contrary thoroughgoing) of “scientific” or “literary culture,” which are directly useful in the different jobs in production (one instruction for manual workers, another for technicians, a third for engineers, a final one for higher management, etc.). Thus they learn know-how. But besides these techniques and knowledges, and in learning them, children at school also learn the “rules” of good behavior, i.e. the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labour, according to the job he is “destined” for: rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which actually means rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination. They also learn to “speak proper French [or English],” to “handle” the workers correctly, i.e. actually (for the future capitalist and their servants) to “order them about” properly, i.e. (ideally) to “speak to them” in the right way, etc. (p. 132)

And again: That is why I believe that I am justified in advancing the following Thesis, however precarious it is. I believe that the ideological State apparatus which has been installed in the dominant position in mature capitalist social formations as a result of a violent political and ideological class struggle against the old dominant ideological State apparatus, is the educational ideological apparatus. (p. 152; italics in original)

Althusser’s rehabilitation of ideology reminds us that there exists no position outside of ideology. Through self-reflection, educators demystify their involvement in domination. But as they accomplish this critical moment, they also realize that they are thinking through ideology as

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much as they think about it. Ideology is akin to a perspective, one that is inflected, for example, by one’s racial or ethnic experience. But by itself this conceptualization lacks the heuristic punch to inform educators of the enabling and disabling ways they make sense of a world, not as a given but as constructed through language. Moreover, if everything is ideological (i.e., necessary), then nothing is ideological. Ideology critique loses its analytical appeal. Althusser has emphasized that ideology functions for a specific reason: capitalist exploitation through the division of labor. The school is an important site for the reproduction of ideology through the inculcation of values of docility or aggressivity, depending on the class “destiny” of particular students (Bowles and Gintis, 1976). Suggesting that reproduction occurs should not be confused with the position that it happens without contradictions or accords. In Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992), one reads about the perpetual problem of racist ideologies in a society characterized by centuries of racial hierarchy and oppression. If one reflects on the past and current history of the United States, one cannot fail to feel a bit pessimistic about the future of race relations. There have been advances in the fight against segregation in schools and neighborhoods, but racial discrimination is still a formidable and debilitating force in many students’ lives. In short, there is little empirical proof to suggest that racism will one day end. But there is another meaning behind the announcement of the permanence of racism. It serves the purpose of a vigilant discourse that makes the presence of racism a fact of social life. The proclamation that racism is permanent encourages educators to guard against its manifestations at every turn. Thus, the fight against racism is a never-ending project. The same can be said of Althusser’s announcement that ideology, like the unconscious, is eternal. Althusser’s theory of ideology is a vigilant discourse that guards against possibilities of idealism. As that intervening imaginary force between the real relations and the lived relations, ideology continues even into socialist societies, contrary to what Marx believed. Ironically, and recalling Ranciere’s charge against Althusser’s marginal Marxism, what better way to continue Marx’s project? If distortion is a fact of life, then we can never abandon Marx’s theory of ideology and are forced to modify it accordingly. For if ideology is a form of illusion about the real relations, it also functions as an allusion to the real relations. Distorted as they may be, ideological representations of real life allude to the real relations, but in imaginary form. Reformers can take this lesson to mean that, as a mode of critique, school reform works to interpret these imaginary forms, much like a psychoanalyst interprets dreams in order to arrive at the individual psychosis. Likewise, educators interpret ideologies to get at the social psychosis found in capitalism, racism, and sexism. But this does not suggest that teachers can arrive at a nonideological interpretation of schooling. It points out that ideological work is a perpetual


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practice in order to guard against the idealist notion that one can achieve pure, sensuous consciousness. The work of a materialist school reformer is like a mathematical asymptote, failing at each turn to reach its point of contact with the axis of the real relations. It may be said that ideology critique is a language game of justice that functions under the sign of prescription and not description (Lyotard and Thebaud, 1994). Justice is a never-ending language game about a state of affairs that is indescribable, enigmatic. Justice is a “constative language game” that is inexhaustible, for it has neither an origin nor a destination. Like Althusser’s ideology, Lyotard and Thebaud’s sense of justice does not foresee an end. It is pagan, always “not yet.” Reformers guided by a sense of justice understand that it is a proposition, not a description. It is a search for a path that does not lead to a teleological endpoint, yet guides discourse about important themes in school reform. It is a vision of something that can always be better. For what would a society do the morning after justice has been realized? Like ideology, the ruse of justice is necessary for any society working toward what “ought to be,” which is not grounded on the “what is.” IDEOLOGY AS POSITIVE While the literature on ideology as a negative and necessary phenomenon abounds, we cannot say the same for the literature on ideology as something positive. This area has not been as developed as the previous two, due in part to the tenacity of classical Marxists to maintain ideology’s pejorative sense. However, exemplary theorists exist who, while not directly affirming ideology, consider the ideological struggle as a sign of possibilities. These theorists, like Lenin, Lukacs, and Gramsci, see cleavages and contradictions within ideological domination that subaltern groups may seize for liberatory purposes. As Giroux (1983) notes, “As a distortion ideology becomes hegemonic; as an illumination it contains elements of reflexivity and the grounds for social action. It is the positive moment in the dialectic of ideology that has been ignored by educational critics” (p. 67). Through counter-social movements that are both spontaneous and organized, the ideological struggle offers interstices of hope for hitherto oppressed groups of people. In V. I. Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? (1963), the Russian leader refers to a revolutionary program based on a “socialist ideology.” Here Lenin speaks of a workers’ movement that would “tear [its] fate from the hands of the leaders” (p. 71) and establish an independent ideology. He writes: The only question is this: the bourgeois ideology or the Socialist ideology. . . . [A]ny belittling of the Socialist ideology, any withdrawing from it, means by the same token the strengthening of the bourgeois ideology. (p. 71; italics in original)

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In Lenin, we see a transition from ideology as only negative to one that resists dehumanization: in this case, socialist ideology. Furthermore, ideology is depicted here as a struggle, a war between a negative ideology (bourgeois) and a positive one (workers). They cannot coexist and are at odds with one another. We should note that ideological struggle is a violent undertaking where the workers’ humanity can only be restored by destroying the capitalist system and in the process constituting the working class as a universal human experience. In Georg Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness (1971), we witness the continuation of ideology as a force potentially enabling the working class. Like Lenin, Lukacs sees the obliteration of the working class as a direct result of capitalism’s contradictions and the coming of socialist revolution. Reminiscent of the teleological language one finds in Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto (1964), Lukacs writes: The proletariat only perfects itself by annihilating and transcending itself, by creating the classless society through the successful conclusion of its own class struggle. The struggle for this society, in which the dictatorship of the proletariat is merely a phase, is not just a battle waged against an external enemy, the bourgeoisie. It is equally the struggle of the proletariat against itself: against the devastating and degrading effects of the capitalist system upon its class consciousness. (p. 80; italics in original)

Destruction of capitalism requires destruction of a reified working class consciousness inevitably becoming a class-for-itself, rather than a class-initself. The working class destiny is to reach “ideological maturity” (p. 76), a condition marked by a true understanding of the social formation and a true consciousness of itself as a class. This is not only inevitable, but can be found in the very contradictions of capital, which, while it develops more fully as a system, also approaches its own demise. For Lukacs, “Capitalism . . . is a revolutionary form par excellence. The fact that it must necessarily remain in ignorance of the objective economic limitations of its own system expresses itself as an internal, dialectical contradiction in its class consciousness” (p. 64; italics in original). Ideology is more a product of conditions of capital than a product of a ruling class. As an ideological formation, capitalism procures false consciousness and subverts real knowledge. However, kernels of rational understanding are structured into this ideological condition that transcend its limits. The key for school reform is to assist students in recognizing these moments of transcendence. Lukacs endows the working class with great ideological potential to free humanity only by freeing itself. Working class consciousness achieves this kind of potential because it is not tied to class interests like its counterpart, the bourgeoisie. The working class transcends its own class interests and can generalize its goals for the whole of humanity. Unlike the bourgeoisie, it does not depend on another class of people in order to


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establish its domination. In short, without a working class, there is no bourgeoisie; the latter’s economic livelihood ceases to exist. The bourgeoisie depends on the working class in order to survive as the dominant class. The bourgeoisie cannot generalize its class interests because it needs an army of laborers. This exploitative state of affairs is what the bourgeoisie lives on, and it perpetuates relations through the ideological process. In contrast, the “dictatorship of the working class” does not depend on the bourgeoisie in order to realize its potential. True, the working class does not want to generalize its own working class condition either. For the working class experience is a result of historical conditions of exploitation. It is equally true that working class individuals have interests. However, they have no invested interest in perpetuating their own conditions of existence or their class status. They would rather obliterate class society as a whole. The working class is able to penetrate social life at its roots because its consciousness has the potential to see material conditions as a totality. On the other hand, the bourgeoisie organizes production according to its own interests and therefore is blinded by the consequences of its own actions, “a standpoint from which the most important problems become quite invisible” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 62). From the worldview of an individual capitalist, capitalism seems to make a whole lot of sense. In contrast, working class consciousness is in the position to discern objective reality, mainly the system of economic production, something that capitalist social relations consistently obscure. Lukacs explains: The facts no longer appear strange when they are comprehended in their coherent reality, in the relation of all partial aspects to their inherent, but hitherto unelucidated roots in the whole: we then perceive the tendencies which strive towards the centre of a reality, to what we are wont to call the ultimate goal. . . . [T]o comprehend it is to recognize the direction taken (unconsciously) by events and tendencies towards the totality. (p. 23)

With greater total consciousness, the working class achieves lucidity with respect to the whole social process, from local, interpersonal relationships to global political economy. A true revolution is not the preoccupation with details that may appear coherent, but targeting the cohesive, concrete system of relations. Pedagogically speaking, reform participants must consider the total systems that inscribe their work. As Sarason (1990) has already warned, isolated changes may not alter the larger and intractable problems of school culture. Lukacs is asking more than Sarason. He asks us to consider forces extending far beyond the school and into the heart of the contradictions that link individual school sites: capital. And as I have argued above, we should integrate race and gender relations. Pateman (1988) critiques

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the social contract’s inability to address the sexual contract’s domination of women in patriarchal relations. Like Lukacs and following Pateman, Mills (1997) appropriates the Hegelian concept of totality with respect to race relations. Proposing a radicalization of the social contract, Mills opts for the racial contract to challenge the racist preoccupation with racial details and particulars, leaving the global dimensions of race unchallenged. Reform efforts attempting to get the school system back onto its feet must labor to expose the systems responsible for the persistent problems of education. Of course, this is more easily said than done. Many forces and vectors appear to influence our thoughts and actions, and postmodernists are correct to construct a more dynamic analysis. But, one cannot fail to recognize that capitalism has exerted the most comprehensive system of organization in the history of humankind (Darder and Torres, 2000). In addition, the systems of problems it has created or exacerbated in the forms of racism and gender domination weigh equally on the reformers’ conscience. It is the mature ideology of school reformers where school renewal finds itself, mature in the sense of an immanent critique of totalities. With Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) insightful ideas on the nature of consent, we arrive at the compromised concept of ideology. Giroux (1992) summarizes: For Gramsci . . . hegemonic leadership refers to the struggle to win the consent of subordinated groups to the existing social order. In substituting hegemonic struggle for the concept of domination, Gramsci points to the complex ways in which consent is organized as part of an active pedagogical process on the terrain of everyday life. In Gramsci’s view such a process must work and rework the cultural and ideological terrain of subordinate groups in order to legitimate the interests and authority of the ruling bloc. (p. 186)

Following Gramsci, Giroux refuses to characterize ideological domination as something fixed. Instead, ideological hegemony is a process of incorporation and rejection, compliance and resistance, accommodation and penetration. Gramsci cripples the discourse on ideological domination by redefining it. His ideas represent a general extension of Lukacs’s historicism; whereas Lukacs locates struggle in the class-subject, Gramsci finds it in the hegemonic bloc (Poulantzas, 1994). To Gramsci, hegemony works through active consent as opposed to outright domination. Marx and Engels used the concept in The German Ideology but it is Gramsci who expands it into a general theory of society. The rise of the hegemonic class is one characterized by a group’s ability to penetrate the social formation and provide leadership through moral persuasion rather than coercion. In part, this is accomplished through the “organic intellectual” whose social function outweighs the “vulgarized


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type” (p. 9) of intellectuals in the traditional sense of philosophers and artists. As critics, organic intellectuals are able to lead the subordinated mass (i.e., become hegemonic) before gaining actual, political power: A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise “leadership” before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to “lead” as well. (Gramsci, 1971, p. 58)

That Gramsci theorizes an organic leadership is evidence of a radicalization of Max Weber’s (1978) notion of the charismatic leader. Beyond the ability to lead the masses through rational as well as mystical appeal, Gramsci’s organic intellectual is compelled by a liberatory imperative. Gramsci politicizes consent and leadership as processes whereby the dominant bloc must constantly win support from the subordinate class through moral and intellectual persuasion. Hence, equilibrium is never accomplished in its final sense. The hegemonic bloc constantly has to struggle over the production and control of meaning. Unlike the orthodox position on ideology, hegemony can be positive depending on the political agenda espoused by its leadership (see McLaren, 1998). Teacher-reformers are in a strategic position to assume organic leadership. They comprise a critical mass of intellectuals who function as social critics, as provocateurs of what Gramsci called “passive revolution” (1971, p. 59). Organic leaders possess the political sensibility that makes the productive forces a primary site of struggle as well as recognizing that revolutions do not happen overnight without a period of “incubation” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 106). Reformers can use justifications of justice rather than relying solely on the voice of authority in order to secure hegemonic status with practitioners interested in critical reform. Leadership requires ideological maturity. To use Lukacsian terms, the hegemonic union of teachers must work toward a critique of the “totality” of forces impinging on the social formation in any given historical juncture: mainly those of race, class, and gender. Teachers must accomplish this move in part by examining the production of meaning as it relates to the problem of domination. Linguistic hegemony is one way the ruling bloc wins consent from the masses. To this end, language becomes an important site of contestation. Michael Gardiner offers this complex picture: Gramsci felt that linguistic hegemony involved the articulation of signs and symbols which tended to codify and reinforce the dominant viewpoint. Various dialects and accents found within a given society are always rank-ordered as to their perceived legitimacy, appropriateness, and so on. Accordingly, concrete language usage reflects underlying, asymmetrical power relations, and it registers profound changes which occur in the cultural, moral, and political worlds. Such

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changes were primarily expressed through what Gramsci termed “normative grammar”; roughly, the system of norms whereby particular utterances could be evaluated and mutually understood . . . which was an important aspect of the states’ attempt to establish linguistic conformity. (cited in McLaren, 1995, p. 121)

As we have seen, ideology is a multilayered concept. It includes class, race, and gender vectors that have their distinct issues but are never ideologically separate. Instead, they dialectically re-initiate one another. They cross, complement, and contradict one another. Paul Willis (1977) has shown us how a group of working class students, the “lads,” relish their manual work in efforts to boost their sense of macho efficacy, thereby replacing the class oppression they experience with the sexist discourse they embody. More important, the lads’ sexual desire to dominate women prevents them from fully penetrating the class system of which they are a product. Together, ideological trajectories meet in school settings and reformers must confront rather than avoid them. Inquiry, for example, can become a setting where discussion over ideology is part of the norm. Biases and justifications for how schools should function become apparent. According to Alston, “biases are conditions for understanding” (1995, p. 230). However, this point does not suggest that we are slaves of our own biases. Biases can be pointed out, and through dialogue we can reduce privileging our own common sense. As such, bias is not the main problem because its opposite is not found in a nonbiased curriculum, as popular as this phrase may be. The goal is multiperspective curriculum, which counters the centering of a particular group’s biases. Like biases, ideology is a mediator, not a determinant of consciousness. As Giddens has shown, structures and agents mutually mediate one another (Shilling, 1992; Turner, 1992). That is, structures constrain agents who in turn create structures by acting. Agents act while inscribed by structures but create contexts for these structures as they act on them. In Ain’t No Makin’ It, Jay MacLeod’s (1987) analysis of marginalized students’ subversive conduct extends our understanding of the relationship between agents and structures. MacLeod’s ethnographic participants, the “Hallway Hangers,” suffer anguish, like Willis’s lads, as a result of their minimized penetration into their own conditions. However, MacLeod reminds us, “Individuals are not passive receivers of structural forces; rather they interpret and respond to those forces in creative ways” (p. 152). Agency is a mixture of structural features and individual response. For example, one student, Slick, recognizes the academic listlessness in his classes and resists by taking action, mainly by not participating. To most observers, Slick’s truancy suggests dysfunctionalism, when in fact the otherwise bright student protests the absence of a challenge. Only a contextualized account of such a seemingly simple behavior (ditching school)


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can tease out the complex social and individual mediations leading to the event. A dialectical engagement of personal and structural ideologies guards against reductive interpretations of ideology as either totally abstract or purely individualistic. Karl Mannheim (1936) explains how ideology can be thought of in two ways: total and particular. The first component describes the ideology of an “age of a concrete historico-social group, e.g. of a class” whereas the second works on a “purely psychological level,” usually indicative of an individual’s attempts to manipulate others (pp. 55–57). Also, ideology is one of the poles in a dialectical relationship. On one side, ideology represents a negative incongruence with respect to reality “as it is”: distortion (see also Ricoeur, 1986). On the other side, utopia represents the vision of a reality as it might be, another incongruence: projection. Although Mannheim’s description still leads to a picture of ideology as something negative—distortion—he is helpful in pointing out the structuration between structures and agents. Ideology (capital “I”) is the structural backdrop of personal ideologies (lowercase “i”). In Ideology, Terry Eagleton (1991) summarizes the sixteen popular notions of ideology. Among them are “the process of production of meanings, signs and values in social life,” “false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power,” and “the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world” (pp. 1–2). In order to preserve the usefulness of the concept of ideology, Eagleton warns against using the argument that “everything is ideological,” lest the term become stripped of its utility as a tool for critique. In short, if everything is “ideological” then it loses its specificity that is distinguishable from the “social” or the “political.” Instead, we must delineate ideology’s specific sense in the context we use it for critique. Thus, although Marx’s notion of the false consciousness has gained disfavor in recent years as positivistic due to its claim of a true consciousness, ideology-as-false-consciousness is still valuable for analyzing discourse within a given set of material conditions. This suggests that an ideological critique of school reform must specify its uses of ideology. The critique cannot guarantee that anything is particularly ideological until the context is bounded and the issues unraveled. Ideology critique is not merely criticism. As it is used in lay discourse, criticism is the attempt by agents to establish their sense of superiority. In the traditional sense of it, a critic represents authority and is not bashful about exercising this status. While speaking with much confidence, traditional critics do not exactly inspire dialogue. Monologues are what result; diatribes ensue, not dialogue. In contrast, critique is an in-depth analysis of the structures that inscribe subjectivity. It attempts to shed light on what agents normally gloss over. Employing critique is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. It is the act of threading together a social life that currently appears fragmented. Critique is to puzzle over fundamental ques-

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tions concerning the dialectical relationship between school and society. For just as much as a society creates schooling in its own image, schooling also gives rise to a society. Ideology differentiates our era from previous ones because it is now possible more than ever to conduct rational discourse about life themes that affect us (Gouldner, 1976, 1994). Whereas the religious era relied on the authority of the “Word,” the modern sense of ideology allows agents to critique their predicament through the word. Gouldner finds that “tradition was, in short, being modernized into an ideology” (p. 205). Whereas religion is attentive to the minutiae of everyday rituals, ideology mobilizes throngs of people to revolt against and change the social formation. Though Gouldner’s theory of ideology is untenable with respect to religious crusades and jihads, since both of these are examples of mass mobilization, he points to the possibility of a social movement grounded on ideology as a positive force. Ideology is a metalanguage for unveiling social relations previously unseen. We see here an almost complete inversion of Marx’s theory of ideology. Whereas Marx opposed religion as ideological and the “opiate of the masses,” Gouldner redefines ideology as the rational replacement for religious idealism. Through increased communication free of distortion (Habermas, 1994), teacher ideology can arrive at decisions driven by rational discourse. It is a search for critical consensus that does not precede the dialogue over what is to be done. Instead, it is the reconstruction of the public sphere in search of an “ideal speech situation” based on “the authority of the better argument” (Habermas, 1989, p. 36). Here, ideology takes on the meaning of systematically distorted communication, which is different from suggesting that it is always a bit distorted. Ideology is not mere discourse either. It is a call to action, a faithful adherence to one’s convictions (Gouldner, 1994). It requires a certain selflessness, an “abnormal altruism” that sacrifices self-interest for the good of the collective will. A critical teacher ideology is the extension of Habermas’s notion of publicity to include a hermeneutics of the self, or an ideological interpretation of how our subjectivities are mediated by social structures. Important in this selfcritique is the discourse we adopt to talk about our role as educators. Whereas for Habermas ideology stifles rational communication, for Gouldner ideology is what facilitates modern discourse as we know it. Just as important is the political project on which critique is grounded. A critical, rational discourse prioritizes the transformation of material conditions and this is where Gouldner and Habermas’s framework lacks the specific appeal because each theorist projects an overly rationalist communicative situation, a virtual impossibility as long as labor is exploited for profit, people of color are victims of racism, and women are systematically oppressed (Ellsworth, 1989). Particularly, Gouldner’s overgeneralized theory of ideology as enabling cannot differentiate between a


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reformist or transformative project because it emphasizes rational discourse in exchange for a political project, an aspect not lacking in Marx’s writings (Thompson, 1984, p. 88). Ideology is a three-pronged process among objective structures, subjects, and language. Objective relations produce subjects in relation to one another. We exist, speak, and act within the borders of a given set of social constraints. These material experiences provide us with the initial impressions of the world around us. However, objective reality does not exist outside of subjects who have created them. Therefore, objective conditions are inextricably tied to social actors. Materiality is a product of historical subjects who then become conscious of their being as a result of their material relations. But none of this makes initial sense to them. They provide the context for experience that subjects apprehend through modes of intelligibility. Language is one of the most important ways of representing these experiences. This is where we turn next.

CHAPTER 3

Discourse and the Problem of Change: Toward a Critique of the Sign of Reform

Through language, social actors signify their material conditions in the form of signs. Discourse is the realization of language in speech, which may include “talking to oneself.” It is responsible for breaking up material reality into discrete categories, constituting them in words, and achieving systems of meaning from them. Some of these discursive categories are general in the way they structure our world for us: for example, consider subjectivity, knowledge, experience, and identity. These discursive fields are imbricated with power relations of which subjects become more aware through a language of critique. However, it must be noted that social life is not somehow born at the moment of articulation. Since this articulation is always articulation about something, it is based on something prior to articulation. That something is material reality. Language does not breathe life into our world as if it did not exist before enunciation. It makes that world apprehensible to us. Take this passage from Eagleton (1996) on language: Language is what emancipates us to a degree from the dull constraints of our biology, enabling us to abstract ourselves from the world . . . and so to transform or destroy it. Language liberates us from the prison-house of our senses, and becomes an entirely weightless way of carrying the world around with us. Only a linguistic animal could have history, as opposed to what one imagines for a slug is just the same damn thing over again. (p. 73)

Through language, we struggle to know and consequently know that there is an ideological struggle: for power, legitimacy, and emancipation.

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Appropriating Laclau’s concept of articulation, Stuart Hall (1996b) says that “[articulation] enables us to think how an ideology empowers people, enabling them to begin to make some sense or intelligibility of their historical situation, without reducing those forms of intelligibility to their socio-economic or class location in society” (p. 142). A “Black feminist ideology,” for example, guides our understanding of how subjects can base their ideological position on the experience of Black women (Collins, 2000; King, 1993). Likewise, we understand how an “oppositional racial ideology” counters the static explanations of race and racism in exchange for the more fluid, contextual language of “racial project” and “racial formation” (Omi and Winant, 1994). Language plays an important role in how we perceive our social world and it affects what we want to change about the world by resignifying it. A language of critique enables subjects to rupture ideological assumptions about themselves and their world, and by doing so reconstitute their ideological dispositions. We know ideology as an active organization of consciousness made manifest in language. By studying language use, we can approximate the various ideological positions that subjects take up. LANGUAGE AS A SYSTEM Ferdinand de Saussure has been dubbed the “father of modern linguistics” and structuralism. Affirming the structural method, Roland Barthes (1971) reminds us that people represent their sociality through structures of intelligibility and come to know the objective world as a “simulacrum” of material reality, a copy of the order of things. Born in 1857, a year before Durkheim and a year after Freud, Saussure (1983) later was the first thinker to study language as a system, a discipline he placed under the general study of systems of signs, or semiology. Saussure’s theory of signs held that language could be broken down into two fundamental elements: the signifier and signified, the first a linguistic form (e.g., a written or spoken word—parole), the second its intended meaning. Signifiers and signifieds are analytical units but should be thought of not as separate, but each dependent on the other. Together, they create the sign (Culler, 1976, p. 19). Signifiers are not necessarily articulated words, but invocations of “ ‘the psychological imprint of the sound,’ ” as in a sound-image or thought. Signifieds are “mental representations of the meaning” attached to signifiers (Gadet, 1986, p. 32). As such, Saussurean linguistics opposes the Naturalists’ claim that there exists an essential relation between things and words; on the contrary, the relations are arbitrary. Saussure’s dismantling of the nomenclative theory of language and his redefinition of language as an abstract system (langue) outside of an individual’s control “contributed to the deconstruction of the free and conscious psychological subject dominant in philosophical thought and

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the nascent human sciences at the end of the nineteenth century” (Gadet, 1986, p. 12). The sign in Saussurean linguistics is arbitrary. That is, there is no natural relation between a barking furry animal, for example, and its English linguistic representation, “dog.” Furthermore, the object-dog is signified differently depending on the language, as in the French “chien.” Signification, then, is a matter of convention. However, arbitrariness is not absolute but a “matter of degree” since dix-sept (French for seventeen) is more “motivated” than dix (ten) or sept (seven), which cannot be analyzed further as linguistic units (Gadet, 1986, p. 39). By deploying Saussure’s structuralism, we understand that Inquiry is first made known to teachers as sign. Participants come to know its processes, concepts, and problematics through a linguistic structure via signification. Saussure’s insistence on language as a system of relations between signifiers is one of the most useful concepts for a study of Inquiry. Jonathan Culler (1976) notes, “They [signifiers] are members of a system and are defined by their relations to the other members of that system” (p. 24). Or as Saussure puts it: In all cases, then, we discover not ideas given in advance but values emanating from the system. When we say that these values correspond to concepts, it is understood that these concepts are purely differential, not positively defined by their content but negatively defined by their relations with other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is that they are what the others are not. . . . There are only differences, with no positive terms. (cited in Culler, 1976, pp. 26, 28; italics in original)

Because Inquiry assumes a communicative format, ideological differences between participants become observable in the way they differentially make sense of the process, react to each other’s statements, and juxtapose themselves in relation to other people, much like terms within the environment of a sentence. By observing the articulation of parole, one begins to understand systematically Inquiry’s particular rules for langue. It should be noted, however, that Charles Peirce also created a branch of semiotics that focuses on the signification of thoughts. His was a semiotics of object-sign-interpretant. To Peirce, an object (or our perception of it) is meaningless—that is, a sign—until followed by another thought, the interpretant (Hoopes, 1982, pp. 8–9). However, since the Inquiry study examines how signs empirically manifest themselves and are in turn understood by Inquiry participants through language, Saussure’s linguistic paradigm has more heuristic value. The relative importance of Saussure’s theory of signs has been appropriated by numerous social theorists. For example, Jean Baudrillard extends Marxism by introducing the concept of “sign value” to the more traditional Marxist categories of exchange

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and use values. What results is the simultaneous production of the commodity as sign and the sign as commodity (Baudrillard, 1981, p. 147; also see Kellner, 1989). It is true that signs are encrypted in discourse, but this discourse happens to be the one located in the conditions of late capitalism where language becomes a form of commodity. With respect to ideology, the Saussurean revolution provides a semiotic theory of value. By engaging language as a signifying system whereby the social is made intelligible through a network of signifiers that refer to one another, we understand ideology at the level of the sign. Here meanings become a site of struggle for control because they make sense only insofar as subjects are able to render them knowable in symbolic forms, such as language. In Marxist terms, material production invades the production of meaning so that those who control the means of production also exercise their domination over the labor of the signifier. It is through a symbolic chain of signifiers that ideology then secures itself in the production of social life. For example, ruling power translates into class hegemony over the legitimate use of language in school curriculum. Through myths, or the privileging and naturalizing of certain signifiers (Barthes, 1994), the Great Works begin to take on a transcendental status. Without much questioning, it becomes common sense that school curricula should include Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Hemingway in the reading list. Of course, critical reform can always appropriate these works by deconstructing and encouraging a symptomatic reading of them. But just as a bricoleur’s craft is limited by her tools, so is the reformer’s horizon of possibilities limited by the text she reads and deconstructs. The ideological nature of texts projects a world onto their readers and structures their responses in predictable ways. As John Frow (1994) makes clear: A theory of ideology is a theory of semiotic value, because within the symbolic order the position and intensity of values are the index of a mediated tactical assertion, the site of a struggle for symbolic power, and are charged with the traces of that struggle. The ideological structure is coextensive with the semiotic field— with the totality of signifying systems. Bakhtin/Volosinov makes this point when he writes that “the domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. They equate one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present too. Everything ideological possesses a semiotic value,” and “without signs there is no ideology.” (p. 298; italics in original)

Ideology and signs conspire with one another to produce social life as a totality. If ideology serves to promote bourgeois interests, then this is accomplished by recruiting language into its logic (Moraes, 1996). Frow and Bakhtin make it clear that ideology’s negative function of distortion compromises school reformers’ ability to use language in a concrete way,


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“the language of real life” (Marx and Engels, 1970, p. 47). They reaffirm the assertion that ideology is made known to subjects through language, that teachers can know ideology as a mode of language use, and that reformers must reform the language of reform itself. As a structuring principle, ideology maintains a semiotic register. Critical scholars employ the semiotic method in order to understand structurally how language codifies the movement of capital, the representation of race, and the signification of gender. Likewise, Inquiry exposes social contradictions in linguistically significant ways. As a method of reform, Inquiry is witness to the distortions of capital as it encroaches on public education. Exposing the logics of racism, sexism, and capitalism represents the central challenge that Inquiry faces. Moreover, participants’ differential treatment of this intersection suggests something about their location within its circuits. DISCOURSE AND KNOWLEDGE Despite the successes and advances of the structural method, a surge of radical reactions inaugurated what we now refer to as the poststructuralist movement. Arguing against structuralism’s logocentrism, or a preoccupation with the fixing of meaning through speech, poststructuralists argue for the “slippage” of meaning through writing (Stanley, 1992). As such, meaning is never stable but instead is caught up in the residue of prior uses of language. In contrast to the structural preference for language as an overarching form that escapes context, poststructuralists argue for the constitution of language. In other words, language becomes part of the reality it attempts to describe as opposed to remaining external to it. Seen this way, the structuralist perspective posits a reformer who engenders ideas and finds a language to express them, whereas the poststructuralist perspective suggests that reformers are inserted into discourses that position them as subjects. Language is not the medium for externalizing a coherent reform already constructed in the subject and finding its destiny in language; instead, reform is constituted in discourses that are often incoherent and conflicted. In Althusserian terms, reformers are interpellated into language, or inserted into its grammar as subjects or objects of statements. Notwithstanding their tendencies toward linguistic idealism, poststructuralists have demystified power by exposing the power of myths to achieve the status of truth. Poststructuralists like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Jean Baudrillard have succeeded in unraveling the certainty in language as it relates to truth, meaning, and objective knowledge. Metanarratives, or self-referential discourses such as science, reason, and history, which beforehand were able to explain human progress, have lost their credibility or status as truth (Lyotard,

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1984). Rather than speaking from a privileged vantage point, metanarratives are discourses upon layers of discourses that societies have legitimated as true, rather than having claims to objective truth. Baudrillard, for example, has exposed the ideological myths embedded in Marxian production (1975), Freudian desire/sexuality (1979), the reality principle (1983a), the social (1983b), and subjectivity (1990). Arguing that all of these categories are myths created by discourse in order to fix the infinite play of language—that is, to stop the slippage from one signifier to the next—Baudrillard claims that a transgressive culture revels in indeterminacy, in radical undecidability. For production, Baudrillard follows Bataille and substitutes what he claims is the human proclivity to waste. For sexuality, he offers seduction, or the play on appearances that the Freudian discourse on desire, in its search for depth, suppresses. We should also notice that Baudrillard inverts the Platonic dichotomy of surface and essence in favor of the former. In place of the reality principle, Baudrillard introduces the hyperreal, or that which implodes the real into copies with no original. In other words, the real is now that which is always-already reproduced and postmodern culture fails to distinguish between the real and the real-like. There are no original forms, only the recycling of old forms in new combinations. Baudrillard’s next target, the social—like the ideological—loses its specificity if everything is, as social theorists are sometimes wont to claim, part of the social. The social loses its categoriness. And last, the banal subject folds into the power of the pure object, or those nonhuman strategies that people take up.1 Although Baudrillard and other poststructuralists have succeeded in pushing discursive formations to their limits, they have been criticized for forsaking the reality principle in favor of a vertiginous social life characterized by extremities in language games (see Kellner, 1989). Baudrillard, in particular, lacks a heuristic for collectivism and opts for radical individuation. With respect to school reform, it stands to reason that educators cannot signify away inequality. Differential outcomes between whites and students of color, rich and poor, and men and women do not disappear because we signify social life differently. This does not suggest that altering our language games fails to produce changes; it reminds us that material life, or the prelinguistic dimension of social life, possesses relative autonomy from our language. Poor students still live in poor conditions despite our efforts to reconstruct their meaning. Reformers are located at the dialectic between material life and discourse. Critical change mobilizes the potential of ideology critique and discourse analysis to arrive at a transformed language based on real life. Poststructuralists bring us back to the power of discourse by deconstructing the discourses of power, or metanarratives. They have contributed critically in our understanding the power of the word to change the world (Freire and Macedo, 1987; Gouldner, 1976, 1994). Poststructuralists have


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inserted educational hope in a time when we see the waning of possibilities. They have encouraged some reformers to “construct an arch of social dreaming and a doorway to hope” (McLaren, 1991a) in combating discourses of sexism, racism, and economic violence. Traditional epistemology, such as positivism, regards knowledge as an objective fact, a verifiable link between humans and the natural world. Within this paradigm, the purpose of educational reform is to construct a language based on logical deduction from measurable outcomes. Hence, as an intermediary between objective knowledge and recording such knowledge, language provides assistance. Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean-Loup Thebaud’s (1994) critique pushes the assumptions of positivist discourse. They differentiate between knowing the “it happens” (the pure event) and the “what happens” (the linguistic representation of the event). Lyotard and Thebaud argue that the two events are incommensurable, such that language as criteriology transforms pure events when we fit them into our existing schema. We are reminded here of Plato’s ideal, objective chair and its tainted human representations in the chair-maker and poet. The ideal chair is the it-object and our representations transform it into a what-object. On a similar note, Nelson Goodman (1978) argues that changing the style of representation necessitates a change in content. Teachers know this almost intuitively when they read two students’ essays apparently about the same book. Likewise, there is no transcendental reform across different ways of talking about it. Reform changes as we alter our discourses about schooling and its purpose. The language and style (rhetoric) reconstitute the object being examined. Lyotard and Thebaud propose a “pagan” discourse that works “case by case” to capture the singular specificity of events, much as a jury is instructed to adjudicate the particularities of a court case. Universality, a mark of modernism before the postmodern critique, is a form of conceptual imperialism because it is a discourse that fails to represent the particular. Likewise, Inquiry problematizes the particular dilemmas of its context. We see here a negative reaction to Hegel’s focus on totality in favor of the specific, the particular, a move that is clearly predicted by Adorno’s Negative Dialectics where he problematizes the concept of “systems.” A precursor to postmodernism (a pre-postmodernist), Adorno (1973) argues, “Totality is to be opposed by convicting it of nonidentity with itself—of the nonidentity it denies, according to its own concept. Negative dialectics is thus tied to the supreme categories of identitarian philosophy as its point of departure” (p. 147). Negative dialectics affirms the irreducible, indeterminate aspect of human subjectivity, that which escapes the desire to assimilate particulars into universal categories, such as economics or sexuality. To Lyotard and Thebaud, a “just [language] game” ruptures the colonizing tendencies inherent in our current, totalizing

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discourses. Accordingly, school reformers must be able to differentiate between experience and the representation of schooling, the first being the process of discovery and the second a construction of that discovery through language (White, 1994). Lyotard and Thebaud, Goodman, Adorno, and White propel our understanding of language as it concerns knowledge. The moment of singularity or discovery shows us the theoretical possibility of a discourse that escapes totalizing meaning and is instead embedded in the moment of its articulation. It is a discourse that is so specific, it is born and expires almost instantaneously in order to move on to a new context since no two contexts are ever the same. Epistemologically speaking, this seems incompatible with our need to understand how teachers come to know their educational experience through language. By focusing on a language game that precedes “what happens,” we are confronted with an enigma. How will we know this event? If we are concerned with how Inquiry members come to know their world, then knowledge and teachers’ linguistic representation of it have to be considered as happening simultaneously. It is true that language does not reflect objective knowledge; it accentuates events that we come to know and it constitutes part of the knowledge that results from this active process. In this modified framework, knowledge fails to speak for itself. We can neither leave our histories at the door nor can we start anew in each moment. Language mediates knowledge in order for subjects to generate meaning from life events and we only learn from experiences we learn from. There is much about our social experiences that we repress, or which never reach articulation. To say it another way, coming to know is a dialectical process between experience and representation. DISCOURSE AND SUBJECTIVITY Language mediates the forging of subjectivity, a pedagogical condition characterized by accommodation, contestation, and reconciliation. Although Jameson notes during a series of talks delivered at UCLA in 2001 that the notion of a subject has existed as long as language has been around, subjectivity is a newer concept. By this, he means that language necessitates a speaking subject, whereas subjectivity as an effect of discourse is a relatively recent innovation, notably since Foucault. A critical approach to school reform starts with an awareness that the power of language oppresses as well as liberates educators from the taken-for-granted ways we name our everyday schooling experiences. By being critically aware, we become exposed to the language of common sense as a problematic site and work toward renaming and resignifying daily life in schools. Critical reform seriously treats language as a mode of organizing social life, one filled with ideological dimensions that produce material results. As such, language is


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not only composed with words, a nomenclature arranged in grammatical structures, but instead is a way of acting on the world. Language is an act for it guides our behavior, depending on the way we choose to represent ideas, invest events with authority, and exercise relationships (Austin, 1962). Moreover, language has transformative potential because subjects possess the power to change their “limit situations” (Freire, 2000) by first transforming the way they think about, talk about, and relate to language. Whereas we commonly think of language as a tool for communicating thoughts or a medium for utterance, in this book I am referring to language as a process whereby individuals become subjects. Languages are commonly thought of as “officialized” ways of speaking, like Tagalog in the Philippines, Spanish in Mexico, or English in the United States. Language issues have been a hot topic in educational debates. For example, we see reform movements in the realm of bilingualism and English-only instruction. With the demographics showing that California, for example, exceeds the national percentage of Limited English Proficients (LEPs) and the national percentage of bilingual speakers, studies into language become more nationally pertinent and educationally pressing. This is one way to think of languages. Most often people construct language in its popular forms, or macro languages (e.g., Spanish, Tagalog, English). However, if we splinter the common-sense discourse on language, we discover that many “languages” actually exist within individual, sanctioned languages. For example, there are different ways of speaking, reading, and writing English in the context of U.S. schools. There are profound differences within English: everyday speech, formal speech, Appalachian English, West Coast versus East Coast, and Black English. Although speakers of these languages may comprehend each other in conversation, the meanings they evoke differ. It is ultimately at the level of meaning that our concern over domination is articulated. Speaking, reading, or writing a language is a cultural practice that communicates more than thoughts through words; language narrates subjectivities. Language is not the mere property of the knowing subject; rather, the knowing subject is an instance of language. It does not find its realization in the subject, as if she comes home to roost in it. Instead, the subject finds her subjectivity in the multiplicity of discourses available to her. As Foucault (1972) describes it: Thus conceived, discourse is not the majestically unfolding manifestation of a thinking, knowing, speaking subject, but, on the contrary, a totality, in which the dispersion of the subject and his discontinuity with himself may be determined. It is a space of exteriority in which a network of distinct sites is deployed. (p. 55)

Subjectivity is not posited by a coherent humanist individual, but by a subject who is an effect of competing discourses. Subjectivity is no longer

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only an internal product of the cogito, as Descartes once described it, but an external effect of social processes. The challenge for educational reform is to construct the subject out of emancipatory discourses. Diane Brunner (1994) is helpful here when she writes, “Through personal experience, we come to know. Through story we make it known. In narrative we weave the fabric of our lives (and others) connecting information with experience to construct knowledge” (p. 58). People use language to construct and tell their stories, hopes, and struggles. In addition to being a medium for utterance, language serves the important role of positioning us in our understanding of social life. It is not a pessimistic state of affairs where the feeling of unrootedness is to be appalled. That subjectivity is an effect of discourse suggests that language provides the backdrop for the self we create, the meaning of which we admit is open to reinterpretation. Scholarship on discourse represents a general reaction to the humanist or liberal notion of a stable, knowing subject. In the humanist discourse, the subject is posited as a transparent, speaking subject, who, in the act of speaking, presumes to reflect the social world as it “exists” and not as it is constructed through meaningful linguistic practices (Weedon, 1997). To the extent that humanism separates representation from political interests, it is guilty of opposing reality to ideology. Consequently, it underestimates the role that language plays in change, its ability to constitute reality rather than reflect it, and its capacity to create meaning and not only to apprehend it. Humanism’s other goal is to purge language of its contradictions, sometimes even repressing them in favor of consistency and clarity. Rather, a discursive study reveals the subject as the fulcrum of multiple discourses that compete for its subjecthood, a social rather than psychological process. It is not idealist in the Hegelian sense, but requires material institutions that administrate the subject’s pleasures and desires. Insofar as students and educators are interpellated by discourses that compete for their subjectivity, Weedon also reminds us that they are not passive receptacles of discourses. People do not assimilate concepts and notions of the self without making active decisions in the matter. However, this choice is made possible by discourses to which they have access. Material institutions, like schools, and their administrators of policy gain their power through discursive authority. But discourse lacks power without the institutional backing that makes the exercise of power more efficient and potent. In other words, the subject is created out of the dialectical tension between institutions and the discourses that regulate them. DISCOURSE AND IDENTITY Language constructs the meaning we derive from experience, one of which is identity. We come to know the identity of self and things through discursive interaction with our social world. Rather than having an


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autonomous space wherein subjects forge identities, we co-construct them with others in the context of a social grammar. Our identities are part of discourse communities that embody epistemic rules for language use, concepts, and ways of knowing the self and other. McLaren (1995) encourages reformers to forge “border identities,” which are a combination of transcultural crossings resulting in a hybridized notion of self that is neither essentialistic nor indeterminate, but intersubjective: Border identities are intersubjective spaces of cultural translation—linguistically multivalenced spaces of intercultural dialogue, spaces where one can find an overlay of codes, a multiplicity of culturally inscribed subject positions, a displacement of normative reference codes, and a polyvalent assemblage of new cultural meanings. (p. 139)

The politics of identity cannot be dissociated from the social context out of which it arises. We do not create ourselves outside of history. Discursive identity is borne out of the common histories that interpellate subjects, who in turn respond to their experience in patterned ways. “I am” is a linguistic claim that carries historical weight. Identity formation is not altogether an idealist activity that takes place at Starbucks over a café latte (although this certainly occurs). It is a material practice that happens through the mode of discourse because identity becomes an issue of how best to define ourselves through language among the available signs. Consensual theorists have suggested that identity politics should serve the common good. The common good becomes the key moment. For example, Emile Durkheim once argued that identifying the good necessitates organic solidarity around his conception of “the social.” To Durkheim (1956, 1973), the social group is the source of normalcy. By following tradition and exercising reason, individuals serve the good of the social. It is the schools’ function first to identify the social milieu, then welcome the students into it. Likewise, E. D. Hirsch Jr. (1978) has followed along the same lines by identifying what he believes is the core information necessary for American “cultural literacy.” Allan Bloom (1987) goes even further by claiming that Western legacy is in jeopardy due to the proliferation of standards for identity. He suggests that we return to Greek classical literature and philosophy. The “closing of the American mind” is ironically attributed to the opening of standards, a trend he traces back, in part, to multiculturalism and affirmative action. In a similar vein, Ted Sizer (1992) writes that people have made too much of race in the United States. Consensual theorists assume a high degree of preexisting commonality that needs only to be recovered, a sentiment that San Juan (1994) warns us is forgetful of culture as “both civilization and mental labor, [and which] must be understood within the framework of a social structure

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constituted by multiple contradictions, in particular from the viewpoint of the hegemonic process of struggles by multiple sectors and forces” (p. 36). There is an alternative explanation for identity formation: People do not achieve identities, but rather negotiate signs among the layers of discourses available to them. As Biesta (1995) suggests, “Identity is no longer something to be discovered; identity has become an invention” (p. 1). Identities are not preexisting categories waiting to be named. They are created through the differential play of signifiers. For example, in a study of the Khmer population in the Boston area, Smith-Hefner (1995) highlights the intersection of language, culture, and identity. In Khmer society, linguistic development is part of socializing children into understanding social distinctions. This hierarchy is reproduced in the language coded to defer to elders. Likewise, because language as we know it is stratified, Inquiry discourse re-creates some hierarchies while attempting to fracture others. For language is imbricated with racial, gender, and class values, and Inquiry as reform is “critical” depending on how it confronts and deconstructs the concept of identity. A concomitant to discourse communities is that they define borders around themselves. Every community reserves the right to define itself. The discourse on inclusion has traditionally lacked the self-reflexive apparatus to admit that an additive democracy always presumes a self onto which the other is accreted, leaving the center unquestioned. As Lipman puts it: Culture and democracy cannot co-exist, for democracy, by its very nature represents the many, and culture, by its nature is created by the few. What the many cannot immediately comprehend, they destroy. . . . What is necessary are definitions of culture and democracy based . . . less on inclusions and more on exclusions, less on finding similarities between conflicting realities, concepts, and goals and more on recognizing the differences between them. (cited by Giroux, 1994a, p. 71)

A discourse on identity that values differences recognizes distinctions between them but also realizes that these borders are porous. As defined here, exclusion should not be confused with images of segregation or discrimination. Coterminous with the valuation of difference, the discourse on exclusion recognizes that inclusionary practices have historically been a “be more like us” perspective disguising itself as democratic. By contrast, a truly democratic reform is inherently “noisy” as opposed to monophonic, a trademark of the discourse on sameness. In order to avoid privatizing identity, reform must provide spaces for voices to dialogue with one another. Group identities are distinct but never separate from one another. People construct identities in relation, dialogue, and reaction to other identities. In other words, identities are dialectical negations of other identities rather than resulting from autogenesis, much like Saussure’s notion of negative terms. Conditions fostering


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a sentiment of solidarity enable identities to enter the conversation as equals in Habermas’s (1989) projected “ideal speech situation.” Subjects occupy several, if not many, communities. These community associations erect parameters, but it is to be understood that they are mutable and can accommodate new identities. For instance, a teacher can belong to different political affiliations that cross over into each other. That said, educators need a way of looking at differences not merely as diversities, but as power-invested signifiers. As Calhoun (1994a) observes, “The pursuits labeled ‘identity politics’ are collective, not merely individual, and public, not only private. They are struggles, not merely gropings; power partially determines outcomes and power relations are changed by the struggles” (p. 21). At the point where identity intersects privilege, power becomes instituted. Without a collective project, identities offer little hope for resistance, let alone transformation. Ellen Willis warns: The problem is that [identity politics] gives rise to a logic that chokes off radicalism and ends up by supporting domination. If the present obsession with group identity as the basis of politics is hard enough to imagine, much less build, a broad-based radical collectivity, it has even more tellingly stood in the way of a principled commitment to the freedom and happiness of individuals, without which no genuine radicalism is possible. (cited by Giroux, 1994a, p. 70)

In its initial stages, identity politics is transformative because it raises individual consciousness and at times those of an entire group. However, politics is never guaranteed in advance. Social location does not predetermine political position, without suggesting that they have nothing to do with each other whatsoever. This does not suggest the “death of identity politics.” A radical identity politics inevitably must transcend the bounds of identification so that new subjectivities can be forged, or identities as we might know and live them. By appreciating the power of language, we understand that identity is known as sign. The politics of naming is not just a quarrel over what to call groups. It is an issue of representation because identity labels have loaded meanings in which people invest. Not only will Inquiry sessions have to deal with naming identities, but with the issue of identification as well. That is, identifying the process of “Inquiry” (an identity itself) suggests different meanings for participants. How issues are discussed, or identified as this or that, suggests different ideological commitments between subjects. DISCOURSE AND EXPERIENCE The notion that language reflects experience has been challenged and problematized by critical theorists. Rather than reflecting our experience,

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critical educators understand that language refracts experience. Language differentially mediates our experience depending on one’s social location and politics: “Language functions to ‘position’ people in the world, to shape the range of possible meanings surrounding an issue, and to actively construct reality rather than merely reflect it” (McLaren, 1986, p. 28). Discourse allows subjects to make sense of their experiences in such a way that escapes a final verdict on what they mean. We compose and decompose social life to fit our version of reality. People weigh certain experiences as more relevant than others. We “delete, supplement, and deform” experience to fit “the architecture of the world we are building” (Goodman, 1978). But this is not to say that language is our worldview. We bring our experience to language (Ricoeur, 1976, p. 20) and it is here that a world is constructed. In order to avoid relativism, a critical discourse on experience makes relations of domination of paramount concern. It is true that experience has multiple meanings, but they are not all equally liberatory. Experience and language do not exist independently of one another. Experience and its linguistic representation occur simultaneously as part of a subject’s being-in-the-world. This point contrasts with Ricoeur’s (1981) assertion that “Language does not change experience, but lets it become itself” (p. 115). For it is not hard to imagine that an adult’s recollection of her school days as a child represents a different meaning of the experience when compared with the child-version’s memory of the same event. If we are concerned with how students and teachers make meaning of their school experience, then we have to consider that no experience exists apart from language. Language is less a mechanism that allows experience to become itself and more a mode of experience, a way of accessing meaning. In McLaren’s (1991b) words, “language does not imminently reflect reality but serves as its constituent mechanism” (p. 9). Inquiry participants comprehend and create reform as they construct it through language. As such, they do not merely know schooling as it exists, they come to know it through language. Through this active process, they render Inquiry intelligible by creating a language for it. Following Rorty, McLaren (1995) writes: Experience is fundamentally discursive. That is, we cannot separate experience from language and the conflict among and contradictions within systems of signification. . . . We can never “have” an experience and then simply attach a word or concept to that experience. Because experience is always a form of languaging—it is always an event. After all, experience is produced by systems of intelligibility that help to recognize it as experience. When we acquire a new language of analysis we reinvent experience retroactively. (p. 163)

As a mechanism for signifying events in our lives, language helps subjects generate meaning out of experience. Inquiry participants receive events


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through language in forms of words, images, and symbols. In turn, they process this information by representing it in language. In effect, reform does not only occur in language, it occurs through language. Postmodern theorists have announced an epistemological break in education. They have suggested that people do not construct the world as autonomous subjects. Marx may have agreed with this predicament when he declared that people make choices in conditions not entirely of their own making. Subjects neither freely experience social life nor act as they would always like. Henry Giroux (1994b) reminds us: Representations are always produced within cultural limits and theoretical borders, and as such are necessarily implicated in particular economies of truth, value, and power. In relation to these larger axes of power in which all representations are embedded, it is necessary to remind the student: Whose interests are being served by the representations in question? (p. 49)

McLaren (1995) is also helpful on this issue: “Experience needs to be recognized as a site of ideological production and the mobilization of affect and can be examined largely through its imbrication in our universal and local knowledges and modes of intelligibility and its relationship to language” (p. 125). Subjective experiences are always-already motivated or interested; they cannot be otherwise, which is not to say that is all they are. It should be clear that the process of intelligibility is not a tabula rasa because we are not merely in the world; the world is also in us. A world without people is void of meaning, but people without a world is an empty consciousness. We need a discourse that can “read critically the narratives that are already reading us” (McLaren, 1993a, p. 203; italics in original). In other words, critical discourse strives to understand the historical context that makes any meaningful interpretation possible. The conflation between the “I” (individual) and “we” (social) poses a problem for “authentic” experiences. It forsakes the notion that subjects can create (and hence live out) autonomous ideas and ways of seeing (Foucault, 1991). However, this is not an altogether pessimistic state of affairs for educational reform. Understanding that subjective creation is always a dialectical process between self and other avoids essentializing our experience, or to “hold to the mistaken belief that experiences constitute some ordinary or foundational event” (McLaren, 1995, p. 193). Language is a social, as opposed to an individual, act. Or as Walt Whitman puts it, language is a “native grand opera” of different voices and experiences (see Cmiel, 1994). Following Bakhtin, Robert Stam (1993) notes that linguistics forms part of the broader study of ideologies, for the ‘domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs.’ The individual consciousness is decentered, for

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‘signs can only arise on inter-individual territory.’ Debunking the cherished myth of the monadic ego, Bakhtin posits consciousness as a socio-ideological fact rather than as the product of an autonomous self-generating cogito. (p. 119; see also Bakhtin, 1981)

Compare this point with Giroux and McLaren’s (1986) insight: It is through language that we come to consciousness and negotiate a sense of identity, since language does not merely reflect reality, but plays an active role in constructing it. As language constructs meaning, it shapes our world, informs our identities, and provides the cultural codes for perceiving and classifying the world. (p. 27)

Thus, the unbridled Cartesian self is challenged. Meaning is removed from independent cognition and interpellated into the social grammar. Bakhtin, Stam, McLaren, and Giroux reinvent semantics as a generative process that eludes auto-diction and instead is implicated in interdiction. In this perspective, experiential formation depends on the discursive strategies one deploys. DISCOURSE AND POWER Language is not the war, it is a battle site. As Joan Scott reminds us, language is where “history is enacted” (cited by McLaren, 1995, p. 125). It is the terrain that frames the struggle, but power is the spoil that demarcates oppressors from those oppressed when asymmetries in relations of power are not sufficiently addressed. This unwitting and sometimes deliberate neglect takes many forms. Because language represents a site of cultural politics, ways of speaking, reading, and writing become ideological issues. As an ideological event, language cannot occupy a neutral space. People invest in their words and thoughts, and whether consciously or not, subjects choose certain ways of languaging the world over others. Race, class, and gender enter the economy of considerations as educators sift through their cultural repertoire, a process that is often internalized and tacit, yet very much active. For example, daily encounters with race during interactions with people and the media racialize the alien other. In addition, middle-class cultural signs inculcated in classrooms validate the linguistic codes deemed productive for an educated middle class. Last, male-directed and male-centered vernaculars often relegate girls and women to second-class student status, or the opposite other of males. Educational reformers benefit from a new language that fights against class, race, and gender domination (Giroux, 1995a). Conditions do not have to follow this logic of domination. Educational reformers can welcome and encourage multiple and critical language games. For example, reformers nurture languages as always-already dia-


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logical and listen to the spoken or read the written word as the subjective articulation of one’s ideology. Within this critical discourse, language formation is not only communicational (a tool) but communicative (social). In other words, linguistic articulation is a social act by subjects who relate with others by narrating their worldview. Subjects do not construct narratives in a neutral and autonomous space but negotiate them in the context of other people’s narratives. Language provides witness to the inter-history between subjects. Educational reform that prioritizes the social aspects of language enables participants collectively to unpack the relational nature of their social positions. They discover that no one exists alone and unconnected with others. Through language, we inherit our labels, ascriptions, and signs, which are stratified along asymmetrical lines of power. Or as McLaren (1991a) puts it, “Critical educators have shown us that students do not step into the moving stream of history naked. They are always clothed in the dispositions of language and power” (p. 139). Foucault (1978) arguably has been the most productive thinker in systematically studying the effects of power as they relate to discourse. He describes power like this: Power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms. . . . New methods of power whose operation is not ensured by right but by technique, not by law but by normalization, not by punishment but by control, methods that are employed on all levels and in forms that go beyond the state and its apparatus. . . . Where there is power, there is resistance. . . . These points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network. Hence there is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. (pp. 86, 89, 95, 96)

To Foucault, power is omnipresent. It produces relations and is a product of relations. Power begets resistance and institutes power against it. Seen in this light, power is productive, as opposed to purely repressive or negative. It emanates from within and without discursive relations. It comes from the bottom and rises up as much as it descends from the top. In addition, Foucault (1986) leaves room for self-transformation. Technologies of the self are social practices that individuals construct in order to promote self-renewal and valorization. Like ideology, power is not something to overcome, it is to be cultivated for its productive aspects. Although power is omnipresent, this does not suggest that discursive power is omnipotent (Best and Kellner, 1991). There is knowledge outside of discourse. It may be a marginalized articulation held to be too threatening. Or as Burbules (1993) suggests, the social circumstance fails to accommodate it into the official dialogue. The pedagogical challenge would then be to bring these latent discourses to the level of dialogue.

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Foucauldian analysis allows educators to understand that a certain will to power is integral to the establishment of reality, or at least the appearance of it. Seen this way, what Apple (2000) calls “official knowledge” is a particular deployment of information to convince students and teachers that reality actually unfolded the way textbooks have organized it. Foucault does not reject this situation as false inasmuch as he would not claim another rendition as true. A discursive analysis of reality, knowledge, and history takes into account the “general politics of truth.” Foucault (1980) writes: “Truth” is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements. “Truth” is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A “regime” of truth. (p. 133)

Thus, truth is not to be discovered but enforced. It is not founded on the reality principle but on the force of words, statements, and declarations. Truth is not judged on the basis of its accuracy or correctness, but on its effects, or whether it produces pleasures and works against repression. It is chaperoned by power, which is not mainly sinister or negative, but productive. Or as Calhoun (1995) puts it, a theory is judged by its ability to produce epistemic gain, not truth in the scientific sense of the word. Fruitful for social theory and educational reform, Foucauldian analysis is not without problems. Staying within an anonymous and abstract framework, Foucault lacks a critique of power in concrete educational terms. His depersonalizing framework fails inevitably to hold certain subjects accountable since Foucault is more concerned with power and not the powerful. For example, he leaves out aspects of power as a legitimation process, of how actual agents practice and rise to power in concrete terms. In this, Bourdieu (1991) has been helpful. He writes: The properties which characterize linguistic excellence may be summed up in two words: distinction and correctness. . . . Value always arises from deviation, deliberate or not, with respect to the most widespread usage. . . . Language that is “well chosen,” “elevated,” “lofty,” “dignified” or “distinguished” contains a negative reference . . . to “common[,]” “everyday,” “ordinary,” “spoken,” “colloquial,” “familiar” language and, beyond this, to “popular,” “crude,” “coarse,” “vulgar,” “sloppy,” “loose” language. (p. 60; italics in original)

Bourdieu’s critique of language as it intersects concrete forms of power helps reformers understand that language is a matter of everyday distinctions. For example, his description is convenient for a study of schooling where working class culture is often debased as vulgar. These structural distinctions are encoded into the body vis-à-vis the habitus, or linguistic


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predispositions. Then language is systematically coded and inserted into the way people speak, whether they consciously or unconsciously follow these codes. In the final analysis, language use has concomitant costs. Seen in this light, Homo linguisticus is not free to choose among the available discourses. She positions herself and is positioned along differential matrices of power according to her experience, history, and ideological relations. DISCOURSE AND CRITIQUE Language not only codifies experience, it also has the potential to empower its users. In other words, language can be used as a weapon for critique. Kathleen Weiler (1988) argues that we must work to the point of questioning language itself. In the process it forces people to interrogate their own common sense view of the world and to move toward critical consciousness of their relationships and position in society. . . . Changing people’s consciousness is not enough; real relationships and forms of power must be changed. As Freire points out, it is not enough for the oppressed to recognize their own oppression. That recognition is only the starting point for a movement to destroy that oppression and to become free in fact and not simply in the mind. (p. 71)

As such, speaking or reading the word becomes a transformative event. For Freire and Macedo (1987), the act of reading the word is always an act of reading the world. That is, subjects exist with the world through language instead of merely living in it. One of the key concepts in Freire’s epistemology is that humans come to know the world as beings-forthemselves who have the capacity to act on their concrete everyday lives. Inquiry participants expose their capacity to “decode” the myths that have deceived them and in which they have participated. On the same note, McLaren (1995) urges: We cannot afford to just temporarily disengage students from the doxa—the language of common sense. If we want to recruit students to a transformative praxis (critical reflection and action), students must not only be encouraged to choose a language of analysis that is undergirded by a project of liberation but must affectively invest in it. (p. 143; italics in original)

In terms of praxis, critical Inquiry can be a mode of “social and cultural critique” (McLaren, 1995, pp. 143, 230). Hence, a language of critique must include the public sphere beyond the walls of the classroom or the fences of a school yard, not just in Political Science 101 but political economy at large. Because people are historical subjects with specific narratives to tell, their linguistic renditions invoke particular contexts. The words we use do

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not define experience the way a dictionary may dictate meaning. Words describe worlds and histories. Ideologists in the positive sense start from the premise that words matter, “that they have a power that can change men and their worlds, sometimes dropping the scales from their eyes or the shackles from their hands. Ideologists, in brief, believe in the power of the idea as vested in the word” (Gouldner, 1994, p. 206). Words matter as part of the process of naming the world. Although words are not made of matter, they maintain its residue—that is, of material reality. There is a relative necessity between our need to name the world and a world that is prelinguistic. Teacher discourse is precisely about the activities in which they participate. They talk about the daily routines of class, the challenges to teaching, and the incredible moments of learning. This is the basic conundrum between materialism and poststructuralism. Whereas materialists argue that an objective world grounds our concepts, poststructuralists claim that our concepts construct the world in which we float. Pedagogically speaking, reform begins with a language of critique. Through critical concepts, reformers reconstruct educational life and expose its contradictions. Critique aims at material changes, but this process begins with a language that penetrates the core of race, class, and gender domination. A problematic for educational reformers then becomes an issue of sustaining a critical but eclectic discourse that not only creates space for different language games but also avoids essentializing them. However, this does not suggest a free-for-all. Rigorous standards for combating oppression can become the new common sense. A critique that interrogates the formation of student and teacher subjectivity becomes a vocational study for all people involved with the educative process. It is vocational in the Freirean sense because humans use language to transform nature into culture. Humans possess the special capacity to work and by working, they create their world. As a form of cultural practice, language is a transformative vocation differentiating subjects becoming part of the world from objects merely being in it. A language of critique is never simply about clarity. It is always bound up with a political project. Clarity without complexity and hope chokes a truly radical critique. Clarity is always a question of “Clarity for whom?” And as we have read, clarity is too often an issue of conventions. A critique aiming solely for clarity takes for granted the reader’s position (Giroux, 1995b). This does not suggest that critique should aim consciously for vagueness and obfuscation. It suggests that critique is not an issue of either clarity or complexity but of both. Also, it implicates clarity as an ideological issue, rather than a merely rhetorical one (Lather, 1996). For example, a “literacy for stupidification” perpetuates the importance of clarity over political purpose and denies the fact that people’s tastes and dispositions toward language are socially inscribed (Macedo, 1994). Dismissing critical language as jargon and esoteric


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depotentiates what is otherwise a powerful ideology. This is perhaps shown most clearly in the term “accessibility.” Critical language is often excused by mainstream readers as being inaccessible. However, access is an issue of discourse community as opposed to understandability, the two of which are often equated to mean the same. Whereas an “unclear” and simplistic critique provides little help to reformers, let alone to the public, an apparently inaccessible language may have more to do with the politics of audiencing. That is, whom does it address and which sensibilities welcome its voice? Obviously, critique needs clarity without sacrificing complexity. In addition, criticism launched against the apparently muddy descriptions of critical pedagogy tends to valorize ordinary language. It is not uncommon that mainstream educators charge that critical educational language is “elitist” or “exclusivist.” Its highly academic discourse is not only hard to understand, it seems to demand much previous knowledge from its readers. Though this particular criticism helps point to the important project of widening the interest in critical theory, it also misses the mark. On a profound level, it assumes that ordinary language is sufficient and nonideological (Aoki, 2000; Gouldner, 1976, 1994). The argument valorizes common language as transparent when compared to the supposed opacity of critical language. In fact, there is much in ordinary language that leaves one searching for a better mode of critique in terms of providing educators, teachers, and administrators with tools for a deeper engagement of school processes. If “plain talk” were sufficient, then “theory talk” would have no place in educational reform. This suspicious move may only further de-intellectualize teacher culture during a time when new concepts and ways of seeing old problems are greatly in need. It should be obvious to anyone who has struggled reading John Dewey’s texts that theoretical language is difficult to understand, yet indispensable. Of course, there is always the issue of translating theoretical language for people unfamiliar with it. And this is the challenge. How can academic reformers work with practitioners toward a language of critique that is both critical at its core but organic in its function? In other words, the new language is an abstraction of general social themes but specific in its application to the everyday lives of concrete people. The new language of reform worth advocating does not force educators to start anew, but it does require a fundamental shift in how we currently view critical language from a stigmatized set of “academic jargon” to a language that disrupts the hegemony of ordinary language. For there is nothing commonsensical about common sense. Rather, it is part of a long process of naturalizing the inherently historical genesis of words and their meaning. Inquiry is a form of school critique. Depending on the language it employs to describe the educational enterprise, we are able to approxi-

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mate the ideology embedded in the critique and the political project on which it is grounded. Research informed by the critical tradition can assist in our understanding of Inquiry. Deploying the critical vernacular means recognizing the power of ideology to thwart as well as promote change. Furthermore, we are able to know the Inquiry participants’ ideological commitments by critically examining the language they use to construct reform. Last, encouraging educational reformers to take stock of critical discourses in their search for change may result in what Larry Cuban has called “second-order changes” (cited by Fullan and Miles, 1995). NOTE 1. For an extended discussion of Jean Baudrillard, see Leonardo, in press-d; see also McLaren and Leonardo, 1998a.

CHAPTER 4

Ideology Critique as Method: The Problem of Interpreting Relations of Domination

If ideology is the problem of domination, then studying it is the problem of interpretation. School reform is an interpretive endeavor concerning the role of schools in society; it is inherently hermeneutical. At the heart of Inquiry is a hermeneutical structure where participants’ interpretations collide or complement one another. Analyzing school reform is likewise unavoidably interpretive because of my own participation with Inquiry, as a subjectresearcher. Before we embark on a discussion of the research, one important issue has to be cleared up: the difference between methodology and methods (Morrow, 1994). It is not uncommon that researchers use the two concepts interchangeably. However, there are major theoretical and practical differences between the two concepts. Methodology is a framework for discussing the ideological underpinnings of social research. It is an ontological position on the question of social reality. Furthermore, methodology invokes epistemological assumptions about what constitutes knowledge and how we can apprehend it through research. It implicates phenomenological explanations for empirical data—that is, their meaning and social significance. Last, methodology’s most important function is to justify the purpose and project of social research. A researcher’s methodological assumptions affect her methods for collecting data. At the same time, there are widely acknowledged methods for collecting data that researchers with different methodological presuppositions share. In their simplest form, methods are techniques for gathering data; they are the practical side of research. Methods comprise the strategies that researchers use when collecting information in the field, and they are ways of amassing the data required for answering the study’s

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research questions. Of course, a researcher’s ideological commitments influence her decisions for choosing methods since the mode of data collection recalls her methodological position on reality, knowledge, data, and purpose of research. Although there is no clean way ideologically to separate methodology from methods, they are distinct research issues with their own concerns. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY My study of Inquiry is an ideological critique of reform in progress. Thus, the analysis highlights the role that ideology plays in Inquiry, a reform that exists in a larger context outside of its immediate temporal and spatial parameters. It is a point in historical time with the benefits and banes of the histories preceding it and that now interpellate it. Inquiry is also part of a spatial structure because it is located in a specific geographical place with structuring forces acting on it. It takes place in the context of a school, which influences its discourse patterns in a different way than those found, for example, in an organizational study of the superintendency. There is a material reality external to Inquiry sessions, which constrains and liberates its possibilities as reform. Large portions of this material reality continue with or without Inquiry. One of the book’s main objectives is to understand how structures such as race, class, or gender affect Inquiry discourse and the impact they have on the process of change. Despite the strong influence that objective reality exerts on Inquiry, its participants still mediate structures, interpret them, and create meaning out of them. Understanding this subjective reality is important because “reality” does not merely come to us in the form of unadulterated experiences that require us only to reflect them, even in an imperfect manner. Reality does not make immediate sense to subjects. It does not walk around with a Post-it on its forehead announcing its arrival; it has to be registered and then mediated. Objective reality carries different meanings for people depending on their social location. Inquiry is a good venue to observe the dialectical process between objective constraints and subjectivity. Coming from various racial experiences, class cultures, and gender histories, Inquiry subjects live reality as a relation between their objective and subjective worlds. They come to Inquiry with personal and collective histories and leave it with slightly, if not radically, different stories to tell and realities to live. Seen in this light, reality appears in flux, never quite clear but fuzzy and ambiguous. As Althusser might suggest, Inquiry participants do not have direct access to the real as it exists in its pure state. Yet this does not presuppose that the relationship between reality and representation is purely arbitrary. There is some necessity between objective reality and our representation of it. Our discourses are able to express this reality with some

Ideology Critique as Method

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relative degree of coherence and connection; but by doing so, discourse also constitutes this reality. Teachers’ constitution of reality depends on the way they operationalize problems. For example, a psychoanalytic explanation of schooling as the cultivation process of the ego leads to different problematics from the same phenomenon operationalized as the Marxist struggle against economic exploitation. The ability to constitute reality through discourse does not mean that social life is any less real to people. Subjects live “as if” their lives are stable and constant. It is this “as if” condition that allows them to extract some sense of meaning out of social life. A reform produces critical results depending partly on the degree that it questions objective and subjective realities. Research assists in this process by pushing the envelope on what constitutes reality and the political consequences of constructing it one way versus another. Epistemological assumptions about the production of knowledge are also another critical issue in methodology. In its search to mirror the natural sciences, social research has traditionally been occupied with linking causes and effects. In certain empiricist circles, social researchers strive for verifiable evidence that a certain source, A, has caused an observable effect, B. From this, we receive reliable knowledge about a social phenomenon because we have experienced it firsthand. This has also been one of the problematic notions associated with the pragmatist tradition. It leads certain pragmatists to assume that experience produces knowledge. However, experience does not always lead to knowledge, let alone truth. As Weedon (1997) reminds us, “[T]he experience of individuals is far from homogeneous. What an event means to an individual depends on the ways of interpreting the world, on the discourses available to her at any particular moment” (pp. 75–76). We only learn from the experiences we learn from. That is, the meaning of many of our experiences escapes us and remains unanalyzed. They remain catalogued in the deep recesses of the unconscious. The problem of democratic school reform does not seem so much an issue of producing “better” knowledge, but of liberating people from accepting their knowledge as natural and neutral. Research can assist in this project by challenging the claim that it produces objective knowledge about a particular phenomenon. In addition, it questions the notion that progress is the production of better, more accurate, and reliable knowledge. Instead, research can justify its knowledge production in ethical terms—that is, by self-reflecting on the political consequences of the research product and project. What is the knowledge for? How does this knowledge enable people to become more politically responsible subjects? And, how does the research knowledge critically help us to understand schools as sites of change? With Inquiry, the basic issue of “how we come to know” becomes problematic. The act of knowing is never transparent but instead is caught up

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in an economy of considerations. Although experience may not produce knowledge, it provides context for events and subjects learn from experiences in light of how they make sense of them. How subjects make sense of them returns the discussion to ideology, defined here as worldview. This move is necessary because people are sense-makers and rely on meaning for daily decision-making. Inquiry participants rely on their knowledge of the world for their everyday decisions. Otherwise, an average school day would appear to them as an amalgamation of anarchic disconnections having no pattern. But educators do not normally view school life this way. There are certainties that we know and on which we rely. In order for critical change to happen, our everyday knowledge has to be made problematic because it is in the daily interactions between people that knowledge begins to assume its naturalness. Critical research unsettles this obviousness by encouraging self-reflection. It asks fundamental questions about apparently innocent phrases like, “It’s common sense,” “That’s human nature,” or “We’re all human.” First, there is nothing commonsensical about the obvious. Common sense is a long process of naturalizing knowledge that is inherently historical and ideological. Gramsci (1971) has taught us that ideological hegemony is established at the level of common sense in order to persuade people away from questioning certain relations and the social order they produce. Second, human nature is a myth that mystifies people into accepting as natural that which is social. As a result, apparent differences, like “women are emotional and men are rational,” are interpreted as natural traits rather than social constructions serving particular interests. Third, collapsing people into “just people” forgets our situatedness. It is part of a discourse attempting to fix what it means to be a subject. Instead, people are participants in and are effects of discourse communities, regimes of knowledge, and historical blocs. Research apparently is not about describing the obvious, the natural (note the irony in “naturalistic” methods), or just people. It is a struggle of coming to know social phenomena within a particular set of assumptions and with a particular purpose. Consequently, empirical data do not just leap out at researchers. What we recognize as data partially comprise the research questions, on one hand, but can also be considered as relevant ways of representing a phenomenon. We know evidence by representing it in intelligible ways. One way we do this is by translating what we know into representations. “I know” is a linguistic statement that carries histories of what counts as knowing and how this is different from other statements about evidence. For example, Israel Scheffler (1965) differentiates statements about beliefs from statements about knowledge. Here, he argues that knowing something takes more commitment from the knower than believing in something does from the believer. Knowledge claims are more reliable than


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belief claims. Knowing invests a critical amount of authority as well as surety in a person’s claims. Thus, which sets of information count as “data” is not only a matter of choosing that which is good or appropriate evidence. Critical research recognizes that perceiving is always perceiving from a social location. Research is always research for a purpose. However, research differs between people with outstanding and prior ideological commitments. Traditionally, much of social science has been geared toward describing social phenomena in efforts of verifying knowledge claims. With the political platform of the reconstructionists, Dewey’s pragmatic insights into democracy and experience, and the current work on school reform, a strong minority of social science research has become change-oriented rather than descriptive. Moreover, with the invaluable critiques of ideology from critical pedagogists, school reform has been extended to school transform. Critical social theorists have made it known that much of social research has spent too much time describing schools. The point is to change them. This necessitates an ideological critique of the purpose of schools and how to conduct research in order to expose the contradictory conditions in which schools are embedded. As Kincheloe and McLaren (1994) describe it, a critical researcher can be characterized as a theorist who attempts to use her or his work as a form of social or cultural criticism and who accepts certain basic assumptions: that all thought is fundamentally mediated by power relations that are social and historically constituted; that facts can never be isolated from the domain of values or removed from some form of ideological inscription. (p. 139)

An important purpose of critical research is to expose myths that have long been held as self-evident: myths like rugged individualism, history’s facticity, and science’s objectivity. From this, it should be clear that research is never neutral. By critically engaging the promises of social research, scholars promote transforming social ills rather than describing them. RESEARCH METHODS AND TECHNIQUES First and foremost, the study uses ideology critique as method. Therefore, it suggests that methods are not only interpretive, but also political. The study employs ideology critique in order to understand how Inquiry members create meaning from Inquiry. Because the study focuses on language use, the most appropriate methods are those offered by a qualitative approach. There are nine teachers (six classroom teachers, two resource teachers, and one librarian), two school administrators (principal and vice principal), two district officers, and three researchers participating in the

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Inquiry sessions. In its third year, Inquiry expanded to include two other groups in addition to the original one. The study will limit the sample to include only those participants from the original group: a total of sixteen participants. This particular group had met together for more than two years. Although the group is larger than it was in its first year of inception, a large percentage of the members have been together since Inquiry began. They have had ample time to establish a crucial amount of rapport, allowing them to feel more comfortable with expressing their beliefs and values in front of one another. The group lends itself readily for a study of ideology because its members are more likely to partake in a discussion around their value systems, having already passed the initial stages of establishing the norms for the sessions. Designing the study becomes an issue of bounding the case (Merriam, 1988). Because ideology is best understood in depth, Inquiry participants provide an appropriate group since an in-depth study requires a setting wherein participants feel relatively free and uninhibited to discuss their value systems. I am considering the group as a “bounded system” (Merriam, 1988, p. 9) because it is marked by issues particular to its context yet maintains connections with larger relations outside of it. The comprehensive meaning of ideology in this context is what I aim to grasp. The following analysis is an ethnographic account because cultural codes play an important role in determining the totality of ideologies at play. But it should be made clear that the focus is on cultural politics, or how ideology interpellates the interactions within the culture of Inquiry, and not culture in general. I attended the Inquiry sessions as a participant-observer for two years, representing my first source of data. It is a sensitive situation because participants attempt to dialogue with one another about their norms, beliefs, and values about schooling. Ensuring the participants’ comfort in having their statements tape-recorded for research and publication purposes was a challenge because of the nature of the dialogue topics. Encouraged to speak their mind during the sessions, Inquiry participants felt vulnerable in having their comments tape-recorded. It is in recognition of this sensitivity during Inquiry sessions that recording the participants’ exact words becomes even more important in order to avoid paraphrasing their statements. For purposes of accuracy, taping the sessions became indispensable. In addition, taping was necessary because the research is about discourse, or language use. Studying ideology as a textual process required that I observe the contexts for language use. For example, we are able to approximate the participants’ understanding of their conditions, the meaning they derive from Inquiry, and the social significance of their ideas about school change. As mentioned in chapter 1, Inquiry sessions look very much like focus groups, a quasi-Freirean cultural circle. The format it takes is conducive to studying ideology as relational because as Morgan (1988) states, the “hall-


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mark of focus groups is the explicit use of the group interaction to produce data and insights that would be less accessible without the interaction found in a group” (p. 12; italics in original). Participating in Inquiry sessions provided a setting for a study of the relations between the subjects. For example, the importance of ideologies can best be understood as the relationship between worldviews. Ideologies do not make much sense in and by themselves. It is in relation to other worldviews that their significance becomes known. It is in the difference between worldviews that they achieve meaning. Ideologies are constitutive and textual, which means that they are never guaranteed in advance by social location or the interactions during Inquiry sessions. Ideology is a specific event and must be identified in its context. It can best be understood in its context: what precedes it, what follows it, what it means for its senders and receivers, and how it maintains the traces of social life. Because ideology plays a primary role in the analysis, everything is potentially ideological. However, as Eagleton (1991) suggests, this strips the concept of much of its strength as an analytical tool. It requires researchers to separate phenomena that are ideologically significant from those that are ideologically banal. For example, it may not be important ideologically that a particular Inquiry member prefers chocolate chip ice cream over rocky road, as opposed to believing that students are receptacles for knowledge and the teacher is giver of knowledge. This is not to say that, depending on the interaction between two people, ice cream preference could not be ideological, as in a person trying to use his power to override the preference of others. However, it makes little sense to map out ahead of time which phenomena count as ideological since this also requires a specific ideological lens to explain the interaction at hand. That said, there are acknowledged fields of articulation where ideology becomes an important structuring principle. During Inquiry discourse, these fields can be identified as discussions involving: identity, subjectivity, experience, knowledge, and reality. We know that these fields play significant roles in how subjects view and make sense of their world. Moreover, they provide the study with analytics as well. Analytics proffer points of discussion about ideology as an empirical process observable in people’s language. The following processes represent specific examples of how we can know the participants’ ideological positions during Inquiry discourse: 1. Which topics participants take up or eschew 2. How participants discuss topics: the tropes with which they frame ideas, the signifiers they use to constitute and describe the phenomenon, the form and content of their discussions 3. How the group manages discourse: turn taking, direction, resolutions, and so forth

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4. Points of conflict and dissonance, and the nature of the tension 5. How authority is asserted and power is deployed 6. How the relationship between the individual and social life is addressed 7. How participants identify the purpose of particular schooling practices such as grading, teaching, or learning 8. What role race, class, gender, and culture play in education 9. How the participants frame the purpose of education

The foregoing processes provide convenient ways of determining which information counts as evidence. First, we peer into the participants’ worldviews through the topics they choose to discuss. This suggests the areas that the participants consider relevant in the educational arena. In particular, the manner in which they discuss these areas provides information on the issues they consider important in their institutional lives. The topics they eschew expose not only those areas they consider irrelevant or unimportant, but also those they find uncomfortable or threatening. Second, the tropes and signifiers that the participants use to frame specific issues show their level of understanding of a given set of phenomena. In addition, the form in which they phrase comments—that is, the grammar through which they form a unit of thought—displays their ability to link causes and actors to social events. More important, the content of their speech suggests their disposition toward particular social or educational issues. Are they trivialized? Are they considered important? Or are they pressing and critical issues? Third, management of Inquiry discourse exhibits internal dynamics between the participants. The kind of speech situation tells us something about the level of comfort that is pervasive in the group. Turn taking implies that units of speaking turns have become a struggle, especially when people interrupt or are interrupted. Selection or direction of topics is another instance of struggle wherein speakers exercise their power to maintain or derail a particular topic of discussion. Fourth, because Inquiry discourse is an ideological struggle, the participants’ worldviews will complement, overlap, and collide with one another. Moments of conflict and their resolution provide a glimpse into the ways communication mediates ideological positions. Furthermore, points of conflict reveal the argumentational criteria (e.g., ethical, logical, and practical) that participants use to justify their particular way of viewing the world. Fifth, because ideologies are never equal, we can witness power at play. There are both officialized and subordinated ideologies. This process of legitimation is often enacted through modes of authority. Sixth, Inquiry sessions provide a good context for assessing the participants’ views on the relationship between the individual agent and social institutions. For instance, an important and ongoing debate in education


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revolves around notions of individual merit versus group relations. Seventh, because schools are bureaucratic institutions with multiple layers of competing administrative bodies, educators deal with the overarching concerns of grading, teaching, and learning. How participants deal with these concerns shows their understanding of schools as institutions (e.g., as sorting mechanisms, places of moral inculcation, or vocational training). Eighth, race, class, gender, and culture are important social factors that exert significant influence on educational processes. The degree that participants differentially deal with these issues highlights their views on educational themes such as student success and failure, intelligence, and student–teacher interactions. Ninth, the totality of Inquiry dialogues and interactions gives form to perhaps the most important pedagogical issue: the purpose of education. By studying the intersection between processes, starting with those above, we gain perspective on what participants deem as a worthy aim for education. In addition, we receive their views on what needs changing and what should remain the same. Finally, we observe the participants’ views of themselves as agents of change. A second source of data comes from individual interviews with the participants. Between Inquiry sessions, I conducted individual interviews in order to extract the participants’ continuous impressions on the Inquiry process. Individual interviews provide a different dynamic for language use because face-to-face group influence is not a factor. Respondents may reveal different thoughts about Inquiry that they previously may have kept to themselves during the sessions. More important, interviews paint a portrait of the participants’ personal world: their hopes and desires as well as limitations and unexamined assumptions. In particular, the interviews uncover the teachers’ “particular ideologies” (recall Mannheim), thereby giving us a better picture of how agents make sense of their educational life in the context of Inquiry. Patton reminds us, “We cannot observe how people have organized the world and the meanings they attach to what goes on in the world—we have to ask people questions about those things. The purpose of interviewing, then, is to allow us to enter into the other person’s perspective” (cited by Merriam, 1988, p. 72). However, it should be made clear that although we may call them distinct, individual interviews are not independent from one another. The separate interviews converse with one another, discursively positioning the participants in relation to one another. Interview questions serve as follow-up queries to Inquiry sessions. They are intended to elicit expanded responses from interviewees, illuminating the issues discussed during Inquiry that either need clarification or are pivotal in their understanding of the Inquiry process. Because there is a higher level of researcher control during interviews as opposed to Inquiry sessions, which are essentially like focus groups, individual interviews are a good method for eliciting pointed comments for specific ques-

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tions. Interview questions deal with issues similar to the ones found in Inquiry sessions, with the critical difference being the interview format’s ability to arrive at extended comments. Just as important, interviews provide reflections on issues discussed previously during Inquiry sessions. Interviewees have had some time and distance to mediate the information imparted in past sessions. The participants’ synthesis is an important luxury because educational change happens at the personal, as well as at the institutional, level. A third source of data is participant-observation. Classroom observations inform the analysis of the pedagogical structures that facilitate or hinder diffusion of Inquiry tenets in classrooms. Field data show where and in what context Inquiry’s major tenets (e.g., self-reflection, critique of knowledge, examination of norms and values) influence the participants’ worldviews. More important, observations expose the way practitioners mediate objective structures in their daily efforts to juggle simultaneously institutional pressures and change. In turn, this dialectic affects the way they perceive Inquiry and make sense of it as a change process. SETTING THE CONTEXT Inquiry at Monroe Middle School looks very much like a focus group, a quasi-Freirean cultural circle. During the first year of the study, researchers, administrators, and teachers met once a month for an entire school day. In the second year they moved the sessions to a meeting room on the Monroe campus, and Inquiry transitioned from off-campus to on-campus for convenience, enabling the administrators to address any pressing needs the school may have on Inquiry days. With respect to the teachers, they maintained access to their classrooms should the substitute teacher face any problems. The sessions also shifted from full day to half day twice a month in order to maintain some sense of continuity in the classrooms, because the teachers expressed some concerns over the decreased contact time with their students. Typically, the teachers begin the meeting at 8:30 A.M., break during recess for twenty minutes, reconvene, and conclude before lunch period at noon. For each Inquiry session, the participants rotate the responsibility for bringing food and beverages. As the participants trickle into the room to begin the meeting, they sit in a circle and start the conversations for the day. Often Patrick, the critical friend, starts the discussion with a short summary of the themes pursued in the previous Inquiry session. In his absence, the principal initiates the dialogue. From this point on, the discussions are wide open in the sense that there is no topical agenda determined beforehand. The participants introduce educational themes, discuss challenges they face with their students, and then analyze their positions. The tone of discussions is informal. The participants take turns


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speaking, interrupt one another, and debate. There is rarely any closure on the issues raised, and the teachers frequently revisit previous topics. The participants are relative equals in the sense that anyone can raise an issue, change the direction of the discussion, and reject or accept their colleagues’ position. Not all discussions are serious in content. The teachers’ demeanor is often pensive or attentive, but sometimes they laugh and joke with one another. For the several hours that the participants inquire into their pedagogical practices, it is almost impossible to predict the nature of the discussions from beginning to end, but there are recurring themes. Other than the occasional bureaucratic interruptions from the front office or those concerning classroom matters, the Inquiry group sustains undisrupted dialogue from start to finish. Monroe is one of the three middle schools in the Washington school district. Monroe shifted from a junior high to a middle school in 1987. Since then, according to the school’s mission statement, it “has shifted from that of a ‘mini-high school’ to a student-centered, heterogeneously grouped middle school that emphasizes a meaning-centered curriculum.” It serves roughly 815 students from all socioeconomic levels as well as a diverse ethnic and racial representation of students: 47.3% Latino, 32% white, 15.6% African American, and 4.7% Asian American. Several of the school’s stated goals include promoting the “independent learner, solving challenging problems, being able to work together, and a respect for diversity.” According to the school’s descriptions, here is a typical eighth grade social studies assignment: In cooperative learning groups, choose one aspect of U.S. history covered thus far, and dramatize a scene which reflects seven historical facts. Items to be completed: computer-generated script, list of seven historical facts with bibliographical source, theater poster announcing the production, and, finally, the live performance. Factors involved in complying with the assignment included: group dynamics, decision making, identification and pooling of talents, division of labor, extensive research, knowledge of correct bibliographical form, keyboarding and computer technology, writing and staging expertise, graphic design, creative expression, and public speaking.

Classrooms at Monroe are organized in Cores, or smaller learning groups within the larger school. Classes are heterogeneously arranged, with Special Education students “mainstreamed into regular classrooms.” Resource teachers collaborate with classroom teachers on student assignments. Honor students are also placed in heterogeneous classrooms, but are recognized as a subgroup therein. The teachers’ classroom pedagogy represents various methods, including the Socratic method, Tribes, and cooperative learning. Students use hands-on experience in science and math. When students ask “How many pages does this report have to be?”

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their teachers do not provide an answer because page length is not a relevant issue for assignments. However, teachers frequently remind students: “State your source.” The school boasts a Science Magnet Program, a Spanish Language Immersion Academy, and an “award-winning music program.” The faculty and administration’s written educational philosophy “stresses learning as a process; the process being as important as the product.” As a reform protocol, Inquiry emphasizes face-to-face communication and negotiation of change norms between researchers and practitioners in efforts to achieve school renewal and decrease the inequalities between student outcomes. Inquiry is a specific response to the general limitation of top-down initiatives and mandates to create meaningful and lasting change. Traditional reformers have been guilty of assuming consensus a priori. They have designed changes with minimal input from people on whom they have a great impact: practitioners. It is not surprising that most of these efforts have had limited success. In California alone, there were fifty-two reform initiatives from 1958 to 1975 (Kirst and Meister, 1985). One by one, they failed due to inefficient time, inappropriate application, and lack of funding. Unlike more traditional models of reform, Inquiry emphasizes collaboration among teachers, administrators, and researchers. In efforts to promote teacher ownership of reform, the Washington school district adopted Inquiry as the mode of change that its schools at all grade levels follow. As part of that district, Monroe conducts Inquiry sessions with teachers. Inquiry recognizes and addresses the need to empower participants during the process of school change. Historically, change research has been something relatively ill-defined and controlled by academics. The traditional relationship between researchers and school practitioners has been forged with the assumption that researchers enter the school site as experts and the practitioners as novices with respect to change. As a result, the researchers’ knowledge and status have consistently been privileged over those of the practitioners. Inquiry’s dialogical format disrupts this cycle by emphasizing co-construction of the change process between researchers and practitioners. In effect, it tries to promote an ethos of communicative exchange between participants whereby practitioners are encouraged to own the change process. That said, Inquiry participants confront the pressure for consensus around a common ground of struggle because, in the final analysis, something needs to be done. Thus, in the face of difference, participants search for a collective solidarity on school reform. This is the challenge.

CHAPTER 5

The Tropes of Inquiry: Ideology as Symbolic System

If researchers want to avoid perpetuating relations of domination, then our interpretation of ethnographic evidence must allow space for the participants’ worldview to shine through. Researchers forsaking this move would privilege their own analytical powers over their participants’ ways of making meaning of their conditions. That is, even before labeling participant ideology as either “negative” or “positive,” researchers are in a position to understand, in Ricoeur’s sense, the world that participants project and how this is constitutive of reform. This is essentially the strength of a “grounded theory” in research. It privileges the research participants’ voice by constructing a narrative around their ideologies—that is, the necessary ways they make sense of their world. As such, I reiterate the first point of a three-pronged approach that links ideology’s necessary, negative, and positive dimensions. This move avoids a one-dimensional theory of ideology that treats it as a purely negative phenomenon, while still maintaining the problem of social relations of domination at the center of critique. A three-dimensional theory of ideology that integrates necessary, negative, and positive outcomes provides social research with the tools to unpack school reform’s complex web of influences, one of which is the important task of understanding its participants’ worldview, a world the evidence suggests is dominated by pragmatic concerns. In this chapter, I present the participants’ worldview not in order to take it for granted, but to portray a world of teacher ideology that is necessary to teachers functioning as practitioners. I describe the participants’ ideology as the necessary ways that teachers use Inquiry for their own purposes that are not particularly tied to the reform tenets of Inquiry as a

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change process. In other words, the participants are able to make sense of Inquiry procedures in a manner that is consistent with their worldview as structured by their work conditions. To this end, teacher participants, in a sense, co-opt Inquiry as a space that fulfills their needs as practitioners whose work can be characterized as increasingly more intensified. With more duties and responsibilities added to the teacher’s plate, teachers sometimes look for unconventional places to meet their professional needs. One of those places is Inquiry. For example, teacher participants use Inquiry space to vent their frustrations, seek advice from colleagues, and share their narratives with one another, a luxury they often do not have. This process is due partly to their pragmatic worldview, one composed of decisions with immediate concerns and “real world” application. Although Inquiry is designed to be a reflective reform process, teachers sometimes use it to take care of their “everyday business.” It is here where we first sense the teachers’ pragmatic ideology. I present participant ideology as a necessary network of meanings in the sense that teachers formulate their own “uses of Inquiry” to serve their immediate, pragmatic goals. Overtly, Inquiry is a designated place for teacher reflection with the larger goal of reforming one’s practices, or what Patrick (the critical friend) calls “upside-down work.” At this point, it may help to recall that one of the critical friend’s roles is to encourage the teachers to consider alternatives. However, participants, most of whom are teachers, have other ideas. For the following discussion, the evidence suggests that they take advantage of Inquiry time to address their idiosyncratic needs. Here, they seek each other’s advice, vent their frustrations, confess their guilt about being unable to ameliorate certain inequalities, and share their personal narratives, in and out of school. It is by first considering ideology as a necessary, constitutive medium that we arrive at the meaning teachers gain from Inquiry as a hermeneutic space, the use of which is open for interpretation. Chart #1: Inquiry Ideology as Necessary Modus Operandi • Pragmatism • Help-Seeking • Venting • Confessions • Personal Narratives

THE PRAGMATICS OF INQUIRY As the expression of teacher pragmatics, Inquiry provides a sense of their practical orientation toward their work and world. We receive this portrait by first

The Tropes of Inquiry

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paying attention to their discourse style. In one interaction between teachers and Patrick, a discussion over student work assessment shows us the teachers’ practical orientation. As they problematize the different quality of work between students, Patrick and the teachers display their tendencies, the first concerned with a theoretical understanding of student work, the second more pragmatic. Patrick: Aren’t there issues about discourse style where kids might have a discourse style that was allowed to prevail? There were very different criteria from those which prevailed as discourse style. Yolanda: Usually when they [students] peer-edit, they peer-edit with friends. So you would imagine that they would be selecting someone with a similar discourse style. It is not uncommon that some of them will say, “Ms. Farrel, I don’t understand this at all. How can I edit it?” I’ll sit down and read with them and we’ll try to work on ways to edit it. So it’s not simply a matter of using the conventions of standard English, or it’s a matter of having sentences where they’ve got the word in their head and it didn’t make it to the paper. You don’t know what they’re talking about at all. You have no clue. So I don’t know that it’s just a matter of discourse styles.

Here, we see Patrick introducing the concept of discourse style, or the ways that students present their ideas as embodied in concepts and choosing their own criteria for argumentation. Yolanda chooses to see the same event as something more about expression. Certain students in her class have an arduous time writing and she has difficulty understanding the source of their problem. To Yolanda, this case is not particularly about discourse style. Her concern precedes any attention to the writing style and is more about the difficulty she faces in even grasping the content of a student’s work. If Yolanda cannot grasp the essay’s meaning “at all,” then she is at a loss with respect to assessing the work’s quality. She validates this belief by referring to the student’s peer, who likewise fails to understand the student’s work. As a history teacher, Yolanda acknowledges the subjective nature of her grading process where, as she admits, unlike some “subjects that are more objective, like math when there is an answer . . . I say an A is an A isn’t an A. Everybody has different standards and that’s the grading process.” At this stage, teachers’ ideological use of Inquiry does not yet fall within the domain of reforming practice. Yolanda’s descriptive accounts of her teaching give us a pragmatic portrayal of her work. Teacher pragmatics suggests that valuing difference is an important but often difficult ethic to follow. Dealing with at least thirty students per class, they search for some measure of standardization. Yolanda is again helpful as she explains the challenges to difference: As a teacher, my brain gets trapped to this practical world. That would be great to sit down and say, “Tell me what you [student] want to learn about and let’s

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explore it together.” I have this great vision of how many that would be. There’s thirty kids in every class and I’m going to have thirty kids in every class doing a different experiment. Panic sets in and I can’t even conceptualize to discuss it rationally. I can’t (while laughing lightly).

Classroom management overwhelms Yolanda’s pedagogical vision. She admits that it would be ideal for her to address all of her students’ interests. But with her “brain trapped to this practical world,” we sense her anxiety even thinking about it. She imagines herself “panicking” with the thought of her students pursuing thirty different interests. The scenario we receive is one that is out of control, one that Yolanda punctuates with “I can’t.” The discussion continues: Yolanda: The idea of having students say, “I’m interested in this, I’m gonna pursue this,” and a teacher who is able to not necessarily tell that child where to go, but to guide, to be an advisor, to be a helper in finding that information, is wonderful. Then we get back to the cement and I think, “Okay, that one interaction I had with that kid took seven minutes and we found something that didn’t work.” Then SSR [Sustained Silent Reading] is now halfway over, and the kid can’t remember the next time they come which book it was they were reading. There are still thirty-one other kids I haven’t interacted with that way. So that’s where my panic mode set in. Larry: You know, maybe a better analogy is the M*A*S*H analogy, and we are just performing triage. When you stop to think about it, we’re just trying to get better at triage so that maybe we can save a few more bodies.

The metaphor, “cement,” in Yolanda’s statement refers to her working condition, one filled with demands that she has to fit somehow into her workday. With teacher accountability being an issue, Yolanda feels pressure to send all of her students home with some amount of new learning and the teacher as “guide, advisor, and helper” falls by the wayside once she thinks about her time limits in increments of seven minutes. Larry enters the dialogue by presenting a medical analogy from the television show M*A*S*H and compares teaching with emergency medical conditions in the middle of a war. Consistent with the popular view of teachers as soldiers in the trenches, Larry’s comparison of teaching with “performing triage” reiterates Yolanda’s practical concerns. Larry is not suggesting that teachers systematically select students who will be saved from those to be sacrificed. He is pointing out that, like the often gravely limiting conditions we find in M*A*S*H, teachers can only do so much to address every student’s interest. This mild panic attack provokes Patrick to interject: This is not about let’s make teachers crazy. This is about how does the work life of teachers and that of students become more compatible? From my point of view, how then do teachers work less and students work more? But the practicality of


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that has to be developed by us. Very few people, if any that I know of, have taken that on and figured it out.

Sensitive to the context, Patrick understands that addressing all students’ interests is an admirable but difficult goal. He comprehends that this is a theoretical proposition whose “practicality” has to be developed by the teachers and students involved, and admits that he has rarely seen it enacted in classrooms. Nevertheless, this does not prevent the theory from guiding teacher practice. As we have seen in these few examples, teacher ideology is characterized by pragmatic concerns. This is what Inquiry rubs against—and in order for it to proceed, the participants must confront certain conditions, one of which is how teacher work structures teacher outlook. In fact, teachers may find it difficult to address more fundamental questions about education if they constantly have to worry about the minutiae in their work, bureaucratic or otherwise. For example, while participating in Inquiry and thus being out of the classroom, Yolanda is concerned about the quality of her substitute teacher. She suggests that Monroe Middle School use as substitutes the novice teachers who are currently interning at the school because she predicts that “it might be a way to work that partnership together. I know that there’s been a couple times when if my choice would have been [between] a sub I didn’t know and my novice teacher who’s wonderful, I would have hired the novice teacher.” Out of the classroom in order to discuss reform ideas, Yolanda feels some guilt about leaving her students under someone else’s care. Furthermore, she is uncomfortable with the notion that a “stranger” is teaching her students and would prefer a substitute teacher with whom she has more contact. From this we understand that a truly reflective reform must come to grips with teacher ideology, a worldview that is intricately woven with pragmatic concerns. Teachers do not regard Inquiry only as reform, but an added responsibility to their already busy schedules. SEEKING HELP THROUGH INQUIRY With teacher daily pragmatics frequently occupying Inquiry time, dialogue about classroom practices permeates the sessions. Because Monroe teachers acknowledge that their work life is marred with struggles over grading processes and worse, inequalities, the teachers ask one another for help with the concrete challenges they face in their respective classrooms. As a result, they engage each other’s perturbations and offer help when someone asks for assistance. In this sense, Inquiry becomes a second space where the teachers’ help-seeking behaviors manifest themselves. It is not uncommon that the participants ask for and receive pedagogical advice from their coworkers. Again, generally cut off from each other’s everyday

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circumstances, the teachers use Inquiry for professional development. The form it usually takes is an apparently nonchalant introduction to a concrete situation in one of the teachers’ classrooms. A teacher relays a particular story, a quandary, or a decision she recently had to make. The respondent reacts with queries that pose more questions, demand more information, and inquire into the exact nature of the problem. The majority of the concerns have to do with students. Here is one of the simpler interactions involving Amanda, Yolanda, and Elexis: Amanda: One of your students, who was my student, tried so hard. You want initials? I wasn’t going to say anything. You want the initials? Yolanda: Yah. Amanda: A.F. Yolanda: Yah. (nods her head) Amanda: I agonized, “Should it be a P, or a C⫹?” I thought, “If this C⫹ could upset her, would the P upset her? Would she rather get the C⫹ than the P?” But she’s conscientious, she tries so hard, she’s just wonderful. It’s not A or B work. So, I agonized whether it should be the P or the C⫹. Elexis: Did you ask her? Amanda: I went for the C⫹. No, I didn’t ask her. Maybe I should. I still can change it, so I can ask her. Elexis: I’d talk to her. Amanda: OK. Well . . . good.

Amanda broaches the topic of using A–F versus Pass/No Pass grading systems. She invokes the topic in order to solicit advice from her colleagues about which system to use. At this point, Amanda is not concerned about the ideological use of grades as sorting mechanisms. Her concerns are more practical than that. A discussion about the merits of each system does not ensue because all three teachers recognize the immediate and practical context: Amanda needs to give student A.F. a grade. Elexis advises Amanda to ask A.F. which grade she wants: a P or a C⫹. As Amanda notes, she has “agonized” over the dilemma, overlooking the option of simply asking A.F. which grade she prefers. At this point, Amanda’s quandary is idiosyncratic; it does not have much to do with reforming Monroe Middle School. She takes this moment to usurp Inquiry’s larger goals for her own purposes. A more serious issue that commands attention is student engagement (or lack thereof). Dissatisfied with student engagement until all students are engaged, some teachers consider student disengagement a perennial problem. After initial hesitation, Esther broaches an instance in her classroom involving a student.


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Esther: I feel very frustrated and certainly don’t know the answer. I might as well bring this up. We have a little case study discussion. Larry and I were just discussing a student who has come here as a sixth grader, the youngest of four sons. We see the same pattern with this child that we saw with his brother who’s in eighth grade: very bright, but not doing any homework. Not doing any work. He is in Special Education and does have a learning disability, so it’s harder for him to read and write. But he’s certainly got it up here (tapping her head). He’s not making the effort and we saw the same problem with the brother. . . . I don’t know the answer. I’m feeling very ineffective with this particular child, his brother, and with the mother. I don’t quite know how to reach her or where she’s coming from because she must see this pattern. So, we’re losing. Here’s this child, he’s in science magnet. We’re probably going to have to take him out and reduce his self-esteem. It already shows him as a failure in a way, even though maybe he knows consciously or unconsciously he’s not doing what he’s supposed to be doing in there. How do we reach [him]? Elexis: Esther, I just have a question. When you said, “She must see the pattern,” what pattern? Esther: Oh, that the mother must see the pattern? Elexis: Right. Esther: Maybe that came out wrong. I’m not sure that she does see the pattern. Elexis: Okay, then what do you mean by “the pattern”? Esther: I wonder what she does see. I feel that she sees that Special Ed doesn’t help her children as much as she’d like. Two, they’re not doing that well. I think she feels she can’t force them to do their homework. She must be seeing the pain they go through; she sought some additional help with one child. I don’t know. This is a very specific case, but I’m just wondering if it can be broadened and generalized for a lot of these children. Somewhere along the way we lose them. Is there something from home that’s not supporting the system enough? I don’t know. Yolanda: Is there something in the system not supporting them enough? Esther: Maybe the system is not supporting them enough early on.

Esther is disturbed and feels disempowered to deal with a case study involving a child and his brother. She senses the academic and personal struggles her student goes through and feels that they are both “losing” the battle. She appeals to the group for suggestions and offers her own interpretation of the situation, a “painful” problem she traces back to the student’s home life. She validates this theory by citing the “pattern” of problems in the family, which dates back to the older sibling. Elexis responds with inquiries in order to understand the circumstances more fully. However, there is a shift in the case story when Esther tries to generalize it to other children, perhaps sensing that her home critique is misplaced.

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Yolanda reminds Esther that teachers cannot control what transpires in the home but possess the power to alter the school condition to a certain degree. Esther’s last comment reiterates her view that she has provided the context for this particular child to learn. The systems problem occurred “early on,” a reference to elementary school. As far as Esther sees it, the problem lies external to her classroom, and the advice she seeks is how to ameliorate these forces. Patrick acknowledges that teacher–parent relation is a sensitive issue that must be approached gently. His advice is as follows: Patrick: It seems to me one of the things that it does is to keep the defensiveness low. It also gets me real smart because eventually when somebody’s calling me a “jerk” or “You’re the worst this” or “You have never thought about x,” they ultimately have a point where they say, “Here’s what I want.” Eventually [I ask], “So what do you want?” When they declare it I can then decide if I can give it. There’s nothing in any rule or etiquette book that says I have to give anybody anything in the world. It seems to me that part of the status issue is we get to see ourselves quite in the position of saying, “It’s this, this, and this but no I can’t do that.” Or, “I don’t want to do that.” It’s within your right as a human being to say, “I can’t do that.” There’s always the issue of [parents saying], “You’ve been beating my kid.” [Teachers say,] “I know you want me to stop, but no I can’t stop.” (laughter) That’s a different issue. We want to spend more time just talking about how I can ask for more information. What I’ve learned is when I’d ask for more information, people’s defensiveness declines dramatically. Elexis: I’m also thinking about those parents who aren’t necessarily asking for anything. Earlier we were talking about the importance of valuing the knowledge that children bring. In any discussion about parents and parents participating, we need to also talk about the parents who don’t participate in the ways that we’re used to. What are those implications for their children? What kind of opportunities do those children have? What about the parents who don’t go to a PTA meeting or don’t read a flyer about instruments? That has to be part of any discussion. It’s not just addressing those who are asking for more.

Asking parents for more information keeps teacher defensiveness down so that hopefully, with more shared information, teachers and parents can arrive at the crux of the problem and discuss how to ameliorate it. Parental pressure sometimes meets with teacher resistance so that they cancel each other out. Part of help-seeking behavior comes from wanting more information in order to avoid accusatory overtones. Patrick’s advice is a way to manage interpersonal relationships between parents and teachers through mutual communication as well as mutual accountability. Elexis recognizes that parents who feel empowered enough to put pressure on teachers do not represent a disenfranchised group. She is more concerned about parents who do not participate in school matters.


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She advises the group to identify the silent majority of parents whom the schools, in the standard ways they deal with parents, leave by the wayside. From this we can infer that it includes working class parents, parents who work more than one job, single-parent households, and immigrants. In William Julius Wilson’s (1987) words, these parents represent the “truly disadvantaged,” at least with respect to influencing school processes. Regardless of where the disengagement problem originated, the fact remains that teachers deal with its manifestations in their own classroom. This is the “reality” that they face. For example, Yolanda is disturbed with the fact that some students “choose” not to participate with class assignments. Again, unsatisfied until all children are engaged, Yolanda asks the group for suggestions. Yolanda: What do you do when a student will not choose when you said “Choose”? For example, we’re doing a project right now where the students are doing a campaign and I have [said], “Here are the rules of campaigning that are the same for political people. Do whatever you want.” I literally have kids who say, “I won’t do anything.” [I ask,] “Well, which committee would you like to be on?” “None.” “Okay, can you think of something else you’d rather do?” “No.” It’s about choice. “Tell me anything at all that you’d like to do towards helping the class with the campaign.” “I don’t want to do anything.” “Nothing. Would you be willing to color in lines?” “No.” What do you do when a student will not make a choice at all, just refuses to participate at any level? Esther: Do you have a lot of students like that? Yolanda: I have more this year than I’ve ever had. Really frustrating. Probably fifteen or twenty. They elected a campaign chairperson, and the campaign chairperson comes to me: “Miss Farrel, what do I do? So-and-so won’t do any work.” I say, “Well, have you told them how important it is to the group that everyone participate?” “Yah.” “Have you made suggestions to them of things that you see needing to be done that they could do?” “Yah.” Then I’ll say, “Well, let me see. Your campaign person tells me that you don’t want to participate. What’s up?”

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Ideology, Discourse, and School Reform “I don’t want to do this. This is dumb.” I say, “Okay, well what would you rather do? You can do something else. What would you rather do?” “Nothing.” “Well, we’re at school and believe it or not, you must do something. So tell me, what would you like to do? Would you like to read the newspaper about current campaigns? Would you like to draw a poster? Would you like to talk to me?” “No.” Total shutdown, so what do you do at that point? You want to give choice, but you also have to be prepared for what happens when someone chooses not to participate.

Esther: Were they participating before this project? Yolanda: These particular students will do the traditional type lessons when I’m standing over them, and out of fear. But when it comes to actually thinking or applying themselves or making choices, I don’t know why they’re resistant. They’re also resistant to talking about why they are resistant to doing anything. So, I’m not really making inroads with them. It’s frustrating when you make changes in your curriculum to adapt some of the ideas that we’ve talked about, and you’re thinking, “Okay, student involvement up! Student participation up! Behavior problems down! (laughter) . . . YES!” [Then] you get the opposite results. It’s very difficult to know where to go from there.

All educators have dealt with the problem of students opting out of doing work. It is a practical issue. Teachers can engage some students some of the time, and in special cases all students at any given time. But they cannot engage all the students all of the time. In Yolanda’s case, she does not understand the motivation behind student resistance to work. Even after providing students with choice, they resist doing work and are “resistant to talking about why they are resistant to doing anything.” And while Yolanda is not rigid about students having to do the work she assigns, she is firm about the idea that they have to be engaged in some form of work. This is the imperative in schools: work. This is where she draws the line. Esther enters with questions and encourages Yolanda to divulge more information so that the scenario is complete. In addition, Esther learns more about Yolanda’s class dynamics, which may help Esther in her own dealings with students. But Esther is not the one who offers advice. Obviously attentive, Yule, the principal, proffers an alternative. Yule: Let’s reverse our thinking and say, “Okay, these are less than successful students. What would cause them not to engage in these activities, as opposed to, as teachers say, ‘Gosh, I have given them all the choices and they haven’t chosen anything’ ”? If you reverse it and say, “Okay, I’m a student who hasn’t been successful and now I’m going to choose how to not be successful,” maybe in their brain, they would rather disengage than make a choice that shows a lack of success.


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Amanda: Do you think they’re intimidated by the assignments? Yolanda: These students, no. These are the students who are the intimidators. Amanda: I’m talking about intimidated in a sense that the other students are successful, so they feel everybody else is doing such a great job. They might as well do what they’re good at, which is doing nothing very openly. Yolanda: These students would be the leaders of the class. They’re the ones that the other kids are looking up to, so it’s especially damaging to the class. Amanda: Do what kinds of things though? Class clown leaders? Yolanda: They’re the kids who if this kid said, “Hey, that’s a good idea,” everyone else would say, “That’s a good idea.” If they said, “Oh, I like that,” everyone else would say, “Oh, I like that.” So they say, “Oh I don’t want to do this,” and everyone else says, “Oh, I don’t want to do this.” The kids who have refused to participate, they all have skills that you can see. Amanda: But they weren’t successful in getting the rest of the class to turn around and say, “We’re with you, we don’t want to do it either.” Yolanda: Well, pretty much they have been. Amanda: But, the other ones that are involved have been negative? Yolanda: Periods three and two are the ones that have radio commercials. They’ve got their posters, they’re having their campaign. Periods five and six have not produced a single thing at all because the other kids are so consumed with what’s going on. They’re so consumed in their group dynamic of not being able to do anything because they’re concentrating on how they can get the kids whose opinion they value to participate. It’s a difficult situation.

Yule tries to attack Yolanda’s problem by first inverting it. Rather than thinking of teacher rationales that explain a particular student’s disengagement, Yule advises Yolanda to assume a student’s point of view, a perspective wrought with insecurities that find their unproductive expression in nonparticipation. Students who disengage may be signaling that they feel unsafe in the class environment and resist work because participating in classwork only reinforces their sense of inefficacy. Thus, seen this way, nonparticipation is a student’s way of psychologically coping with her surroundings. However, Yule may be advising too quickly. There is little information to indicate that the students are not performing well otherwise. We cannot assume that the children Yolanda speaks of are low-attaining students and Amanda takes it upon herself to inquire further into their status. At this point, Yolanda is clearly focused on the students’ manifest behavior, the source of her pragmatic dilemma. She does not answer Amanda’s question and is instead fixated on the resistant students’ ability to create mutiny in her class. She cares less about the students’ status and more about quelling their behavior. Amanda seems to understand Yolanda’s quandary. She is also cognizant of Yolanda’s search for a practical solution rather than a desire to

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carry on a philosophical discussion at this moment. Amanda responds with a very pointed suggestion, a pedagogical method. Amanda: I have an alternative. Yolanda: What is your alternative? Amanda: I have two things. One [method that] I’ve tried and works is they [students] do it with their back to the class. They talk and the people don’t see them. All of a sudden, something happens and they don’t mind people coming around and looking because they get over the stage fright. Others are so adamant that they come in person to me alone, after school, and present to me by myself. I give them that option. Yolanda: Oh, I was just wondering. Amanda: From my own experience, I was terrified. You wouldn’t know it now. I was terrified. I told them, “This could happen in seventh grade.” I remember eighth grade, my knees would shake, I would turn bright red, I’d start to giggle and laugh uncontrollably. I was the worst, could not get up in front of a class. I dreaded it. So I can certainly sympathize with the kids that feel that way. I told them [that] when I went to college I deliberately did not take my speech class [during] my freshman year. I thought maybe they’d drop it by senior year as they dropped the swimming requirement. I couldn’t swim. My senior year I jumped in the water anyway because I said I’d rather drown than take swimming again. I waited until my senior year [in college] to take my speech class. I was already a mother of three. I loved it [speech class] and I didn’t know I was gonna love it. The teacher said, “You have to take acting,” and I took drama [during] my eighth term of college. I got an A and loved it. So, I tell the kids this story and I say, “You know, we change. Different perceptions we have of ourselves at one time will change as we get older maybe and it’s just an opportunity. It’s great to learn how to feel comfortable in front of people.” We don’t all feel that way.

Amanda’s “alternative” is accomplished via a detour through her own narrative as a student in the past. Her advice for Yolanda takes two forms. One, she offers a methodological solution of having students turn their backs to the class and demonstrating their knowledge of the subject matter at hand. This is done to reduce the students’ apprehensions about performing in front of their peers. Two, she asks Yolanda, as Yule did previously, to view the situation from the student’s point of view. Amanda recounts her own experiences as a frightened student. This descriptive narrative shifts the immediate focus from the students to Amanda’s story. The advice she gives Yolanda cannot be divorced from its delivery, a method of displacing the tension away from the students. In effect, Amanda draws the faculty’s attention to her, and the students fade into the background. Amanda also reduces the difference between teachers and students through her sympathetic appeal. Teachers, having once been students themselves, have experienced stage fright, no doubt an import


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from Amanda’s experiences with drama. The plane of advice exemplified here is intersubjectivity. By stepping into their students’ world, teachers increase their capacity to understand student behavior. INQUIRY AS A SPACE FOR VENTING As part of Inquiry’s dialogical format, teachers are encouraged to speak their minds. However, teachers put their own spin on this ethic. The third way they utilize Inquiry for their own purposes is by using reform space to vent their own frustrations about the everyday challenges they face, mainly with students and school processes. For example, when it comes to student engagement, many teacher participants are at their wit’s end. As already mentioned, they complain about the problem of some students opting out of doing their work. In some cases, the situation is so desperate for Yolanda that she admits, “For me at this point, I’m not even saying I want every kid to necessarily get into it. I want every kid to give it a try.” Again, we come back to the issue of class size. Teachers find that with so many students, engaging all children to participate in classwork becomes a daunting task. As a result, some students unfortunately pass time in class. Take this exchange among Ellen, Yolanda, and Esther: Ellen: Fewer kids would sure make a difference because that’s where, as the teacher end of it, I’m totally frazzled. I’ve got twelve kids and they all need me. They don’t understand an index, whether it’s on the computer or in the book. They don’t [understand] at all when they read the Alaska article. You have to read it with them. I don’t have that kind of . . . I just . . . there’s no way. Yolanda: It’s so hard to decide how to evaluate a piece of work and what I’ve tried to do is put more emphasis on the process, that the process counts more than the product. So I got their rough drafts. No matter how good or bad it was, it didn’t matter, they all got the same score. They got comments. But still, I would say that there were very few students who turned it in out of the hundred. I would say forty turned in the rough draft. Ellen: That disturbs me more than anything else. The kids, the people, that just opt out. Esther: That’s right. Ellen: They just don’t do it. Yolanda: It’s students who are usually receiving B’s, C’s, D’s, the whole range. There were A students who did not do the rough draft. Ellen: They didn’t want to do the rough. They wanted to turn in the final product.

Ellen’s “frazzled” disposition with students who “opt out” of doing schoolwork is obvious in this exchange. To make matters worse, she feels disempowered to address the problem because, as she says, “I don’t have that kind of . . . I just . . . there’s no way.” We can infer here that Ellen is

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referring to her time and resource limitations; this clearly “disturbs” her. Caring deeply about student engagement, Ellen, Yolanda, and Esther sense the contradictions between their desire to teach and the limitations of their work conditions. At times, even the students seem to be working against them. Esther explains: Esther: You see, for some students it may not be necessary [to write an outline] because, like you said, everyone has their different level of organizational skill. For a really good writer or someone who’s organized in their head, they may not need any of those steps to get whatever they have researched out onto paper. Patrick: So, is the knowledge in their heads? Esther: Yes. For certain kids, for certain people, yes. Patrick: For ones that it’s not, where is it? Esther: Well, let me share my frustration. My frustration was, with some of the kids I’ve been working with this year, if they had followed the teacher’s outline and done their bibliography, taken the notes, the bibliography sources, and put them into a bibliography at the time at which it was asked for, and tried to come up with an introduction at the time it was asked for, or tried to take the meat of their project and put it into the body of their report, if they had indeed tried to do that along the way, I think it would’ve helped them get more organized. Instead some of them left it until the day, two days before it was due and went, “Teacher, help!”

For teacher participants, Inquiry becomes a place to vent their complaints and frustrations. One can imagine that there is little forum for them actually to do this on a consistent basis. Generally isolated from their colleagues, teachers, like Esther, take advantage of Inquiry’s dialogical format to voice complaints about their students, some of whom intensify the teacher’s work even more. In fact, keeping in line with Inquiry’s hermeneutic principles, Patrick tries to redirect the issue toward interpreting Esther’s epistemological assumptions. Patrick succeeds in engaging Larry, but is unsuccessful with Esther who ignores his attempts, eager to get to her own story. This does not suggest that she is a less-caring or lessreflective teacher for doing so, but that she finds it cathartic to vent her feelings. Inquiry allows her the space to indulge in a little venting about her classroom frustrations. It is generally assumed by educators that parental involvement in school and student affairs is a good thing. But to some teachers, without proper coordination unguided parental involvement becomes a source of more frustration. Inquiry participants understand this difficult dialectic between well-intentioned parents’ willingness to get involved and the miscommunication that may result among parents, students, and teachers. Here is an example from Amanda, Larry, and Yolanda:


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Amanda: One of the problems is, I had two instances I could think of offhand where I’ve had students whose skills aren’t very high right now and they’re working on them. Parents help and they hindered them with their help. The parents told them to do the wrong things after I gave very clear instructions. The kid came and I said, “Well, why did you do it this way?” [The student said,] “Well, my mother, I told her it was wrong. But she insisted, ‘This is what point of view means.’ ” I had one boy, I made him type his poem over twenty times because it had to be perfect. Each time Mom did it, and Mom put in the wrong punctuation, Mom decided to embellish and do it differently from the assignment, and take out what he had done that was good. [At first] I said, “This is great. This is a fabulous line.” I get it back and it’s this rhyming little silly poem. I asked, “Why did you change it?” [He said,] “Well, my mother changed it.” It was grammatically incorrect and it had a lot of typing mistakes in it. I said, “Who typed it?” [He said,] “Mom did.” Larry: You should have just given her a grade. Amanda: I felt like I was grading her each time. (laughter) But sometimes the parents mean well and want to help, but really don’t have the skills themselves. So, if they’re going to be the ones who are assessing what is really quality work, sometimes they don’t know. I have a feeling this Mom is one of those who really doesn’t have the skills herself. Yolanda: Something that you said to me once, that we have to remember. Oftentimes parents feel that they’ve worked hard on behalf of their children. You’re right, sometimes it backfires.

Recognizing that “parents mean well,” Amanda is careful to avoid suggesting that parents should not help their children with schoolwork, if only to ease her work. However, she does not anticipate with fondness the sensitive situation of having to inform some parents that their assistance is not “helping,” that according to Yolanda, “sometimes it backfires.” Parental overzealousness can work against a student’s progress if it means that the parent is doing the child’s schoolwork for her. More serious is the situation when a parent does not possess the specific skills for the student work being assessed. This Inquiry moment speaks to Amanda’s cognizance that parents have become a silent but influential part of a child’s school experience. Sam recognizes this fact when he recounts his own story: Sam: I remember a couple of years ago when I had a student who had done a paper and I had graded it. The mother called me up because she wasn’t happy with the grade, the points that the child had received. I started getting the feeling that it was the mother who had written it. Amanda: They [parents] take it very personally because you’re grading them. (laughs) Sam: [They say,] “I’m working on my master’s. I’ve been helping her [student] on this.” I almost felt like asking her, “Well, who wrote it, you or her?” There were

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grammatical errors too. They lost points for that and the mother was really upset. Yule: The issue for me was you have a rubric. You have to stay on what it’s supposed to be. Usually you have a percentage of kids, how do we recognize what they do? They do their own work and do everything you want them to do.

Like Amanda, Sam is sensitive about parental involvement. He recognizes that grades no longer designate only the student’s performance; in some cases it becomes a family grade. For parents who feel empowered to assume a strong influence over their child’s school experience, student grades reflect an assessment of parental effort, and in some cases, parental worth. Sam avoids escalating the confrontation but admits that he had his suspicions about the parent’s overinvolvement with the child’s work. In this passage, we witness a shift when Yule enters the conversation. As a principal, he is more concerned with following the school’s evaluation rubric as a way to resolve the conflict between Sam and the parent. As a rationalized measure, the rubric represents the school’s policy with respect to student work. So, like the student whose grades reflect the family, the teacher applies rules that reflect the school’s policies. There is another undercurrent in this passage. Sam’s accounts are arguably designed to elicit Yule’s reactions. One can imagine that despite Yule’s attempts to be accessible to the Monroe faculty, there is just never enough space for teachers to voice their concerns within the normal working hours. In addition, with all the bureaucratic procedures that take up teacher time, teachers may decide to keep their concerns to themselves. In his busy schedule, Sam discovers a window of opportunity where he can capture Yule’s attention: Inquiry time. So, following Amanda, he takes this moment to inform Yule of the challenges to his work, one of which is parental involvement. Sam’s need is further justified when he learns that other teachers are dealing with similar parental issues. His account is couched in a flashback, but as Amanda’s story attests, the tension is not presently resolved. Seeking answers to their frustration over the disparate quality of their students’ work, the teacher participants try to find the source of the problem. Being middle school teachers, their first target of critique is the elementary school. To the teachers, the reading, writing, and behavioral problems they find in their students can be explained if they examine the preparation their students receive from the elementary schools. For example, Larry begins with this comment on students’ writing skills: Larry: Part of the reason is we have no control over what walked into the door. There’s no consistency. In other words, the standard that gets established here may be logical for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. But then if the sixth grade teachers are initially concerned because the youngsters coming in have such huge gaps, then the articulation never occurred between fifth and sixth and


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between fourth and fifth or whatever. At some point in time there’s a beginning. That fifth grade teacher doesn’t know what the sixth grade teacher’s doing. The fifth grade teacher is not preparing the youngster in Washington school district for the three-paragraph essay. Elexis: But, Larry, doesn’t that fifth grade teacher, doesn’t that third grade teacher, even first grade teacher, have the same uncertainty about what students will be coming to school with, what knowledge they will have, what skills that they might have? I think that articulation is extremely important, but what’s the purpose of that articulation? Is the purpose of the articulation for the colleges to let the high schools know what they should be doing, for high schools to let middle schools know, middle school to let elementary know? Because if that’s the purpose of articulation, what happens with those kids that don’t fit into those standards or expectations?

Larry’s perplexity shows us his frustration with the endemic problem teachers face in schools: how to deal with children with diverse academic skills. In search of an answer that can explain his students’ difficulties with writing, Larry traces the problem back to the elementary school, not so much as a place where incompetent teachers frolic but where misarticulation begins. By the time Monroe receives its sixth grade students, some of them “walk into the door” already with writing difficulties, about which the fifth, fourth, and third grade teachers never coordinated. “At some point in time there’s a beginning,” Larry remarks. If we take this statement to its logical conclusion, then the problem mysteriously disappears because it becomes an infinite regress. There is no beginning because schools are continuations of the structures that children bear even before they enter the schools. Disparities do not begin in schools, but it is here where they become systematically enacted, as in the case of tracking. By the time students reach high school, Yolanda suggests that “whatever you sign up for that first semester has pretty much decided it.” Elexis is sensitive to this point. She recognizes that misarticulation between school levels, from the elementary school all the way up to postsecondary education, is a perpetual problem and can hardly explain the different levels of academic attainment students bring to middle school. Aaris chimes in with a similar sentiment: In the elementary level, they’re having the same discussion: “What can fourth grade teachers do to prepare the fifth?” These kinds of discussions are going on and everybody is looking down to the lower grades. This is the same conversation elementary schools are having within themselves: “If only the first grade teachers were to do this.” I think that what we need to do is look at what you said, look at what we have here. Now we have them here, this is how they came, what can we do with it? Articulation between schools and grades is great and it should happen. It might help, but you have to look at what’s here and say, “This is what we’ve got. Let’s deal with it.”

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If misarticulation is really the source of students’ writing and reading problems, then this suggests that all students should suffer similar, if not equal, drawbacks in their school training when they enter a new level. But this is not the case because students of color attain at lower levels than white students, and working class kids less than children from rich homes. Aaris suggests that trying to find the problem’s origin is not only futile, it also overlooks the immediate challenges present at Monroe that the teachers have much more agency to address. For, Sam reminds the group, “Ultimately, we can control what we do here.” Larry’s frustration with what he sees as the articulation problem shows us that Inquiry is as much a stage for venting as it is for changing one’s practice. This act produces therapeutic results because teachers like Larry, who remind us that what we “want for our best and brightest we have to want for all of our kids,” face the reality of the ways teachers fail students every day they show up for work. Amanda shares Larry’s consternation: While reading their [students’] papers, I’ll read a paper and I see the word “CAINA.” I’ll say, “Okay, what is this?” So I read it out loud and try to figure out and interpret it . . . see CAINA . . . CAINA . . . KIND OF. Oh, CAINA, it’s KIND OF! So, I spoke to the class and I said, “I’m going to ask you a question. How many of you were told when you were in early elementary school, when you started to write in middle elementary school, that it doesn’t matter how you spell anything? It doesn’t matter what kind of punctuation you use. It doesn’t matter what your sentences are like because the main thing is to get your ideas out and don’t worry about it.” They said, “Yes, yes, that’s what we were told.” Many of them, still from that time, feel that it’s okay to spell anything anyway that you spell it as long as you say it, because that’s fluency. It was that whole thing of writing fluency, that general thing, “Don’t put your pen down, just keep writing, don’t worry about anything.” (laughter)

Again, at face value this may look like an attempt to place blame; rather, it is a sincere wrestling with the task of resocializing students into the middle school writing curriculum. Amanda spends time undoing what many students have learned and “believed” during their elementary years. With class time spent on mechanics in writing, Amanda devotes less time for the kind of learning she wants to take up with her students, such as threeparagraph essays. The situation frustrates her because she feels that she is teaching what elementary school should have taught or at least addressed. The “fluency” writing (content-based) that students learned in elementary school is in stark contrast to the more form-based writing she wants to accomplish in middle school. She takes this moment in Inquiry to relate this struggle to her colleagues. Some participant teachers are able to pinpoint the source of the problem more specifically. To these teachers, the responsibility falls upon the


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larger organizing bodies, such as the local school district office and its administration. For example, let us examine the following explosion from Leslie. Leslie: Someone from the administration, please say to me why things that are so important in this district, like reading teachers, and anything that’s supportive of the needs of the students—as a teacher in my classroom, I can identify ten to twelve students who are not reading—what do we do with those kids? What can I suggest? I can send them to Sam but there’s only so much that can be done now. Kids need more. So, why, as a district, is it so hard to see? There’s some basic things that we need. It boggles me when people with all this intelligence . . . the problem is kind of fairly simple: Kids aren’t reading. What the heck do you do with that? Why don’t we have reading teachers? Why don’t we have the support staff needed if we are indeed getting kids at sub zero or point zero? You cannot expect the same result with a kid coming in at zero [and] someone who’s coming in at ten. The learning process and the wheel. We were stripped of aides and help and even tried to get rid of librarians. I mean, for heaven’s sake. I mean what? What? What kind of logic is that? I don’t know. So, we can sit here and we can talk until we’re all blue in the face about the problem. Esther: Yah, let’s talk about solution. I agree.

Leslie is clearly flustered here. She vents about what she sees as the simple problem of allocating resources: To alleviate the reading and writing problem at Monroe, the school needs more reading teachers. She traces this problem at the level of district decisions and appeals to the administration, here represented by Aaris, but disguises it as a general plea, with the phrase “someone from the administration.” Leslie is reacting to the downsizing of staff, evident now in many schools, which cuts librarians and teachers’ aides. She critiques the ethic of dialogue empty of action because “for heaven’s sake,” the problem is much simpler than articulation between schools. It is mainly a problem of funds because as she notes, “SES—in the middle of the socio standard is economics.” District administration is failing to allocate more funds toward the reading problem and at times even reduces its existing allowance. This pragmatism inspires Esther to interrupt Leslie with her own call for “solutions,” a theme that comes up again and again during Inquiry dialogues. When Larry adds, “I don’t see a solution without a massive systemic change,” Leslie punctuates with, Can we at Monroe (someone tries to speak) . . . excuse me . . . can we at Monroe put the banana on the table? (laughs) Whatever you want to put, and say, “This is our problem.” We recognize that there’s a problem and can we then begin to say, “We think this is what we need to commit to.”

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Leslie wants group consensus, the “banana on the table.” The banana metaphor is interesting as it points to the general fruitlessness Leslie suggests regarding pure dialogue absent forms of action. But before the group can even act, they must reach some level of agreement on what they consider dear to them in pursuit of education for all students. Leslie is very forceful about this belief as she fends off the interruption to finish her point. However, as it becomes more evident, consensus is not easy to achieve and the teacher participants revisit this search time and again. To some Inquiry participants, in addition to the lack of communication between the school levels and district allocation of funds, the source of the problem can be found in the relationship between teachers, as adults, and students, as children. That is, to some teachers the problem is more internal to the school culture itself. “Fixing” the problem means examining the relationships between teachers and students, something more manageable than systemic changes and articulation. For instance, Leslie comments on Monroe’s own disciplinary policies: Leslie: Well, I’d like to interject. I’m sorry, my mind has gone completely off into tangents today, but because we’re anticipating an extra one hundred students next year, I’d like to just throw on the table an observation that I find just absolutely deplorable. I think we are sending our children the wrong message about our lunch time issue. When that bell rings and the kids clear and you look at the grounds, I think the grounds are deplorable. Esther: They are. Leslie: I would propose an idea of perhaps two bells, a five minute bell, and then those kids would be responsible for picking up their trash. I talked with Jasper [custodian] about it and he said that when he’s walking around sweeping, kids were just throwing things down on the ground. They’ll say, “Hey, he has to get it. That’s his job.” I think that’s the wrong message for us to perpetuate at this school. I think our kids should be held responsible and accountable, not only to outside area but the restrooms. I remember elementary school days, we had monitors. I don’t know if we could do it here, but I think there should be some monitoring, of students monitoring other students. All that translates back into the classroom after an activity. I like to have a lot of different arts to do. I have a lot of activities in my class and kids just more and more are not responsible. They do not know how to take care of materials. There’s this sense of trashing everything.

Leslie’s complaint is less academic and more about building a school culture based on responsibility. Students need to become more responsible about their actions. As it is, their sense of responsibility is “deplorable.” Yet this is not altogether divorced from academics because this passage speaks to the responsibility that, as we heard earlier, Ellen and Yolanda see lacking in students with respect to their school work. In this current passage, students opt out of caring for their school and this parallels how they opt out of their school work.


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In fact, this point about student responsibility seems important to many teachers and they take up Leslie’s charge. Basically all of the participants present in the room participate in the following exchange. Katie: You know what would work? Leslie: Everything gets trashed. Katie: You know what would work? We stand there and we see them dropping this stuff and then we go up to them and enforce it. Leslie: I’m sure you do. Katie: The ones that we see, but you’re talking about nine hundred kids out there. Stuff on a picnic table, you’ll see. I think what would be really a great solution would be to have two or three minutes and to have each classroom adopt an area near your classroom. For a period of two minutes, have the students pick up that particular area. When we have the kids who go around with the trash bags doing the pickup, it takes a lot of time. There are fewer of them and it wipes out fifteen minutes of their time. But if you had a two-minute period, and each classroom adopted an area there the way highways are adopted by institutions, that would help greatly. Leslie: But what about making the kids who throw in the garbage . . . Katie: Well, we are. You know, Leslie, we are. I mean, we are there thirty-five to forty minutes and if we see them . . . you have to see them . . . Leslie: No, I understand. Katie: If we see them, we go to them and we make them clean up. Or if there are kids who are fooling around pushing each other, we give them clean-up duty.

Because Katie is the vice principal and school governance is closer to her duties, Leslie’s point draws her into the discussion. She immediately suggests a programmatic way of “enforcing” the rules, to which Leslie skeptically answers, “I’m sure you do.” Also, because Katie is responsible for assessing school-wide decisions, she defends the enormous task of caring for “nine hundred kids.” This conversation is not particularly about reform but is more about simpler problems in the teachers’ daily school life, ones that they apparently have thought about at length. Katie’s comment instigates Yule’s participation. As a school administrator who supervises a wide range of school processes and to whom teachers appeal for policies, Yule is aware of the limits to school resources as far as monitoring nine hundred students during recess or lunch time. He begins: Yule: With five of us out there covering from the fields, to the basketball, to the cafeteria, we can’t do it because we’re there to enforce it. We have to do it because the kids want to clean it up and it’s their campus. I think this is a real valuable discussion. We need to expand to see what the different roles are and how we can do this. But we just can’t do it. I know you’re not suggesting this. The issue is if this is important to us as a staff, what are we willing to do?

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Katie: Well, we could do a rotation the last two minutes of the last period of the day, have a rotation and a certain class goes out and does the sweep. Esther: That’s true. Katie: Or it could be the first two minutes of SSR [Sustained Silent Reading]. Yule: Well, what’s the incentive to put your trash away when you’re a thirteenyear-old wise guy? Katie: It’s a lot of work. After lunch you’re talking about lockouts. Another problem that we have, the lockout situation is out of control. The tardy situation in the morning is out of control. I mean, it would really help to do the lockout if the teacher stood outside in the hall and said, “Okay, it’s gonna be lockout.” But you should see after lunch.

Reforming schools is not the issue here. What is important is something more immediate, something that could ameliorate the sometimes anarchic relationship between adults and children: discipline and desire. For “what’s the incentive to put your trash away when you’re a thirteen-yearold wise guy?” Teachers cannot make students desire to become more responsible about their conduct. This throws the discussion into the direction of building student character and away from academic topics, such as reading and writing. Participant ideology here is expressed in the form of venting about the difficult relationship between adults and children. And if we recall that teachers are in the position of being in loco parentis for children, then this conversation is consistent with teacher ideology. In fact, campus clean-up reminds us of conversations where parents “nag” (from the child’s point of view) their child to clean up her room and finally conclude that forcing the child to tidy up her space rarely produces long-term effects. Just as parents come up with incentives for their child to become more responsible, school practitioners also devise ways to produce the desired behavior through Yolanda’s “minus and plus points” for cleanliness and punctuality, a situation Esther admits has “gotten terrible” and Sam describes as “horrendous.” In a moment of self-reflection, Yule turns the teachers’ venting toward a critique of the teachers’ own accountabilities. To him, discipline comes from modeling the correct behavior. If adults do not “practice what they preach,” how can teachers expect students to follow suit? Yule: We had a procedure that worked well. But it was let down when we got complacent and stopped doing it. We had teachers sweep. We closed our doors. We stood at the door and said, “When this door closes, it’s an automatic hour [for detention].” Now I ask you to stand with me when lunch is over and see how many teachers we can catch and lock out. When there’s a whole bunch of kids out there, when we’d say “lockout” before, “vroom,” they were gone. Now we say “lockout,” and they say, “Oh, I know, Mrs. Smith. I’ll get there before she will anyway.” Those are teacher issues. Maybe we need to resolve them first. So


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you stay out and see the teacher running out of the cafeteria saying, “I know, I know, and you know.” I say, “We all know.” Yolanda: My morning class, I take my roll. The bell rings, I take the roll. The kids tell me that I take roll too early, that the other teachers don’t take it until seven minutes into the class and so you’re not tardy until they take roll. Esther: Oh, that’s ridiculous! Yolanda: They’re looking at me and they’re saying this with the honesty. Sam: They haven’t been in my class. Yolanda: They really mean it. They’re not making it up. Yule: Half the teachers allow kids to come in late is my guess. Esther: Not me.

Yule’s redirection shows his ability to self-reflect on what he considers to be the other side of the student discipline equation, or what he calls “teacher issues.” He shifts the critique from student behavior to teacher modeling. If teachers expect students to comply with school rules, then the enforcers of those rules, mainly teachers, must also follow them. Students perceive these contradictions and act on them. Notice the way the teachers, particularly Sam and Esther, react to Yule. They sound defensive, declaring their innocence regarding Yule’s charge despite the fact that his concern is with teacher culture as opposed to individual teachers. As the principal whose critiques sound a warning to teachers, Yule’s authority is contiguous with his words. Yule continues his remarks. Yule: What time are the teachers supposed to be here, folks? Yolanda: Quarter of. Yule: Seven forty, seven forty-five. Want to stand there with me in the parking lot at eight o’clock? I mean, all I’m saying is . . . Yolanda: Would you like to talk about A period and what time that’s supposed to start and when the teachers arrive for that? Because I’m here before they are. Yule: You’re here before the sun gets up. Many are, but I think the issue has to be, do we model what we expect? Do we expect the kids to do what’s appropriate? Yolanda: I had heard one teacher tell her students, “Oh, you don’t have to be on time. I can’t be on time anywhere. Why should I expect you to?” Esther: Oh, my God. (sigh) Sam: Oh, that’s a good one. Esther: That’s terrible! Yolanda: The teacher was being honest.

What initially began with teachers using Inquiry time to vent about students opting out of schoolwork and parental overinvolvement has transformed into a discussion about teacher contradictions. Yule follows his

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line of argument by asking the teachers to consider their own actions and reflect on them. The teachers discover that student problems find their source partly in teacher problems. Upon examination, the teachers expose the underbelly of their complaints and see the reflection of student inconsistencies in teachers themselves. To this they gasp in horror, “Oh, my God.” “Oh, that’s a good one.” “That’s terrible!” This kind of denouement is possible because teachers rarely get the chance to reflect on an existing teacher culture but instead concentrate on their own conditions and concerns. Discussions such as these are not attempts to reform the teachers’ fundamental orientation toward students or schooling. Without the space to vent their concerns during daily school life, teacher participation in reform may be characterized by bursts of frustration. And rightly so, for as these episodes suggest, teachers rarely have the time or place just to release their energies. INQUIRY AS CONFESSION Releasing teacher energies does not only come out in the form of venting, it also takes the appearance of confessionals. This fourth form of Inquiry use reels the teachers back into their responsibilities as adults in charge of caring for children. As the participants’ venting subsides, they enter a reflective mode, confessing that schools have produced conditions that do not promote all children’s learning potentials, conditions they admit they either participate in or do not know how to ameliorate. For example, when it comes to grading, the participants understand the ways they unwittingly devalue groups of children and their ways of knowing. Elexis admits: The whole issue of grades deeply troubles me. I think one of the reasons that we continue to revisit the whole issue of grades is because at some level it troubles many of us. Is it resolved? I feel that way, but I don’t have all of the answers. It deeply troubles me. It’s another way of sorting kids and I think that we give double messages. I wonder why we keep expecting kids to believe this if we say, “Well, we just want you to try your hardest.” I don’t know how we figure that out. One of the things that strikes me is wondering why do kids want grades so much? Are they born that way? How did that happen? Then we have to revisit it. I just assume that we’ll revisit this topic again and again because I don’t know if the small group can figure it all out, or our school can. But I think the conversation is the place to start.

Elexis is clear about being “deeply troubled” by the grade issue as a mechanism for “sorting kids.” She confesses that a grading system tracks students into hierarchical paths to academic success, but is unable to think of alternatives to replace it. Stuck in the quandary of wanting to assess student work more equitably but finding it hard to imagine forms of assessment that do not compare students with each other, Elexis appeals to the


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group for a way out of this aporia. Moreover, Elexis recognizes the hypocrisy in sending students and their families the “double message” that effort counts, when in fact, it does not. As a result, students have bought into the notion that grades reflect effort and more important, selfworth. Yolanda corroborates Elexis’s fears: When I asked them [students], “What if I just collected your work, read it, commented, and it was just like a check system. I’d check that you did it and I didn’t really give it a letter grade.” The kids said, “Wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do the work. If I don’t get a grade, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to put in the effort.” I said, “Oh, well, that’s disappointing. I was hoping that would save me some time.” (laughter) But they just said, “Nope, not going to do it. If I don’t get a grade, you won’t get the same level of work that you got before.” That was from the kids that are in the honors language arts program down to the students who are not doing any work for a grade either. They said, “Definitely, if you don’t grade it, I’m not going to do it.”

Yolanda’s testimony reinforces Elexis’s deep reservations. The grading practice has created an animal that has a life of its own, which both teachers and students feed and nurture. Following Elexis, Yolanda recognizes that undoing the grading system for the benefit of students becomes daunting when one considers that students themselves will resist assessment reform. As much as teachers use grades to evaluate, students depend on grades for feedback. As much as teachers, students find meaning in school through the grading process. They are even more pragmatic than teachers, even more concerned about the product of their efforts. Speaking bluntly, Patrick presents a challenge: Patrick: Let’s suppose it is that way. Why don’t we then just declare it that way openly and say to the kids, “Look, there are some of you that just by virtue of what we value here you bring, you’re going to do better than the rest of you who don’t bring that stuff. You can all try, but trying isn’t what it’s about. It’s about what you bring here.” Larry: We can’t be that honest because we don’t have a place for these youngsters who will then just completely turn off and become totally disruptive. Once there’s no carrot, or once they see the carrot that’s dangling as artificial—or maybe that’s an incorrect description, maybe as artificial as it really is for many youngsters—then there’s no reason to keep running, to keep jumping, to keep going after that carrot.

Patrick’s attempt to question the justification teachers build around grading practices meets with Larry’s confession that grading serves as a form of distraction for kids. Being “honest” about the function of grades, Larry acknowledges their practical purpose for students who find very little

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about school that is worth their time. As the metaphor “carrot” (artificial at that) shows us, grades are a form of enticement for disengaged students. Larry admits that grades are a form of teacher coping with otherwise “disruptive” students. Grades distract these students and keep them “running and jumping” for the carrot-grade “dangling” in front of them. As Larry’s comments imply, teachers rely on grades to promote classroom order by providing the basis for a goal upon which both teachers and (disengaged) students can agree. The alternative to an A–F grading system is to use Pass/No Pass to register the amount of effort a student devotes to the task at hand. Instead of using a grade for student work, teachers use P/NP to assess effort rather than quality. Patrick decides to push the envelope with respect to teachers grading student effort. Patrick: The other issue that I keep on hearing on the table is effort really doesn’t matter. Amanda: It does. It does matter. Larry: The kids put forth lots and lots of effort. Patrick: But the P is like having a blank space. What you’re really saying to somebody [is], “We’re not going to grade it, so therefore, it’s not going to count.” Right? Elexis: It doesn’t. It doesn’t count. Amanda: But it could have been an F. In other words, the P acknowledges the fact that the child has put effort in and done a good job for what that child can do. Patrick: That’s like saying, “You don’t smell too bad.” That’s not saying what you’re accomplishing. What it is saying is what’s absent. Why would somebody who put in a whole lot of effort get an absent? Because the P doesn’t count. Amanda: It should count. Patrick: How? Amanda: P with positive comments, it should count.

In the final analysis, student grades will be expressed in the form of A–F. Patrick’s contention is that a P does not count because it does not convert to any value in the student’s overall grade average at the end of the grading period. It indicates a “blank space.” In other words, it counts as a “zero,” but replaces the F in appearance only in order to acknowledge the student’s effort. At first, Amanda interrupts Elexis to defend the P/NP system as an alternative to the A–F system. By the end of the interaction, Amanda’s repetition of “It should count” suggests that for all practical purposes and in the final analysis, P’s do not count. We sense Amanda’s realization that the P/NP grading system is another “carrot” for students


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who are otherwise disengaged. Elexis expresses her own dissatisfaction with the grading system: My guess is that kids feel like they really put in an enormous amount of effort on this particular writing or research task before they even get it in the final form. Then when they are sometimes asked to do that over, they shut down because, in their minds, they have given all they’ve got. I have been thinking about process versus product. That’s what I keep thinking about, those kids who in their mind [say], “Well, I’ve done that. I’ve been working on this. I’ve been working on this for weeks. I’ve given you blood. How much more do you want?” But that part of their process isn’t part of the evaluation process a lot of the times.

Elexis’s concern for “process” (another word for “effort”) expresses her guilt about her inability to evaluate student labor and her overattentiveness to student product. In a sense, there is a gap between the labor that students put into their school work and the product that is recognized as the outcome of their effort. The assessment that follows the work recognizes the finished object (e.g., an essay) and exchanges it for a wage, the grade, which oftentimes leaves much student labor unrecognized. Elexis clearly suggests this point in her use of the metaphor “blood” to indicate the extraction of labor that students feel schooling represents for them, at least for those whose grades reflect an imbalance between the amount of work and the return. This uneven return generates a surplus value in terms of strengthening the teacher’s authority in relation to the student. For without ways to assess student effort, there will always be a gap between a teacher’s power to determine student worth and a student’s self-assessment. Elexis’s empathetic attempt to see evaluation from the students’ point of view implies that she has agonized over this issue. She tries to assume her students’ experience by mimicking their thoughts, which again expresses the level of guilt she feels about the current evaluation system. It is a downward spiral for certain students, as Aaris explains: I’m thinking the same group of students that are always getting P’s, no matter what they do, eventually they’re going to stop putting a lot of effort into it because no matter what they do they’ll always be getting a P. Maybe that’s the way some people see the P.

The “P or not to P” question is a veil that keeps unsuccessful students plodding away on their work, if only to receive some credit for effort on their assignments. Eventually, the veil is lifted and students recognize P’s for what they really are: F’s. Clearly, the grading system is part of the myth educators tell students because as these sets of comments suggest, industriousness does not always produce favorable results.

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As the confessions pick up speed, they influence certain aspects of Inquiry. Inquiry becomes a space where participants unearth many practices that they perpetuate despite being harmful to students. It should be noted, however, that guilt takes multiple forms and is motivated by various emotions. Guilt can paralyze teachers into inaction, but it can galvanize teachers into change as well. Guilt represents the beginning of the process of renewal because it emphasizes that teachers are actors who perpetrate wrongdoing while still maintaining the power to act differently, to find practices more consistent with an emancipatory education for students. Awareness of how we contribute to structures of educational inequalities is the first step to undoing deleterious practices. Inquiry participants find meaning in their confessions because Inquiry reminds them that they are participants in oppression as long as they remain oblivious to relations of domination. Yule’s admission sounds like this: Yule: I would like all the kids in our school [to know] they’re smart and they’re learners. By the time I read their essays at the end of eighth grade, many of them have learned that they’re not. We tell them that. Someday it would be nice if everybody felt that they reached their maximum potential. When I read their essays, some of our lower-achieving students will say, “I knew she thought I was stupid so I didn’t try working. Teacher X thought I was smart, I worked as hard as I could. I only got a C but I gave it everything I had.” Someday we’ll get to a point where we get beyond that. There’s something in our system that says, “We in middle school usually let the kids know they’re not as smart as they think they are.” Esther: Some of them, I feel, have already had that before they came to us. I don’t think we’re totally responsible. I feel some of that happens in elementary school. (Yule is trying simultaneously to speak)

Yule recognizes that there exists an unconscious ideology at the school, which discourages students rather than liberates them. The phrase “we tell them that” indicates that teachers do not actually tell students they are “not smart.” It suggests a much more implicit, ideological process in place at the school whereby a consistent group of students suffers from low self-esteem as a result of patterns of interaction with teachers and administrators. In contrast, students are explicit about their negative and positive experiences in school. However, Esther’s resistant response shoots us back to the elementary school as a possible source for children’s low self-esteem. Again, as the principal, Yule is taken very seriously. Esther takes his comments to mean that the critique is directed toward her, as a faculty member at Monroe, and she deflects it away from her and toward the elementary school. This interaction also points out the challenges to the critical consciousness that moves reform participants from confession to reflection. As teacher guilt intensifies, Inquiry time becomes a place for absolution. Avoiding guilt is difficult when teachers’ ideals of assisting students to


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reach their potentials is compromised on a daily basis. Uncertainties arise and some of the participants begin to question their own efficacy. For example, take this productive exchange: Larry: We also have to make an impact in terms of the high school in the sense that they have to open their arms a little bit to the diversity and embrace this as a positive, because there it isn’t okay. [They should say,] “You’re lacking math skills, but you’ve come a long way. You’ve gotten here. Now you’re in our Integrated Math program. So let’s do something to bust tail to get you out of the Integrated program and into Pre-Algebra and on.” Rather than that, it’s, “Gee, you come here, you’ve got no skills, you’re behind, and you’ve been behind your whole life. I’m not going to be able to do doodles for you so let’s just make this as painless as we possibly can and get you some math requirements out of the way. You don’t do to me and I won’t do to you. Get math out of your life.” Yolanda: But are we that different in that respect either? I can only say this about myself. I have kids coming to me that I know have been behind their whole life. I would like to think that I’m making opportunities for them to catch up, but I don’t know that I am. Larry: Well, I don’t even know if it’s a question of catching up because I don’t know if you could. I don’t know if you can overcome, if you could take a youngster that’s an eighth grader and that’s functioning below sixth, and catch them up. I just think you have to . . . Ellen: Have a place for them. Larry: keep them going. Ellen: Yah and still have them get better. But there’s not a way in the world. We know they’re really not ready for Algebra. There’s certain kids that really cannot write. So they’re saying, “I’m not telling you anything.” But they can get better. Larry: What I’m hoping is that if they come in as sixth graders and they’re functioning on third grade math level, then when they have three years of experience at the middle school, they’re not farther behind. In other words, if they spent three years at the middle school coming in at third grade level, then they’d better leave here at least at sixth grade level. Yolanda: That’s my question. I don’t know. I’d like to think that that’s happening, but I don’t know that that’s happening. I can think of an example of a student that I have who came in probably reading at a second grade level. I think he’s probably still reading at a second grade level after three years. Ellen: I do think some progress is being made though.

In this exchange, we see an attempt at refocus. Rather than continue the confessions that center on Monroe, Larry turns his gaze toward the high schools, which he considers are failing to help students perform at their grade level. But Yolanda is not reassured by this move and personalizes the critique to herself, this reappropriation having more immediate meaning to the everyday conditions she faces. She admits that some students

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leave Monroe performing below their grade level despite her attempts to ameliorate their academic deficiencies, a goal Larry considers a bit unrealistic. Larry’s solution is a little less utopian and more pragmatic: Students must leave Monroe no worse off than when they came in. Unwilling to relinquish her hopes, Ellen inserts some optimism in the discussion by claiming that learning is taking place at Monroe. In a sense, she absolves Yolanda’s feelings of guilt. Ellen also absolves herself by placating any sense of guilt she may be feeling about disengaged students who will not “tell her anything.” This interaction is reminiscent of the never-ending work of teachers. Students advance from level to level, grade to grade, and they enter any given teacher’s classroom in medias res. The play is in motion by the time students reach the middle school and Yolanda confesses that she feels disempowered to realign what is essentially a schooling process bent out of shape. Nevertheless, with her guilt comes the courage to admit that inequalities exist in her own classroom. Yolanda: It seems to me, even when I look at my eighth grade class, the discrepancy between kids is still huge. I still have kids who are really, really low that aren’t in Resource, aren’t ESL. Just really, really low. I don’t have any quantifiable measures to say that I’ve done anything that has raised them. I try to give opportunities and I try to help, but I really don’t know if they’re better off than they were when they first came in. They’re getting the same grade that they got at the beginning. They’re making some progress, but I don’t even know that. Ellen: Well, at least if you’re having them do work, or producing work, they’re at least holding their own. These kids in the high school had quit doing anything. They quit working. They’re not turning it in. Larry: I’m not sure what grade level means: history grade level, math grade level. We know kids are developmental in terms of as they grow and we tend to have a standard that we measure everybody to, so you’re automatically below or you’re automatically above. Every year it’s below or above. But do we have the kids involved? Is what they’re doing rich and meaningful, in terms of the work we have them doing? My concern is at the high school everybody’s giving up, the kids and the program. It’s putting in time.

Sensing the unevenness in her own classroom, Yolanda is unsure about her impact with students. Concerned about the discrepancies between them, Yolanda admits that she does not know if she is reaching every one of them. In all possibility, she will never know the extent of her influence. For better or worse, it may be many years later when the students themselves realize the full effect of Yolanda’s teaching, or any other teacher for that matter. But she is not comfortable with the void of “not knowing.” To Ellen, teachers can take some solace in the present, in their interactions with students to produce good work and improve themselves. Only by concentrating on the pedagogical moment can teachers avoid what Larry calls “putting in time,” a trope that invokes images of schools-as-


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prisons. In addition, the notion of “grade level” is a forced construct. Yolanda’s aim to bring students “up to level” becomes a target that is both too precise and moving. Rarely is a student at grade level; she is usually either below or above. Also, grade level is a construct that has changed over the years and one that Larry considers is the wrong aim, one that should be replaced with providing students with conditions for rich experiences. Yule agrees with Larry’s sentiment. Yule: You’re managing class, making sure everybody behaves. It’s a tacit agreement. You won’t be a pain in the behind, we won’t ask much of you, and everybody sits there. What we’re doing is distributing, where in one class it may be rich and meaningful and things are going on because we’ve defined them as bright kids. The other class, because we’ve defined them or they’ve defined themselves as not-so-bright kids, we don’t offer them anything. But under different conditions, those kids can operate. You don’t have to be smart to be thinking. You don’t have to be able to read very well to still be able to think. Do we ask the kids who don’t read well to think? I see that happening here. I worry about all these separations that incur after they leave us. How much do we do it here? How much are the activities we do based on whether you can read well or whether you can think and use your mind well? Elexis: The opportunities do tend to be for those who are already playing the game and are very successful.

Students thinking well and being at a certain reading level are two different issues. A student can read the world without reading the word. Of course, Yule is not displacing the importance of being able to read a book. He points to the relative importance of using the mind well over and beyond reading well. The teacher’s duty is to provide the context for students to exercise their intellect and this has to be cooperative with a positive valuation of all students without comparing them to one another. Indeed, this is the challenge and Elexis is quick to remind Yule that the school is structured to reward students who are already succeeding at “the game” of schooling. The metaphor of “game” is one that the participants frequently use to refer to the structure of schools, an issue that will appear more substantially in the following chapters in this book. For now, it suffices to say that “schooling-as-game” suggests that there are rules, and students who follow them benefit, and those who do not become marginalized but are still allowed to participate in the game. For example, students who do not follow the standards of writing receive lower grades than those who do, but are still in the game. Breaking the rules produces worse consequences for students. They cannot play the game of schooling, at least for the meantime, as in detention and suspension. Like those who do not follow the rules as they are promoted both tacitly and overtly, students who thwart the rules are disciplined and then penalized with low grades. Repeat offenders to the game of schooling are penalized (e.g., low grades),

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punished (e.g., suspension), and then programmed (e.g., surveilled). These students are ostracized from the game and are reduced to spectator status. Even when the school administration expels them, they still maintain their spectator status at the next school because they carry the mark of their transgressions. As a place for confessions, Inquiry is a necessary strategy for the teacher participants. During the sessions, they see opportunities to purge their worries and reservations. In their most honest moments, the participants relate stories about the ways they contribute to relations of domination. They admit to the failings of grading systems, valuing some students’ knowledge over others, and maintaining the disparity between students. Their need to confess these shortcomings suggests that even before reform can take place, teachers must first attempt to understand their work in a systematic way—that is, how they have helped to (re)produce schooling’s existing structures, some of which they admit are harmful. THE NARRATIVES OF INQUIRY The fifth and seemingly most instrumental use of Inquiry time is for sharing teacher stories and experiences both in and out of school. The participants use Inquiry as a place to relate their professional as well as familial affairs. Here, we gather information about the apparently “mundane” victories they experience as teachers. It is only with their embellishment that we sense the narrative structure of their work life. Here, we also receive a glimpse of the participants’ personal lives: for example, as parents with children in school, family life, and so on. As professionals whose work is marked by intensification and isolation, teachers do not usually benefit from opportunities to communicate with their colleagues. As Yule remarks: Part of what we’d like to do is make the teaching profession no longer isolated where you go into your room, close the door, do what you do, and at the end at 3:00 if you’re still standing, you go out and go home and do whatever you do. But that’s hard. We might talk about why it’s so hard for some teachers to break out of that. Some people still struggle, even with the Coring, having conversations, expressing themselves, being able to compromise, being able to do things by consensus rather than votes, and build towards what we want. That’s a challenge, something that we’ve been working on and we’re so much better now. But we’re not all the way there.

Inquiry provides a convenient forum for teachers to catch up and tell one another about their classroom experiences as a method of communicating with each other. Inquiry becomes a social space where teachers tell stories, thus strengthening their professional as well as personal ties. Again, this is a pragmatic move. They take advantage of the dialogical opportunity that


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Inquiry offers them. It is a time when they share teaching moments they are proud of, no doubt to reassure each other that, as a profession and as many problems as it may have, teaching contains pedagogical moments when “all nine planets seem to line up.” Amanda recounts her students’ impressions of their “installations,” an activity where students gather family paraphernalia, interview family members and relatives, and create an exhibit for others to learn about their family. Amanda: Bring in any kind of artifact, whether it be photographs, music, tape interview, film, slides. Decorate the box. Every kid in the class loved it. Every single kid. Some weren’t comfortable at first but they shared. That was one of the experiences they talked about. We have some interesting ones. (reads a paper) “During the installation, I had a lot of fun. I learned more about the art process than I ever learned. By working with my classmates, I gained respect and knowledge for many of them, especially the ones I didn’t know too well. The installation gave me some of the best representations of teamwork I have ever experienced. I had a wonderful time doing this and I hope to express this kind of creative process again.” Now this one told me more about the actual installation: “I honestly wish language arts program did installations, using boxes and relics from past decades of the symbols [of] our parents’ and grandparents’ lives. We created the installation to look like an attic with boxes underneath and to the sides of the table with a crawl space in between. In between the tables comes a sheet. The theme was treasuring the past and our family heritage. So one, we made it look like an attic with boxes filled with family memories that have more meaning to us than anyone else. People who have strong opinions and imagination but were flexible (her emphasis; others laugh) and tried to see things the way other people do were the successes. I learned a lot about the other people, like me, who understand the past. We worked very cooperatively with one another and worked well under oath in pressured situations.” Okay, I have [one more]: “I thought the installations were very interesting. Instead of taking a picture, we actually made something where we could walk in and be isolated in a tunnel with our boxes. Before I did the project, I thought the best product would be a neat sheet covered, neat sheet covered tables and boxes. The fish exhibit was very different than I expected. Some of the adults (some laugh), they say, ‘You can’t make people crawl under tables.’ ” Larry: Who could that be? Amanda: (continues reading) “Well, whose project is it, the teachers’ or the students’? The students!” (loud laughter around the room) Esther: You trained her well. Amanda: Let me just read two or three more. This is a different piece: “The experience during the installation was more fun. We got to cooperate and work together to create the installation. I learned that everybody has interesting

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ideas. That’s how we completed the process of creating the installation. I’m kind of disappointed at how the final project came out though because the most important part, the boxes under the table, where people have to bend down and see, there isn’t that much light under there. What if someone’s in a wheelchair?” Teachers: Ahh, right. Amanda: (continues reading) “Then I was surprised at the unique items that people brought in to their boxes. I kind of expected them to bring in weapons or something like toy bombs, but [they] didn’t. I also thought that yearbooks and pictures were really boring. While everyone was putting their installation together, I was off in my own world. My job was basically to inform the group outside about the paper to get the materials. The dark windows were a problem. I observed just about everybody else. Working together like a team of ants, not realizing there’s so much about the stabilizer about the middle thing, a lot of stuff including collar bones and faces could have gotten broken. I had a good time especially because I got to miss science.” (laughter) Here’s Maya: “My experience with the installation was really interesting. I had a lot of fun working with my friends and learning about other cultures. It was very exciting to work together and create this installation. We didn’t have a lot of time and we worked very quickly, pushing each other, running everywhere. Actually, it turned out to be a very interesting project and a lot of fun. I really like this thing because lots of people told me about their roots. I think you should do this every single year. I think everybody would like it. The thing I liked about it was all the stuff the kids brought in about their parents. So different kids saw different things.” The letters I read to you are from kids that are honors, not honors, all different kids.

Amanda’s ebullience is easy to note here. The sheer length of her dedication to the installations suggests her delight with the results. Her indication that “Every kid in the class loved it. Every single kid . . . honors, not honors, all different kids” signals her deep satisfaction with the installations as an inclusive event. To legitimate her assessment, Amanda brings student essays and reads them to the group. More important, her act of reading the students’ reflective essays shows her pride from knowing her students’ detailed memories of the exhibit, relative proof that academic learning took place. In addition, Amanda is pleased that there is evidence of self-learning as the students devote text to their own and other students’ families. When Amanda reads one student’s last comment chastising teachers for controlling the installation exhibits, laughter fills the room. The laughter suggests the teachers’ sense of pleasure with the story’s punchline: The student asserts her ownership of the installation. It is a moment of teacher recognition for students’ power to determine their own direction, that ever-fine line a teacher chooses between leading and guiding her students.


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Leading suggests a practice that is more rigid than guiding. Leading takes for granted the follower. Teachers-as-leaders necessitates studentsas-followers; they are two dimensions of one entity. Leaders simultaneously take and are given charge, and the rules of the game emanate from them. Teachers-as-guides connotes a less rigid association between students and teachers. That teachers guide students does not necessitate that students follow. Guides are examples to consider because they provide previous experience. Unlike leaders who are in authority, guides are an authority. The first individual rules with discipline and power, as a drill sergeant, whereas the second rules with expertise, as a museum docent. One of the ways that teachers guide students is by providing them with the context to “feel safe.” Here students appreciate the safety offered to them by teachers who advocate for their interests. Leslie narrates with Yolanda the small but significant victories their students experience from being around people who value them. For instance, we receive the following description about the afterschool program “Black Collegiance,” an extracurricular, voluntary-based group especially designed to meet the needs of African American students at Monroe: Yolanda: They felt valued. They felt that there was a place for them. In this institution where we talk about making students feel comfortable, there actually was a place were they did. Then that spilled over into other parts of their lives. I can’t even really verbalize the change because you’d have to had seen a picture of what a student was doing before this year and what they’re doing now. It’s like they’re different people. Leslie: Oh, yah, they talk outside of school. A couple of them, in particular, the tutors call them and they’re able to call the tutors. So there’s a real bond. Esther: I think the role models help, that they see these “with it” guys and girls coming from the college, who are making it in junior college, and willing to come and give their time. Leslie: This is totally off the point, but it may provide a clue for us. The tutors, when they introduced themselves to our group of students, they were very honest with those kids and they told them, “I was a class clown,” or “I was a goof-off,” or “I was the one that had to stay out.” They all said, “I wish I had paid more attention. I wish I had been a different kind of learner.” But they did make it very clear to those students that “We’ll be here for you.” We have a real solid group of college students who appear in my room at 3:00 or 3:05 every Tuesday/Thursday and they’re with those kids. Sometimes it’s one-on-one, sometimes it’s one-on-three. Also Yolanda comes through. From the beginning of the program she always has stopped in, as well as Esther and other teachers have stopped through. Yolanda has become an integral part of it because she has provided information to the tutors. She has made herself available to tutors and students so it has been a giving situation from her perspective as well. For the first time, they feel safe. They feel that it’s OK to get an A. It’s OK to be smart. James Mitt, the coordinator, started the “recognition of each week,”

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who’s [sic] received an A on a paper. They get to stand in their chair and say, “Hey, I’ve got an A!” Then they get a little special something. Now there aren’t the treats, but they still have the A’s and they still can stand and say, “Hey, I’ve got an A!” Corby, the first A that he got, he just lingered in the chair for a while. (laughs) Esther: He was pretty thrilled. Larry: Savor it. Leslie: Yah, because it was the first the time. You know?

Leslie’s lengthy and poignant narration of a victorious moment suggests that she “savors” her students’ success as much as Corby savors his first A grade on an essay. Examples such as this represent the teachers’ attempt to highlight positive events that the whole group can share as professionals. Inquiry becomes the forum for such sharing. It is a context for showcasing the ways teachers make progress toward their ideals. Thus, as reform, Inquiry is not only about changing teacher practices; it is also about justifying those that produce favorable outcomes. This means that teachers must set aside some time with one another to discuss the goals they share as well as where they differ. Another recurring narrative during Inquiry discussions concerns the participants’ own family stories. Frequently, they offer examples involving their own family members. Thus, we learn something intimate about the participants through their self-descriptions. This move is significant for several reasons. One, it provides participants with information about their colleagues’ personal lives. Two, personal examples remind us that teachers are not just educators, but many are also parents trying to make sense of their own children’s experiences in school. Three, personal accounts position teachers as subjects in their own stories. That is, through their text, we can begin to unpack the relationship between their life experiences and their discourse on schooling and students. For instance, Esther frequently personalizes her contribution to the discussions. I have a nephew now who made it through USC [University of Southern California] but he’s still not a strong reader. He is dyslexic, but he has learned to read and he’s working on it. But he’s certainly not like we would like him to be, given his level of education and his intelligence. I feel, “Why is it that some children don’t [perform] at certain schools?” I don’t have the answer. Is it because parents didn’t speak or talk to them as much? Is it because their parents didn’t sit them down next to them and read with them? I know my parents didn’t have to teach me to read. I don’t know what the difference was, other than it was a very homogeneous group where I went to school, in the sense that we all spoke English as a native language. We were not dealing with a lot of different languages. Not that my father spoke this language when he came here. But reality was, we were homogeneous in the sense that we all spoke English and we were all kind of somewhat middle


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class. So we came to school with the baggage, we sat down, and we pretty much learned to read.

Recall that Esther earlier traced students’ school habits to their home life. Here, her story takes the same angle with respect to her dyslexic nephew. Her juxtaposed string of queries suggests that her nephew’s home life can ameliorate his reading challenges. Esther goes further and offers a story about her own memories of learning how to read. From this passage we learn that Esther comes from an immigrant and middle-class family (despite the hesitation), and that she grew up in a linguistically homogeneous environment. In fact, Esther is the participant in the group who is most willing to discuss her students’ class background. As we will see later, Esther has strong criticisms about ethnic-based student groups and advocates commonality based on student interest in activities, like music and sports. As she informed me in a conversation, having grown up as one of the few Jews in her city, Esther experienced minority ethnic status. Esther gives us more. During a discussion about grades in math, Esther, eager to gather information for her own son, interrupts Larry. Esther: Could I say something? Larry: Sure. Esther: As a parent, my son had a test the other day and they were doing the x and y coordinates. There were two sides to the paper and on the one side he had done the x and y correctly. On the other side of the paper, there were six problems where he had to, I believe, read the graph and put the x and y coordinates. He did them all putting the y coordinate first. Of course, he missed all six of them. I thought that was very interesting. My husband wrote the teacher a little letter because we felt he should have gotten some credit for the process. Now granted he was totally wrong. He had actually done them right on the other side of the paper, but he flipped it over and he just got confused. Of course, six problems wrong lowered the score considerably. I was interested in the teacher’s response to that because on the paper he just marked them all wrong. He didn’t take any time to look at it and say, “Steven, I see you kind of understood this, but you flipped them.” Now hopefully he will never flip them again. That’s what we were discussing at home (laughs) and said, “Maybe, he’ll never flip them again.” Yolanda: But, it could’ve been something, like, “Minus two, you did them all backwards, got the right numbers” instead of “Minus six, you got them all wrong.” Larry: Well, I . . . Esther: Shouldn’t he have gotten some credit for these? They were wrong, but you saw that the child had, in his mind, done them correctly once you saw he had misunderstood the concept. He had flipped and simply recorded the y axis before the x. But he had done them. Once he had confused the concept, he had done them all correctly. Now, you say they are mathematically wrong. I just brought it up because you . . .

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Amanda: Did the teacher respond? Esther: No, they were all marked wrong. Amanda: No, but you said that your husband wrote a letter to the teacher. Esther: No, we haven’t gotten any response. These are children in sixth grade. Larry: Most likely I wouldn’t mark them wrong but I would have used that as a point for teaching. Okay, that’s part of my analysis of student work. When I go through student papers, I take notes on trends that I see and those become points for re-teaching or for re-explanation. But that’s like the map. That’s putting your point in South America instead of North America.

Esther, the resource specialist at Monroe, complains about her son’s math teacher to Larry, Monroe’s math teacher. This is pragmatic because she has access to Larry during Inquiry sessions. It is clear from what subject position Esther speaks: as a parent. As she alludes to her home discussions with her husband about her son Steven, Esther assumes that the child’s home environment engenders important responsibility for the student’s education. Coming from a middle-class background and an English-speaking environment, Esther feels empowered to confront her son’s math teacher. Her family’s complaint letter signifies her own feeling of efficacy when dealing with school bureaucracy. She feels confident enough to assert her standards as well as knowing the bureaucratic procedures this assertion requires. She is not unreflective about this privilege either, because as she admits several times in other contexts, she recognizes that, as a middleclass parent, she possesses both the cultural and financial capital that some parents do not. And as this incident shows, like other parents, Esther is trying to understand school processes and how parents exercise their influence on school standards. In another commentary, Esther continues her criticisms: I’m dealing with something right now: my son. The teacher gives A⫹’s and he just got an A⫹ on this report. He was in shock and said, “That’s not an A⫹ and I know it’s not an A⫹.” I mean, what is an A⫹? I concluded that I need to go and ask this teacher. I think her philosophy is: Let’s build their self-esteem, let’s reward them for the effort they’ve made. That’s the only thing I can conclude because she’s giving these A⫹’s like . . . (claps her hands). I’m fascinated because she’s just flippantly giving out A⫹’s, and he [son] left out a section of his big project. So in my mind I think she did him a disservice. Frankly, I’m frustrated by it as a parent. I think she did him a disservice because I think he truly knows it wasn’t an A⫹. He was surprised and I was honest with him because I didn’t agree with her. And he knew it too because in the end he left out a section of the report. So why? I don’t understand. What is the message that he’s given?

Esther’s previous complaint revolved around a teacher’s underestimation of her son’s work; that is, he deserved a better grade than the one he


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received. In contrast, the current charge is one of overestimation. Esther believes that her son’s grade is inflated and sends the wrong message to students about standards for good work. She is livid and her tone is urgent, as “right now” indicates. She considers the teacher’s “flippant” grading practice a “disservice” to students. Her emphasis on self-esteem displaces the important quality of work for which students should strive. We also witness Esther’s ambivalent stand on grading effort, a rubric she places aside grading to increase student self-esteem. “As a parent,” she fails to understand the teacher’s philosophy and Esther does not dodge confronting her. For Esther’s purposes, Inquiry is a place to address personal, family issues. This is accomplished through a narrative format that has little to do with Inquiry as reform. Nevertheless, through stories, the participants learn about Esther’s family structure and personal life outside of Monroe. But she is not the only one. The vice principal, Katie, shares her stories as well: My son attends Washington schools and my nephew attends Tally [nearby city] schools. My mother was telling my son, “Well, you know that your cousin has so many A’s on his report card.” You could see the puzzled look on my seven-yearold because our report cards do not have, in the elementary, A, B, C. He’s never known what an A really means, or a B, or a C. There was this puzzled look on his face like maybe there was something wrong with him because the report card that he had didn’t show any A’s, B’s, or C’s. He was very puzzled. We don’t have that in the elementary grades, but other districts do. Some kids have a D, some kids have an A. This puzzled look is the students saying, “I tried really hard but I have a D and somebody else has an A.” This whole issue really gives mixed messages to the kids. They’re confused. [They seem to say,] “Wait a minute.”

Katie shares a personal moment with the group concerning her own family dynamics. As Inquiry participants struggle with their grading policy, Katie’s example shows us the real effects that this produces on home life. That is, grading is not an abstract practice about student worth because, as Katie plainly tells us, grading has concrete results that she deals with in her own home. Thus, the Inquiry debates over grading are personal issues for the participants and not an objective exercise about “what is best for kids.” They are ideologically invested in it, if not as parents, then at least as interested adults with children under their care. They see the “confusion” in children’s faces when teachers compare students with one another through grades. And it is not hard to imagine that these intimate images are invoked as they struggle with each other over school policy, such as grades. In his attempts to turn the teachers’ notions of knowledge away from their own ideological assumptions and toward student-oriented perspectives, Patrick gives us a glimpse of his own personal world. During a discussion on student organization, Patrick shares this narrative:

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I always use the example of my second son. He’s now on his own but when he was at home, he and I used to have these endless debates about “You have to get organized.” He’d say, “I am organized.” I’d say, “You have to get organized.” He’d say, “I am organized.” I’d go into his room and he had notes, and I’d say, “No, no, you’re gonna get organized!” Then I’d start showing him how to get organized, which was my mess because when somebody looks at mine, they say, “This is organization?” I think that the way I have in mind to be organized is the way to be organized. Yet, it has surprised me. My son is doing quite well without any of my assistance right now. He actually meets his own budget, he’s living all by himself. I’m absolutely amazed because he can’t possibly be organized. How do we know it’s necessary that they go through all of these steps to accomplish something? That’s one question. The other is, having accomplished that, does that mean they now know something?

As the critical friend, Patrick provokes the discussion toward an examination of what teachers assume as the constitution of knowledge and how students organize it. He accomplishes this by relating a story about his own son, whose idea of organization does not mesh with Patrick’s own notions of it. Patrick goes further by updating the group about his son’s latest developments as a college student. As an illustration of the different ways people construct meaning, the story is meant to be didactic. However, it goes beyond this. The portrait we receive of Patrick is one of a parent who, like other parents, negotiates meaning with his child. For instructional purposes, Patrick did not need to divulge information about his son’s current status. Instead, his narrative extension expresses a latent need to project his world for the group to see. In this sense, Inquiry is transformed into a space for story sharing. Eventually, Patrick returns to the question at hand, but not before his momentary digression. As part of the Annenberg challenge to reform, Monroe receives funds to conduct Inquiry sessions as well as sanction events that are considered “Inquiry-like activities.” Although I was not able to attend the staff retreat that falls under Inquiry-like activities, some time is devoted toward reflecting on the retreat during an Inquiry session. Yule begins with a descriptive summary: One of the Annenberg statements is to create a stable learning community. That means, perhaps for us, to be comfortable with one another and to be able to interact with one another and in a way that’s positive. To create that means, at least to me, sometimes getting away from the work we do to say, “Okay, what are we all about here as people, and as professionals, as educators?” That’s based on individuals and comfort zones. Some people, that’s hard for them and some people it’s not. I think we have to give all groups the opportunity to do those things and some take advantage and some are uncomfortable. Some people went home and that’s fine. Some people stayed, and some people did what they had to do. But the part that I was hoping for is when you talk about learning, a stable learning community is that we enjoy one another’s company as people. We’re all different personalities


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but the hope that blends in is that we can work together better when we get back to the site. It’s always interesting. If I would say to you, “Okay, everybody come 20 minutes earlier than usual for a meeting. We’re going to have coffee and sit around, talk, and enjoy each other’s company.” Nobody shows up. Put the people down in the faculty meeting, give them a cup of coffee and a roll, and don’t say a word, they go on and on. For me to step back, hearing the laughter, the enjoyment, the conversations, some are serious and some are not, I couldn’t agendize that sort of activity. I’m hoping that everybody went away feeling that it was different, it was valuable, and helped to make Monday a better day. Now, how that reflects to the kids, I don’t know if we made that step yet. But this was our beginning . . . beginning . . . beginning.

Yule’s speech-like narrative creates a plot that centers around the school’s reform project. This sets the tone with goals, like creating a “stable learning community,” and characterizes the teachers as “people, professionals, [and] educators” who enjoy each other’s company. The story Yule constructs is only the “beginning” of their journey as a family of reformers. The family image is definitely invoked, but it is clear that “getting along” is only the first “step” toward fundamental reform. The trope, “step,” is a recurring theme. Time and again, the participants use “step” to correlate with stages of reform, as in a step forward or Elexis’s favorite, “baby steps.” By using “step,” the teachers suggest the idea of progression or regression. Reform is a step forward whereas status quo is no step at all, or from the perspective of relations of domination, a step backwards. The degree of reform promoted is also constitutive of steps, as in a large step for radical reform or “baby steps” for incremental improvements. In the next chapter, I will return to the concept of “step” as it reappears in the participants’ discourse. Teachers enjoying each other’s company, Yule admits, is something that he cannot “agendize.” However, reforming the school does require agenda setting and great amounts of planning. We sense this return in Yule’s reference to “kids,” the major concern of their reform challenge. Yule takes the teachers’ family narratives and uses them as a model for Monroe. An analogy may help here. Just as teachers are parent-figures for students who acknowledge their authority, principals are also parent-like authorities for the school. Principals’ status as leaders or guides means that they are under the public eye and their image as confident, visionary subjects becomes important, especially during times of reform. They are taskmasters, and it is not a coincidence that Yule rarely digresses from Inquiry’s reform purposes. In this case, Yule’s appropriation of the family image is couched within a discourse on school change. In this chapter, I have tried to show the teachers’ pragmatic orientation through my use of ethnographic evidence. Their necessary “uses of

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Inquiry” as a place for venting, confessionals, advice, and narrative sharing is ideological in the sense that it facilitates their functioning within the school. With an intensified work schedule, the teachers come to Inquiry with other purposes besides reforming their middle school. They co-opt it for their own immediate as well as latent needs. Here they integrate their work life with their personal life. Here they express their frustrations and dissatisfactions without yet the benefits of critical reflection. Inquiry provides them with the context to share their beliefs in unadulterated fashion. For the purposes of this chapter, I have attempted to describe the teachers’ world by presenting their statements and discourse in a relatively low inferential manner. However, this move also reminds me of the ideological enterprise I am conducting. For even the process of choosing and focusing on a select group of members’ meanings is itself a hermeneutical process and is already ideological. Nevertheless, I have labored to keep my inferences to a minimum. By doing this, I privilege the participants’ meanings as a way of entering their universe. The constellation of metaphors, tropes, and semantemes I have represented here is the first dimension of a three-dimensional ideology critique. If educators are concerned with the ways that reform serves to maintain or challenge relations of domination, then we must consider how the apparently necessary ways that participants make sense of their world become distorted or transformed. It is in the interest of a critical pedagogy that we submit ethnographic evidence to a negative ideology critique. By examining discourse as the realization of ideological distortion, critical researchers and reform participants work together to problematize the structures that limit human thought and activity. For this, we turn to the second dimension of ideology critique.

CHAPTER 6

The Evasions of Inquiry: Ideology as Distortion

Necessary or functional ideology never speaks for itself. It always functions for a particular purpose and specific end. Moreover, because teachers and educators live in a social formation marked by capital’s encroachment on all imaginable facets of life, their ideologies betray the social contradictions of capital. And because our time is also stifled by the logic of racism, school reform bears the important responsibility of combating the distortions of racist relations. Last, patriarchal systems of intelligibility remind us that the potential for change is proportional to a reform’s ability to crack the foundations of sexism. These three faces of domination intersect at the point of Inquiry, and the participants exhibit the extent to which our three concerns interpellate them as social subjects. Chart #2: Inquiry Ideology as Negative Modus Operandi • Naturalization • Suppression of Difference • Rationalization

In this chapter, I examine the negative dimensions of ideology. It is precisely because of the three faces of oppression that this move is important. It does not suffice a critical study of school reform to stop at a grounded theory of ideology. We must move into negative critique in order to begin exposing some of the insidious social forces that interpellate the participants’ discourse. We must deploy an ideology critique to unmask the distortions in their communication, significations, and semantics. For at the

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heart of ideology is the problem of social relations of domination made intelligible through discourse. By unpacking meanings, we arrive at the negative functions of ideology as a system that maintains relations of domination. This is critical for understanding school reform because negative ideology shows us how, even with the best intentions, participants bear the mark of social relations. As already mentioned, social life is problematic at the joint where capital, racism, and patriarchy meet. To the extent that Inquiry reinforces this interlocking oppression, school reform benefits from the insights of a negative ideology critique. With respect to Inquiry, sometimes the critique is articulated by the members themselves and I extend them in the following analysis. Where this is absent, I supply the critique. In addition, necessary, negative, and positive ideologies are sometimes inseparable dimensions within a given interaction. All three ideological forms may be present. In areas where the three forms intersect, I provide text for them when appropriate. However, for the purposes of this chapter, I focus on negative ideology as the discursive dimension that maintains relations of domination. NATURALIZING THE TROPES OF INQUIRY One way that Inquiry participants display the negative influences of social relations of domination is through the naturalistic tropes they employ in their discourse. Here they naturalize the processes of schooling and adopt seemingly commonsensical positions. For example, the participants often discuss schooling as a game whereby students who possess the privileged cultural capital achieve at higher rates than students who do not have equal access to the rules of the game. Furthermore, they admit that these same rules are frequently tacit. Patrick: I used to take my kids to soccer. It is understood that there is a range of skillfulness. Every child both plays and is encouraged to play well the game of soccer. Now, as a parent, I used to drag four kids to four different fields every Saturday. Nobody ever graded my child, nobody ever wrote a narrative. My kids were always up early either in helping get the orange juice ready or putting everything out. They played from the time they were five years old and they played it all the way through high school. The issue with the parent was, they [children] were playing a game and the game was quite clear. The skill from this, obviously, was there, but everybody understood the game. What I think goes on here is we’re not clear what the game is. Therefore it’s really unclear whether or not it constitutes a fully embodied game that everybody can see being played. I never had any problems. I’m always disappointed when my son missed something, and they [opposing team] scored a goal. But that was my own stuff, it had nothing to do with him. Beyond that, over the years I saw my children getting better and better. I stood out there hours upon hours in the rain or the heat, when it rained, or in the sun, and encouraged them

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on. Some parents were much more vociferous than I was. The issue was that it seems there are characteristics that when kids put in great effort, parents put in great efforts, there is no grading done, at least, formal. Informally that’s always there. But it seems to me what’s present is this clarity about what the game is and what accomplishing the game is about. I don’t hear that clarity about written work. I don’t hear it about what the game of mathematics is, or what the game of writing is, or what the game of science is. In soccer, five-year-olds do not play a different game than thirteen-year-olds. It is the same game of soccer enacted with somewhat less quality. But all the way through, whenever you show up at any of these fields, you don’t say, “What are these kids playing?” Larry: There’s a key ingredient that’s significantly different from that and the element of choice. Here in this place, we have our vocal and instrumental music room. That’s our comparison to soccer. Your kids were out there not because the law said your kids had to play soccer, but because Mommy and Daddy said you had to go play soccer. Kids come to school and most of the subjects they have no choice about. They’re there because they have to be there. Patrick: But it’s not apparent what they get out of it. Ellen: There’s another problem with soccer too. It’s very clear to those children, as they go through, there are good players and sucky players. Rules say that every child has to play at least two [positions]. The kids saw immediately the kids that played all four, and the kids that just played two. There was a whole world. They gave each other grades worse than we every did. Nobody ever grades them, but they knew after the second practice.

By comparing schooling to a game, Patrick’s insight is that whereas the rules in soccer are clear and every child has access to them, we cannot say the same about school rules. But as Larry and Ellen point out, Patrick’s assumptions about soccer are faulty. First, Larry problematizes the difference between choosing to play sports and attending school, something about which students do not have much choice. Ellen goes even deeper. Whether or not we call it grading, there is evaluation in sports. Kids who participate in team sports construct a “whole world” inscribed by rules that are unevenly applied. They are sensitive to the different roles players on the same team take as leaders and followers. These exchange points to the notion that the criteria for success in sports, like success in school, are in no way clear. Yule: You’re teaching them the way that you want the game to be played. They may have all sorts of other ways of getting the ball in the hoop. They could do dipsy-do but if you teach, “You set a pick, you toss the ball over, and you just lay it up gently,” that’s how you win the game. Patrick: Right. Yule: So, in terms of basketball, everybody has a role and there’s something you want the people to do. You don’t say, “Just score the basket, that’s all that counts.” You have a definite way of doing that. If you don’t do it that way, you sit on the bench.

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Patrick: Right. Larry: Isn’t school very similar in terms that we have what we want them to be able to do? Patrick: This is the validity question. Is this the game? Does the game that we’re asking students to play really represent the game out there? Yolanda: No. Patrick: The issue with basketball is, you would ask itty-bitty basketball players to do the same version—they won’t do it as well—as you would collegiate players. There would be no distinction between a pick. It’s not going to be done well with itty-bitty ones. But there’s a pick. Now the question is when we say to somebody, “Go to the library and do x,” is that really like what you would be doing if you were a research scientist, a historian, or a politician who’s trying to make a case and you want to reference and understand? Is that what we’re asking them to do?

Sport success is often granted to those who “make the points,” much like students who “make the grade.” Yule admits that all players on a team have different functions within the game and thus are valuable to a team’s overall success rate. But this does not account for status differences because success in sports is more closely associated with those who produce points and goals. In the final analysis, scoring points is “all that counts” because points (and those who score them) are proportional to a team’s winning percentage. This relegates to lesser status players whose specialties may not be scoring the goal or making the basket, but whose contributions are vital to the act of making the points. Our memory of sporting events recalls the acts of players who score, the Michael Jordans and Babe Ruths. On the other hand, those who efficiently defend against opponents receive less attention. Likewise, students who do not “score” high in school are tracked in lower classes and, absent of interventions, are destined for lower-status jobs. As future working adults, these students fill jobs in the market, which are vital for the economy but receive little regard. Patrick’s contention is that educators should examine the game of school and the corresponding rules we tell students about their work. Unlike basketball, where rules apply evenly for “itty-bitty” players as much as it does for collegiate players (e.g., setting a pick looks the same for both groups), there is no public consensus concerning school rules. This is a fair assessment because individual rules in basketball appear to have more publicity than rubrics for good writing. But a focus on the rules of the game can only be accomplished by neglecting the game’s totality. To complement Patrick’s analysis, we need to consider the social structures of sports. There are important issues that an isolated attention on rules overlooks. Rules may be articulated consistently but this does not suggest that they are enacted or applied in conformity. Rules are social relations


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and are not neutrally applied to all players of a given game. Co-ed sport teams often marginalize girls and women prior to consideration of skills, which means sports processes resemble school processes more than Patrick initially suggests. Girls in sports, like girls in schools, are among the last considered to participate in activities. In sports, they are “picked” last; in classroom discourse, boys’ voices drown girls’ voices. Also sport rules, like school norms, are racialized. This fact often goes unmentioned in sports as much as it does in schools. In many contact sports, athletes of color usually are assumed to be “superior” (consider the physical representation of African Americans in basketball). That is, by virtue of their race, African Americans are enfleshed and anointed with agility, speed, and strength, and are valued as such (Dyson, 1994). This has implications for schooling as well, where the embodied signification of African Americans results in educators’ de-intellectualization of them. In short, the dominant construction of African American students is one associated with their bodies, not their minds. And this has historical roots. Through slavery, we understand that Africans were exploited for their bodies, as labor power. Considered as chattel property of white slaveowners, Africans were considered labor bodies without minds and souls. It is not surprising that, as descendants of African slaves, African Americans are currently overphysicalized and de-intellectualized. These considerations taint the supposed clarity of rules in sports and schools. A naturalistic discourse on rules masks what is, in essence, a sociohistorical process. As the discussions continue, the shift from sporting games to school language games becomes facile. In the following exchange, Ellen unwittingly adopts Patrick’s naturalistic stance. In contrast, Patrick assumes a critical stance toward Ellen’s suggestions. Patrick: In all of these so-called games, it’s apparent what the game is and what accomplishing means, and nobody ever posts the rubrics. And they [children] also watch the entire enactment of what is understood to be the game. In other words, one can infer the quality without having to be told what the qualities are. Ellen: I think our kids know good writing when they see it. Just like the soccer players, I don’t care how hard my kids play and practice. All of her life she will never be anything but a second-class soccer player. (laughter) There are children who look at writing and for them to write, it is a tremendous struggle. They probably are going to have a better chance of being a better writer than my kid will ever have at being a soccer player because there’s this physical that is much more of a problem to be a great athlete than to be a decent writer. You just keep at it. A large number of our poor writers can be decent writers with all of the coaching and rewriting this bloody thing until it becomes a legible, understandable paragraph. Patrick: Is it clear to us, when we see a legible clear paragraph, that it is that? Ellen: It’s much more difficult than . . .

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Patrick: Soccer. Ellen: Than soccer. Yes. But, I think a kid can read two pieces of work too. A child can read two paragraphs and see differently. In fact, they do it all the time with their peers. Then they hear it as something that they don’t have too much to say about. They know that.

The transition from sports rules to writing rules becomes a convenient ideological trope. Whereas Ellen was previously critical of Patrick’s naturalization of sport rules, she now applies a similar naturalistic logic to writing, such that “kids know good writing when they see it.” She accomplishes this contradiction by geneticizing skill in sports and opposing writing as a skill to be learned. In other words, sports is biologically determined whereas good writing is inculcated through practice. This assumption makes sense on one level. An athlete needs the minimum required physical health in order to compete in sports at the highest levels. This standard for health is determined by the culture of the sport in question. However, sports skill is another issue altogether. It indicates an athlete’s familiarity with the sport and its nuances. A physical standard may suggest that a player is fit for the sport, but this says nothing about her skill, something that is much less about physical determinism and more about familiarity with a sport’s discursive structure. The same can be said for writing and literacy, as Patrick implies in his skeptical question, “Is it clear to us, when we see a legible clear paragraph, that it is that?” Contrary to what Ellen suggests, writing standards are neither clear nor publicly announced. Beyond grammatical flawlessness, teachers form different criteria for good or bad writing. This is part of their “discursive repertoire” (Frankenberg, 1993) in terms of what concepts count as worthy of attention and which ones do not merit text. In addition, writing is also about content. If a student writes about an experience entirely unfamiliar to a teacher’s understanding of the world, good writing form may not necessarily help the teacher better understand the written form of the experience. The following exchange should make this point more clear. Patrick: The assumption that kids come to school and haven’t had experience is not so, right? All children have lived for five years before they start school. So what we’re really saying is, certain experience is more valued in school than other experiences. It’s not that children are without experience or that they’re without knowledge. With experience comes knowledge. What we’re saying is, certain knowledge and certain experience is valued in school. Certain other knowledge or experience is not. Esther: The way the schools are set up, I think that’s right. Patrick: So that we wouldn’t read stories about dads or uncles or moms who are in prison and their experiences with children. But we would read experiences


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about going to the zoo and how wonderful it is to see animals cooped up in zoos. Yolanda: We don’t have a unit on prisons in America, whereas we have a unit on barnyard animals in kindergarten. Patrick: It’s not only about prisons, it’s about people, human beings who have families in prison. Esther: If I was a teacher in that situation, it could be an awkward kind of situation. You might feel that the child is very comfortable with sharing it. I don’t know if the teacher would want to cut it off. On the other hand, if the child was writing about it, it would be different from sharing it all. I think students innocently share things that are very much a part of them. I think they should be encouraged to do so. On the other hand, when you have something very—I hate to say it—unusual . . . I have children right now in schools that are aware of what’s going on in their lives, for example. One little boy that comes to mind, all the people who just recently have been killed in his family from being shot. Then he wants to talk about it. I don’t know. It’s a more awkward thing if a child just opens it all up and you pursue it, encourage it to be laid out on the table. He certainly had more powerful experiences than I ever had or other children. Patrick: Would it be possible to see that experience as equivalent, relative to knowledge as the experience of going to the zoo or going skiing down the Alps? Esther: Absolutely, I don’t think . . . . . . Larry: It falls back on what the purpose of the activity is. If the activity was to explore ways they spend their weekends, then anyone should have equal delivery. If the activity was to explore what we know about animals, then the kid that writes about animals is on task and the kid who doesn’t write about animals is off task.

To Esther, a death in a student’s family is an “unusual” story to share “innocently” in front of the class. Yet, it is not clear why visiting the zoo is a more “normal” experience than a death in the family. Esther freely admits that shootings and deaths are “more powerful” than anything she ever experienced as a child and she feels “awkward” about the interaction with the student. Larry circumvents the issue by technicizing it. He returns to the objectives and whether the student is on or off task. This dialogue points out that the presentation of ideas and the content of presentation are in no way separable. Patrick points out rather clearly that schools do not value all forms of experience. This point seems obvious but is rarely addressed. When a student writes about an experience, the content of writing affects the rhetoric and how style is then confounded by its subject matter. The experiences themselves are plotted along hierarchical lines and this stratification must first be recognized before any evaluation of student writing. This suggests that there is no universal standard for “good” writing, paragraph or otherwise, untouched

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by a certain politics of representation. However, this is not the same as saying that no standards exist at all. One could not read a student’s essay if there existed no common standard for understandability. Otherwise, teachers could not enact the game of literacy, just as athletes could not enter the game of soccer without some form of consensus on rules. It is to point out that standards for evaluating these language games are neither natural nor universally agreed upon. What counts as good or bad writing is not based simply on style of presentation absent of content. For we know that changing style also changes the content of writing (Goodman, 1978), sometimes in profound ways. As the discussion over standards intensifies, the participants begin to show a level of frustration over their representation of the issues. This sincere wrestling with the concept of consensual standards draws more participants into the debate. In trying to understand one another, the Inquirers exhibit the tension that is central to any reform. They witness the unnaturalness and arbitrariness of their discourses. Patrick: We’re raising questions about Ellen’s thing, that we have this notion of a standard that is evident. Therefore when you see it you get it, and when you don’t see you didn’t get it. Ellen: No, I think you can tell differences, that the child is supposed to read something and say, “Well, if I were going to give this a grade, it’s a three.” There are things that they can read and know it’s better or worse than other things that they read. Patrick: So this is a moving standard? Ellen: I’m not talking about a standard! (laughter from others) But when you do read something, you know whether you understand it and you know whether there’s anything that you would change. Patrick: Right, but I thought the argument we had earlier . . . maybe I’m just confused. Amanda: Was it an argument? Patrick: That . . . (some laughter) Amanda: It was a discussion, not an argument.

First, let me point out the fact that the statements are becoming shorter. This is a sign of the discursive struggle currently transpiring between the participants. They are searching for a common understanding but find it elusive. Patrick questions Ellen’s assumptions about a self-evident standard for writing but she is now uncomfortable with Patrick’s use of the signifier “standard.” “I’m not talking about a standard!” she says. She then substitutes the signifier “understanding” for “standard.” We see here the point I made earlier: that changing the style of representation changes the content being presented. Ellen changes the nature of student writing


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from one that teachers evaluate according to a rubric, to a process that is more about understanding a world articulated through discourse, a written world (Ricoeur, 1981). This is not the act of being fastidious about words. Rather, it shows a fundamental problem in reform discourse: how to represent school issues. As the tension rises, Amanda escalates the representation stakes by questioning Patrick’s use of “argument,” replacing it with the less tensioned signifier, “discussion.” As we often find in educators’ search for consensual understanding, conflict becomes uncomfortable and is eschewed through redirection of the discourse. Consensus is naturalized and dissonance is denormalized. Recognizing the apparent discomfort, Patrick reverts to his use of a naturalized sports analogy. But Yolanda quickly points out Patrick’s ahistorical assumptions. This is the ensuing discourse: Patrick: The discussion earlier had to do with if you watched somebody playing a game of basketball, you clearly know those who were good players and those who were not, and those who play soccer and those . . . Yolanda: But doesn’t that standard also change? A good basketball player twenty years ago compared to the good basketball player now is not the same thing. Patrick: Yah, but I hear a lot of guys saying that they would love to play with Jerry West and they’d love to play with Oscar Robertson. Yolanda: So, let me get this straight. You take the five best players from 1950 against the five best players from this year and say that would be an even match? Patrick: If they were the same age. Yolanda: If they were the same age? Elexis: That’s a great game. (laughs) Forecasters always do that. They’re always talking about that. Patrick: Don’t you think it would be great if [Bob] Cousy were still playing? Amanda: Or Mike Tyson. (laughs)

We receive a naturalized history of sports as an analogy to school standards. Moreover, it is a universalized history indicated by Patrick’s allusion to Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, and Bob Cousy as timeless figures of talent. Patrick’s argument is that the best basketball players from the 1950s would be an “even match” against today’s best NBA players. The logic is unmistakable. It holds constant both the notion of talent and the structural experience of basketball. Clearly, the meaning of both has changed over the last fifty years. Basketball players are now much more athletic, the game more physical, and rules like the twenty-four-second clock have forced players to be more efficient with scoring. “Playing above the rim” is now a phrase used to describe the dominant structure of the game, a game characterized by

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offensive dunks and defensive blocked shots. Basketball maintains a selfresemblance through the years, just as school looks much like it has in the past. But basketball is hardly the same game anymore. It has transformed as the market has mutated, the profit motive becoming more and more the determining force. No doubt a game between the ten “greatest” players in NBA history would, as Elexis says, be “a great game.” However, even the “same age” comparison to which Patrick refers has changed. With more players entering the NBA draft at a younger age, the same age contest between past and present players lacks the contextual fit that would corroborate Patrick’s challenge. A twenty-five-year-old Michael Jordan, having already played in the NBA for five years, would have more experience than a twenty-five-year-old Bob Cousy; and let us not forget the young phenomenon Kobe Bryant, who entered the NBA after finishing high school. The analogy between school rules and sports rules is intriguing but deserves more historical reflection. Amanda’s apparently confused comment about Mike Tyson and her subsequent laughter show her resistance to Patrick’s universalization, using the boxer’s name ostensibly to disrupt the basketball-school analogy. Analogies and representations such as the ones mentioned cannot be excused as external to the reform being forged. They are not extraneous information because they contribute to the construction of Inquiry discourse and its overall linguistic environment, and thereby are constitutive of its internal structure. In other words, the Inquiry participants’ tropes, analogies, and metaphors do not represent an overarching linguistic form but instead constitute the participants’ concepts and understandings of Inquiry itself. They are as much a part of the reform discourse as any other statement that directly mentions schooling or reform. These “ways of language” show us the reformers’ treatment of history, values, and norms. In particular, metaphors are a result of linguistic tension (Ricoeur, 1976, 1981) and they function as representation through the difference between two terms. Furthermore, they create semantic innovation by exposing the tension in a previously flat linguistic relation between two words. When McLaren (1995) innovates the phrase “predatory culture,” he attempts to showcase the invidiousness of schooling conditions located in late capitalism. It invokes the question: What is predatory about capitalist culture? The linguistic tension resides in the idea that our current cultural condition is marked by the predatory logic of profits and market commodification. The innovation is a linguistic twist between the relatively taken-for-granted concept of culture as a benign unit of analysis and the venality of capitalism as a producer of social relations. It can be said that metaphor at the level of the phrase is like the tension between similarly charged magnets. The two pieces resist each other much like two signifiers repelling each other, this time through difference. Push the two magnets together and one eventually flips over and attaches itself to the other.


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Much the same can be said for metaphors that become common sense. The constant use of a metaphorical phrase eventually turns it into commonsense language. As time passes, one word “flips over” and attaches itself to the other. It becomes normal language through desensitization. In short, the innovation becomes “natural.” With respect to schools, the previous Inquiry conversation is interesting in that it shows a certain romanticization of the past. One of the tasks of school reform is to critique the production of the past. If we extend the school-sport analogy to a match between the great minds of the past and present, we obfuscate the historical genesis of great minds as reflections of the modes of economic production of the time. For intelligence is never transparent, but instead is part of a historical process of valuing certain discourses over others. Educators cannot match the brightest children of fifty years ago with today’s high-achieving students without examining the social construction of intelligence in the context that inscribes success. A certain historical attitude avoids an essentialism of the past in exchange for a critical analysis of the multiple and concrete influences that impact a given historical context. Patrick’s romanticization of the NBA past is not unconnected to Larry’s nostalgic tone when recalling his teaching experience in elementary school. Larry: It reminds me of the elementary experience where you eliminate the time constraints. If something is going, and the kids are interested in something, you don’t have to stop because it’s nutrition time and move on to another subject. Esther: Well, here we do because they [students] meet by period. Larry: I understand, but I’m just saying, when you stop and think about it, the elementary experience lends itself very nicely to a number of things that we eliminate the minute we go into a middle school.

Larry’s recollection of his elementary experience as a teacher is marked by a pronounced nostalgia, something that Esther immediately notices. Larry’s imaginary is confounded by his middle school teaching condition, one that apparently is more fragmented than his elementary school experience. In this move, Larry naturalizes his elementary years as a time of plenitude where there seemed to be more flexibility to pursue topics than middle school conditions currently provide. This is in stark contrast to how several of the participants earlier held elementary school as accountable for middle school woes. In contrast to their charge that elementary school has failed to address students’ academic needs, particularly in literacy, Larry’s memory constructs it as a place of freedom. What is consistent with both tendencies is the construction of the present as a time out of sync with the past—that is, either better or worse than the past. The present history’s contingency is distorted as an event lacking its own objective reality. It is in a state of disarray either because of the past or because of

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that which could have been avoided in the past. This appeal to the past is a distinctive move because critical reform insists on avoiding the romanticization of the past or creating an alibi out of the past for a present that, as agents of transformation, subjects have relative power to change. Naturalizing certain school characteristics is a negative ideology because it universalizes what is at heart a sociohistorical phenomenon. Naturalization takes the historically contingent and strips it of its concrete and material basis. That something is constructed as natural or commonsensical betrays an uncritical disposition toward the detectable ways that social norms are inscribed by ideological processes that mask their contradictions. Naturalization reifies the historical by turning myths into realities. It petrifies the wood of our beliefs into the rock of our existence. For instance, literacy is a central theme in many Inquiry discussions and often receives much attention. Here is a typical exchange: Yolanda: Why isn’t a three and four, where we’re saying, “You’ve done a solid job, you’re a good writer, you’ve done a good job?”—why is that not OK? Why must you be a five or a six? Ellen: I still say we know, and to try to work with a child to get closer and closer to being competent or presentable, and then work with these other kids. I don’t think, in reality, there really are very many sixes, kids that are going to write novels that you are then going to buy out of the bookstores. Larry: I don’t think sixes are a professional novelist level anyway. Ellen: Who cares? Is it good enough to write a grant? You were talking about different styles. If you can write something, you can write.

This discussion starts with Yolanda’s charge that grading practices have denormalized students who earn threes and fours (six being highest). She wonders if praising these same students would create a more caring environment for them. But if we consider that students of color and economically disadvantaged students represent the usual bearers of threes and fours, then it would serve them no justice if educators were now to praise their “mediocrity.” Interestingly, Yolanda’s suggestion is to normalize threes and fours rather than question the criteria that undergird the rubric. Normalizing threes and fours may only function as a disingenuous “congratulations” for students who earn them, as opposed to revamping the grading system to welcome different forms of literacy. It sends a message that it is acceptable for some students to earn threes and fours, students who are not randomly distributed over the population at large. Moreover, Ellen admits that sixes, the writing level of novelists, do not really exist anyway. This conclusion suggests that in order for a student’s essay to earn a six, the evaluator must herself be able to recognize novel-level writing. In other words, the evaluator’s capacity to judge the writing quality is often left unquestioned.


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As insightful as Ellen’s comment proves to be, she follows her own intervention with an equally problematic assumption about literacy. To Ellen, being literate means being able to write a grant. This characterization is not an isolated belief but one that remains central to many of the participants’ ideological presuppositions about literacy. Ellen’s declaration works on a couple of levels. First, there is an association between literacy and money; that is, to write well is to convince a particular funding board that a project warrants a grant. And since we know that funding boards have economic interests that guide their decisions, literacy becomes inextricably tied to a mode of writing that is economically directed. This is suggested as the universal definition of any student writing in a literate manner. Or as Ellen remarks, “Is it good enough to write a grant? If you can write something, you can write.” Second, grant writing is proffered as an example of a common-sense language, a transparent literacy that speaks for itself across different audiences. Grant writing suspiciously represents the everyman’s language. Its discursive character fades into obscurity. Yet, grant writing does not represent a unified practice and we only have to examine grant proposals from different disciplines to arrive at their discursive element. Third, literate writing is here defined independent of its subjective component. For Freire (1993) has shown us that literacy is an active event of naming or changing one’s world, of a subject’s coming to know her world (see also McLaren, 1991c). This transformative potential inherent in literacy and writing takes a secondary, if not tertiary, role if we follow a literacy of the obvious, or what Donaldo Macedo (1994) calls “literacy for stupidification.” This next set of interesting comments concerning literacy should clarify my point. The italics are my emphasis. Larry: Well, if you can word-call, you can word-call anything. If you have strong phonics skills and strong word-call skills, you can sit here and verbally read through the paragraph, and people say, “Yah that all sort of sounds right.” Ellen: I’ll word-call. I can word-call in Spanish for that matter. Larry: Right. Yolanda: Yah. Larry: But the question is can you make meaning from that? Patrick: So is that really the reading issue then? Yule: So maybe we need to think about what that means. If the kids aren’t reading what we want them to read, paralleling what we’re saying with this article . . . Larry: Whenever you say reading, I think you need to talk about what you mean by reading. Yule: Comprehension. Larry: If you’re talking about comprehending, making meaning, that’s different. Yule: I’m talking about making meaning.

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Larry: OK. Yule: Well, what else is there to it? Larry: Word calling. We have lots of kids that will call out words, sit there and read through a paragraph and make no sense of it. Yolanda: But don’t you think that we can basically agree that when we say reading we mean not word calling? We mean understanding the text that’s in front of us. Don’t we all agree on that? At the very basic level, reading means you understand the words that you have just gone over. Esther: It means that you can read them, you can actually pronounce them. Leslie: We need to be on one accord as [to] what we’re defining as reading, OK. Yolanda: Understanding the words. Can we agree on that? Leslie: Sure. Patrick: I would also hope the other thing is that we’re questioning our own theory about what this thing is, called “reading.”

It is obvious that Inquiry participants do not agree on the concept of literacy, despite Leslie’s acquiescent attempt at pronouncing consensus with “Sure.” From “word-call,” to “making meaning,” to “comprehension,” to “understanding,” and “pronouncing,” the definitions run the gamut. Later, Ellen expands on this sentiment: Putting the whole thing together, I think we’ve all, no matter how much we want to fuss about it, we would come to an agreement of what reading is: that you can read it and talk about it with somebody else. Maybe we can even argue about that. But if you can read the Daily Times [newspaper], you can read any of these novels. Some say, “It’s OK for some kids to not be able to read the Daily Times.” Well, see, I just can’t get with that. It isn’t OK for some kids not to be able to read the Daily Times.

The group’s search for an agreed-upon definition of literacy shows its fundamental undecidability. However, this does not militate against building a critical literacy that does not inhere a common-sense logic. We can characterize the many definitions offered here under the general rubric of a functional and not critical literacy. The literacy we receive is one centered on a naturalistic gravitation toward a reading of the word. A reading of the world, in the Freirean sense, is absent. The multitudinous ways that students, as subjects of literacy, already read their existential world is less of a concern. More significant, literacy is a powerful act of naming one’s world, naming relations of domination, and naming one’s desire for freedom. The influence of naturalistic structures is strong and literacy is only one of its nodes. With a critical disposition, we can begin to crack relations of domination by exposing the limits to a naturalistic ideology. The next target of naturalistic ideology is knowledge. Here the production of knowledge becomes a contested terrain. Meanwhile, knowledge’s


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association with politics and privilege seems less central. The question of “Whose knowledge governs schools?” is infrequently invoked. Instead, we receive the participants’ distinction of knowledge from other forms of “knowing.” This is not an insignificant move. It allows reformers to reflect on the discursive strategies they employ regarding the epistemological foundation of their craft as teachers. However, fine distinctions at the expense of ideological critique construct a discourse that leaves the issue of domination untouched. For example, here is a dialogue around the difference between knowledge and learning: Leslie: I want to go back to the question of learning versus knowledge. I suppose we are all on a continuum in terms of learning. Now that I really think about it, how do you assess that? I grade on what they’ve [students] learned. Patrick: So if you learn something you don’t know it? Leslie: Yah, right. It’s like, know about what? What do you know about what, though? What do you know about division? What do you know about fractions? What do you know about the fall of the Roman Empire? Patrick: But wouldn’t it be true that most of us, if we’ve had experience with something, you know something about it? Leslie: You would think that. (laughter) That sounds logical, but I still would have a couple of kids who would go, “Rome?” It’s been six weeks! Patrick: Well, yah, but they may not have had an experience with Rome, right? Leslie: But they had an experience in class. Patrick: Right, so maybe they could tell you a whole lot about what was going on in class, what they were experiencing in class. But they may not be able to tell a whole lot about something they didn’t experience. See, one of the issues that I’ve honed in on here, do we believe that there’s a real mind inside the head of each of us? And that mind is full of stuff, it’s not vacuous. Despite our tendencies . . . Woman: Well some of them are . . . (laughter)

For Leslie, the distinction between learning and knowledge intersects the practice of evaluation. In short, she asserts that she grades student learning, not student knowledge. Thus, she is making the distinction between knowledge, something students have, and learning, something teachers facilitate. Knowledge is a pre-schooled way of “knowing” and learning is its schooled version. Teacher’s craft is shaping unformed knowledge into organized learning. On the other hand, Patrick’s concern is more with student knowledge as an already existing structure in the mind. In short, students have previous knowledge and teaching starts from this point of departure. Patrick’s reasonable contention is that schooling should start with children’s previous knowledge and experience. This is done in order to avoid the tendency to characterize student minds as “vacuous,” which merely need to be deposited with knowledge (Freire, 1993).

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But Patrick goes even further. He makes the association between experience and knowledge, such that the first produces the second. This is a problematic assumption because, as Leslie notes, there is not ample reason to believe that a congruence actually exists between experience and knowledge. She says, “You would think that . . . . That sounds logical, but I still would have a couple of kids who would go, ‘Rome?’ I mean, it’s been six weeks!” Experience does not produce knowledge in such a natural and direct way because experience never speaks for itself but instead is mediated by the student’s discursive repertoire. In other words, if we use Leslie’s distinctions, we only learn from the experiences we learn from. A student’s discursive repertoire intervenes between experience and knowledge by interpreting the events of everyday life. Depending on the discursive structure of the experience in question, students may come out of it knowing very little. That students experience something does not suggest that they were able to accommodate it into their previous knowledge. Furthermore, there is the issue of critical experience. Because most school discourses are grounded on hegemonic ideas that are commonsensical, students do not benefit from a critical vernacular they can employ when accommodating new experience. This brings up the importance of critical dialogue in classroom interaction. We need to take seriously Patrick’s suggestion that teaching should start with student knowledge and experience. Moreover, educators must also assist students in building a critical discourse that scrutinizes those forms of knowledge and experiences as potential sites of domination. By doing this, learning becomes an overtly hermeneutical process and not one based on organizing student knowledge into school knowledge. A critical discourse on school knowledge insists on a de-naturalized perspective, one that regards knowledge not as artifacts to be learned but as access to power. Here is another fruitful exchange: Ellen: Children can do it. I don’t care what their grade is. They can do this. Patrick: Right, but suppose now we also argue that one of the connections for those kids—and I don’t know if this is the case but it might be worth exploring—is that my interest, in order to do something, is also based on what I already know. For example, scientists don’t just explore any old thing because it’s a great idea. They start finding things that connect to their previous and prior knowledge. Ellen: See, I disagree with that, in some ways. I think there isn’t a child alive that isn’t interested in science. Patrick: Understood. But now suppose the kids are saying, “I’m really interested in understanding this about that.” The other issue about doing a so-called Inquiry is my interest and my question. What’s my question? Why fire? Maybe I’ve been watching bark peel off a tree. I don’t know what they’re called anymore, these trees that are out here. But I know that bark peels off from them from time to


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time. As a kid in Cityville, I used to always peel back the bark to see what kinds of critters were in the bark because I always knew there were critters there. That was my question. Nobody in school ever asked me to explore inside these little barkies. We were always doing something else with sugar or water or something else the book thought was important. So I’m not denying the importance of the experiment, but it’s rather the issue of how does the interest and knowledge of the child intersect with the notion of being a scientist.

Patrick insists on a pedagogy that starts from students’ previous knowledge. He buttresses his claim by demystifying scientific knowledge as a subjective practice stemming from scientists’ previous knowledge and interest. Patrick offers his own poignant example. As a child interested in tree barks, he was ignored by teachers more concerned about following the official curriculum. By personalizing science, Patrick suggests that science is not only about facts and formulas. Science intersects interest. His point is rather clear: Educators do not ask students about their own interests. However, Ellen contradicts Patrick with her own generalization about the universal appeal of science. Ellen does not regard science as a discourse with its particular structure and specific community of practice (Kuhn, 1970). She declares, “I think there isn’t a child alive that isn’t interested in science.” What is occluded here is the privilege and status of science as a discourse in school and society. The “uses of science” produce a culture that is male, Eurocentric, and instrumental. On one hand, scientific knowledge in the shape of methods, formulas, and physical laws transcends cultures. Newton’s laws and Einstein’s relativity apply generally to all cultures. However, using these laws for human purposes is where the meaning of science becomes cultural. Using scientific laws to build aqueducts to supply water to people who need it engenders different meanings from using the same laws in the context of classroom discourse, which often stifles girls and women from participating as full agents in their education. Ellen naturalizes science as a universal interest rather than constructing it as an interested discourse. Said another way: Although scientific laws may transcend cultures, their human and social functions make science, for better or worse, an ideological pursuit. Or as Patrick succinctly puts it, “I’m not denying the importance of the experiment, but it’s rather the issue of how does the interest and knowledge of the child intersect with the notion of being a scientist.” Seen this way, science does not occupy an objective and faceless space. It is a discourse that functions through paradigmatic ways of thinking and a certain interest in how knowledge should serve as means to human ends. The upshot of such an analysis is that science is not an end in itself but is a means to an end. As Albert Einstein (1956) remarks, “Science cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. . . . For these reasons,

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we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems” (p. 124). Furthermore, Einstein connects science with the idea of capitalist production and labor exploitation. He continues: [S]ocialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. . . . The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evil. . . . I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. (pp. 124–130; italics in original)

Any consideration of science as a form of knowledge should also provide the space for cultural, economic, and social critique. We have learned that Nazi science is a venal use of the discourse, whereas humane examples of science promote progress. Taking for granted the “inherent” usefulness of knowledge, science in particular, serves to naturalize what is inherently a sociohistorical matter. As science’s bedfellow, math knowledge also achieves a certain universal status in school discourse. Though different from science in its mode of application, math has likewise become privileged as cultureless, objective, and part of the natural world. Once again, the status of math knowledge as a social construct is left untouched. In the following exchange, Patrick tries to destabilize the “natural” place of math in the curriculum. Esther: My little resource kids, they don’t even know their fractions. Patrick: Understood. But Esther, this is the problem. As long as we keep defining the curriculum as fractions and that they oughta know that . . . Esther: That’s true, I agree with that. Patrick: That that’s [fractions] basic. Esther: I don’t know, maybe we should throw out the “you need to know fractions.” You need to know it in cooking. (mildly laughing) Patrick: I have a hunch there are a lot of those things we could throw out and we would not harm children. Esther: It’s very painful because they knew they didn’t know the fractions. Patrick: Do you know your fractions? Esther: Well, I do. I got them drilled into me in elementary school. Patrick: What do you know about them? If I asked you to divide fractions, could you do that and then tell me what it means? Esther: Yes. Yolanda: I have never used calculus since I took the class, but it enabled me to make, in the system I was in, the decisions about where I went, whereas if I hadn’t taken it decisions would have been made for me. So I see it more as an opening of doors. But if you don’t get into those classes, it’s a closing of doors. When I look at things completely, I don’t know that it’s always, “When will I


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use this in my whole life?” I use fractions and algebra, and I use things like that not necessarily the way it was taught to me in class. When a student comes to me and says, “What do I need to get on the next test to get such and such grade?” I’m using algebra and saying, “Well you have this plus an unknown equals this” and we figure it out. So I do use those skills in my job. I don’t know if every single thing needs to be done. I kind of worry. We always pick on math when we start talking about things we don’t think people need to know because to a lot of people math is just a scary subject. Math didn’t scare me and I enjoyed it. I found math really satisfying that once I learned something, it was always the same thing every time I saw it. I knew that once I got it, I got it. So for me it was really a self-esteem thing. I hated social studies in eighth grade because every time I got it we got on to another subject and I had to learn all new stuff again. I go, “Dang, I never accomplished anything.” Esther: Maybe you didn’t go deep enough into the subject. Yolanda: I just thought you learn one thing and it’s done. Now you go on to another thing. You start all over.

Patrick interrogates Esther’s assumption that fractions deserve a natural place in the curriculum, “that students oughta know them.” His intention is politically correct, but his delivery is suspect. He is correct to point out that students knowing fractions should not precede students’ interest in them, that in order for students to find learning fractions fulfilling, they must intersect the students’ real world experience and not just fractions as a school topic. Yet, Patrick’s tone sounds interrogative and forces Esther to assume a defensive posture rather than reflect on her assumptions. His line of questioning does not instigate a dialogue but instead challenges her in front of her colleagues. This instance of gender dynamics within reform is important for a reflection over the relations between men and women involved in reform. Esther’s reaction to Patrick’s interrogation is reduced to “Yes” because she is given very little option to do otherwise. In fact, Yolanda’s subsequent long example can be regarded as an intervention to release the tension we witness between Patrick and Esther, a strategy Patrick himself often applies to diffuse a tense situation during Inquiry. Yolanda’s comment returns us to the issue of math privilege. She links it with the notion of access, that failing to fulfill math requirements diminishes a student’s access to higher education or mobility. However, Yolanda’s critique can be extended because she does not question the very centrality of math knowledge in the curriculum. The fact that a student is penalized for forsaking math is symptomatic of its ostensibly natural place in the curriculum over and above other subjects, like art and the humanities. Furthermore, her characterization of math’s sense of order and predictability over social studies as a subject area that begins anew at every turn deserves some attention.

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Yolanda’s sense of math as ordered and social studies as variegated reaffirms math’s hegemonic status in the curriculum. Yolanda regards math as productive and feels like she “accomplished nothing” in social studies. Her testimony corroborates the construction of math as a topic free of conflict, full of certainty, and absent of human ideologies. By following this logic, one gets a sense of math as natural, ahistorical. But this is surely a myth because mathematical progress is not just a result of paradigmatic improvements but also political interests, cultural contexts, and economic influences. Again, like science, mathematical formulas appear to transcend culture because the Pythagorean theorem applies generally to New York City as it does to a small village in China. What is important to consider here is the use of math. This is where math’s cultural unnaturalness becomes obvious. Applying the Pythagorean theorem to build pyramids on the backs of slaves derives a different meaning from applying it to build shelters for homeless people. And since humans are beings in labor, the pure state of a mathematical equation that exists purely for itself does not exist at all; it always exists for the fulfillment of human activities. Like knowledge, math never exists for itself but only for particular purposes (McLaren, 1994b). With Larry as the math coordinator at the middle school, discussions around math continue to take on more significance. Math reform, as Yule admits, is a bit more elusive than the less-linear subjects of language arts, social studies, and even science. The conversation transpires like this: Yule: I understand language arts, social studies, and science. Is math out of this completely in terms of what Inquiry does in terms of changing our strategies? Math is so linear to me and I wouldn’t know where to begin to do some of the things that I can understand in the other areas. I just wonder if math is a part of this as well. Larry: Yes and no, quite honestly. Okay, in math you’ve got an end point because you’ve got an answer. The answer is right or wrong. How you get there, however, could be very divergent. If youngsters have sufficient divergent skills in their pharmacy, in their repertoire, you can approach a problem many different ways. You can approach a solution many different ways. But you will still come to the same answer if it’s correct. This notion of correctness is one that appears most often in math. It certainly appears in language arts and it appears to a significant extent in science. But then as you get into other subject areas, it starts getting less and less because the gray areas come up and the notion of argument and position and defense of position start assuming greater emphasis. You can make an argument for the causes of the Civil War. You can make an argument for diverging viewpoints. But you can’t make an argument that 2 ⫹ 3 is 4. You could solve 2 ⫹ 3 in many different ways. So I think that’s something along the way that’s different.


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Elexis: Right. But if you can’t get further, then you don’t get the correct answer. How do you deal with that in math? Is there a way how kids deal with that process is evaluated or valued? Larry: Well, it gets valued in the concept of partial credit. But that only carries a youngster so far.

Larry provides a good overview of what, according to him, differentiates math from other subject areas. Math’s difference from other subjects is its internal sameness. There is a prescribed answer to any problem, a common end point for all students solving any given problem. According to this portrait, math is intrinsically non-hermeneutical. One cannot interpret 2 ⫹ 3 as resulting in anything but 5. There is more than one way to arrive at the answer, like the examples one takes to get there, but in all essence a student is either correct or incorrect. In other words, there is only one cause for every effect, unlike the Civil War, which had many causes. One should note Larry’s discourse, as evident in signifiers like “pharmacy,” a word that sums up math’s prescriptiveness. Math is like a pharmacy where students pick up their prescribed equations that resolve errors found in faulty thinking. Initially lacking the skills to arrive at the right answers, students cure this ailment by choosing the right pills (i.e., math procedures) for the right problems. Wrongly applying an equation or rules of deduction results in failing grades just as taking the wrong pills may result in unhealthful complications, or worse, death. Partly solving a math problem warrants partial credit, much like failing to take all of one’s medicine relieves only part of the symptoms of an illness. But there is more. As the teachers continue to compare math with other subjects, math’s naturalized prescriptiveness exposes its privileged status in the curriculum. Yule: So, let’s compare it to a research paper. You do all this process. You take the final product and if they draw the wrong conclusions, you mark them no credit at all? Or if they do something else with the final product that is not right, do they get no credit on the whole? Larry: But what is not right on a research project? Yolanda: Well, for example, a student recently tried to convince me that President Theodore Roosevelt had created the Roosevelt National Park in 1968. (laughter) Well, that’s wrong. Larry: That’s a very kind of isolated . . . Yolanda: It’s factual. It is a concrete thing where the student made a mistake in the process. Now, do they get a zero for that in my class? No. They get a note that says, “I think you’ve messed up the present name or you confused the fact that it was named after this President, or the fact that he signed it.” Obviously, I know that in their research they came across a sentence that said, “This park was named after Theodore Roosevelt and it was created in this year.” They put the

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two things together wrong. But the process of getting the information was correct. So they don’t get a zero. They don’t get an A⫹ for doing it wrong, either. Yule: They would get a zero in math.

It becomes evident that Larry regards non-math subject areas as purely interpretive. In other words, correct answers guide math whereas history is about argumentation, and correctness is more about rhetoric rather than fact. Or as Larry puts it, “What is not right on a research project?” On one hand, it is fair for Larry to make the assertion that rhetoric plays a more important role in language arts and history. There is a greater level of subjective interpretation in language skills than in math skills since words are much more meaningful than numbers. On the other hand, the assumption that all interpretations are just versions of an elusive fact is a caricature, as Yolanda quickly points out. Math’s privileged status is precisely due to its claim on objective knowledge. This creates a generalized notion that being objective is valued over being subjective. First, this dichotomy creates a false sense of objectivity in math, as if nonrational values do not enter mathematicians’ decisions to pursue one research topic over another. Years of discipline and mentoring do not necessarily produce an independent mind, but a docile body (Foucault, 1977). Traditions maintain themselves when disciples of the discipline enflesh the values of their discourse community and invest in this identity. Second, it assumes that objectivity or distantiation is preferable over personal involvement and investment. One could argue that a person who is emotionally invested in truth is not to be decried but celebrated. Third, a claim on objectivity says nothing about a political project on which one grounds her pedagogy. Objectivity for its own sake betrays a politics of nothingness, since to remain objective apparently suggests no political project that one could defend, and since passionately defending a position would imply that one is personally invested. An ideology based on naturalization perpetuates as common sense what is at heart a sociohistorical process. By characterizing social rules, reading formations, and discursive knowledge as natural occurrences, reformers neglect the conditions of production that inscribe their work. A critical analysis does not guarantee that inequalities will decrease by virtue of talking about them. But it provides the beginnings for ideological work that is necessary to any school reform concerned with relations of domination. Naturalization dehistoricizes the rules that govern our schools. It depoliticizes the networks of privilege and status that distort our real evaluation of school procedures as struggles over representation. Finally, naturalization perpetuates the myths we tell one another about the material basis on which knowledge is grounded, a foundation that is ridden with contradictions.


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INQUIRY AND THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE School reform is not only an issue of coming to terms with consensus and a unified strike toward a clear goal. This is indeed important but cannot be accomplished at the expense or fear of difference, what Memmi (2000) calls “heterophobia.” Difference is not the other of consensus, as if to value difference means to promote anarchy. The centrality of difference is important to reform as part of a dialectical engagement with consensus. Difference is the sense of community that resists any monolithic essentializing of its members. But difference also represents solidarity between reformers based on a common desire for social justice, albeit forms of justice that are dependent on their context. In my observations of Inquiry dialogues, the participants struggle with notions of difference to the point that, especially during important junctures, it becomes secondary to their goals. For example, “difference thinking” is regarded as inefficient and complicated. The safety of sameness is the convenient solution. Thus, the suppression of difference represents the second form of negative ideology signified in the participants’ discourse. This is not a totalizing critique because, as we shall see in chapter 7, the participants are able to value difference as central to a vital reform. That said, in this section I consider the ways participants jettison notions of difference, and in doing so maintain relations of domination through an unreflexive negation of the other. Whereas in chapter 5 I characterized teacher ideology as creatively pragmatic, it is now that I present pragmatism as the obstacle to difference. Pragmatic concerns minimize the importance of difference, because teachers’ work conditions appear so daunting and the structures of schooling so mammoth-like, that thinking differently becomes unimaginable given the teachers’ practical dilemmas. In short, difference thinking is inefficient because of the intensified work conditions within which teachers function. Difference thinking becomes just another duty to add to a teacher’s already full plate. This is understandable and as I mentioned in chapter 5, we cannot expect teachers to reform their classrooms without establishing the conditions with them. However, there are critical areas of change to which teachers have access without radical changes in their work conditions. One of them is to think differently about their work and students. This move does not necessarily require extra resources. Patrick: Now the question is: How do we work together and say, how do we figure out what students know and what their interests are? Then how do we create structures and activities and build on that? That would be an alternative explanation. Do you understand? If that’s not what you’re interested in pursuing, then what we’re back doing here is pursuing teacher interest and knowledge as the explanation that drives schooling. Ellen: Assuming we can do this, I still don’t see what we’re doing.

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Leslie: Well, even if we could do this and we figure out what we’re doing and we do that here, okay what about the next step? What about the high school? What about the college? Patrick: Well, this is the part where we’re then trying to be, in a sense, as courageous as we can be but thoughtful as we can be too. Leslie: We can’t be both in this situation. Larry: See the thoughtful also tells us that we have to put our feet back in the cement. Yolanda: I look at this situation, I want to know, what does it look like and whether it’s happening at college or not? My brain can not deal with the concept in any way, shape, or form, when I ask a student, “What are you interested in and what do you want to know?” I believe that there would be overlap, but how can I, without totally losing my mind, teach five classes or four classes of subject matter to one hundred fifty kids? This is how my brain works and I assume that my brain does not work totally different than every other person on earth. I need to know the structure so that I can start thinking of different ways to do it. That’s how my brain works.

Patrick’s suggestion is met with immediate resistance. His proposal to change teacher thinking to make it more student-oriented collides with skepticism. He makes it clear that reform requires a shift in thinking as much as it requires a shift in resources. But consistent with the participants’ resistance to what they refer to as Patrick’s “outer-spacedness” and lack of concern with “reality,” the participants immediately expand the issues to include high school and college, eventually overwhelming their imaginations. What appears as an apparently simple suggestion to think differently becomes a daunting task, so much so that Leslie confesses that she cannot be both “thoughtful” and “courageous.” This is a stifling commentary about the prospects of change because it epitomizes Leslie’s, if not other teachers’, sense of powerlessness to think differently—in this case, to consider the students’ interest when creating school work. Returning to the metaphor of “cement,” Larry reaffirms Leslie’s perturbations about changing one’s thinking when one cannot take a different “step” in a concretized work condition. Larry feels immobilized to think differently. Yolanda follows with a similar concern and demands a description of Patrick’s imaginary applied to “one hundred fifty kids.” Pragmatism and immediate concerns stifle the participants’ capacity to entertain or engage Patrick’s suggestion. They revert to the obstacles to difference rather than seize those spaces of agency that they possess. Here is another set of comments along the same lines: Yolanda: So this frustrates me totally. Ellen: I’m real skeptical that it’s going to make all the difference in the world if we do this one thing [student-oriented teaching]. There’s so many other things.


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Patrick: Could we pose an alternative that is so at odds that we’d say, “That can’t be!” Which is what we’re saying over here with this interest in meaning. The reason I get excited about it is it says, “Maybe we’ve got something here.” It’s so alternative that a lot of people are saying, “Bullshit!” Esther: To me, you have to start somewhere and you can’t throw out the whole system and start totally student focused, unless that’s what you’re saying you want to do. (laughter) I don’t know that any of us would feel comfortable with that.

Patrick is again encouraging the teachers to imagine differently. He proposes an alternative to school work because teacher-driven school work has produced the problem of disengaged students. Yet this seemingly modest suggestion—modest in the sense that it leaves other radical questions untouched—meets with Ellen’s skepticism and Esther’s discomfort about “throwing out the whole system.” The teachers cling to the safety of their conditions, despite the intensification. Ironically, they argue against a more equal distribution and production of their work life. By considering student interests and designing school work that incorporates them, teachers reduce their own workload because inventing new pedagogical ideas becomes a shared process between teachers and students. It requires coordination but may benefit both teachers and students in the long run. This reversal of work production fulfills Yule’s mantra that students should be working harder than teachers. This current example of resistance to difference implies the teachers’ investment in their identity as decision-makers. Since the beginning of their posts, teachers have determined their students’ class work and giving up control now would require a different identity, one that requires divestment of power. Thinking differently suggests that teachers relinquish their previous sense of self. This short exchange makes the point clearer: Ellen: Could they do without the scores at all? No, that would be hard for us. Leslie: Yes, hmm . . . . . . Sam: Maybe the students could. It would take them a while to get used to it.

As Ellen’s Freudian slip shows us, teachers invest in their identity through school procedures. Grading is the present example and Ellen implies that teachers invest as much in grading as a form of identity conservation as they do to evaluate the quality of student work. Teachers do not just perform the rituals of schooling; these rituals become constitutive of their identity. Thinking differently about school work means that teachers have to think differently about themselves, something that takes ideological work. With further reflection, members of the group discuss the possibilities of change. Elexis’s response to the debilitating inaction that concerns her

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is to emphasize the dialectic between self-transformation and systemic reform. Elexis: We’ve talked a lot about the overwhelmingness of massive systemic change. I know part of the urgency that I feel is not waiting for something to happen to us. Not waiting for something to happen to me. Not waiting for the answer, or the reading program, or even the schedule to make it okay, but to start turning inward and looking at my own assumptions and beliefs about all of this, which in itself can be quite overwhelming, and start thinking about [what] chipping away at some of those things would mean without letting go of what could be, in terms of massive systemic change. Esther: Could we start with something smaller? Elexis: I know it’s very frustrating and I get really concerned and deeply worried about children and what schooling does to them and what, if anything, it does for them. I guess I am at a point where I can’t always be looking at all the massive systemic changes that need to take place for me to be doing something right. That’s why I have this urgency to have this changing, of changing going on all the time, and admit that can be in very different ways than for somebody else. I don’t know that we always reach consensus for changing. Larry: I think we can certainly facilitate it in a lot better way than we are doing at the present time. I think at the present time we are doing next to nothing to address major needs that exist in a significant population. I’m thinking that there are times of the day when we have upwards of maybe seventy adults on this campus. Seventy adults divided into our thousand youngsters makes for some significantly smaller groupings and arrangements. We could try different kinds of arrangements, but I think that we go on and on saying, “These youngsters can’t, can’t, can’t,” and don’t attempt anything more than what we’re doing at the present time. I’m not saying it’s great and it’s wonderful, but I’m just saying it may be a start. It may be a way to get everybody focused on something that we all agree is an issue. Leslie: Yah, I think the key issue here is the size of the group. Then we can begin to look at the other end, that prior knowledge and interest. But given one hundred thirty students, a ratio of one to one hundred thirty . . . Yule: But we have control. It’s not whether we can do it. We can do it. Do we all believe in it? Do we all want it to happen? Are we willing to give up something to make it happen?

Elexis cathects her own frustrations over the paralyzing difficulties that change involves. She emphasizes that change happens at both the individual and collective dimensions. Consensus implicates the group, but difference allows for flexibility, so that individual teachers can renew their own practice without permission from the group. This does not suggest that individuals are in no way accountable to the group because the community provides context for reflection in a way that is difficult for each teacher to accomplish alone. Said another way, group accountability


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allows subjects to “step” outside of their own ideological positions through intersubjective communication. It is as a group where teachers deploy speech-acts to support or reject ideas in search of a liberating pedagogy. But Elexis’s appeal to action does not comfort Esther and Leslie, who tread lightly on the discourse of change with one foot in the cement. In order to “go for broke,” teachers must, as Yule says, “give up something.” They must exchange pragmatic concerns for utopic visions of difference. Only by committing to difference will they step into the mode of experimentation that Dewey encourages because, as Patrick consistently reminds the group, teacher nightmares about the backlash that may transpire due to change rarely come true. Earlier in the chapter, I analyzed the discursive aspects of literacy. As one of the most important and frequently visited topics in Inquiry, literacy again becomes an important issue, this time as it relates to difference. In the following passages, Yule begins a discussion about a student who apparently worked long and hard on his essay but received a low grade. Patrick’s response starts the analysis. Patrick: Now let’s take the example that Yule gave. He [student] worked really hard. Now that child, for whatever reason, I’m not certain that the child can’t write. But certainly this child can’t write in the manner that people here expect him to write. Now that’s the discourse this student has. In this case, this child, for some reason, worked real hard. Then there was a particular discourse style that was expected and wished for. This kid figured out a game which is at least a copy because if you can’t meet the discourse style that way, at least you could copy it. Now the question: Is that really a discourse style that, first of all, we say everybody ought to be able to do? Secondly, does it then shut a lot of kids out by virtue of that discourse style? Zeus: I think the example that came up a couple of Inquiries ago is the one writing about jail. Do you remember that? The student that came in and was talking about some family member was in jail. Patrick: Right. Zeus: This idea of discourse is always also an area of content. Patrick: Right. Zeus: So when we recognize a paragraph that seems to be “good” or that to be valued, and we think that it’s style, it’s just a particular way of writing. It’s also the content because what if that particular kid wrote in that same style, but about jail, or prisons—that we aren’t necessarily comfortable with, or we don’t read about, or we don’t talk about—suddenly that paragraph is not as good because the content is changed. Ellen: I do not agree with that at all. Zeus: No? Ellen: No. I think there is such a difference between . . . I don’t even know what you’re talking about, “discourse style,” to tell you the truth. But a paragraph

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that is understandable. I understand the point of that paper. We all do have a background in the English language, some background. We speak it and let’s assume we’re talking about people who can speak and there’s a paragraph. I don’t care if it’s about jail. These kids, they could write about . . . Yolanda: Any topics, anything they wanted. Ellen: Just so long as it could be understood. Patrick: So, when you pick up a novel, or any piece of book, we believe there’s this kind of common . . . Ellen: Our kids aren’t writing novels. We’re talking about these students! Patrick: All right, suppose I pick up a story and I brought it in. Better yet, I’ve got some educational research. Ellen: No, I want us to look at student work.

As Patrick introduces the concept of “discourse style,” I follow his cue. The fact that I follow his introduction already suggests the effect of discourse, either because Patrick and I are both academics who share a common language and/or we are both men who share a priori rapport with one another. In fact, as I reflect on my involvement with Inquiry, I recall that I felt most comfortable to speak when Patrick was present in the room. I was conspicuously more reticent when Patrick was absent. In addition, most of my comments follow Patrick’s cue, as it does in this instance. After I make the point that discourse is not solely about style of presentation but about content as well, Ellen voices her disagreement. She punctuates her comment with a reaction to Patrick’s and my very use of “discourse.” What is significant is Ellen’s reaction to the status of academic language, here signified in the word, “discourse.” She rejects the theoretical-sounding vernacular that Patrick and I bring to bear on schooling. What develops is a semiotic difference: the common-sense language of teachers and the theoretical language of scholar-researchers. Moreover, this is compounded by the social privilege of academic language. So, it is not simply difference that is at issue here, but difference as it intersects power. Critical reform must deal with this differential incorporation between discourses before any mutual understanding can take place. However, the reflection is not just an exercise for academics. Ellen’s commonsensical discourse is also problematic when she defines literacy as a mode of reading and writing that is “understandable.” Understandability is discursive because when a subject critically analyzes a particular social problem, the vernacular becomes less populist. As the common denominator, English can hardly promote a level of understanding that is critical. Discussing school problems within the confines of everyday language quickly reaches a limit, not to mention being less precise. The challenge for critical reform is to share a language of critique with the goal of combating rela-


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tions of domination, without losing sight of the difference in status between the discourses educators bring to bear on a given issue. As part of an experiment to buttress his point that there exists no common language for understandability, Patrick introduces a solid state physics article to the group. This is done apparently to challenge the notion that “if one can read, one can read anything.” After taking the article home, the participants return to Inquiry to discuss their experience with the highly specialized piece of writing. Hoping that the teachers consider the notion that literacy is a discursive practice, Patrick gives the group a virtually unreadable article to the extent that they cannot make sense of it without prior background on the topic—that is, discursive familiarity. Here is one of the ensuing discussions: Larry: The papers you’re talking about, like the physics, was an article for a specialized audience. So, and in that sense, peers of the authors felt that it indeed communicated the information well, and therefore it was credible. Patrick: In the physics world, at least the solid state physics world, that way of presenting the stuff was credible. Now, in another world, for example the comic book world, there’s a way of presenting material and it’s acceptable. In school, my hunch is, there’s a way of presenting the material and it’s acceptable. For example, there are characteristic research papers that are called research papers, that are not research papers like they are research papers in most other places, right? But in schools they are the characteristic research papers. Larry: Why are they not like in other places? Patrick: Because they are not like the solid state physics. Ellen: No, but they are, in some ways, like the Daily Times or Newsweek magazine. Patrick: Right. But the Daily Times is not a research place. Ellen: Well, I would think it is. The Daily Times tells you about mad cow disease and they quote doctors that have done this. The E. coli virus just broke out and this person traveled from there to there. Yes, they’re research papers. Our student work is much more like that than a comic book. I think there is something here that we can look at and make sense of. Can they take these different things that they learned? They read different things and they don’t always agree, and then tell you, the reader, so that you know more about mad cow disease than you knew before you read the paper. This isn’t discourse style.

Patrick’s method is a bit crude, since introducing a random physics paper to a group totally unfamiliar with the topic is an unfair challenge and appears like a setup. Nevertheless, it corroborates his point. Both prior discursive knowledge and interest influence a student’s engagement with literacy, as they do with the Inquiry group. Reading Patrick’s exercise does not impress Ellen, who only strengthens her position. This time she invokes popular newspapers and magazines as models of universal literacy. She punctuates her resistance by declaring, “This isn’t discourse

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style,” suggesting that anyone reading the Daily Times and Newsweek magazine would understand its random authors. Clearly, Ellen is reasonable to assert the Times’s apparent universal discourse style. It reaches a wider audience than Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. But this is accomplished at the expense of depth. As difficult as it may be, Freire’s discourse offers more hope for difference than the Daily Times appears to proffer to students. The Daily Times hardly offers an immanent critique of social life that could offer students visions for social change. It is caught in the snares of profit and market politics, despite its liberal tendencies. That a form of writing is more accessible does not make it more liberating. Conversely, that an essay is difficult to read does not make it critical. That said, critical discourse is a combination of complexity and political insight, not readability and simplicity. Although it can certainly be done, it would be ridiculous to suggest that middle school children should now have Pedagogy of the Oppressed on their reading list; this ignores developmental stages in students’ ability to form complex thoughts. It suffices to say that reading for ease of understanding neglects the important discursive struggle that often accompanies (political) insight. The notion of discourse style is a valuable concept for school reform because it informs participants of the different ways students make sense of their world through language, and by doing so, construct the very world they are apprehending. It also reminds us that domination is waged at the level of the signifier as much as it is enacted in the economy. The participants have a plethora of examples about literacy that provide crucial text for an in-depth study of difference. Upon Larry’s suggestion that the group return to the problem of reading, Amanda offers this narrative: Amanda: I had an experience yesterday when he [student] brought in his time line [homework exercise]. The book itself didn’t make sense to me from the action he gave me and then his parallel information. So I had him redo it. We had a little talk and I set it up for him. He redid it and he brought it back to me again; it was wrong. So I brought him up the library and sat with him at the computer and we went through things. I realized in talking to him, he really didn’t have a clue what really happened in the book at all. When it came to the parallel time line, we were doing information and we got to a point on the “underground railroad.” He’s also read a biography of Harriet Tubman. When we got to that point, I said, “This is a very good point to put into this book.” He said to me, “Well, how did they ever pass that? To build that? How did they ever pass that to get slaves escaping?” I said, “Oh. Well, first of all, the underground railroad was neither underground nor a railroad. Let me explain.” I did a little analogy of me escaping from the police going from Washington [school district] to Linewood without a car (laughter), traveling at night, going to houses during the day,


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sleeping, getting food at safehouses. He has been going through the seventh grade, I’m sure he’s heard about the underground railroad since second grade, and has always had it in his head as a subway going through the South that was built by the government. We’re saying one thing, they [students] have something else in their minds. So, when we’re working with the class and we have thirty-five students in front of us and we’re seeing one thing, we have no clue as to how they’re interpreting what we’re saying. We think we’re getting across to them. It was really enlightening having this moment to talk to this young man. At least in the future, he won’t see the underground railroad quite the same way he did in the past. How do we know what they’re thinking so we can correct the misimpressions, the misunderstandings, so that we have some clarity? I wish I knew a way. Patrick: I think that’s a wonderful example. Are there not two different issues here? One is: Do we want to correct them? We may, yes or no. The other is: Doesn’t that also bring up the problem of selecting reading text for kids and believing there’s one way to understand it? For example, the underground notion, right? Very few people have had those experiences recently, although in Nicaragua and some Latin American countries, for example . . . in Tucson several pastors were arrested and convicted of federal crimes for an underground railroad with regard to El Salvador. So, it seems to me that kids in South Tucson may have more familiarity with the underground . . . Amanda: The concept. Patrick: . . . concept, than somebody here in Washington school district. For me what it furthers is the notion that what we have to do is really build on what kids already know, rather than trying to bring stuff to them that they don’t know, for the very issue that you just talked about.

Amanda’s student makes meaning from “underground railroad” despite the fact that it is historically incorrect. Patrick’s contention is to engage the student’s meaning-making as a method of understanding how students accommodate school information into their worldviews. Moreover, he points to the arbitrariness of students having to learn the concept of “underground railroad,” something very foreign to many students’ everyday lived experiences. Although it would be unreasonable to suggest that students should no longer learn about slavery and how African slaves dealt with their inhumane conditions, Patrick’s insistence that educators move away from a pedagogy of correction is reasonable. In light of the student’s misinformation, a teacher has options. She can correct the student or inquire into the student’s sense-making strategies in order to create a hermeneutical space. This does not prevent the teacher from informing the student of what she intended to teach. In fact, while observing Amanda’s classroom I observed a similarly bizarre occurrence that first escaped my understanding. Here are my field notes, with observer’s comments:

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Amanda plays a game wherein the class is divided into two halves, Team A and B. One representative from each team sits at the front table and faces the class. Amanda writes a word on the board behind the representatives, preventing them from seeing the written words. A team member provides a one-word clue for the representative, who then tries to guess the mystery word behind him/her. When John’s turn comes up, the word is “Asia.” Tammy, who is on John’s team, provides the clue, “country.” Amanda and I turn to look at one another. [O.C.—I am reacting to the apparent and possible miscue here. That is, Asia is a continent, not a country. I assume Amanda is reacting to the same thing.] John pauses to think for a moment. Then, he says, “Texas.” A sound of laughter breaks out in the room, perhaps the loudest from Amanda and me. She bends down at the waist while remaining seated and laughs heartily. [O.C.—I realize that my laughing may not help John’s feelings of efficacy. His response was so unexpected to me, especially in light of Tammy’s clue.]

When Tammy first associates Asia with a country, I am surprised. Then, when John associates Texas with country, I am doubly surprised, my surprise bursting out in the form of laughter with the class. After some reflection, I decided to ask John about his decision to associate the words in the manner that he did. Here is my description of the interaction, taken from my field notes: After John concludes his turn, he sits next to me on the couch. I ask him why he said “Texas,” when Tammy said “country.” John explains that he was born in Texas. When I ask Tammy why she had said “country” for “Asia,” she admits that she had made a mistake.

After speaking with John, the event begins to make a little more sense. He has a personal history with Texas, having been born there. So, his decision is far from random. Days after this incident, I discover that the state motto of Texas is “Texas, it’s a whole other country.” Consider this motto with John’s association between “Texas” and “country,” and it begins to make complete sense. I would never have made coherent sense of the incident had I not considered a different way of making sense of the words. Moreover, this points out the fundamental undecidability between words and their meaning. It is only in light of the game’s accepted language rules that meaning becomes fixed. However, I do not want to avoid the potential academic problems here either. John is one of the lowest-attaining students in Amanda’s class. As African American students, John and Tammy face racial inequalities and it would be unjust to ignore their academic challenges. Neither Asia nor Texas is a country and we are left to wonder if they actually believe this is the case. There is a fine line between valuing different literacies and preventing students from gaining access to “literacies of power,” as Macedo (1994) calls it. As educators, we want to value student differences, but not by valorizing them at the expense of certain truths. That there should be


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no monopoly on meaning does not suggest that all interpretations are equal. In both the “underground railroad” and “Asia” examples, meaning slips and fails to be fixed. Undergroundness and Asia have multiple meanings, and we are never quite sure how students make sense of terms. We can avoid dominating students’ imagination by inquiring into their sense of the text and discovering their interpretations. In his zeal to problematize the teachers’ notions of literacy, Patrick continues to push their assumptions. Attempting to start from the students’ worldview, he also threatens the teachers’ sense of expertise. That is, asking them to relinquish their belief in “correct answers” and widening their scope of what is an acceptable student response, Patrick challenges their tolerance for difference. However, Patrick does not negotiate this new ideology without difficulties. In the following exchange, Patrick faces more resistance from some of the teachers. Ellen: I get this feeling that you totally don’t agree that there are any children who can’t read? Patrick: I believe that a lot of the reading problems we have is a constructed problem, not a child’s inability to read. Yes. Ellen: Well, I think that we have some differences of opinion here that need to be discussed. That’s why I just kept thinking, “Does he really think everybody can read if we just find the right thing?” Patrick: Yah, I do because I don’t think this reading thing is as tough as we make it. For example, one of the things I’m aware of is the reason the literacy rates have not increased is because we’ve changed our definition of literacy throughout our time. Ellen: I think there are some children you can sit with right now and I don’t care what your definition of literacy is, they don’t measure up to it. Patrick: No, you’re right. No, that’s exactly my point. You are right. The way we define literacy . . . Ellen: No, the way anybody ever would.

In his dogged insistence to value different literacies and dismantling a monolithic version of it, Patrick faces criticism. This type of interaction seems to be a pattern. Patrick widens notions of literacy whereas participants react by making it even more specific through an ironic twist of universalizing a functional literacy “the way anybody ever would.” In this instance, Patrick emphasizes the social construction of literacy and Ellen naturalizes it, claiming that no matter “what your definition of literacy is, they [certain students] don’t measure up to it.” It seems the more Patrick attempts to stress different reading formations, teachers answer with an even more rigid definition of literacy. What ensues is an ideologically distorted communication. It is becoming more clear that this typical pattern of interaction has less to do with the integrity of ideas and more about a

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struggle for representation. Patrick’s challenge that all students engender some form of literate understanding of their world according to their vantage point may be seen as a threat by teachers who try again and again to engage certain students to read and are either thwarted or unsuccessful. They are invested in believing that students are illiterate despite their efforts to teach them how to read. The other option is to hold themselves accountable for a literacy ideology that has limited effect on students. Either scenario is negative. We also have to consider that Ellen is a particularly strong woman and Patrick, as an assertive and articulate professor, may be perceived as a typical dominating man who is bullish about his ideas. Ellen’s resistance to Patrick’s suggestions becomes more resolved the more he presses on with his ideas. This point brings up the issue of gender relations during reform. Patrick’s gender, job status, and public appearance (he usually wears a suit whereas the teachers dress more casually) point to important differences between him and the participants. As a man who embodies privileged signs over the participants, Patrick cannot only rely on what Habermas (1989) would call the “force of his argument” because his ideas are in no way divorced from his status as a man. Coming from a male professor, his ideas are imbued with more power. Ellen appears to resist this privilege. If literacy is a way of reading social texts, then scholar-reformers must be cognizant of the way teacher-reformers read them as text. When reconsidered, Patrick’s constructivist position on different literacies is sympathetic with Freire’s ideas on the topic. Like Freire, Patrick suggests that students read the world before they are able to read the word. An illiterate child can read a world into a word she cannot decipher. For example, she can tell you about home life preceding any capacity to read the signifier “home.” Fixation on the word as the access to children’s literacy ignores the many ways they already represent the world. This instance expands on this point: Yolanda: Okay, let me ask you a question, Patrick. I have a student who has a hard time writing. So, the student was telling me what he wanted to write and I wrote it down. Then I asked him to read it back to me to make sure it said what he wanted it to say and he couldn’t read it. Patrick: That’s right. But suppose that child had written it in his script. Yolanda: He can’t write it in his script. Patrick: He has no graphemic representation that he could put it in? Yolanda: He cannot take the words from his head and put it onto paper. He has the ideas, he wants to put it down. In the process of putting it down, he can’t get it down from way up in his head. Patrick: Understood. That’s the writing problem for most adults, too. In other words, he has no idea. You’re telling me he has no graphemic representations?


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Yolanda: I’m telling you that as soon as he starts writing, he can’t remember what he was writing. Period. End of story. He’ll sit down and write the word “I,” and then he’ll forget what the next word was, even though he had the whole thing in his head. Ellen: There are children, too, who really want to read. The interest is there; they want to read. They want to read that particular story. They want to read what the kid sitting next to them is reading because they’re buddies. This kid can read and that kid can’t.

Literacy generates lively discussions during Inquiry. Motivating students to read is one of the most important educational challenges they face. To avoid any confusion, we should note that Patrick is not suggesting that children should not learn how to read and write in the common way that we refer to it. Ignoring traditional “book literacy” would only marginalize low-achieving students because this is the dominant criterion for access to many positions of power. Patrick is reacting to the current definition of literacy as the ability to read and write in words. Children who fail to meet these requirements are then labeled deviant, as “illiterate.” But children already possess different literacies and teachers can recognize these multiple forms of reading formations (e.g., computer literacy, media literacy, and popular cultural literacy) as important in themselves as well as inroads to more traditional forms of reading. If asked to represent their thoughts in their own graphemic representations, students will surprise teachers with some form of script. This does not prevent teachers from teaching students how to read books. However, it recognizes the intelligent and creative ways that children make sense of their world and discursively represent it. Imposing the “word” on them structures a different kind of interaction that dominates children’s imaginations. These imaginings are not located in their heads and mysteriously find their way to the surface of sheets of paper. Imaginations are social relations, and pedagogical conditions either nurture or domesticate them. Yet, none of this discussion points to the concept of critical literacy. It begs the question: Literacy for what? A critical literacy assumes that domination exists and that learning how to read inheres learning how to decode limit situations and then transcending them. Freirean literacy is not reading for its own sake but for the purpose of increasing one’s freedom through reflection and action. This is not a possibility monopolized by adults, but is very applicable to children at very young ages. The absence of critical literacy from Inquiry dialogue perpetuates the hegemony of functional literacy. Despite Patrick’s constructivist inversions, the goal is still to learn how to read, albeit by welcoming different literacies. Larger relations of domination that inscribe student–teacher subjectivities are unthreatened, uncompromised. By emphasizing multiple forms of

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student reading, the discussion avoids the ways in which the social already reads, or interpellates, students and discursively positions them into the grammar of domination either as subjects or objects of it. Any opening of differences within literacy that does not address ideological inscription reaffirms the logic of domination. For students do not read the social only in different ways; they read the social in structured and patterned ways through class, racial, and gender ideologies. Related to the notion of book literacy is the concept of cultural literacy. In its many forms, culture is a production that does not speak for itself but is something educators and students read. By reading culture, I am referring to the textual character of culture, its narrative structure, and its discursive content. Here difference is articulated through coded value systems and stratified rituals and practices. A viable reform answers to the challenge of cultural difference as a site of domination. In other words, cultures are not just different from each other but also enter into hierarchical relations with one another. One articulation of culture is race. During Inquiry sessions, a sustained discussion of race is absent. At times, certain phrases associated with race are mentioned—for instance, “students of color” and “ethnic groups.” But on the whole, fundamental discussions about race are far and few. As a stigmatized topic, race discussion is tentative, and worse, stereotypical. This should not come as a surprise because our school systems have not constructed a race discourse that is sensitive to its problems—mainly, the ideology of racial domination. As an African American woman, Leslie is often at the center of race talks, both as a volunteer and as a visible other. In this exchange, Leslie reacts to Linda’s assumptions about an African American student’s “hair” practices: Leslie: I’m going to tell you. Esther and Linda were talking about the girl with the braids, that it must be expensive. So I said, “But it’s not.” It could be twenty-five to thirty dollars. I could get into the braid length, but let me get back to the story. The style was different because not only was there the individual part of wrapping them around each other . . . Linda: I think they could have spent the $100 on tutoring for her. (laughter in the room) Leslie: Exactly. Linda: She is so far behind. Leslie: I know. That’s why I’m bringing this up because you don’t know (her emphasis). You are ignorant about some things, as I am ignorant about your background. So until we can get into each other’s heads and backgrounds, and have a higher level of understanding, then we will value each other. Braiding is an old technique. Braiding from my culture, it’s old (her emphasis). It’s no big thing. It’s a big thing if it’s done in a salon in Willingwood [an affluent area]. There, you may pay. Okay, you don’t know her hair, number one. I know that there are high school girls that charge twenty bucks to get it done. All you have to do is


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buy the hair. You could go buy the hair extensions. (laughs) Oh Yule, you did not think those girls all had one hair! Amanda: Or some of the teachers in our school. Yule: I just never thought about it. (pause) You mean my wife may not have her hair? Leslie: Or straight and narrow. It always looks the same. See, there are intricacies. When you don’t know, you simply don’t know. Elexis: If we at least realize that we don’t know.

Racial differences are simultaneously suppressed and exacerbated. They are suppressed because Linda makes little effort to find out the meaning of hair practices from an African American perspective and history. She criticizes a student’s hair braiding practices as a waste of time and money, and suggests that the student could redirect these resources toward tutoring. The association between school success and hair distorts a critical understanding of systematic forms of racial domination, which relegates African American students to second-class student status on the basis of their skin color. This is quite clear to the extent that there is no real relationship between hairstyle and school success other than the stereotypical associations we construct out of them. With a critique of hairstyle, Linda deflects a structural problem that explains better the academic plight of African American students. As Leslie points out, hair braiding is an inexpensive process, far from the $100 price tag that Linda puts on it. Thus, we receive another problematic trope: the exoticization of an African American practice. Difference is thereby exacerbated because, since braids look so “different” (i.e., exotic), it is assumed braiding must be a complicated and costly practice, something that differentiates it from other hairstyles. Leslie makes another reference to difference. Her allusion to Willingwood salons implies that hair braiding has been co-opted for its exotic/different look by the rich, a bourgeois excursion on the “wild side.” From this we understand that reified race relations are also extensions of class relations. The culture of the racialized other becomes a commodity for white and bourgeois consumption. Pedagogically speaking, a cultural difference in hairstyle becomes a problematic racial association with school success, or the lack of it. But there is no need to go on. Yule’s response takes this form: What we grapple with is that we all work hard and we all really care. Then when we keep saying, “Gee it’s not working. I feel bad.” It makes us feel like we’re responsible. We have to get beyond that to detach ourselves. This is what it is and it’s okay. Leslie said that our African American students have a lot of anger and frustration. What can we do or what’s the next step? We do what we can do. Are we responsible for this or can we have that inner-self taught? Instead of listening, just say, “Okay. That’s a fact, that’s a given.” Where do we go from here? It may

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make you feel real guilty, may make you feel real uncomfortable, or it makes the group feel defensive trying to figure out where we all sit up in this. To me, in Inquiry, these are things that come out. We have to divorce our own personal part of it to say, “Okay, that’s a given.” It was kind of glossed over. It’s a given that we don’t know some of our students. There are a lot of students we don’t know (his emphasis). And we’re their teachers. If we don’t know them, how can we be the type of teacher we want to be? That makes us feel uncomfortable.

As the principal who feels the need to promote harmony among the staff members, Yule takes the position of the healer. His comment attempts to soothe the previous tension by emphasizing that the problem is larger than any comment an individual can make concerning another group. He diffuses the conflict by appealing to the teachers’ sense of action and reflection. But he accomplishes this by downplaying Leslie’s emotions and asking the group to “divorce [their] own personal part of it.” In this move, he racializes Leslie’s response as idiosyncratic and absent of structural origins. But if we consider Leslie as speaking out against a general racial domination, which historically precedes and inscribes Inquiry discussions, then we also have to conclude that her reactions have an objective basis. The issue of racial (dis)comfort during school reform seems to be an aporia. There is ample and good reason to insist that race must become a central topic of reform if U.S. educators expect to crack racial discrimination at the institutional and ideological levels. However, because public race discourses lack the sensitivity to tackle both the material basis of racist exploitation and its insidious forms in everyday symbolic interactions, emotions run high and rational discussions low. This is not meant to negate the importance of emotional responses but to suggest that without rational discourse, reform participants find it hard to reflect and act. Instead, racial differences are fixed as just that: incommensurable differences. A common solidarity designed to combat racist structures fades further into obscurity. That said, there are some procedural strategies that are in our possession, such as favoring the narratives of people of color as the starting point for discussions around race. This does not prevent white participants from entering the dialogue. However, it suggests that when it concerns race, reform has to consider favoring the voices of people of color with the simultaneous divestment of white voices. For it is with the lives of African Americans, for example, that we discover the “double consciousness” (Du Bois, 1989) they live as subjects with their own value systems as well as those imposed on them by a dominant white culture in the sense of whiteness as normativity and superiority. We can venture to generalize this existential condition to other people of color, albeit articulated in the specificities of their own histories. In keeping with the metaphor “gem,” which participants use to refer to students, I inquired into the possibility that teachers of the same stone


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may provide cultural sensitivity that is valuable for students of color. Sam and Yolanda’s responses sound like this: Sam: There’s got to be some common denominator that brings them all together. It happens with my group that I have, as well as with the black group and the Latino group that meets at lunch. They may not all be Mexican American, but if it’s a common denominator that’s in all of them, and it may be the indigenous roots that they all share, or maybe even the Spanish roots—as many of us may want to deny it’s a part of all of us—there’s something there that brings them all together. Coming together as a group sharing things that are alike to them makes them feel better about themselves. Once they feel better about themselves then they can better function with other people. I want them to be on the same level, regardless of their heritage, of their skin color, their religious beliefs. They all need to be on the same level in order to work together. I didn’t feel better about myself until I hit college and I got into a group that made me feel comfortable with who I am and what I am. Therefore it made me a better producer and a better worker once I was in with a mixed group. Once I felt, “Hey I can shine like everyone else. I may shine differently, but I can shine.” Then I was able to go in and to compete because I felt good about myself. This group helped me to realize that, by bringing in people who are like me. As a teacher of color, I may be a Chicano teacher, but the kids see me as a teacher. It’s true sometimes they need to be with others that are like them to help see that, to help bring that shine out and then they can shine in all of their classes. Yolanda: Like the chess club, for example. There’s a lot of kids that you won’t find in the same class together. I think what Sam is talking about is really true. Sometimes as much as we’d like to be together, sometimes we need to find a place to belong first and take care of that need before we can worry about the other things. The kids, especially in middle school, are so sensitive to other people’s opinions. I know recently I had a student in my class say something that was very racially charged with one of the students. She just jumped on this kid and said, “How dare you say that!” I hadn’t heard what the child said. I said, “What happened here? Did you say that?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Wow!” I just couldn’t believe he said this out loud because to me it was like you never say that out loud even if you thought it. But you shouldn’t be thinking it. It brought up to me how many times the students feel like they’re unappreciated. It wasn’t a blazon comment. It was an offhanded flip, off the mark, and really wasn’t a big deal. When she got very upset I realized how many times some of my students feel out of sync with what’s going on, not really a part of what’s going on. When you’re not a part or when you feel that way, how easy it is to tune out. To teach them, “Well, ignore this if this happens to you”—well, how do you ignore X and pay attention to Y if it’s happening in the same place? You tell them, “Well, just tune out these comments that disagree with your values.” But how do they know when they’ve tuned them out?

Sam points out the benefits of a racial and cultural support for Latino/Chicano students. Ethno-racial groups whose identities appear secondary to

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school curricula and are denied representation through an apparently cultureless school atmosphere seek a safe place where they feel a sense of belonging. The Black Collegiance I referred to in chapter 5 provides the same cultural belonging for African American students. “As a teacher of color,” Sam speaks of a people’s alienation from the official processes of power. As a result, Latino/Chicano students sometimes lack the self-esteem required to compete on an equal footing with white students whose culture is the invisible marker in school texts and official knowledge. With ethnic or race-based student groups, students of color find their cultural voices valued and histories affirmed. Yolanda’s initial analogy between ethno-racial groups and chess enthusiasts misses the mark. People’s experiences with patterns of discrimination and pangs of marginalization can hardly be compared to a special interest group involving a game, like chess. The first bears the weight of history in a way that the second, as an avocation, does not. Nevertheless, Yolanda reaffirms Sam’s sentiments by offering her own example of how racist distinctions produce psychological damage and maintain relations of domination. But notice that Yolanda is a spectator of the racist incident of which she speaks. She witnesses the terrible event where a student apparently blurts out a racist epithet to a second student. But as a white woman, Yolanda herself is only a spectator and not the object of it. She is not the target of the incident. She watches it transpire and then chooses to become involved. This is a critical difference from the tone of Sam’s story, which is self-referential, signified by his self-description as a “Chicano teacher” and “teacher of color.” This significant difference supports the idea that our critiques of race and racism should start from the concrete lives of people of color. This does not suggest that discourses of color are not without problems. On the contrary, people of color sometimes embody the most essentialistic and rigid associations between identity and politics (Leonardo, 2000). However, dialogue and critique begin with concrete examples from the lived experiences of people of color. Racial identity is a historical category into which someone is born. On the other hand, a racial attitude is a perspective that students learn. It is a discourse that starts from the premise that race matters despite its reified everyday status. It matters because although it is not real, in the sense that race is a category constructed for the purposes of stratification, race has produced real consequences in the lives of both people of color and whites. Radical race theorists have critiqued the negative images rampant in U.S. society associated with people of color in order to demystify some of the reified racial differences that inform school policies. Yet this should not be confused with a color-blind discourse that refuses to see the differential incorporation of racialized subjects currently in place. In short, although a raceless society is a possible utopia, a hasty jump at warp speed to this imagined place cannot be accomplished without the institu-


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tional and ideological obliteration of racism. Said another way, U.S. society cannot transform from a race-based society to a raceless society by closing its eyes to color. Here is a good illustration of this point. The italics are my emphasis. Esther: I don’t want to sound . . . I don’t know . . . but I have a little problem with that being carried through high school and college. I think it tends to be divisive rather than pulling people together. I’ve looked at that because the one year I worked at the high school, that’s one thing that bothered me over there. I have to explain that I grew up in Cityville, OK? I moved out here for twenty years, so I’ve been here most of my adult life. But I grew up feeling somewhat good about myself, although I was out of it in the sense of a community, being Jewish in a very Mormon environment. I don’t mean to get off on this, because I think we’re tripping. You mentioned something about how these groups separate and I just want to show I have a little problem because I think they separate to such a point, I don’t know that we come together enough. I see that in the high school and college. I hear about it and I see it. That’s the only thing I want to share with that because I think it’s important to feel good about who you are. I really support this tutoring program in so many ways because I think these kids really are benefiting and really need it. But to keep promoting those kinds of groups, I personally have trouble with it. Leslie: But Esther that’s why I prefaced by saying, unfortunately it has to be selfserving. Unfortunately the group has to start out that way . . . Esther: (interrupting) I think that’s a big problem. Leslie: So that’s when it started, by looking at GPAs at the spring of 1995, and seeing that, gosh we’ve got some 4.0’s, some 3.0’s and above. So why aren’t these kids participating? What’s going on? So that’s what the group was formed for. But I think Esther, not to feel, don’t . . . Esther: No, that group I can handle, I have a little more problem with the . . . Leslie: No, no, it’s the same thing. Sometimes you have to be part of a group that you feel safe enough to be who you are, so that you can express yourself, so that you can get polished, so you can then go out into the mass of society, and then to fit in. You need to know when we first began to meet, there was a lot of anger in that group of students. These kids came in like hurricanes. We had to really do some heavy duty polishing to get to the goal, which was to get to the learning. We start at three P.M., but from three o’clock to three-fifteen there’s something going on in terms of self-esteem building, or history, or something that brings the group together. Some of our students expressed deep hurt, anger. That’s what anger is, it’s just deep hurt. If you’ve gotten hurt then it comes out as anger, as an expression. But we have to be a realistic group. We really have to be realistic and attitudes on our campus, among our cohorts, some of these students have met very negative looks, statements, and comments. That’s damaging and a lot of them are damaged. So if that group has to stay together through high school to make it, then that’s just unfortunate, Esther, until this society becomes more humanistic and stops looking at the color, and get to “Hey, we’re all people, we’re all learners.” Until that happens, you will have groups.

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Esther is apparently uncomfortable about ethnic or race-based groups without directly articulating her position. She distorts the referents by using pronouns like “that,” “it,” and “those.” The politics of such naming perpetuates race as a stigmatized category even at the level of the word. Esther supports tutoring but not ethnic groups, which she believes promotes “divisiveness.” This is ironic because African American and Latino students seek out their groups to feel a sense of belonging, to address the “deep hurt and anger” they experience from racist interactions and alienating structures. As Leslie suggests, ethnic and race-based student groups, like the Black Collegiance, are often designed to provide a haven for students of color away from racial divisions and not an apparatus to recreate them. These groups have a historical basis as well. Segregated and discriminated against by market logic and white attitudes, people of color have survived hundreds of years of social apartheid. Churches, communities, and enclaves are support systems for people of color who find themselves on the margins of white culture, job networks, and social mobility. Ethnic-based student groups are such a response. They testify to the historical maltreatment of people based on their identity. At a time marked by pronouncements of the death of identity politics, there is much to suggest that identity as politics remains a cohesive and reasonable response to a patterned denigration of categories of people (Leonardo, 2000). The meaning of and criteria for identity (e.g., what counts as Latino or African American) are largely undecidable, but this fact does not militate against the social consistencies among people from the same race group. As the conversation continues, an important tension builds. Esther: I’m not against groups, I’m just . . . Leslie: Well what are you against? You said you . . . Esther: No, I’m very much in support of groups and I’m very much in favor of the tutoring program. You know I am. I’ve totally supported it. I think it’s wonderful for these kids. I’m very much for it and I’m encouraged by what Sam says too. I just personally am a humanist, to the best of my ability. Maybe in my own personal life I have a little group and I have my close friends, and so forth and so on. At the high school I saw this so clearly, and it was really disturbing to me. I was against the Jewish student union, the Black student union. I just have a problem with it over at the high school and then it goes into the college. I feel it doesn’t bring the children together, come together as a group of musicians, come together as a group of kids interested in government, come together as a group of kids interested in sports, come together as a group of kids interested in some artist or something. But when I see this other kind of grouping . . . Leslie: What other kind of grouping? Esther: Well I saw it over at the high school, it just bothered me. I’m just sharing, and I didn’t mean to get off on this topic . . .


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Leslie: No, I’m just trying to understand, what do you mean? What other kind of grouping?

Esther’s position remains unsaid. She maintains an ambiguous, yet detectable position on ethnic and racial groups: She opposes them. Esther tries to appease Leslie by stating that she opposes her own Jewish ethnic group’s gathering. In its place, Esther promotes “other kinds of grouping” based on student interests and a humanistic understanding. Here she deracinates interests while racializing people. But this logic quickly becomes problematic because interest is not free from race relations. Because we function within a racialized formation, our cultural creations and practices are likewise racialized. Music, art, sports, and government are products of race relations. This does not suggest that students representing different race groups do not convene around a particular interest, like basketball or jazz. However, it remains to say that the meanings they make of these experiences become racialized forms of intelligibility. There is a false sense of truth in claiming that only African Americans and Latino students form ethnic or race-based groups whereas white students do not. To restate, people of color form groups as a response to alienation and segregation. In this sense, white students forming white-based student groups, such as a Euro-American club, do not represent a parallel experience. It begs the question: To what form of discrimination are they responding? Suggesting that these racial responses are equal would mock the “hurt and anger” students of color presently experience. But, the idea that only students of color form ethnic or race-based groups naturalizes the activities in which white students participate, as if it were just a coincidence that white students in colleges and universities, for example, dominate Greek fraternities. At this point in the conversation over race groups, the participants of color are active. Sam, Leslie, and Aaris are most vocal; except for Esther, the others are silent. Observing Esther’s obvious discomfort and evasion of the race question, Aaris interjects: Aaris: Ethnic grouping? Esther: Ethnic grouping! These ethnic groups, per se, that are sometimes the only activity some kids have in high school. I would rather see them be involved in one of the other kinds of groups that I just mentioned, where we all worked together regardless of who . . . Aaris: Coming from a group that’s not valued, for me it was very important when I went to college that there was a group that I had a lot in common with, which was culture, which was family traditions. I didn’t have the music, I didn’t have the art, I didn’t have any of those developed talents. Coming from a school which was predominantly Hispanics, I never had the need to get into a MeChA [Mexican/Chicano Association] because that’s who I was surrounded by. But going to the university I had never ever been with so many Anglos and then feeling that my culture wasn’t seen as something valuable, thinking that per-

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haps “She’s here on affirmative action,” or what have you. I wasn’t really an active member of MeChA or anything like that. I did hang around where they hung around. They did it for political reasons. I needed a place to hang around to socialize with people that I knew shared a lot of things in common. For me it was very important to have it. I didn’t feel a need to enroll as a MeChA person, but just knowing that they were there was extremely important to me. It just made me feel more comfortable at the university. Esther: I can understand that up there [university]. It’s such a big place. Aaris: There were some people who were very political. Esther: Maybe it’s the political element that I’m thinking of. Aaris: But even then, the politics of being a Chicano, it was something that I never called myself. It was something that was very complex to explain, but I know that groups like that need to exist until we, as a group, are part of the mainstream. Therefore, we need separate kinds of groups. People might think— because I thought that MeChA was all politics—down with the status quo. But it wasn’t all about that. It was just about being with our culture. Then, I thought, “Oh my God all these people are all into being a Chicano. They can’t even speak Spanish.” (laughter) But I think that’s what happens a lot of times. It is almost like being a group of musicians. . . . It is belonging to this group. Patrick: Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about? This is not a secret. Part of the issue that we’re trying to deal with is that, on the one hand, that is true: If you are of color and poor you are less likely to get access to the goodies. Now the question is: What are we going to do about it? Now what is interesting is, when I listen to some of the characteristics [of ethnic and race-based groups] I have great affinity toward them—that is, the notion of a place where you can be unique and different, unique in your differentness, believe that you’re okay so you can go out there and compete with everybody else, there’d be long-term connection, safe. That’s the kind of school place I’d like to be. I can be different and yet feel like I’m connected.

Aaris cathects Esther’s discomfort. It takes Aaris finally to break the discussion wide open. Esther’s inability to utter the words “ethnic” and “race” is symptomatic for several reasons. First, it shows that the stigma associated with people of color, as the racialized other of white subjects, stigmatizes even the signifier commonly associated with people of color. It suggests that as much as ideologies are responsible for our actions toward one another, the language we use is indicative of our ideological posture toward the other. Notice how fluid Aaris’s narrative is compared with Esther’s. Aaris’s explanation of her own experience at the university contrasts with Esther’s sense of discomfort with ethnic and race-based student groups. Aaris admits that she also feels a sense of distance from militant groups, like MeChA. However, like Leslie and Sam, Aaris, speaking as a person of color, recognizes the importance of such groups as a coping mechanism and warns against their essentialistic tendencies as well. In other words, identity politics for the sake of a rigid identity rather


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than politics eventually degenerates into appeasement rather than addressing the material needs of a people. A critical reform discourse favors the latter. The valuation of difference does not negate the importance of identity. Understanding that identity occurs at the nexus of belonging and respecting the other’s worldview, school reformers construct a reform discourse that encourages both difference and, as Patrick notes, connection. A critical attitude toward the other reminds educators that the choice is not between fragmentation and consensus, but rather choosing solidarity over oppression. INQUIRY AND THE DETOUR OF RATIONALIZATION The third form of negative ideology articulated during Inquiry is rationalization. Here rationalization is defined as a form of justification for “the ways things are.” Rationalization is a negative appraisal, not a negating discourse. To imply that the status quo is justifiable lacks a critical attitude toward asymmetrical relations of power. And worse, it maintains relations of domination through a complicitous acceptance of an oppressive state of affairs. For “the way things are” is part of a material relation that endows the ruling class control over the production of education. The ideology of rationalization is common sense at its “best.” It removes the linguistic tension from the contradictions in discourse and justifies social life as working out for the best possible reasons. But for a mass of people, this is farthest from the truth. To the oppressed and marginalized, “the way things are” is a material process that works against their human potential and decreases the aggregate humanity of a given social formation. For example, school inequalities remind educators that educational processes are not free-floating systems, but ones that bear the mark of social actors within the production system. The following conversation expands on this point. Patrick: It seems to me that, as Larry pointed out, we’re back into the set of contradictions we’ve been swimming around in. The only way out is to say, “Plague on everybody.” But can we get out of this thing in another way? There have been multiple ways of trying to get out of these contradictions but the contradictions may just be inherent in the box that we already have. Ellen: I think that there’s some good teaching and learning going on despite all of this stuff. The teacher really does work with the child at the level that the child can do and is accepted. Patrick: Isn’t that the contradiction for a kid? It’s great if I’m a kid that’s gifted. It’s already assumed that I will get a six [the highest grade] but we’re working on you to get better at sixes. Yolanda: But something that troubles me about this is that we talk as though the only acceptable grade is an A. I hear this from my students all the time. A C is

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like a plague to them and I don’t know exactly where that happened, that a C was figured anything less than fine. Absolutely, “Good for you.” Ellen: Well, we don’t reward C’s. Aaris: Yah, because maybe we always prefer A’s and B’s. Larry: Who wants to walk around with a label on your forehead that says you’re average? Amanda: To that child, a C is great! I said to one little boy this morning who got a D last time, “I want to congratulate you.” At first I asked him, “Do you think you did better this time?” He said, “Oh, yes.” I said, “Well it showed and I noticed. You really have been doing a good job and you’ve really improved.” He improved to a C.

The “box of contradictions” Patrick refers to is the rationalization of schooling from the teachers’ perspective relatively absent of the students’ input. He insists that the participants may never “swim” out of the pool of contradictions they wade in unless they are willing first, to see the unequal patterns, and second, to shift their orientation from teacherthinking to student-thinking. Despite this, Ellen affirms the positive moments she finds at Monroe. What initially takes the form of analysis now is regarded as criticism and Ellen is quick to contradict Patrick. The second half of the conversation is more typical for a discussion about rationalization. Both Yolanda and Amanda suggest that a C grade should not be stigmatized, as if only A’s and B’s were acceptable. That C’s show progress from a D or an F grade is not a dispute. However, without evaluation of the criteria teachers form around C-quality work, and more important, which students receive C grades, there is danger of becoming complacent with unequal student attainment. As Larry reminds the group, “Who wants to walk around with a label on your forehead that says you’re average?” To suggest that C’s should be celebrated as progress ignores the psychological damage and feelings of powerlessness that average or low grades produce for students. As stated beforehand, average and low grades are not randomly distributed. When Patrick questions the group about their justification for their grading system, this dialogue ensues: Patrick: So, let’s suppose we took punishment as an illustration. What are the forms of punishment that are put forward? For example, I imagine getting D’s and F’s is a punishment. Esther: Well, for some it is and some it isn’t. For a lot of these kids, I don’t think that matters. Or at least it appears it never matters. Patrick: Right, and if it appears that it doesn’t matter, why would we give the D’s and F’s as a form of motivating, when it doesn’t matter? Larry: We do it as a communication to the parent. Esther: Right.


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Patrick: Call me up! (laughter) Larry: Well, yah it’s easier and it’s a system that’s in place. Esther: It’s traditional. Amanda: It’s also communicating to the child. Patrick: But they already know. They’re not surprised. They don’t go, “My God, I failed!”

Grading is an issue over which the Inquiry participants frequently struggle. At times, they ponder over its effectiveness and contemplate its removal from school procedures. In this case, the participants justify—to no avail, as far as Patrick seems concerned—the purpose of grades, in particular D’s and F’s. To them, grades “communicate” something to parents and children. What it communicates is not clear, at this juncture. What is clear, however, is that “it’s easier and it’s a system that’s in place.” Or “it’s traditional,” according to Esther. So, using a more communicative format, as Patrick suggests, is counter to the accepted way of assessing students. But there is a deeper issue here. Grading serves as a buffer between teachers and the students and their parents. It communicates something to students and parents without teachers having to communicate directly with them. As long as grades take on this impersonal character, teachers can maintain a certain sense of objectivity. Justifying their grading system to students and parents through direct communication would only force teachers to admit the relative arbitrariness in grading, which does not suggest that it is absent of objective value. This is not an issue that teachers must shoulder alone. Nor is it a commentary on deception. It suggests that at times teachers rationalize grading systems at the expense of critiquing them. Furthermore, it shows the extent that teachers invest in grades as a coping mechanism to deflect the structural problems of schooling. Part and parcel of the grading system is the goal of schooling. Grades do not only produce social distinctions between students; they also produce certain life paths. In short, high grades provide students with greater social mobility than do low grades. Grades do not determine life paths, but they greatly influence access to higher education, which in turn provides students with access to networks of power. Grades produce longterm effects beyond the immediate school situation. If applied in a patterned way, when teachers dole out grades to students, teachers also help carve out a niche for them in the division of labor. How teachers rationalize this process then becomes interesting for school reform purposes. Esther addresses this issue when she says: Is it so terrible at some point in a child’s education to begin to focus them in some direction? The way it is right now, realistically, not everyone can go to the university system. I don’t even know if everyone needs to go to college, but we have to help them feel good about themselves.

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Esther is correct when she assumes that all students are not destined for the university system. The university system selects only the top percentage of applicants. Nevertheless, her statement smacks of a certain elitism, which rationalizes that some people do not “need to go to college.” Yolanda agrees when she says, “I don’t think the end-all for everyone is to go to college.” For these students, Esther expresses, “We have to help them feel good about themselves.” High self-esteem is indeed important for students, but only as a way to empower them to create better choices for their future, not as a way to accept their lot in life. Building self-esteem in low-achieving students encourages them to pursue their educational goals as opposed to accepting passively their marginal status. Otherwise, self-esteem becomes the opiate of the masses of students. To say that only some students will attend four-year universities is different from saying that teachers should not assist students in their pursuit of higher education. Yet, as Esther’s personal comments earlier about her own children suggest, children who do not pursue higher education are hardly ever “our” own children; they are frequently someone else’s children. Like ideology, lack of educational desire is always about someone else. The notion of compliance is another aspect of school life that the participants rationalize. In this context, compliance signifies a student’s willingness to acquiesce to school norms (Bowles and Gintis, 1976). Compliance is the creation of docile bodies that do as they are told (Foucault, 1977). In other words, compliance is the reproductive cognate of domination. As long as students remain compliant, domination remains unchallenged. As it is commonly constructed, the opposite of compliance, mainly resistance, complicates school processes, is inefficient, and becomes a source of frustration. There certainly is a case to be made that not all forms of resistance produce liberating consequences (Giroux, 1992; MacLeod, 1987; McLaren, 1993b; McLaren and Leonardo, 1998b; Willis, 1977). However, the notion of compliance is a convenient belief in a pseudo-solidarity. It is the specter of a consensus built on a silent coercion. For example, the following conversation is sparked by Larry’s recollection of his own schooling. Larry: This goes back to Ellen’s issue earlier. We all succeeded by being very compliant. It strikes me that what she’s saying is being compliant is a good thing. Esther: Well in some ways it is. Ellen: I think in the educational, yes. In the educational setting, traditionally speaking, the compliant child, the one who will follow, buys into the organizational structure, does get the perks of it. Aaris: It’s also what was expected of us. If you were expected to do all these individual questions, that’s what’s going to take place.

There is a difference between compliance and doing one’s school work. A student who finishes her work on time in a thorough manner is an exam-


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ple of productivity. In contrast, compliance suggests docility and acquiescence. Teachers who rationalize student compliance because they themselves once functioned under its rule underestimate the way that schools teach children ways of dealing with information. In other words, compliance is counter-productive to a critical assessment of information. By accepting their experience in school as a structure to be followed and not questioned, students build habits of the political mind. They become predisposed to comply with learning as a passive exercise that apparently produces “perks.” But as the model minority myth that surrounds Asian American students tells us, the benefits do not outweigh the costs. As a silenced and silent minority, constructing a compliant Asian American student population does not reap the benefits of a critical education. As a strategy, compliance produces short-term profits but creates an object out of the compliant child rather than an agent of her own education. A concomitant to the belief in student compliance is the ironic narrative of the will to learn. Rationalizing schooling’s “intrinsic” worth, as opposed to its social construction, produces a discourse that glorifies the philosophy of effort. As the argument goes, if only students had the will to learn, then they would find school interesting. Its inversion seems to make more sense: If students found schools intersecting their interests, they would want to learn. But as schools are currently constructed, there is little that interests most students. So, the discourse on the will to learn begins to sound like the sibling of the discourse on compliance. This next exchange will make this point overt. Ellen: If you have it all available, there will be something that they’re interested in. You can’t be interested in nothing. Amanda: I decided I was going to read James Joyce. I was in tenth grade and I picked up a copy. I got to about page fifty and I realized I was reading it. So I got to page fifty and I said if I knew Latin, if I was male, if I was Catholic, it may help. But I don’t understand what is going on here. So I went back to the library and I picked up A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [sic]. Then I found the manuscript of Steven Hiro, which was the original manuscript for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I read that in conjunction. I did it all on my own but I had this tremendous will to understand James Joyce. Without that will, without that self-motivation, I would have picked it up and never read it again. Patrick: So if I brought a piece in to you in which you had no interest and no prior knowledge, I believe . . . I’m not challenging you . . . but very quickly most of you will disengage from it and then you’ll act out some. Most important, you won’t read it and you won’t be able to read it.

In the philosophy of effort, students are liable to fake having an interest while their real interest goes unrecognized (Kliebard, 1995). Amanda’s will to understand James Joyce’s work can be explained as an act of interest. Without her initial interest in some facet of Joyce’s writing, it is

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unlikely, as Patrick suggests, that Amanda, like any other student, would have continued pursuing Joyce. To suggest otherwise is tantamount to saying that Amanda possessed the will to learn information that she had no interest in learning. Supporting this theory returns us to the ideology of compliance in the sense that Amanda persevered through Joyce by convincing herself that she indeed had interest in reading his work. In other words, she read Joyce because the teacher assigned his work. The purpose of learning with such tenacity is not without its progressive aspects. Critical education is located at the intersection of student interest, emancipatory direction, and tenacity. Without this combination, we cannot rationalize the empty aim of learning for learning’s sake. Schools are part of the real world, not a preparation for it. There is nothing that separates schools from the real of social life. In fact, they are all too real in the sense that schools reproduce the labor requirements of the job market. Schools are real places of domination. But this is a far cry from a justificatory explanation of how schools should function. From the outset, I have made it clear that schools are an emancipatory apparatus as much as they are an ideological state apparatus. That schools seem to mirror conditions in the workplace does not imply that this is a defensible arrangement. Thus, to recognize that schools are authoritative places and then argue that this fulfills the fit needed between schools and workplaces is evidence that a deep contradiction lies in the ideology of rationalization. Here is a fitting description: Larry: Part of that, and Ellen alluded to that, is it’s the real world. The fact of the matter is, if you want to talk about what goes on in the world of work, you follow the rules of your boss. If your boss says you write in pen, then you write in pen. If your boss says you write in pencil, you write in pencil. Or you get another job. But the part of that I think is important is the honesty and where does the tempering of justice and mercy pop in there with some of these rules that we know are our own concoctions. Yolanda: I can remember our conversations with colleagues deciding over whether it should be ink, in cursive, or written work. It produced such an argument that people walked out of the room and could not talk to one another over ink and cursive. Ellen: Maybe there aren’t such specific things, maybe what we’re dealing with is children and teaching them. One of our jobs may be to teach kids how to overcome and how to judge, and how to buck it when it’s time and not buck it when it’s not time. There’s a great empowerment in being able to deal.

Schools appear to simulate the workplace. Students have bosses in the figure of a teacher. Workers follow company rules or suffer the consequences of their transgressions. Taking no heed of work rules results in termination. “You get another job,” as Larry says. Likewise, consistent thwarting of school rules results in suspension and then expulsion. Students, wel-


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come to the real world! This discourse is indefensible and Larry appears to realize this when he appeals to values of “honesty, mercy, and justice.” At first glance, Yolanda’s story about her colleagues seems insignificant (i.e., nonideological) and Ellen quickly points this out. Ellen takes this example to promote what she believes is the students’ ability “to deal” with the minutiae of schooling. It should be pointed out that compliance takes place on many levels. To even begin to lead a class, teachers require some level of compliance from students. It is entirely reasonable for teachers to request students to use a pen rather than pencil, white as opposed to yellow paper, and so on. This is not the main concern with the concept of compliance. However, this does not suggest that apparently mundane classroom examples are nonideological. For it is at the level of everyday life that many school rituals are taken for granted and ignored. For instance, in a conversation around the SCAB books (Monroe’s student organizer notebooks), a frustrating exchange takes place among some participants. Arguing that SCAB books are an imposed form of organizational scheme on the students, Patrick inquires into the organizational skills that students already possess as a way of tapping into their interests. The conversation reaches its climax when Ellen says, “If we get too specific, it gets so picky it gets silly. I mean, we’re talking about an organizational system. SCAB books are an organizational system to get your work done.” Although school reform cannot ignore daily school practices, such as the SCAB book, reform time could be spent with more essential issues. The more colonizing forms of compliance, both in economic and cultural terms, assume great significance for reform. Compliance to an economic logic of accumulation and profit perpetuates class exploitation. Being compliant to white standards of knowledge and beauty produces self-negating students who come from nonwhite cultures. Girls and women who comply with a curriculum that silences them reproduce discursive violence, which has material consequences. Compliance takes many shapes, from more informal classroom interactions to more formal ideological forms. In her own attempts to shed light on the issue of compliance, Leslie offers a personal example. Leslie: There’s the whole issue with Ebonics. There’s a time and place for Ebonics and so I think the school’s role is only to distinguish and teach the correct, the standard English. Between home and school the issue is when do you use your Ebonics or when do you use standard English? Do you see? I speak Ebonics . . . sometimes when I’m not around you. Patrick: If the truth must be told. Leslie: If I’m with a certain peer group, I speak a different language. Believe me, I have to really think hard, differently, to speak standard English. It’s a process and that’s reality because of my background.

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The issue of compliance is not evenly applied to all students. In addition to more mundane forms of compliance, students of color, girls and women, and working class children carry the extra burden of complying with white, patriarchal, and bourgeois “ecocultural” values (Arzubiaga, Ceja, and Artiles, 2000). On top of the general bureaucratic expectations in schools, ruling educational values ask the oppressed to adopt a seemingly neutral school culture and disrobe themselves of their own “cultured ways” of thinking. For students who possess the official culture we find in schools, there is little need to comply because schools already affirm their sense of self. From this, it becomes more clear that when we speak of compliance, there is an absent referent. Compliance does not ask all students to “go along” with the official culture. It tacitly and sometimes overtly asks students of color, girls and women, and working class children to leave their cultural and economic baggage at the door. As Leslie’s confessional narrative shows, she lives the double reality of standard English and Ebonics, or Black English. Depending on the environment in which she finds herself, she switches codes. Although Leslie prioritizes standard English above Ebonics in school, her narrative shows the effects of cultural compliance whereby she admits, in a somewhat clandestine tone, that she speaks Ebonics, “I speak Ebonics . . . sometimes when I’m not around you.” Several issues are evident here. Leslie apparently informs her colleagues, for the first time, that she speaks Ebonics. This suggests a certain stigma attached to her ability to speak in a different “language.” Also, in spite of this double ability to speak in two codes, Leslie does not feel valued. It is an ability, no doubt, that quickly becomes a disability because of its sign (i.e., image) value beyond its use value. She makes clear that the process of code switching is a mode of cultural translation. Leslie “confesses” to speaking Ebonics, arguably because of its constructed status as a “bastardized” form of English, a grammatically “ugly” style of speaking. Leslie’s story should dispel the simplistic notion that Ebonics is “bad” English, but rather is another language complete with a worldview as referent, a different “reality,” in Leslie’s words. The issue here is cultural production. Because the ruling race and class control the means of economic production, they consequently control cultural production. Class domination of capital produces cultural hegemony at the level of language. The mainstream discourse around Ebonics constructs it as an unproductive, “broken” language. This discussion neither suggests that a certain class of people “own” standard English nor that Ebonics should become the new standard. However, it points out that official language inheres a level of coercion rationalized as compliance to an apparently consensual, valueless standard. Another common target of rationalization is knowledge selection. During Inquiry, knowledge is frequently constructed as “something in our heads.” It awaits activation, which results from a productive learning rela-


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tionship between student and teacher. For other forms of knowledge that students do not currently possess, these become a rationalized process of selection. Knowledge is technically assessed, partitioned into bits of data to fit into a well-planned curriculum, and then enacted in the classroom. This rationalization process is very significant for any philosophy of curriculum. The fact that knowledge is socially constructed, however, is rarely questioned. Its relationship with hegemony is likewise neglected. Moreover, when the rationalization process is established, the defense for it takes the form of “tradition.” As the argument goes: It was planned that way, so it makes sense. Regardless of who may have planned the curriculum and the intentions they may have had, its technical aspects are valued over its political project, its thoroughness overshadows its aims and ends. Here is a productive discussion involving text selection for eighth graders: Yolanda: The whole reason that there’s one book selected for eighth grade is that we want this presumption that everyone’s had the same thing at a certain point. We want to know that everyone in seventh grade who went through Washington [school district] is going to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Everyone who went through eighth grade has read To Kill a Mockingbird. Patrick: But read for what purpose? Esther: Not only just to read it but to analyze so much of what goes into a novel, right? Yolanda: If the point were to analyze the novel, then really what we would say is that we want every teacher to have a novel to analyze. But that is not what the district is doing. It’s about having an idea that at every grade level certain things are happening and this is supposedly to ensure that everyone has had exposure, that disease-catching way to educate to something. Amanda: But it’s more than that. Dragon Wings was chosen because it goes along with the social studies curriculum. So it’s true, that’s arbitrary perhaps. But it ties in with what the students are learning about in social studies. The same thing with To Kill a Mockingbird, when they cover that period of time. Yolanda: We don’t cover that period of time. The social studies framework of eighth grade does not give the time period of To Kill a Mockingbird. Eighth grade is supposed to be late colonial history until 1900. To Kill a Mockingbird, in no way fits, okay? (pause) Ellen: They may learn something in spite of all of this. (laughter) It may be To Kill a Mockingbird. There is this big possibility that they might get something out of it. (laughter) Yolanda: Larry said, “I don’t think it’s possible for you to have an experience and not get something out of it.” I said, “I don’t know, I’ve had a few.” (more laughter)

Yolanda questions the logic of text selection, one that is district-driven without clear intentions. She interrogates the official curriculum’s method of infection whereby the standardization of texts across classes for the

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eighth grade is designed to spread like a “disease” to all students. Yolanda is critical of the uniformity of the current text selection, exemplified by To Kill a Mockingbird. An English teacher, Amanda defends the literature curriculum because Yolanda’s questionings implicate her by association. Amanda defends the literature curriculum’s thoroughness, which in her opinion coordinates well with the time period being studied in history, an assumption that Yolanda quickly dispels. Following Yolanda’s pause, Ellen jokingly falls back on the notion that students may learn some information despite all the miscoordination, another assumption that Yolanda quickly dispels. It is interesting that Yolanda’s interrogation of the literature curriculum’s goals meets some resistance, which takes the form of a defense of tradition. Amanda is invested in accepting the curriculum as it is. As an English teacher, her identity is inextricably connected to it as a rational framework; it must make sense. Otherwise, admitting that it is part of a rationalization process that maintains a particular ideology on knowledge implicates her as someone who participates in such ideological manipulations. Or worse, she is forced to realize that uncritically accepting the curriculum’s knowledge selection maintains relations of domination because selection is only possible when other forms of knowledge are devalued. This is perhaps an unavoidable consequence because educators are never aware of everything that they repress. Or as Larry admits: I’m not arguing with the standard. What I’m saying is that I’m coming to the realization that we are not going to eliminate standardized scores. We’re not going to eliminate some form of testing. If I’m not going to eliminate some form of testing, then I think it’s not inappropriate to enable youngsters to be reasonably successful on that.

That said, critical reflection necessitates critique and speech-acts that challenge tradition, the status quo, and “the way things are.” To recognize that some form of testing will be part of schooling as long as student accountability is an issue is different from rationalizing testing as a mechanism to sort knowledge into hierarchical systems and tracking students into streams that reflect our evaluation of their knowledge. There is very little to suggest that certain forms of knowledge are intrinsically more valuable than others. Forms of knowledge are tied to interests in a particular social arrangement. They are valuable to the extent that they are useful means for emancipatory ends (Habermas, 1971). They are valuable to the extent that they are unalienated. In this chapter, I have tried to show the ways that functional ideology is distorted into a negative ideology. Common-sense discourse is one mechanism that maintains social relations of domination because it naturalizes schooling as an asocial and ahistorical process. Discourses of transparency


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ironically cloud what is at heart an education that is socially constructed and historically constituted. Also, the politics of sameness represses the importance of political and cultural difference. By assuming an unbridled universalism, participants participate in economico-cultural violence on the visible, marked, and concrete other. Last, rationalization is a tool for pacification. It justifies the status quo as defensible despite the exploitative results it produces. Rationalization evades relations of domination rather than confronting their realities. It reproduces compliance to an apparently absent presence, an invisible location, and a faceless subject. In all of these manifestations, negative ideology is a problem of reform. Ideology is composed of dissimulations of material life, of which reform participants are both objects and subjects. They are objects of relations that distort their consciousness. But they are also subjects of these same forces, who, through critical awareness and a deep engagement with the social, work together to rebel against exploitation.

CHAPTER 7

The Projections of Inquiry: Ideology as Utopic Vision

In many respects, Inquiry dialogue serves a necessary function for the participants. In light of their intensified work conditions, teachers appropriate Inquiry time and space for their own pragmatic purpose. By representing these creative ways of teacher appropriation, reform researchers combat relations of domination between ourselves and our participants. By creating space for participant ideology, researchers gain more understanding of participant worldview and the way they make sense of reform to serve their own interests. However, because meanings never speak for themselves but instead are interpellated by history, social structures, and asymmetrical relations of power, research must go beyond a grounded theory of ideology and deploy a negative ideology critique. The importance of this move cannot be underestimated because it enables research to use a depth hermeneutics in order to interpret the distortive influences of capital, racism, and patriarchy. A negative critique is enabling to the extent that it brings to the surface our deep structures of thought and action. More important, ideology critique is emancipatory in the way it exposes the constraints to political praxis. Negative critique becomes an explanatory and exploratory device that explicates the distortions in communication, dehumanization of othered subjects, and reification of social life. In this chapter, I explicate the third and final form of ideology: the positive dimension. Despite the advances that functional and negative critiques bring to educational reform research, they are unsustainable without an assessment of ideologies of possibility. By themselves, functional and negative critiques mute the positive aspects of ideology, or

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those spaces of emancipatory agency that subjects already possess and are able to seize for purposes of transformation. The participants’ functional discourse lacks both an overtly politicized and collectivist appeal. Their functional agency to make sense of Inquiry for their own personal purposes cannot realize a collective transformation of their work. And as I have shown in chapter 6, the participants’ negative ideologies reinforce discourses that maintain relations of domination. Functional and negative ideologies lack the capacity to explain the way subjects challenge domination, protest the status quo, and resist exploitation. Specifically, Inquiry participants possess the ability to seize power, critique social structures, and form collectivities that suggest critical possibilities for school change. Through a coalitional engagement of the social, Inquiry participants are able to challenge themselves and each other in search of emancipatory truths. Inquiry’s dialogical format is the site of beginning for their positive ideologies. Dialogue creates the communicative space necessary for a rational discussion of exploitation and discourses of domination. It is at the level of dialogue where agency is brought to the realm of signification. In other words, through dialogue, language is transformed from a passive form to an active, constitutive process of naming oppression and enunciating a position against it. And although dialogue is not an end in itself, it provides a means to articulate emancipatory ends. Chart #3: Inquiry Ideology as Positive Modus Operandi • Empowerment • Collectivism • Proactive Politics

INQUIRY AND THE POLITICS OF EMPOWERMENT Inquiry’s first positive outcome is the ideology of empowerment it produces for the participants. Because discussions frequently invoke issues of power as a viable reform issue, the concomitant result is that Inquiry produces conditions that empower its members. Recalling that one of Inquiry’s goals is to create a more equitable arrangement between researchers and practitioners, it is not surprising that the participants display more agency. Their sense of voice suggests that they are taking control of the reform and are empowered in the process. At the very least, Inquiry gives the teachers more room for flexibility to design their classroom pedagogy without the apprehension that they are committing infractions against the official curriculum. For example, take this short exchange between Rhonda, a university researcher, and Yolanda:

The Projections of Inquiry

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Rhonda: What accounts for the flexibility that you have in working with your students, and the types of assignments that you’re presenting? Yolanda: I think a lot of it comes from being in this group. National parks wouldn’t be part of the traditional curriculum of what I’m studying, but my curriculum says I’m supposed to teach, for the particular grade we’re talking about, the biomes, the different geographical regions. How can I give the kids an opportunity to gather the information in a way that’s exciting? I thought, “Oh, we have national parks that are all different biomes. We’ll go that way.” Being in a group like this, it teaches you to look at how you can get to the same end by going a different route. So instead of just getting out the book and going pageby-page, or doing what you’ve always done, how can I reach the same end by just taking a little different route? So I think that that’s where it’s coming through.

Yolanda explains the positive influence Inquiry has on her power to determine different means for students to learn the information required by the school’s curriculum. She realizes that she possesses the discretion to stray from the standard expectations of having to teach in a particular way while still providing her students with the information they need to progress through the grade levels. In other words, the standard curriculum prescribes an end and Yolanda decides the means. Inquiry enables Yolanda to invert schooling as a form of social control into her own capacity to control social processes in a relative way. Leslie agrees and expands on the issue of creating more options for teachers. Leslie: I grabbed an article about what was happening in Iraq and the US attacks and brought it in. Normally, I had kids go out and find an article. Well, I’d found an article and we looked at it, we examined it, and got into a real deep discussion about, “Well, where’s the Middle East?” So that led me into the job of pointing out the Middle East. What region in the world is it? That brought me to, “Why all the fuss about this desert area? What’s the deal? What’s the U.S. doing over there and who determined the no-fly zone?” Then we got into parallel, longitude, latitude, which is another way in. About five minutes, I really agonized about the fall of Rome. (laughter) Larry: That’s exactly my point. Now these kids get to high school and the high school teachers come back and say, you know . . . Leslie: But Larry, check this out. I had covered more in three weeks of school than if I were to have focused in on the fall of Rome, because we had talked about not only Saddam and the president, [but] I’ve gotten into latitude and longitude early, and the characteristics of people. I’ve brought in a 60 Minutes video of the Kurds. Thank God for 60 Minutes! So we did the Kurds. We looked at refugees, a look at the Balkans. We’re talking about region and geography. Larry: I have no qualms with that. Leslie: Hold on, hold on, hold on. When and if I ever decide that, okay, let’s now look at another area, if I ever do mention Rome, or Italy, or the government system and what made it fall, they’ll have more to compare it to. They’ll be able to

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look at the situation that occurs and then reflect, “Well, these people want their own country too.” We have talked about economics, government, people, situations, geography, history. So actually, we’ve done more. I can’t explain it but we’ve done more in three weeks than if I had focused on why there’s blues and the greens, there’s political differences. When I do and if I should decide to talk a whole week or so about what caused the fall of Rome, how the empire developed and became too large for them to oversee, they’ll have a better reference because we’ve talked about other nations. Larry: I hear you say when and if? Instead you’ve made the conscious decision to take your piece of the pie and say . . . Leslie: I think the kids will have a broader base in terms of being able to compare and contrast any other situation. It dawned on me, Larry, the point of seventh grade social studies is to look at why would a civilization, a particular culture, develop the way it is based upon geography, historical events? They look at the geography and how did that affect people? How did people live? How are their lifestyles different? How are their lifestyles affected by the geographical location? How are they impacted by invasions? You can use that in any area.

A history teacher, Leslie relinquishes the pressure of having to cover the fall of Rome as the reference point for the development of Western civilization. She begins with current events because it makes more experiential sense to immerse students in their own world as a starting point rather than a historical event many centuries removed. Despite Larry’s consternation, Leslie does not give up the fall of Rome, only its privileged status as the origin of interest. Rather than following the curriculum’s technical prescriptions, Leslie chooses to focus on fundamental, broad questions that link history, geography, and culture with each other. Leslie emphasizes the positive aspects of power (Foucault, 1978), which is not only a force that the districts impose on teachers in the form of frameworks. As authorities use power to discipline teacher choices, teachers respond with their own reserves of power to create more alternatives. Power is a force teachers seize and which they use to liberate themselves from rigid arrangements. Here is another instance that makes this point clearer: Elexis: What strikes me is that sometimes in these discussions we’re almost creating a defensive posture for people. It’s important to know that does not necessarily mean tossing everything out and starting anew. Maybe it means taking what works and trying. At a gut level you know what works with kids and you don’t need a staff development workshop or someone from a university to tell you what works with kids. I think it’s really important to remember that. Yule: Remember the baby steps. If were going to make anything sustainable, systemic—whatever word you want to use—change, those baby steps are real important. We have to go out for a while and keep taking a look at our own practices. Then maybe, by example, by experience, it will grow. I don’t think we can force that. I think in education we tend to think we found the solution and Inquiry is not the solution yet. It’s a method rather than a solution.


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Elexis emphasizes that power exists in accessible forms at Monroe. She inspires the group to search for the spaces of agency currently in their grasp, something that requires neither staff workshops nor university representatives (e.g., Rhonda, Patrick, and myself) to realize. Taking advantage of these resources does not always necessitate extra funding or external insight. To ignore available nodes of power is to produce “surplus powerlessness” (Lerner and West, 1996, p. 178), heightening the sense of powerlessness by leaving resources untapped. Empowerment is a means to the end (liberation). It is not a search for solutions to problems, but transgresses limiting situations only to discover new limits to transgress. “Baby steps” remind us that, like the development of a child, emancipation from domination is never-ending, steps turning to strides and then to a jog. Inquiry is not an end in itself, but a method of empowerment. Tapping into existing resources requires a shift in orientation, which takes deliberate steps. That is, an empowering reform like Inquiry provides the context for questions regarding assumptions around learning and student work. One way the participants deal with a shift in their thinking is by redirecting, but not reducing, the energy that is present in any classroom. For example, time and again Yule insists that teachers work too hard to maintain classroom energy. It is no surprise that teachers end their workdays exhausted. Yule advocates altering this arrangement. Yule: The hardest-working people in the classroom should be the kids, not the teacher. The hardest thing a teacher should do is the night before, planning what’s gonna happen. Then when it unveils itself, if the plans go well, then the kids are working hard to be able to do what you planned for. Patrick: Suppose it were this way: Suppose the hardest work for the student was the student doing his or her planning the night before, figuring out the materials and being, what one would imagine, self-regulating about “What am I going to be thinking about tomorrow?” We know with those athletes and others who are performance-oriented, you have to do a whole lot of thinking ahead of time about what it is you have been thinking about.

Yule advocates a pedagogy based on a teacher’s ability to deal with student issues as they arise. Note Yule’s subjunctive tone. Careful not to suggest that teachers are exonerated from planning their days, Yule relinquishes them from having to feel totally responsible for classroom energy. Students should go home tired, not teachers. Patrick takes this even one step further and suggests that students should carry the responsibility for their own learning by planning their interests ahead of time, a mode of “self-regulation.” Thus, it is important to note that realizing there are resources on school campuses is not enough; teachers must activate them. Change requires both a shift in what one considers a resource and then an organized effort to mobilize that resource. For example, by the end of the study’s second year, Elexis transitions into the role of the “internal crit-

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ical friend.” Patrick, the “external critical friend,” eventually leaves the site in hopes of promoting what he calls an “indigenous” culture of teacher-reformers involved in an ongoing reinvention of their own school. In short, the culmination of Patrick’s involvement with the group is his departure. The power to change is intrinsic to the group. Yule’s comments about school policies share this belief. Yule: I just wanted to respond to Ellen, who said we may never be able to change how we grade kids. I’m not quite sure that’s true. I think that we, as a staff, still have control over how we want to give that type of assessment out. I think we grade for the wrong reasons now. We grade to give some people power. I think we grade to fuel the egos of some of our high-succeeding kids to make sure that they know they’re good. I think we also punish some kids by telling them that they’re not worthy. But I think there’s lots of room for us to consider and do something different. Elexis: But I didn’t hear Ellen say it’s never been changed. Yule: Well, she said something like, “In a long time from now . . . ” I just wanted to bring us back and say that doesn’t necessarily have to be true. I don’t want to have any limits to what possibilities we have. Patrick: I would like to just encourage, if Ellen was right, that we try to break out of the grading thing altogether, but still know what we’re trying to evaluate and assess. That might require a very different way of looking at it, which is what we at least provoked. Ellen: Well, I’m ready to toss it, of course. Patrick: Right. But then, what’s the alternative? Ellen: So many people are so married to it. Patrick: That’s right. Ellen: They just can’t see life without grades. Patrick: Well, let’s provoke divorce in this case.

The road to liberation is lined with constraints. Empowerment is the capacity to circumvent them. Yule emphasizes to the group that limits exist only to the extent that the participants recognize them as such. Beyond limits, possibilities exist. As a limiter, the grading issue has stifled the group on many occasions. Yule makes it known that grades are not only arbitrary; they are ways to disempower groups of students. Grades are not indicators of difference; they produce difference. And in some students, they produce indifference toward school. The marriage analogy shows us that schooling can be likened to a social contract. Like all social contracts, school procedures, such as grading, can be severed, transgressed, or even destroyed. Make no mistake about it: School change is like a war. As with wars, school reform produces casualties. But without this necessary antago-


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nism, schooling produces the slow death of massive amounts of students. Reform as war treats oppressive traditions and relations of domination as enemies and seeks to destroy them. After the wake of war, a calm signals the destruction of the old regime and the ushering in of the New. Elexis: The change probably needs to be massive and systemic but I also think that if we keep looking at change as always massive and systemic, it’s . . . Sam: We’ll never get there. Elexis: It’s almost impossible. Leslie: The question is, why can’t we? If we are the professionals saying, “This is what is needed,” then why can’t we say that? Leslie: Help me understand. Larry: I think, maybe I just feel a little like we’ve been through that war already in this district and we lost it. Leslie: Then we may need to revisit that war. Maybe we need to go back to that battle. Patrick: It is both a figurative and a literal political battle. Sam: Change the strategy as you get into it. Leslie: I know one thing: If we sit here and do nothing, nothing is going to change. Larry: I agree with you. Leslie: So, we need to do something. We’re gonna keep shoveling stuff on top and not deal. So let’s deal with the problem, not the symptoms of the problem. Larry: I think we can do a lot within those areas that we do have control.

In effect, Leslie is provoking war. She senses the anomie in the group and sends out a battle cry, because accepting schools as they are means they have already lost the war. Change requires a new strategy that shifts the tide of power from a conservative gaze over the oppressed to helping uplift the oppressed. There is a sense of urgency here. Leslie and others understand that reform is not only a matter of change, but for some people is an issue of life or death, both figuratively and literally. On the whole, Patrick has argued that students lack control of their own education. However, for many subaltern students—like minorities, students from working class homes, and girls—the situation is even more grim than merely lacking control of one’s education. These students are dehumanized on a daily basis. But this does not go unnoticed. As Sam puts it: It all comes down to taking ownership. When a teacher says, “Well, those kids . . . ” they’re ours! They’re our students! Whether they succeed or not, it’s a reflection of us. I take it personally when I work with my students, say that they are my students and I’m going to do my best to help them. When we come into a faculty meeting, we don’t know, and it’s hard to tell, who is of the same opinion.

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Sometimes it’s obvious who is and who isn’t, but how do we get them to agree, to bring them in and to come to agreement?

Recognizing that there are different forms of consensus, Sam seeks an agreement of commitment from the faculty. He rejects the complacency that he finds in some teachers who separate themselves from their students. This facile move of distinguishing self (teacher) from other (student) masks the relative power teachers have in influencing their students’ life paths (Fine, 1991). Sam suggests that teachers redirect this power by claiming ownership of “those kids,” whom some teachers conveniently excuse as nonachieving or unsuccessful. An ethos of intersubjectivity between students and teachers encourages the sharing of power and responsibility. This move toward intersubjectivity for mutual empowerment is itself not facile. It requires a reflective ideology that becomes a form of selfinterrogation. This is no small task. Self-reflection can be a painful process of realizing one’s complicity in relations of domination. Moreover, it demands that we deconstruct the ways we invest in furthering our own powers and then to divest them. As the following conversation between Linda and Leslie shows us, the meaning of race is a fundamental reform issue. Linda: I’d like to know what some of the issues were that the kids felt angry about. Is it something that just the Anglo teachers are doing to them, or teachers in general? Maybe not even today but another time. Just so that, consciously I’m not picking on anybody. But if they feel like I am, then to them I am. Until I’m aware of what I’m doing . . . You see what I mean? Leslie: This is a question, quite frankly, I had in my classroom. What can I do? What can I do differently and be ready for all the suggestions? (laughs) Linda, that’s something you can do in your class. At the end of the year, I have the kids write evaluations: “What could I have done differently? How could I approach this? What did you like? What didn’t you like?” It just opens up the discussion. Specifically, do you ever notice when someone doesn’t like you? Can you tell when someone doesn’t like you? Linda: Uh-huh. Leslie: Well, so can kids. (pause) How did you know when someone didn’t like you? Linda: I just know. Leslie: But how do you know? Is it a body language? Is it that someone said? What is it? There’s something that you know. Linda: Yah. Leslie: It doesn’t necessarily have to do with race. There’s some kids that I don’t like. There’s some kids I have a hard time getting to. Some kids rub you the wrong way. It has nothing to do with race. Maybe it’s how I’m feeling today. I


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talk to students one-on-one. I say, “I really want to help you. But how do I get to you?” What do I do? I’ve often said to some of them, “I don’t know what to do. Meet me halfway.” Kids are very honest. Kids are very smart. They know either you do or you don’t. They know that. Yule: Sometimes the teachers who are most in denial are the ones where the students would say, “That’s why that teacher doesn’t respect us.” (some laugh) Leslie: Were you on staff when we had the Cinco de Mayo celebration? (pause; some laugh) One student was glared at by one teacher because he had expressed himself on stage. Yolanda: It was devastating. Leslie: Yah, this kid was devastated. He came to me in tears. Yolanda: I still see this student, who’s in high school now. We talk all the time and every time I talk to him he always says, “How is so and so? Who is she glaring at this year?” It’s still with him and it’s been two years. He will never forget that feeling of, you say what’s on your mind and you get kicked out.

Inquiry as mutual empowerment is just that: an investment in the powers that liberate participants from oppression and a divestment of the powers that maintain it. This example of self-confrontation is not easy. Taken seriously, it is quite painful, but necessary. As a white teacher, Linda assumes that her race matters when she interacts with nonwhite students. She wants to “become aware.” As the “hair braiding” incident in chapter 6 suggests, race does matter. Linda makes the mistake, as Leslie points out, that race is fundamentally what matters in her interactions with students. This is exacerbated by Linda’s problematic move when she asks Leslie, the only African American teacher in the room, about race as if Leslie, a relatively dark-skinned woman, is the embodiment of race knowledge. Leslie’s response hints that she does not like some African American students. That race matters does not suggest that it is the only determining factor. Leslie points out that racial sensitivity is the sensibility for the specific moments when race and racism contribute to relations of domination. Despite the discomfort Linda and other white teachers may feel about confronting their own race and racism, it is a progressive step toward undoing structures that prevent school renewal. Self-reflexively confronting the ideology of racism is the first step to obliterating it. For, as Freire (1993) reminds us, critical reflection is the dialectical counterpart of action. Yule’s reflection helps explore this important concept. Yule: Talk about reform, change, and restructuring. Look at what we’ve heard today. We heard that the Black Collegiance are successful because it’s a place where African American kids who are angry have a release for that. They could be validated, have a forum to speak, and get their perspective on what it is to be successful. I’m sure we see that from the Latino population at school. We have to say to ourselves, “Instead of accepting that, what does that tell us about what they do day in and day out about the business they attend to? How do people

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around here create that situation?” Because we do. We still contribute to it by the day-to-day activities and what we’re trying to do to create an environment which leads to that. As we start looking at change, we know that we create this environment. We do something. It’s not just that teacher down the hall whom we all know. No, all of us somehow have to take a look introspectively to see how we contribute to it. Then when we accept the fact that we have to do things differently, maybe the outcomes will be different. But if we don’t look at making fundamental changes in how we relate to kids every day, then I don’t know if we’re ever going to change how kids learn. We’ll always have the success of the Black Collegiance based on the deficiency that we have in our program. (pause) Yolanda: I think there’s a cycle that happens, like when Leslie talks about the anger. You don’t realize what you’ve contributed to this feeling of anger. Once the students are able to recognize their anger toward you, part of it is not just me overcoming my perception of this student population. It is also about the student population overcoming their perception of me. Just because I’m an Anglo teacher doesn’t mean I’m going to be oppositional to their goals. There’s this huge cycle of preconceptions on both sides. You have a preconception that they reinforce. At the same time, they’re reinforcing your preconceptions. By getting hard or difficult with them, you’re reinforcing their preconception of it. It just cycles out of control. When you come together, it gives everyone a chance to say, “Okay, let’s get down to business and see what we can do to address these issues.” There’s things I have learned about me. I know now that if I really wanted to help, I need to take the personal risk to go in and say, “I really want to help you.” Before, I just operated on other assumptions. When nobody came in for help, it reinforced my preconceptions that these students who weren’t doing well didn’t want help. That wasn’t necessarily the case. Having these groups, it stops that constant reinforcement.

Yule emphasizes the group’s power to change inequality by first realizing that they “create that situation, this environment,” whether actively or inadvertently. Like ideology, inequalities are not bad breath that someone else reeks. Critical reflection requires that we sense the odor of oppression that sticks to our clothes and hair, and emanates from our bodies. At the same time, Yolanda discourages white guilt. As privileged social subjects, whites who reflect on their own social status sometimes become inactive, as if to divest one’s powers means to become passive (Leonardo, 2002). White reflection does not rid oneself of white privilege. The trick is to use the privilege with which one is socially endowed, for political purposes in conjunction with the oppressed, against domination—not as leaders who colonize “the movement” but as partners in liberation. Identity does not guarantee politics in advance and Yolanda is right to assert this important distinction between being white and having a politico-ethical position (Leonardo, in press-d). People of color and women, for example, do not have access to truth by nature of their identities. Their experiences provide the evidence for critique of social relations.


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But as signified ways of being, these experiences are interpreted as they are made intelligible. White subjects cannot take subaltern perspectives for granted and defer to them, even when the beliefs put forth appear irrational or unreasonable. Privileging unofficial epistemologies does not mean giving them absolute power. Prioritizing marginalized discourses begins dialogue from the concrete experiences of the oppressed, not that these experiences speak for themselves and therefore are ideologically correct. All forms of social knowledge are problematic because they bear the distortions of domination and represent only partial understandings of real relations. They are partial in another way as well. Knowledge claims are partial testimonies to “how things work.” Discourses bend knowledge for particular purposes that serve certain interests. Inquiry may not be the determining cause for the participants’ reflection, as many of them have pointed out to me. However, Inquiry does provide the space that is conducive to such an undertaking. It promotes both individual as well as group reflection, because this is one of the overt goals of Inquiry in order to resist the “trend of change” that fails to address essential problems. Or in Larry’s words: For the sake of a label, and for the sake of being able to say we’re on the cutting edge, we have a tendency to discard indiscriminately those things that have proven to be successful. I think that’s a characteristic that I’ve seen in this district for too many years. Some things get changed just for the sake of change, and that to me is not necessarily the most appropriate reason for changing. I believe in change, I believe in progress, and I believe in continuously striving to be better at what I do and to enable kids to do it better. But, I think it needs to be done in sort of a reflected manner as opposed to the fad of the week.

Fundamental change requires tremendous amounts of ideological work. It insists on a deep reflection over the exploitative structures currently working against the liberation of teachers and students. But as Larry points out, change does not equate beginning anew for the sake of the New (Fullan, 1991). Esther is even more forceful when she says, “Another thing we do while we’re denying is think that we’re working so hard. But what you really have to say is we’re working so hard and creating the wrong thing! At least the wrong thing in that particular context.” Critical reform does not promote the notion that the world makes no sense and must be wiped out in a single stroke. Change does not always alter asymmetrical relations of power—and worse, sometimes “the more things change the more they seem to stay the same” (Sarason, 1982). For example, changing relations of power does not mean giving the power to the powerless, as if merely inverting the poles produces the desired outcome. As Freire (1993) has noted, the oppressed model their idea of power on the oppressor. Critical change means transforming our relations to the

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concept of power itself as not something to be manipulated to further one’s personal interests, which merely produces a new oppressed group. One of the goals of Freire’s conscienticization is to undo our previous modes of understanding the nature of power from one based on subjection to a more intersubjective, dialogical process of mutual humanization. Pedagogically speaking, the recycling of powerlessness packaged in new discourses and disguises produces a condition of learninglessness. When teachers are asked to shoulder the responsibility of starting anew, student leaning is neglected because teacher learning becomes the new focus. Critical reform is a discriminate assessment of the emancipatory spaces that exist and need development as well as fully dismantling the structures of domination that produce alienated labor, racist relations, and patriarchal systems. Said another way, school reform is a dialectical process between conservation and transformation of power. Without a discourse that advocates fundamental changes in power relations, change for its own sake becomes political candy to appease the mass. Ideological reform of schools is not a sentimental endeavor. It is not a wishful process of how schooling could be, but rather a politicized and personal engagement of power, the output of which is the realization that participants possess the ideological potential necessary for school renewal. At its root, reform is violent and disturbing. It is a form of violence aimed at destroying barriers to educational freedom. Also, reform disturbs the seemingly serene sea of sense because it upsets our assumptions and previous commitments. It is this condition of positive rebellion toward which critical reform tends. It is ridden with political conflicts over representation as much as it can be characterized as a search for consensus over a desired direction. To this end, Inquiry provides a space for critique. As social and cultural critics, or as “intellectuals” in Gramsci’s and Giroux’s sense of it, teacher-reformers understand that reform is an intellectually exhausting and emotional process of struggling with the purpose of schools. Reform is more than an experience-based journey; according to Patrick, and as I have suggested, experience never speaks for itself and is critical only to the extent that it combats relations of domination. Patrick urges: In school, are we really urging children of parents to be political? I mean this in the democratic sense of understanding what your interests are, what you know, how you mobilize coalitions, to act. Part of being political is conflict, debating, disagreeing. My sense is, we shy away from the conflict rather than saying, “Hot damn! Here it comes.” Not because it’s fun but that’s the way we’re going to stay democratically alive. That’s the question. In a sense, there are four purposes that are in tension with each other: intellectual development, personal development, social development (social-civic), and vocational (economic). It’s not a matter of one or the other being above or below. It’s that they’re in tension with each other. The real question here is of course, it does no good for someone who’s not part of the political-economic sys-


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tem to say, “You’re going to love your intellectual life but it’s going to be a shitty economic life.” (some laugh) Or the other way around, saying “You can have a wonderful economic life and you’re going to have a really terrible personal life.” The question is: Can these be in tension? I don’t mean bad, but it’s going to be like this. It may be that schools have these four purposes that are in tension with each other. Part of the difficulty is that we have to figure out how to promote all four simultaneously but in a way that really counts in all four areas.

Patrick politicizes the process of reform. That is, he emphasizes its ideological nature, though not a monolithic ideology at that. He admits that the political and ideological aspects of change are the most evaded issues during reform efforts. Paradoxically, the essence of the problems in our schools is located in discussions containing the moments of “Hot damn!” They represent the beliefs and values that drive the discourses of domination responsible for the inequalities in schools and they must occupy the center of any reform talk. An ideology of empowerment takes macro social issues and links them with micro personal concerns. A dialectical attitude toward the construction of self and the production of the economy, for example, stresses the increasing globalization of capital grafted onto individual bodies. A pedagogy of transformation has to take this nexus into account because, as Patrick notes, “the school system has to reproduce what the capitalistic system reproduces.” A politics of empowerment uses demystification to expose the spurious notion that the current social arrangement is either natural or the best of all possible worlds. By employing an ideology critique of myths, participants create the rudiments of a discourse of liberation. For example, when Sam again invokes the metaphor of “the game,” Ellen and Elexis agree that schools are constructed as places of learning, but enacted as games. Sam: Are we getting away from the game or are we getting ready? Elexis: Everything we’re talking about has much more to do with the game and figuring that out. Ellen: Probably has everything to do with the game and nothing to do with really learning anything.

Although Sam, Elexis, and Ellen leave “the game” unnamed, they make it plain that learning is a machination process. School logic is based more on following rules of legitimate knowledge than on learning in the enlightening sense of a student coming into contact with the previously unknown. Instead, students learn the codes of conduct and legitimate forms of knowledge. The codes of the game communicate the message. In another exchange, Patrick introduces the concept of “the lie.” Patrick: Could it also be—I don’t know this and it could get real close to heart— that a lot of this stuff, the kids, they’re not going to buy the lie.

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Esther: We bought the lie? Ellen: We had fun. I loved school. Esther: What was the lie? Patrick: The lie was . . . Larry: Go to school and you will succeed. Patrick: If you try real hard in school and you do well in school you will do well in life. Ellen: Yes, we bought this. Rhonda: The achievement ideology is complemented now in the time that economically you see your parents going through a series of unemployment. You’re being dislocated from your job. You have these economic structural constraints on top of it. I think all of our youngsters are quite bright and perceptive to say, “We’ll get a high school diploma.” Let’s not even talk about college. For what? It is a lie, the biggest myth. First of all, in a capitalist society we will never have full employment. There will never be a job for everybody. When you start to look at things in that perspective you can easily get disillusioned and really get in this spiral where it’s really hard to make the case, “Well, why should we?” It’s not compelling enough. Everything around them says something different. Hence, it makes our jobs very difficult to say “You need these skills,” because we’re trying to come to grips with “What are those skills?” What is the it? Larry: It’s that stuff you prepared today, Patrick. (laughing) Amanda: That’s true. Why then isn’t this true for all students? Because this is not something that affects only part of our society. All of our society is affected by the change in economics and the lack of stability and the lack of guarantee. It’s everybody.

This exchange is interesting for it adds a new metaphorical twist to “school as a game,” with “school as a lie.” Otherwise known to the group as the achievement ideology, school-as-a-lie is the myth that academic success produces social success, such as employment mobility. Their problematization does not refute the human capital argument that educational investment gives students more social opportunities. However, the participants deconstruct the popular narrative that schools are meritocratic institutions that dole out success to students based on their academic talents. The Inquirers only have to reclaim their own past in order to arrive at this conclusion. Even Ellen’s initial fond memories of school cannot bear the weight of such critique as she eventually admits to having bought the lie. The lie is part of a deception, a dissimulation of the way schools work against the interests of poor students, minorities, and women in order for the capitalist system to produce a surplus army of qualified workers. Ironically, Amanda’s objection to this point supports the general proletarianization of workers as the class divide widens. In other words, she is correct to assert that more and more people suffer from the nation’s joblessness.


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As corporations downsize their staffs and automate previously humanmanipulated jobs, more workers are forced out of their jobs or work for lower real wages (Mishel, Bernstein, and Boushey, 2003). However, this is done in order to empower the owners and profiteers, a group that seems to decrease in size to the point that they almost seem nonexistent. The richest of the rich control more jobs and capital than ever before (Wollf, 1995; Zeitlin, 1989). The super-rich control more of the American pie than they can chew. The “everybody” to which Amanda refers obviously does not include this group. The lie misguides otherwise well-intentioned teachers away from critiques of structures of inequality, which such a lie produces. But let me make a distinction. The target of such critiques would also be misguided if it were to isolate schools as the manufacturer of lies. The system of production and its inherent contradictions between labor and capital guide the logic of schools, which function as an apparatus of economic domination. The lie begins elsewhere, in the predatory logic of the political economy and its dehumanizing consequences. In addition, as Leslie points out, it can be found in the social relations of racism. INQUIRY AND THE ETHICS OF COLLECTIVISM As individual social critics, Inquiry participants partake in discursive exercises that promote self-transformation. This is a significant move because taken as an aggregate whole, self-transformative events often produce conditions ripe for more collective forms of resistance to domination (Calhoun, 1994b). But without aspirations for collectivism, Inquiry members lack the political power to create fundamental changes at their school. Thus, forming a collective ethos becomes the second form of positive ideology cultivated during Inquiry. By opposing the alienating features of individualistic politics, the participants muster the necessary elements of any viable movement: a political body. For example, by considering parents as resources, rather than as external pressures for accountability, Inquiry participants express their wish to build a community with parents. As Leslie remarks, More needs to be done to get the parents involved, aware, and educated. Maybe that is what we can do. These kids, their parents are concerned with survival. They have a different issue and that has to be understood and the complexities of all the trappings that these parents get into. When you deal with pain you’re going to try and find a way to feel better. A lot of times, that pain is covered up and you know the different ways of covering up pain. So the parent element needs addressing. I don’t see that we need to have parents leading separate factions when you’re talking about the good of the whole. I’m into tribalism right now, studying Africans, so I’m dealing with the tribe (some laughter around the room), working together for the good of the whole. It gets back to the joke about the people belonging on

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the boat. The back of the boat sprang a leak and the people in the back are getting out. The people at the front of the boat are saying, “Sure am glad I’m not in the back of boat.” We’re all in this boat together and if we can’t pull it together, I don’t see how we’re going to keep it from sinking.

Referring to the “good of the whole [community],” Leslie invokes images of pain and the need collectively to understand parental issues, some of which include poverty and the social anger it breeds. She continues: These parents, some of them are working two or three jobs. These parents, by the time they get home, because of the stuff they had to deal with on the job, they’re tired. They’re tired and they’re angry. They snap at the kids. All that stuff is perpetuated. It’s such an ongoing process.

Leslie’s sense of parental involvement is urgent, otherwise the “boat” that keeps the school afloat will sink. The boat Leslie refers to works on several levels. On one level, for instance, it emphasizes that working together for school improvement concerns everyone, parents included. Like a boat whose oarspeople are flailing their oars in many different directions, Monroe’s potential human power is underused because of a lack of coordination between teachers and parents. As a result, parents, teachers, and students paddle their way through school, sometimes canceling each other out. On another level, the juxtaposition of tribalism with Africanism and boats conjures up the image of a slave ship during the middle passage. Leslie’s discourse alludes to the problem of social inequalities that stem from historical structures. In fact, during a visit to Leslie’s house for an Inquiry session, I noticed a book that suggests Leslie’s sensibilities for such an analysis. The trope she employs in her discourse is not mere convenience. Here is an excerpt from my field notes, describing Leslie’s house: Against the wall to the left is a black antique-style couch with a pink and white floral pattern. Above the couch is a picture of a black man with dreadlocks. Esther, Amanda, and Ellen sat on the couch, everyone else sat on chairs, some of which were pink and the others matched the black floral pattern of the couch. Hanging on the right wall was a painting of a Black Moor. On the far wall ahead of me there is a fireplace and a mantel. Behind me is a window overlooking the street. Below that window is a desk with three small pictures of Leslie when she was younger, and a graduation picture of a young man which said in small print, “Palisades High School.” There is a shiny black coffee table in the middle of the room which sits on a black and gray rug. On top of the coffee table is a crystal dish filled with candy hearts and a large black book entitled The Middle Passage.

Leslie’s use of the “boat” metaphor suggests an awareness of the unequal regard that schools often show for parents who have limited influence on


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the school’s power relations. These parents sit in the back of the school-asboat and are the first to be neglected or forsaken by the administration. The parental anger that Leslie refers to becomes more clear. It is quite obvious from Leslie’s description that parents who are more concerned with daily “survival” and who work two or three jobs are working class parents. They possess the least power to influence school governance and are marginalized because of their lower job status (Lareau, 2000), both of which increase their “pain.” Thus, parental involvement is not only an issue of resources, but of domination. If schools want to transform relations of power between schools and parents, then reform participants must engage the voices and lives of working class parents and coalesce around their challenges. Despite the importance of including parents in the school decisions that affect their children’s lives, such an alliance is not casually formed. Integrating parents into the bureaucratic apparatus can complicate matters. Without appropriate coordination, parental involvement further intensifies teacher work and the politics of resentment increases. Without a space for intersubjective dialogue, teacher–parent perspectives become incommensurable discourses. Or worse, without critical dialogue, the issue of power and questions around the ownership of school administration are not sufficiently addressed. Yolanda’s account makes this clear: I have to say that I agree in principle with parental involvement. But right now, as far as the parent communities that I’ve been working with, I’m not secure enough in where I would like to be, that I could even have a discussion, at this point. How do you include parents in decision-making, when so many of the decisions parents would have you make, you feel are fundamentally wrong? I personally am dealing with a lot of issues with parents right now that I couldn’t sit at a group like this. There isn’t that trust. There isn’t the ability to have a real dialogue. I have met with parents and tried to be honest and helpful. Even though it wasn’t necessarily personal, I left feeling defensive. I didn’t get the feeling that we were working toward something. It was me saying “Well, we try our best, we do this, we do that,” and they’re like, “We know you are, but yah yah yah.” I was like, “That’s not where we’re at.” I’m not ready to be with parents at that level and I’m just being real honest.

Teachers forming a coalition with parents have to be sensitive about the collective goals for such an alliance. Reform discourse should avoid naively angelizing parents as “resources” waiting to be activated. Parents have ideological interests to position their children in the best possible advantage. In short, the call for increased parental involvement, as Yolanda warns us, is political to the extent that a struggle for representation distorts communication between the two parties. Forging a collective relationship between teachers and parents takes ideological work and should not be romanticized. Despite the political friction born out of teacher–parent relations, opening the school’s public discourse to increase

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parental input leads to greater understanding. Given the communicative conditions that allow such interactions to thrive, parents become active role-players in their children’s education. In addition to the teacher–parent alliance, Inquiry participants also devote text to forging a stronger network among their colleagues. As unionized professionals, teachers already possess the infrastructure to create massive changes. However, scaling up reform (Elmore, 1996) is never easy, both logistically and politically. Logistically, the participants express their frustration with staff meetings that rarely reach consensus on important matters. Ellen describes staff meetings like this: There’s no way that you can do goals with huge, vast numbers of people. You just waste your time. You can get a lot of ideas and then a committee goes and boils it down and brings it back. Maybe it’s agreed upon or it’s not; the first time it isn’t. Well, now let’s try it again, this time a writing committee because writing on the blackboard with all of those people will never get anything done. I think we need school goals.

There are as many ideas for change as there are teachers who attend the meetings. Politically, scaling up reform becomes an ideological struggle about priorities. That said, Inquiry participants find that collectivity is a goal worth pursuing with their colleagues. Furthermore, any viable reform must consider its general acceptance if participants expect any ideas to turn into policies. The following conversation shows the sensitivity involved in forging a collectivity around Inquiry-as-reform: Esther: I was just curious. I don’t even know who we’re talking about when we say there may be members of the faculty who we see are kind of in a rut and aren’t willing to move out of it, or have such a focus with their teaching and they’re not willing to go beyond it. I’m just curious what kind of effort has gone into reaching those teachers and trying to encourage them to do something a little bit differently. There certainly is a right way and a wrong way to do that. Sam: I can speak because personally I’ve tried that with a faculty member that I see having difficulty and trying to get that person to see things a little differently or to work differently in class with the students. I’ve invited them to workshops, given them materials that I’ve received. Not in a derogatory sense, not saying, “Hey, you’re screwing up, why don’t you do it this way?” But inviting them. Amanda: Has it been successful? Sam: No. I’ve met resistance every step of the way. Or a feeling of, “Nah, I don’t need to do that.” I can even think back to when I was at another school and sitting with the math teacher and they were talking about workshops they had gone to and she said, “Ah, hell, honey, I learned everything I needed about math when I graduated and that’s all I needed.”


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In our scenario, I don’t believe in just saying it and then not trying to do something about it. So I have tried with two individuals and I’ve met resistance with both. I don’t know if it’s out of not seeing how they are with the students and how students see them. In the other case, one is just straight-out resistance. The one of them, I just feel is burned out or doesn’t see it. The other case, “Just don’t talk to me about it.” I understand there’s a good way and there’s a bad way. If I’m going to work with someone, I’m not going to do it in the way of, “Yolanda, you’re screwing up. Do it this way.” But I’m trying to show them, “Hey, I went to this workshop. This is really great and I’m going again. Would you like to come?” “No.”

As the new hegemonic bloc of leaders, Inquiry participants are what Yule calls “pioneers.” The group is in a critical position to start the renewal process by spreading the “gospel.” Finding Inquiry a worthwhile process, Sam tries to encourage other teachers to participate in the reform, but to no avail. Reform-oriented teachers may face several challenges. First, they face apathy from teachers who have long compromised their ideals (Sizer, 1992). Second, as the hegemonic bloc, teacher-reformers confront resistance from skeptical colleagues who see them as a threat to the apparent stability of school relations. That is, teacher-reformers disturb the “natural order” of the school by attempting to change it. In fact, the participants attest to the skepticism they face from their colleagues, some of whom believe that Inquiry is an excuse to get out of teaching or to gain favor with the administration (Smylie and Brownlee-Conyers, 1992). Nevertheless, if any school desires to build a culture of change beyond a selfselective group of individuals, then we must take Sam’s “invitation” as a model. In order to democratize school reform, teachers must share the decision-making process with the existing administration and be mindful of the power struggles between them (Lieberman, 1988; Zeichner, 1991). This process takes time and labor in order to remove initial misimpressions. But if an ethos of collectivism is going to spread in the school culture, then teacher participation must be self-imposed, not coercive (Hargreaves, 1994). To this end, Inquiry’s voluntaristic format is helpful and Yolanda, for example, applauds the sense of freedom it brings. As Yule reminds the group: Yule: My goal would be to increase our numbers, not necessarily the size of this group, but to get more teachers involved with the activities of what we’re doing with Inquiry. I would hope to get 80% of our staff in time, with Annenberg funds, searching out and going through the same stages, coming to get to their own feelings, their own values, presenting their own strategies and how that plays out in the work they do. Until we get more people looking, then we’re still the minority and not the critical mass. Once I get the critical mass starting to examine what’s going on, then we’ll be ready to really set the issues differently.

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Yolanda: It was really interesting to see some of those same people who I remember a year before going, “Yah yah yah,” now saying, “I’d like to be a part of that. Wow!” Which is really neat to see it come about. I think a big reason is that it’s [Inquiry] frustrating and it’s not just sitting around talking about how good you are. It’s looking at how you’re not doing everything you might hope, you’re doing it the way you had hoped, or it’s not effecting things the way that you dreamed. That’s hard to do. Look in that mirror and see. Yule: I think it takes some people longer to be willing to look in the mirror than other people. You are the pioneers, in the sense that you are willing to look in the mirror. Not everybody has that confidence. I think more people are looking at you saying you don’t look any different after looking in the mirror. (laughter interrupts him) So the number is growing. One of the issues we’ll deal with is do we take some of the leadership from this group and start moving out? Do we stay together and continue on and let the others grapple with where we started from? (laughter)

Critical reform does not necessarily realize its success through mainstream participation. Critical reform is a politicized discourse before it prioritizes school-wide participation. The fact that Inquiry is widely accepted does not suggest that it is critical. To make wide acceptance the goal is like voting for David Duke as a presidential candidate because he is popular in your hometown. However, it is also a false sense of criticalness when a reform cannot become more popularized. This is essentially what Yule and Yolanda take up. As a group of teacher-leaders, Inquiry participants represent the minority. There have been additions to Inquiry, as Yolanda testifies. In fact, during the study’s second year, two other groups of teachers form Inquiry meeting times, one on weekdays the other on Saturdays, the latter group wishing to avoid missing their classroom time. But Inquiry-committed teachers did not represent the “critical mass” in the school as of yet. Making definite headway, the original Inquiry group of nine teachers has had some success in broadening the teacher interest in Inquiry. Inquiry as reform will influence school policy proportional to the broadness of its support. The group’s hegemonic leadership has, in a relative sense, been able morally to persuade their colleagues that Inquiry-as-reflectiveapparatus represents a key ingredient to reforming the culture of “staleness” (Ellen) pervasive in schools, and at Monroe in particular. In and of itself, participation in reform is never sufficient. That bodies are present in the room does not suggest the presence of a collectivity. It is, however, a start. Collectivity insists on an active participation, or a mode of not just being a participant but becoming active. Collegial collectivity is a necessary form of camaraderie, whereas critical collectivity challenges structures of domination. This is essentially what differentiates participation (a mode of being) from political participation (a mode of becoming).


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Political participation wrestles with the essence of things, such as racism, exploitation, and patriarchy. Here is a fruitful discussion: Patrick: There’s another strategy here about change. Now we want to create a critical mass ourselves that’s counter to the existing culture. Therefore, you don’t have to argue somebody in, they get attracted to it. So it seems to me it’s the same thing, if I keep focusing on myself with other colleagues who are also focusing on themselves and we keep finding the commonality. That in itself creates this critical mass and what little I remember of science, mass is about tightness; it’s not about how many. It’s about how tightly [molecules are] connected. That mass ends up drawing people to it, and that’s what we’re trying to do, is can we create some shared counter-notions. Yule: Do you think by our example other people will be interested in doing Inquiry next year? Yolanda: Yes, absolutely. Yule: Then we’ve already served the main purpose because what we’re doing has piqued some interest where other people are saying, “Well, maybe there’s something to it.” That is a big baby step. Patrick: We have to say, “Yes, we want people. The purpose here is to do this, not just to belong, not to be left out.” Or the other, we hate being alone so we say, “Well, let’s bring more people in.” People may come in with a different purpose. It seems to me we want people who join and say, “I’m here to work on myself, really change with you.”

Critical reform discourse aggregates its subjects’ collective desires for emancipation. The “tighter” a group’s collective desires are, the more indubitable their “courage to change” (Heckman, 1996) becomes. The more Inquiry exposes the contradictions of social life, the more likely its revolutionary momentum will become a reality. Patrick’s tone is prophetic. In effect, he haunts: “Build a counter-hegemonic discourse and they will come.” As Ricoeur suggests, to belong is a human need. Belonging to an increasingly liberated society is a human goal. But liberation requires ideological work and undoing previous structures of domination. It means that reform supporters must actively participate in critical dialogue and avoid becoming spectators of it. Or as Yule describes it: I’d be interested in what’s working and the critiques. One of the things I noticed is how comfortable we are. I think that’s polite and appropriate. But I don’t think it’s so bad if we have disagreements and say, “I’m not so sure. What about this, what about that?” so our Inquiry becomes a greater depth. It becomes more challenging to us to really come to conclusions about our beliefs and where we stand and what we think works with the type of school we have.

Teachers working together for change become more comfortable with each other through frequent exposure with one another’s beliefs and

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value systems. However, Yule suggests that participants should confront feelings of discomfort rather than avoid them for the sake of polity or propriety. These are the “hot damns!” of which Patrick speaks. In order for teachers to realize their collectivity, they must come to terms with each other’s blind spots, those reified beliefs onto which they hold dearly. Collective reflection exposes blind spots in ways that individual reflection cannot. Blind spots represent our relative comfort with relations of domination. Last, as leaders, teachers have to be willing to make difficult decisions and risk the consequences. For example, there is no change without leadership. As Leslie puts it, “You have to agree that you agree on certain things. You almost have two things going. You have the needs of the kids, but you also need to have a group that’s going to agree upon the needs of the kids.” Teachers-as-leaders are in the position to influence the direction of children’s lives. This current state of affairs pressures teacher collectivities to take responsibility for their actions. Critical reflection gives way to action. In addition to building coalitions with parents and other teachers, Inquiry participants promote a third alliance, mainly with students. Understanding the importance of creating a citizenship that welcomes students as full members of their school community, the group reflects on the role children play in their own education. A question is breached: How much of a role should children play in deciding their educational direction? Here is an entry discussion: Elexis: Why is it teachers always deciding what the needs of the kids are? Going back to a comment you made earlier, Leslie, about the kids who know that they need help . . . if they were part of our conversation more than they are, instead of these kind of lofty, abstract goals, I think that we might be able to start chipping away rather than us making assumptions about what kids need. Larry: Well, my gut sense is that I don’t want to tell my doctor what’s wrong with me. Leslie: Sometimes you know better than the doctor. Larry: I understand that, but then I changed doctors. (laughter around the room) Yule: How do we know how we come across to the kids if we don’t ask them? We don’t do that in terms of asking kids how they feel about what we’re trying to do. Ellen: We don’t care how they feel about what they’re trying to do. Larry: That’s right. Esther: I agree with Ellen. Larry: You know, we mumble around and we worry about the kids’ feelings and all of that kind of stuff. I think that maybe there’s just too much emphasis on it. Elexis: On what? On how kids feel? Ellen: They’ll feel a lot better if they can do the work.


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Larry: You’ve got some kids, you give them a choice between playing basketball and learning to read and I don’t think we’re gonna have a lot of success. Yule: I’m not sure. Elexis: We’d have to test that out. Larry: Well, my intuition tells me that, in many cases, certainly the cases that we’re trying to teach to learn to read, if they really believed that instead of learning to read they could play basketball all day, I think they’d be playing basketball all day. Elexis: If you thought of another question besides making the analogy of the basketball and reading. If you just ask kids, “Given a choice would you rather be successful in school or not be successful?” what would their answer be?

From this productive discussion, it is clear that the group does not have a uniform position on student involvement with school affairs. Leslie and Elexis appear to advocate for increased student input, whereas Larry, Ellen, and Esther seem to suggest the opposite. However, it would be a mistake to analyze this interaction as evidence of the latter three’s anti-student position. Rather, we have a cautious discourse represented here. The medical analogy implies that teachers have authority and should not be afraid to use it. An overconcern with students’ “feelings,” whose adolescent desires change with the direction of the wind, subverts teachers’ authority, maturity, and training. Given the choice between school work or play, most students would likely choose to play. As Elexis and Leslie point out (as well as Patrick), students have interests and prior knowledge, especially about information and activities that excite them. This does not mean that basketball has inherent value over school work. However, it points to the relative freedom children feel during play as opposed to the alienation they experience in school. Thus, the choice is not between basketball or school work, but rather between alienated and unalienated work. As it currently exists, school work is alienating because students exercise very little control over their intellectual labor. Transforming school work requires a fundamental shift in how students presently participate in its production. Although there are many forms of student and teacher experiences in school, the kinds of work they perform dominate their discourses: classwork, homework, staff work, and committee work. Put more forcefully: Patrick: If it looks like that, walks like that, talks like that, it still might be school work. If it doesn’t, then we can say that’s not school work. What are our lessons from going out on the edge? Larry: Now some of the structures kind of preclude it and at the same time we need to think of a new vision of the school as more of a smorgasbord because there are some youngsters who get a lot from what is traditionally been labeled as school. Maybe we need to start including the table of offerings.

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Patrick: The kids who appear not to be making it, it’s just that they’re not buying into the bullshit. Other kids buy into the bullshit, but it doesn’t mean you’re engaging them in learning.

From the student’s perspective school work is teacher-driven, alienated work. What Patrick calls “upside-down work” inverts the relationship of production between teachers and students. At the very least, teachers can offer students a “smorgasbord” of choices, rather than limiting student choices. For, as Patrick makes clear, many children sense the “bullshit,” the lie that hard work produces success. That children earn high grades does not suggest they are learning worthwhile information. In many cases, these students have learned the hidden curriculum of compliance. Conversely, that students earn low grades does not imply they have not learned anything worthwhile. Sometimes, low-attaining students develop a language of critique that not only penetrates the essence of things, but also resists domination (Fine, 1991; MacLeod, 1987; McLaren, 1993b; Willis, 1977). Sharing school decisions between teachers and students does not mean that teachers give up their expertise, as if a doctor who asks her patient’s input does not possess the rational powers to assess the value of such input. Building a coalition with students requires a sense of community that includes everyone impacted by that community’s decisions. This is the essence of a democratic society. As a process, it is “inefficient” but efficacious nonetheless. Patrick says it this way: Remember, my issue is not that kids oughta just do their own thing. It’s how in a community, of which I am a member, I, Patrick, who is fifty-plus and a member of this community, have as much right to say what I want and I’m interested in. But so do they [students]. I’m of the mind that many children don’t pass up good things. I’m of the mind I don’t pass up good things. I’m also of the mind that sometimes I screw up. Part of this is believable, that I don’t know always but sometimes I have some good ideas. Children don’t know always but sometimes they have good ideas. We negotiate that because that’s part of living and being together in a democratic society.

Patrick does not advocate anarchy. Giving more power to students does not equate with democracy run amuck. However, empowering students as subjects of education, rather than objects of it, signifies a preliminary condition of critical reform. To Patrick, this move necessitates a shift in one’s attitude toward children as “empty spaces” to “gems,” each with its own “sparkle.” Valuing students does not militate against evaluating their work. Upon critical reflection, teachers must still judge the quality of student production. Take this insightful exchange among Yolanda, Leslie, Sam, and Amanda:


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Yolanda: We’re doing a lot for these kids. What are the kids going to do for themselves? So on the one hand, yes we need to change our perspective and honor kids for what they do. But if a child isn’t doing it, and the work you think is compelling—the work is something that they’re involved in because they’ve got choices and they’ve got various things that you’ve put in—yet it’s still not compelling enough, then what do you do? Can we say there are times when students will just choose not to work? I don’t know. I don’t want to make it sound too pessimistic, but I asked a child the other day, “You haven’t turned in any work. Is the work too hard? Do you find the work boring? What can I do? Can you think of some way?” “I’m just not going to do anything, Ms. Farrel. I’m just not going to do it.” “Why not?” “Because it’s not important to me.” “Your grade’s not important or school’s not important?” “Both.” I was like, well what can I do? Sam: I have run into this situation lately. I think we have to realize that sometimes, with some kids, they’ve got so much going on at home that this may be an escape from the problems they have at home. They don’t necessarily want to do the work because they can’t focus on it. They’ve got so much going on that even if you sit down with them, you put it in front of them, you map it out, as far as how to get to point A, to point B, and try to show them the way, the minute that their minds or they’re physically out of school and back at home, it all ends because they’ve go so much luggage that they’re carrying from home to here. Then they go back and it confronts them again. Some of these kids never will do it. Inquiry has helped me in the process of how I see myself as a teacher and how I see what I’m doing with my students. There comes a time when we will revisit a lot of the things because if you look at the schools, our schools are a microcosm of society. How many times has society revisited problems over and over again? We do the same thing in here. If we come in here thinking, “All right, we’re gonna get to it and finish it,” we’ll get frustrated because, as Yule said, it won’t be a quick fix. Things are happening, things are changing, we need to find out. I agree that we need to change the system rather than have to fit these students into the system that we have, because it hasn’t worked. It didn’t work when I was a student and teachers tried to fit me into the system. And it won’t work today. Amanda: I think the students are respected even if they’re failing, if they don’t make that effort or try, and they choose not to. They have to understand that they didn’t put the effort in at all, and for whatever reason it is at home, or for whatever reason they’re not doing it, or they choose not to, is still a fail. But at the same time you value them. Last year we had a girl in our core who did nothing. She got straight F’s. She did absolutely nothing in class. She behaved very well, but she never did anything. She came on our trip. Her brother was then executed execution style and the family was getting death threats. They had to leave town, went to another state, and they came back. This girl is now in my

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drama class. She brings her Shakespeare book and sits with it, following the lines and wanting to stick meanings between the modern English and the Shakespearean English. If I had dismissed her last year and said, “Well, this girl is not doing any work, she obviously doesn’t care,” [then she would have no chance]. She came on every trip we had and she was taking everything in. She‘s a perfect example of a kid who has problems at home and this year, somehow, she’s been able to overcome some things. But others may not overcome it for five years. Whatever we’re doing with them, I think it stays there in the computer brain of ours and at some time in the future, if it kicks in, great! If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But I think it can.

Yolanda’s problematization is a recurring theme in Inquiry. How do teachers work with students who avoid doing work? When teachers shoulder the responsibility for student productivity, they become overwhelmed and feelings of guilt creep into their discourse. Sam’s redirection of Yolanda’s concern reminds teacher-reformers that schooling explains only a portion of student lives and their dispositions toward work. Students do not enter the classroom as emotional tabula rasa. Amanda’s story points out that sometimes class work is the last thing on students’ minds. Despite this, a teacher can dole out low grades to students who opt out of work and still value them as subjects. Having a sense of compassion for a student’s social and personal challenges is the difference between constructing a low-achieving child as cognitively deficient as opposed to one who faces debilitating conditions. The discussion continues like this: Yolanda: I think to myself, “Do I really know what’s going on at home? How do I know? Does the child tell me?” Children who are having severe problems at home do not always tell you. So we’re making this leap that we’re looking at a student and we’re saying they’re having problems at home. On the other hand, when you give students an out and say, “Well, they’re having all these troubles and difficulties,” and lower your expectations, in a sense condemning them to always having a lower sight because you’re saying, “Well, you have this bad life. You can’t reach any higher than this level.” It ties into the motivation, that when students believe that you expect a high level of achievement from them, they often rise to that level of expectation. But I know that if I told students, “Ah, this assignment’s not that big a deal, whatever. I’ll get whatever.” So I say, “This is really, really important. I expect you to turn in your best polished work. I’m going to be really looking at every single detail. This work is my favorite thing of the whole year, I expect greatness.” I get a much higher level. Now, what the motivation is exactly, I don’t know. What I worry about is, if I clearly communicate to the student, “I understand that you’re having a problem at home. I understand that there are things going on. So this is what’s OK. Or, this is my level of understanding.” How does that influence what they’re doing? Leslie: You can’t use the information about what’s happening at home to excuse anything. Yolanda: Angry.


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Leslie: Angry, or refusing to do something at the moment. But it’s not to be used and I feel that way about color. All I can think of is, we could get past the color. Color is a distraction. But I can’t get past it so you use information. The more information you have, you can make a better assessment of how to approach the situation and not to excuse it. There have been times when students are so upset I’ve kicked them out: “Take laps, do what you need to do, and then regroup. Then when you’re ready to learn, come back in.” I don’t think it’s our job to lower the standards. So sometimes children are very sensitive to you knowing what’s going on, so that’s why we have to be careful when we say to them, “I understand maybe this isn’t a good time” and talk to them. “How can I help you? How can I help you to be successful at this moment?” Personally, some days you need a little time. They’re people and they’re trying to deal the same way we’re trying to cope as adults. They’re trying to deal. Sometimes the kids are banging on the door. Some kids need to get off the playground. Some kids need refuge. Some kids need a place to talk and discuss. Sometimes, these kids are dealing with things even we as adults, we wouldn’t want to touch. Amanda: If we give them an F, we can still love them and understand them, know how to approach them, and still bring them up. They have to understand both what you did isn’t passing math, but you can next time. I agree with Leslie that we can’t excuse them for things, but we can understand them, we can help them with the information.

Building a collective with students means that teachers must have the space to understand more completely their students’ lives. It would be ludicrous to suggest that teachers should grade students by assuming the conditions of their home life. Gathering more information about students’ lives, as Leslie suggests, does not equate with lowering expectations for students who exist in particularly oppressive conditions. It means that until oppressed students receive compassion, if not assistance, with their material lives, school work will always suffer. It means that expectations and standards are stripped of their supposed neutrality. This discussion is particularly germane to the topic of affirmative action. As a form of historical compensation for past and ongoing discrimination as well as recognition of the deep contradictions in official school knowledge, affirmative action does not lower expectations for success. Affirmative action proponents desire students of color, economically disadvantaged students, and women to succeed at their highest rates. However, it recognizes the barriers to success that relations of domination erect for certain groups of people. To this end, students and teachers must build a communication pathway with one another. Regardless of the good intentions teachers engender in constructing a discourse that inspires students, some students’ material lives remain in horrid conditions. Or as Patrick said earlier, “You’re going to love your intellectual life but it’s going to be a shitty economic life.” Now this does not imply that teachers should rush out and volunteer extra time to alleviate local problems (as

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helpful as this might be). It strongly suggests that schooling for the sake of earning better grades should not surpass education for material empowerment. An education that neglects students’ material conditions is the ideological maintenance of a pedagogy of the oppressed. The construction of collectivist politics recognizes that any change designed to alter relations of power is a massive undertaking that requires a “critical mass” of pro-reform teachers. However, change does not wait for systemic articulation. The gravity of current forms of inequities insists that teachers, as individuals, challenge domination while still working toward a collective goal. And because oppression takes a slightly, and sometimes radically, different shape in the contexts where teachers find themselves, a prescriptive end may not be the best strategy for school renewal. Thus, a coalition also requires individual acts of transformation and resistance from teachers. Elexis: I’m not even sure that we all need to be going to the same end. Patrick: We have much in common as human beings, but we have many differences. What we look to is the commonness that holds us together as human beings, educators, women, men, or whatever it is that we’re trying to focus on. It seems to me, the problem with schooling is that it has been pretty much the same in very precise ways. I always worry about not that we’re gonna have this splitting apart and diversity, [but] given the history of school change, I worry that it’s gonna continue to stay the same. Yes, we want to promote diversity and then seek commonality. See, it sounds paradoxical, but it seems to me that’s what we have to do. There are common things but very different ways of going about it. How do we use this opportunity to keep pushing each other to be different, but also the same? So how does that look like we’re connected? That’s one point. The other that I would urge is this notion that—Goodlad said this a long time ago—we ought to have common ends and uncommon means. Unfortunately, in school we have common means and uncommon ends. That is, many students don’t finish school, some do. Many students learn some things and many students don’t. You look at school it’s run pretty much the same. I hope we can turn that upside-down. Larry: I was thinking of that quote because that’s exactly it. We agreed to certain kinds of outcomes. Like in math, we have this big, huge unending list that we don’t necessarily get to in any way, shape, or form. The reality has been that we don’t necessarily have youngsters that can perform anywhere near each other on even some of the agreed-upon outcomes. Patrick: The only way I think we can have common ends, which a lot of people are going to fit under the tent, given the human diversity, is they have to be broad enough so that the commonness is possible. The trick here is that right now if we end up having precise statements, like “We’ll know how to spell this,” that’s so precise that the chances of a lot of people fitting underneath and the chances of that being very powerful are limiting. So it seems to me what we have to do is seek these broader notions that are both powerful enough and broad enough for a lot of people to fit under the tent, if they really are accomplishing the broad


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things. So the notion, if I heard you right, is to use one’s mind well. I don’t know what that would absolutely mean, but that seems pretty compelling. Now, my hunch is there are a whole lot of different ways to use one’s mind well.

Looking oppression in the different faces that it assumes does not equate with a politics of fragmentation. There are patterns of domination that I have grouped under the interlocking oppression of capitalism, racism, and patriarchy (Weiler, 1988). This triadic relationship represents systemic problems for teachers. But waiting for an entire staff to agree on a policy of tactics to address them solidifies their strength. Collectivism does not dismantle individual agency or discretion; it holds agency to a higher, intersubjective standard. In the two years I observed Inquiry transpire, it has rarely been an end in itself for the participants. During interviews, they expressed the uses of Inquiry for their professional needs. As a dialogical, reflective reform, Inquiry allows the core participants space to complement and challenge each other. Larry’s sentiments sum up Inquiry’s usefulness: Let’s face it, other than our core or department meetings, this is the only other place where folks share the informal versus formal kind of things. We cut through a lot and maybe it has to do with the trust we’ve felt within the group over a period of time. Just speaking for myself, I feel very comfortable in this group or talking to any of you outside the group at a different level than either members of my department or core.

Inquiry provides the communicative format necessary for reform that emphasizes negotiation and the ongoing process of collective renewal. But on separate and several occasions, the members make one thing clear: Absent individual or collective action, Inquiry becomes little more than appeasement. During a session where Ellen is absent, Larry relays her comments to the group and then expands with his own thoughts: [Ellen said,] “It seems to me we just go around and tumble around like a dryer,” and I was a little surprised that she thought it was that way. I think I’ve heard Ellen maintain—and I just wish she was here because it’s hard to speak for her—a feeling that there would be a little more action to what would come out of these Inquiry groups. Every time we hit an issue that sounds like it’s systemic, or within the culture of this school, we back off. It’s like a wall. We hit it, we bounce back off, and we go back to our individual practices and our individual classrooms. It’s almost like we’re playing billiards with a lot of walls around us, and every time we hit the report cards and say, “Oh, yah, there’s some terrible things about that,” we back off of it. I think that maybe what Ellen has indicated is we need to deal with a few of these. Maybe we need to look at changing the report card. Everybody sits here and says how terrible it is and how frustrating it is to deal with it. Why don’t we deal with the report cards? Spend some time, make a recommendation, as opposed to just backing off.

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One senses Ellen and Larry’s concerns with the lack of action resulting from Inquiry. Inquiry as a clothes “dryer,” a “billiard” game, or a “wall” that returns ideas thrown at it, sums up the tension the participants sense between ideas and their aim. Like clothes tossing in a dryer, issues seem to recycle in Inquiry without resolution. Inquiry ideas bounce off one another while leaving “the game” of schooling unmodified. Participants dismantle the educational fences that obviate the realization of their ideals, only to run into a wall. The tension sets up a paradox. Inquiry empowers the participants to change, but the obstacles to action quickly overpower their new-found agency. Although not all participants share Larry and Ellen’s sense of stagnation in Inquiry, they still consider action to be the desired result of Inquiry dialogue. Some members, like Elexis, Amanda, and Leslie, see no prescribed end and emphasize the ongoingness of the change process: “I don’t think there’s ever closure, quite frankly. For me, that’s not a word that I can even see, because it’s constantly changing” (Amanda). Yet in differing degrees, they concur with Larry and Ellen’s desire to act, to realize what Leslie calls the “bottom line,” or action toward change. INQUIRY AND THE DISCOURSE OF ACTION This brings up the third and final positive ideology found in Inquiry: a proactive position on school reform. In the two years I observed Inquiry, no institutional policy resulted from the group’s discussions. This does not negate the importance of Inquiry’s ideological work, which, as I have maintained throughout this book, is its strongest offering as a reform effort. Actions that lack deep struggles with ideology often become a form of technical rationality and advocate what Yule calls “quick fix.” Despite the fact that only a few group actions have been realized through Inquiry, there has been a consistent proactive stance toward reform. This is significant to the extent that a discourse of action precedes action itself. Collective actions do not just emerge magically from wishful thinking. Critical dialogue always precedes them. Thus, Inquiry dialogue represents a prerequisite to substantive action. In particular, the members’ proactive stance already goes against the grain of much of the apathy in U.S. schools. Also, wanting to act does not mean that one controls the means to action or the resources necessary to initiate it. Without control of the means of production, administration, and communication, teachers may find their actions frustrated and thwarted. Although dialogue itself is not action, a proactive dialogue is conducive to future actions. Moreover, dialogue that produces increased communication between participants furthers their collective solidarity with one another. As Yolanda observes, “The conversation here spurs conversations elsewhere.” Leslie agrees:


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By us bonding here or just bonding in the discussion, I think that we really opened up and delved into some issues. I personally feel I’ve benefited from the discussions and looking at things more through the eyes of the student. Listening to different approaches here and hearing ideas, and how other people feel about another process, has broadened my scope.

Educators cannot underestimate the role of dialogue as the platform for solidarity, or the eventual aim of “bonding” between teachers. To combat the isolation that teachers feel in their daily workdays, Inquiry broadens their perspectives for possible avenues to change. Inquiry dialogues are not only proactive, they are sometimes utopic. At times, the participants’ statements are imbued with a visionary discourse of transformation. Rejecting the discourse of complicity, Inquirers construct a language of possibility (Giroux, 1988). Articulating what McLaren (1991a) calls an “arch of social dreaming and a doorway to hope,” the participants recognize that fundamental reform requires a language of courage and vision. Forging a new materiality suggests that in addition to critiquing the existing reality, they must also imagine an alternative mode of being that is neither simply sentimental nor conveniently concrete. In short, the participants use discourse to construct a hopeful other to the current state of affairs. Take this poetic moment as an example: Patrick: We have to create a whole other, moving forward and creating a new sun. Larry: Maybe this needs to be our public posture on this whole issue. The public assumption is that when we talk about the two schools phenomenon in Washington High, the assumption is that there is one well-prepared school and one less-fortunate place. Patrick: Right, which is also a fair comparison, but it’s not the route to the solution. It is a way to identify a problem, but it doesn’t suggest what the alternative is. That’s what we’re trying. Larry: The public perception is that we need to be more like that. Patrick: Right. But, I think your comment, which I think we ought to really think about down the road, is it’s not making one become the other. Elexis: Right. Patrick: It’s re-creating a new something.

In order fundamentally to disturb asymmetrical relations of power, reformers cannot merely invert the poles, with power realigned with the oppressed. This tactic may initially be necessary for short-term projects, but in the long run, merely inverting power relations does not alter the ontology of power. The indexicality of power, or its ability to recuperate its own inversion, inevitably cannibalizes any attempt to reform relations within its logic. Instead, following Gaston Bachelard, educators must institute an epistemological break (Althusser, 1969, 1971). It seeks new

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questions, not new answers to old questions, which recuperate our attempts to circumvent them. As Patrick declares, “It’s creating a new something . . . a new sun.” At Monroe, this suggests changing the meaning of school success, not the process of “making the unsuccessful more like the successful.” As a historical disjuncture, the epistemological break alters the knowable rather than inverting it. Patrick goes on: The reality is the curriculum is not just the stuff, it’s how do we rethink our work and the work of students so that polishing can happen. It seems to me it’s in a group like this that we have the potential to start figuring that out. I think you’re right, Ellen. This isn’t just quixing the curriculum; this is fundamentally altering it. Our work, students’ work, our notion of what important knowledge is, who knows, who doesn’t know, what do we mean by “know” (his emphasis)? In order to do that we have to be able to see each one [student] as a gem. Also, in order to see them as gems we have to see ourselves in the work in very different ways. Because if it’s about getting them to read To Kill A Mockingbird, it’s not likely. If it’s getting students to read significant things and make significant meaning, I think it’s real likely. If it’s how do I encourage that?—that’s real different than how do I teach it or tell it.

Transformative reform discourse rejects a performative of “quixing” the curriculum, which is a technicist way of ameliorating deep ideological cleavages between the owners of educational production and workers. “Rethinking” the curriculum requires interested participants to reinterpret their orientation toward knowledge from a manipulable and highly specialized commodity to a constitution of reality and power. In other words, educators must mock the bird of tradition and replace it with ethically justifiable discourses. This is a discourse of difference that makes a difference. Difference for difference’s sake recycles old forms, inverts them, and represents them without altering their essence. Transformation without an alternative vision is significant but quickly becomes a source of frustration for most educators. A utopia, which technically signifies “nowhere,” must become concrete in order to engage progressive teachers. To this end, Patrick has been consistent. Locating the problem of inequality between students and teachers with respect to the production of school work, Patrick locates utopia in the act of turning work on its head to favor children’s prior knowledge and interests. Patrick: My most bold way to say it is, let’s stop doing school work and then say, “Can we play around with another kind of work that turns it upside-down?” My hunch is that’s going to be the only way that we’re going to get out of this set of dilemmas. I don’t think we can get out of the dilemma by simply improving those things. Yet I know the consequences of even saying that: Either I’ve been smoking and inhaling pot, or I’m really not here.


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Yolanda: See, when I hear “work turned upside-down,” I have no concept. Patrick: I don’t think we know what upsetting will look like because most of the time what occurs in school is school. So one possibility, one way to know if it’s not school work and getting the upside-down, is to look at the work and say, “What are the characteristics that are not like school work?” Because we do know what school work is. So one of the questions is, let’s suppose we articulated what are the conditions of school work, and then say, “Could we find opposite conditions?” I want to be fair here, so nail me right away, as you usually do. One is, school work is usually created by the teacher, proposed and urged onto the student. Now, an upside-down thing, the work now is created by students. The work is proposed by students and enacted by them. The other is, it’s usually about something that the student doesn’t know much about, that we believe if they come to know what they don’t know about it, they will be smarter. Yolanda: Or better off. Patrick: Now suppose instead they spent most of their time out in a real world, with real things, studying and interacting. I don’t know that the ones I just proposed are really the ones, but I know that when I can say if those are in fact the conditions of school work, the upside-down part has to be very different from these existing conditions. Normally the evaluation of student work is done by someone else other than the student, with the student agreeing or acquiescing to the evaluation, rather than placing value on what they did. It’s usually done not where they co-created the criteria. They don’t really help in creating it. We have them already in mind and we convey it.

Reminiscent of Dewey’s emphasis on experiential learning, Patrick encourages a pedagogy centered on activity and environmental manipulation. He imagines students dealing with their immediate environment as opposed to learning facts dissociated from it. Simply “improving” school work does not break out of the aporia. Educators accomplishing their jobs more efficiently do not address the asymmetrical control that adults exercise over student work. This is what school work currently “looks like.” Change is less a matter of producing better products, more a matter of students and teachers doing their work differently. Although Patrick’s critique seems to separate local school process from global capitalism, racism, and patriarchy, it points to the important concept of work, or human activity. Students who exercise more control over their work may find it more fulfilling and fecund, for it produces a favorable disposition toward school work (Anyon, 1980). Before progressive teachers can approach educational transformation, they must cultivate a discourse of experimentation. Because utopic ideas lack concrete models, they often require teachers to make their path as they walk. This is no small task. A step forward is a step into the unknown, but not the unknowable. Uncertainties are sometimes enough to discourage even the strong-headed. However, forging “a new sun” means that a

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community of teachers, even with ample support, must make the personal decision to explore new ways of thinking. In pursuit of a radical pedagogy, teachers teach against the grain of current forms of domination. Ideologically, they imagine a community composed of concrete individuals. Patrick: It seems to me what Columbus . . . although that’s probably not a good one to talk about as we talk about race and class. When explorers went across the ocean in those early days, they came to the edge, what seemed to be the edge of the world because it looked like a flat world out there. One could have stopped before you got to the edge. It seemed when you got out there you were going to fall right down. Except what explorers found when they went further out, I think, what my idealistic uninformed view is, that the world was really round. A lot of these issues that are deep-seated look like we’re on a flat earth and we’re about to fall off. If we could give ourselves the courage and the urge to go forward, we’ll find that there is another place to step, albeit we can’t see it and we don’t know what it’s like. That is the problem I have with this notion of “Well, if you could only show it to me then I could do it.” I haven’t heard you say it. You’re not going to see that round part until we get closer to the edge. Larry: There’s just some artificial constraints on us. So there are not forty-two thousand variations on it. But no: “Unless I can see exactly what it looks like, I don’t want to consider it.”

Patrick uses the logic of discovery to explain the mode of thinking he encourages teachers to take up. The dialectics of discovery perpetrates violence on the other as much as it charts a new terrain of knowledge (McLaren and Leonardo, 1997). Patrick is quick to note this problem when he invokes the specter of Columbus. The obliteration of groups of people, exploitation of resources, and enslavement of many who survive genocide resulting from “discovery” are well-documented (e.g., see Jordan, 1968; Zinn, 2003). But exploration and the ideological inscription of its processes represent two different political projects. Perpetrating violence on the other is not a precondition for exploring alternative ways of being. In order to expose the limits to our understanding, we look to other social formations for insight. Obliterating and enslaving members of those social formations for economic gain represents corrupt ideologies traceable to capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. Patrick’s discourse obviously does not advocate this state of affairs. Instead, he urges teachers to think at the limits of the known by pushing their own capacity to explore the New. At the edge of most people’s fears lie new possibilities. To access those utopic spaces, teachers must be willing to “fall”—and by falling, rise like the phoenix. Transformative thinking is a risk because new forms of understanding come from a willingness to gamble, or what Giroux (1995a) calls “going for broke.” Teacher discovery is also the act of accepting one’s incompleteness. As incomplete subjects, teachers become more whole through intersubjective


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communication with others, such as students. The path to self-discovery is the admission that we are fragmented through our alienation from the other. The sense of separation between teachers and students directly results from their unequal relations to the production of educational labor. By sharing the production of school work more equally, students and teachers co-discover and co-construct relevant knowledge. Explaining the importance of coordination, Patrick introduces the concept of “scaffolding”: Patrick: In what some people call expert–novice relationships where people are learning real world activities, some people characterize one aspect of an expert–novice relationship as the scaffolding that the expert provides for the novice. That is, the expert is actually doing the work that the novice is learning about. Rather than the expert teaching the novice, the expert is doing the same job that the novice is. In talking about it and engaging in it, that provides what some call the scaffolding for the learning of this novice to be a part of this community. How does that contribute to them getting the “ah-hahs” or the insights that we wish they could get? Ellen: Music teachers do it all the time. Patrick: They provide that scaffolding because they play along with the students. Ellen: They demonstrate it, they sing it. Patrick: What would happen if we had real puzzles that we were trying to figure out? Larry: That’s what they are. Patrick: Right. But we don’t know the answer and we have to puzzle through it like they have to puzzle through it. I’m also wondering if one of the pieces is that part of knowing something is not knowing something. This issue that the only way one knows something is to know it, isn’t absolutely true. We all struggle through, think through stuff. In a sense, this scaffolding is saying, “Look, part of this is saying I don’t understand that. I’m puzzled by that. I’m thinking this. What do you think of that?” There isn’t this, “Oh, yes!” Amanda: That happens even within English class. We were talking about the red ribbon contest and we’re brainstorming about kinds of things we would write. Here and there they come up with a question and I say, “You know, I honestly don’t know the answer to that. I think that would be a really good question to ask your science teacher.” That’s something that I don’t know. Patrick: It would also be interesting to ask what they think they’ve learned, which would be different than how well they did. Amanda: Right. Patrick: What did you learn? What were your insights? What kind of ideas did you have that you haven’t had before?

The fact that students are “novice” learners does not suggest that they have no expertise. It is quite obvious that children possess many kinds of expert knowledge about popular culture and the media. But in light of

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how schools currently construct knowledge, it does not include quotidian ways of knowing (Giroux, 1992; Giroux and Simon, 1989, 1994; McLaren and Leonardo, 1998b). Schools encourage students to escape their everyday lives rather than assisting them with strategies to deal with the “mundane.” Yet constructing a critical pedagogy for everyday life is even more urgent when we consider that the apparently nonideological (i.e., trivial) social practices are the breeding ground for ideological processes; they feel “natural” and “autonomous.” The concept of scaffolding points out another issue. It exposes the present unidirectionality of learning that can be represented by the equation: Teacher ⫹ Knowledge = Student learning. Scaffolding does not negate teacher expertise, as if advocating co-construction of learning exposes teachers as fallible pedagogues. Teachers maintain their expertise and add to it by embracing a more open exchange of knowledge with their students. A reform that spurs teachers to co-discover knowledge with their students is productive to the extent that it opens a doorway to experimentation. New understandings are the fount of such an exchange. Offering my own insights into the matter, I enter the conversation like this: Zeus: Seems like scaffolding, a very good idea it is, would necessitate some curriculum changes that really promote uncertainty. Actually it reminds me of a book I was just reading by Diane Brunner and she tries to encourage teachers and curriculum reformers to promote uncertainty. Her example is in English or Humanities, but I’m sure it could spread to other disciplines. She encourages teachers to teach books they haven’t read, so that the process of discovery, which is very related to scaffolding, can take place. You don’t know the end of the book. As you teach chapter 1, you’re discovering the issues and themes with the students. You can’t prepackage this because you don’t know the end of the story. It seems like that’s very much at odds with the way curricula are these days—which is, teachers teach what they know from books they’ve read. Yolanda: I was going to say it’s also a practicality. Zeus: Yah. Yolanda: How do you get a new set of books for every class, which you’ve never read? Zeus: Yah. That was my issue with the paradigm that she’s proposing. How can we take some of the lessons she’s asking us to learn—which is, be more comfortable with uncertainty and discovering with children what the lessons are— but at the same time not make it anarchic? There has to be some planning in a curriculum and a teacher can’t just blindly go into a class choosing books. Uncertainty can reach a certain level when it’s anarchic. Where is it that we can form curriculum so that it’s more of a co-discovery among children and students and parents, but yet it’s not anarchic? Leslie: What I mentioned at the beginning of the year, instead of starting with the fall of Rome, I even said that I’m not really sure where I’m going from here. Zeus: Was that uncomfortable?


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Leslie: I felt like I could turn my keys in. I’m not going to ask what they learned, though. I’ll let you guys know in November. I may have to take my keys back. I felt like, wow, the kids had covered half the stuff that I was doing the whole year in that one project. So, I’m not really sure. We’re doing geography. I did pick up the books today and I’m curious to see. Oh, it’s very nice. I’ll be curious to see when I talk to them on Monday.

There exists a fine line between co-constructed curricula and anarchy. Even an open curriculum takes planning, and the ideology of co-discovery should not serve as a convenient replacement for a well-developed pedagogical plan. A hybrid curriculum that allows teachers experimental space but maintains a sense of predictability may be a reasonable alternative. Teaching books new to both teachers and students also allows teachers to explore current texts. It helps them keep up with developments in the field. This does not vitiate against creating a more hermeneutical relationship between teachers and students regarding “traditional” texts. A reformed curriculum does not require teachers to put their Shakespeare aside. It necessitates reading his plays with a new eye. If teachers complement textual interpretation with the perspectives of their students’ concrete lives, new understandings of old text are possible. Dismantling altogether teachers’ craft knowledge subverts one of the “keys” to reform: teachers’ experience. Teacher-as-investigator should not be confused with teacher-as-learner. That teachers learn from the act of teaching does not suggest that they relinquish their position as leaders. For example, concerning one of Amanda’s class assignments, the following discussion ensues: Patrick: We were also out investigating these things, not as the teacher, but as an investigator, trying to investigate with them. Amanda: As we’re talking about this, everything we’ve mentioned so far [relates to me], particularly one assignment. I ask students if they watch television and they do. I asked them what they liked to watch, and that’s what I assigned. They have choice but I took it from them. I haven’t seen these yet. I had to sit down and do it, and I’m investigating it as they are. So it’s all new to me. Larry: But you still told them it’s plot. Amanda: OK, it’s plot. Elexis: That’s where I’m at. Amanda: I had to give them, as mediator, some concept of what they’re going to be looking for. Larry: What if they don’t want to study plot? Esther: Or couldn’t you have asked them to come up with what they wanted to look for? Amanda: No, because . . . Esther: I’m playing Patrick.

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Amanda: No. OK, let me say what the plot outline is. It’s very simple. Larry: What if they don’t want to study the plot? Amanda: Well, it’s more than just plot. It’s more than just a plot, the characters, the message . . . Larry: What if they don’t want to study characters and the message? Amanda: Say anything about it because that gives me the ability to talk about it. I know you’re trying to play devil’s advocate. Patrick: And you’re a pain in the ass! (laughter in the room)

Assuming the role of “critical friends,” Esther and Larry problematize Amanda’s inscription of the assignment in question. They critique her for putting a condition around the TV exercise: look for plot. Reforming the relationship between students and teachers to realize a more equitable arrangement does not preclude teachers from exercising some control. Giving more power to students to determine their own directions for learning does not reduce teachers to the status of facilitators, one step removed from the status of spectators. There is a false sense of democracy in a pedagogy of facilitation because it depotentiates teachers, who otherwise could serve the social function of organic intellectuals. On the other hand, experimentation challenges the unidirectionality between students and teachers without disregarding teacher knowledge and authority to determine a certain course for learning. But there is another important issue. As subjects who live with the world, as opposed to merely existing in it, teachers exert influence on their world. They are not tabula rasa. Seen this way, educators cannot circumvent what Patrick calls “mediation.” But as he also suggests, mediation is different from “control.” Amanda mediates student choices with her own suggestion of “plot.” This seems reasonable because a position of “zero degree” does not exist. Amanda recognizes this point when she adds, If you see a movie and you’re frank as an adult, the next day you get to school you discuss it like it’s Siskel and Ebert. You’re going to start talking about it, what you liked, what you didn’t like about it. Perhaps, this is something that you cared about. You’d use certain things in it that took place in the movie, the characterizations, studying the message, in order to get your point across as to why you liked the one you did. Those are the skills I’m teaching them.

Attempting to freeze any teacher decision as evidence that she exerts control over student choices is to suggest that teachers can remain ultimately neutral. And . . . that this is desirable. This is plainly false, if not unhelpful. Amanda cannot suggest any assignment without simultaneously exerting some form of influence over student learning. A school where teachers do not influence student learning is not school at all, but a playground where children pursue their own apparently transparent interests. Children still


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need guidance despite their concrete interests. And because most students are children, their knowledge and interests are formative. This seems obvious enough. But as Maxine Greene said during a workshop at the 1997 American Educational Researchers Association, an uncritical constructivist forgets that as young people, “Children don’t know enough.” They have a lot to learn from teachers and adults. An ideology of experimentation does not equate with teacher obsolescence. Teachers are in a critical position to assist students in a critical engagement of their world. Larry and Esther’s problematization inheres some progressive aspects. They remind educators to be mindful of the criteria they employ when selecting their assignments: “Why plot?” More important, they challenge teachers to justify their criteria for choosing their representations of knowledge. Always encouraging the participants to experiment from the students’ perspective, Patrick asks the group if students have conceptions of their experience that do not fit the conceptions of school. Aaris’s participation signals a critical turn in the discussion. Aaris: I don’t think that we really need to know what the purpose is. It’s important to ask, as you said earlier, why am I assigning this assignment? Why am I giving this assignment anyway? What’s my reason behind it? It’s not so much why she’s doing what she’s doing, why you’re teaching math, why you’re teaching science. It’s more of what we are trying to get is, why do we have students who, no matter what it is that we do, they’re not succeeding? We now have a room full of kids who are not succeeding, who probably have not succeeded in elementary, who are going to go to high school and they’re going to continue not succeeding. This is what we need to really be looking at. Larry: Patrick’s throwing you the step farther. Aaris: But am I still going to be . . . Larry: You’re still making assignments and Patrick is saying, “Why are you making assignments?” Aaris: But my point is . . . Larry: Why aren’t they making assignments? Aaris: Maybe I’m not making this clear. Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about the assignment, what we’re giving for assignments. We’re still not looking at why it is that some students are not succeeding. Is it all the assignments or the opportunity? Patrick: But I’m asking urgently, what is it about the assignments that we again believe are to be attractive to these kids? Yet we know we do these assignments, we create the reward structures around them, we create all the structures around them. Again, none of us is going be surprised if we go to Room 34 and see who’s in there. My hunch is that the same kind of work and the conditions surrounding that work have existed since early on and it will exist all the way through high school. Even if I am not going to show favors to one child over another, the work itself favors one child over another.

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Aaris: Yah, but I think that no matter what the work is, it’s always going to favor some child or another. Is it systematically or traditionally . . . I don’t know what the word is. There’s a significant group of kids that the work, whatever the work is, has affected. Patrick: Right, but the general work we give them is usually school work. Larry: We can’t break out of this mold. You realize how frustrating it is.

Critical scaffolding begs the question of direction. Toward what utopic vision are teachers scaffolding students? It is insufficient to imply that teachers are liberatory pedagogues because they co-discover knowledge with their students, because as I have insisted, knowledge does not speak for itself. Teachers “puzzle” through knowledge with students, but it is also imperative that they critique its construction and production. A discursive analysis exposes the constitution of knowledge concepts through language and the meanings that undergird them. An ideological critique examines the industries of knowledge and how they reproduce the current system of production. Having said that, scaffolding serves as one of the foundations for critique. Boasting a dialogical core, scaffolding builds inroads to communication, a necessary condition for critique. Scaffolding constructs the infrastructure for collectivism between students and teachers. But as Aaris points out, as it is practiced, school work produces unequal results for students. It is true that alienated work favors no one in the sense of liberation. Nevertheless, school work benefits some students who possess and activate the cultural capital conducive to school success. This is essentially Aaris’s contention. Experimenting with school work without substantial attention to other structures that consistently impinge on student success in the form of racism, class power, and gender bias may reproduce the essence of asymmetrical results with a new appearance. A sensitivity to multiple forms of oppression does not refute the importance of seriously considering student interests. It adds an important critique. Schools already favor and empower some students over others. Changing their relationship to work does not erase the existing inequalities among students. A vigilant reform inherits the impossibility of social justice. As much as it frustrates teachers, the social justice agenda that Inquiry participants appear to embrace chips away at the many forms of oppression. Without suggesting that school reform has no aims, the rhizome of social justice has no end point. This is no ludic suggestion because educators possess materialist critiques of student work and the production of labor. These critiques do not, as some ludic postmodern reformers may suggest, relish the undecidability of oppression. Domination takes many shapes but this does not prevent educators from taking decisive steps toward identifying its forms and eliminating them.


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Revolutions do not erupt without people’s gradual disenchantment with regimes of truth. Furthermore, transformative changes result from both successful and failed attempts at change. Creating a new sun is a process of both explosive events (e.g., supernova) and steady, constant changes in elementary elements (e.g., stellar formation and thermonuclear fission). Likewise, fundamental school change begins with experimental actions. As social contradictions become more glaring and opposition gathers more energy, the evolution of teacher consciousness becomes more resistant to the gravity of a social formation determined by capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. Teachers begin to notice the irrationality of an education system based on the commodification of knowledge and reification of differences between the races and genders. For although the politics of difference serves an important reference for revolting against the metanarratives of Western education, exacerbating differences between students and teachers, parents and teachers, and administrators and teachers fragments the solidarity that otherwise challenges relations of domination. Creating a new school requires a substantial amount of contingency. But we should not confuse contingency with tentativeness. Critical reform asks teachers to base the effectiveness of their actions on their contingent results. It does not reinforce their fears in order to paralyze them from acting. Take this exchange between Patrick and Linda: Patrick: What if in these experiments we say, “Let’s get the broadest range of our perceived mix that we could and see what happens during an hour in which we try to do this upside-down work?” Now, I don’t know how we create the template. I would argue we ought not to go hog-wild right now and say, “That’s a great idea, let’s change the schedule upside-down!” I’d rather say, “Let’s create some temporary opportunities, sections on Wednesday, [for example].” Maybe three of us are going to bring our groups together, the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. We bring them together and say, “For the next hour and a half or two hours let’s try this kind of work. Let’s see what happens.” In other words, this is not something that we are going to plan ahead of time. This would not be something that you could plan for. Linda: Oh, great. Patrick: You can plan. You can anticipate, but you can’t plan. Of course, I mean . . . you’re not sweating like I am, there’s something wrong. (laughs) Linda: But I have to plan on Thursday what I’m going to do next week.

As a new teacher, Linda’s perturbations are reasonable. Patrick asks her to take risks at a time when she finds herself acclimating to the school’s pace and rhythm. She also points out a difference other participants have noted. As a university professor, Patrick’s work structure engenders more personal autonomy to create changes than a public school teacher would

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have. There is not a rationalized state or local curriculum by which professors must abide. As Yule puts it: Patrick hasn’t walked on the ground in years. (laughs) Another way of doing things means that we go back and continue to examine what we’re doing. Then maybe there’s this far-fetched thing that’s up here (holds his hands up). I would disagree to say you’ve got to turn it around in one stroke and you’ve kind of implied that. We’ve got to take smaller steps to see how we lean in that direction. That may happen. Somebody may see how to turn this head on its shoulders.

With a reform-sympathetic administration, Monroe teachers possess the space to experiment with their classroom pedagogy on a trial basis. Creating administrative support for teacher experimenting is one of the most crucial elements to change; Monroe teachers appear to have it. Another critical aspect is teachers’ willingness to try new methods of teaching and alter their orientation toward the contingent—something for which Patrick suggests they cannot “plan.” If teachers are going to take a “different step,” then reformers must work with them to challenge their worst fears. Of course, as the next set of comments suggests, this is easier said than done. Larry: I think something like this has to be committed to over a period of time. Patrick: How many days? Larry: Well, there’s the natural dynamics of the group, storming and forming, and all of that. Patrick: So how many days? I’m not trying to put limits on it. I’m trying to say, what’s the smallest unit that you could create that you would feel is temporary enough that it doesn’t freak you out that you say, “My God, I decided to do this for a semester?” You could deal with it for a small amount of time just to see what happens and learn about it. So we would be treating this as an occasion to learn and explore our own reactions to things that are not in schools and see what happens to us, what happens to kids. Is it true that when older kids and younger kids get together there are problems? It probably is. What are the nature of those problems? Is it true when two or three try to work together there are problems? Yes, it’s true, but what’s the nature of the problem? Yolanda: I don’t know necessarily that I look at Inquiry as a place to solve the problem, but certainly to make inroads on problems, to affect a greater number of students. I don’t want it also to be a place where we don’t attempt to solve problems either.

Larry’s discourse is ostensibly cautious. It contradicts his earlier frustrations about the lack of action resulting from Inquiry. But this is no hypocrisy. It points out the difficulty of praxis, the arch connecting dialogue with action. A pedagogy of praxis represents an appreciation for the difference between ideology and discourse. Discourse constructs social


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life and positions subjects within that world. Ideological structures, known through discourse, are embodied in the political economy of our actions. The embodiment of ideology through actions suggests that domination does not vanish because we signify social life differently. As Yolanda points out, a proactive discourse absent actions does not “solve problems.” But overrationalizing the spontaneity of change stifles the collective excitement that teacher-reformers feel when they construct their educational vision. Successful revolutions require organization in order to differentiate strategic action from wanton beliefs. The civil rights movement did not begin with the unplanned action of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus; she was already an active member of the NAACP (Morris, 1984). The East Los Angeles school walkouts did not germinate from nothing; they required planful leadership from men and the often-forgotten women of the Chicana movement (Bernal, 2000). However, the sparks of important changes are often unforeseen, and apparently insignificant actions, when aggregated together, create not only an atmosphere of change but a creative mix of determined and indeterminate actions. When contradictions become ripe, the historical moment exercises great influence on the eventual significance of revolutionary action to the point where unplanned actions sometimes produce more desirable results than planned ones. From something as small as an individual action to massive riots, the unpredictability of revolution rises like a wave from the middle of the ocean destined for the shore. Reforming schools requires a political ideology committed to action. But action absent a transformative discourse becomes mere activism (Freire, 1993). An intervention into school culture confronts the complexities of change. Teachers possess positive forms of ideology while they also contribute to relations of domination. The dialectic of school reform is nothing less than this tension. In one of the most emotion-filled moments of Inquiry, the following dialogue sums up the dynamic interplay between the teachers’ hopes and fears. It begins with Larry’s suggestion concerning the literacy problem at Monroe. Larry: Let me throw a different kind of thought at you. What if every single day began with a forty-minute period of reading? Every single day, and every teacher in this school taught reading. Those youngsters that really need skillbased instruction are assigned to those teachers best able to provide that skillbased instruction. Yule: You mentioned legality, I heard you say, Esther? Esther: Uh-huh. Yule: Is it legal for a shop teacher to teach reading if they’re not credentialed? We have to be careful we don’t stay behind barriers to not make it happen, but figure out ways to make it happen if this is where we can support the kids. Then let the chips fall.

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Esther: That’s an interesting idea. I’m still in a little spot. What is the role of a resource specialist teacher? I think it depends upon the nature of the school, the federal government, and the state. I happen to be a member of the State Association of Resource Specialists and, by law, we are responsible as a resource specialist to deal with twenty-eight children. We are responsible to meet the goals that have been established in the formal and individualized educational plan. Are resource specialists supposed to be doing a lot of other teaching across the board with other children? I think it really goes back to the individual school and how to use the resource specialist. I’m not saying that I’m opposed to doing it. Larry: Let me give you another scenario. How about the first forty-five minutes of the day we all, everybody in this school, relies on our state teaching credential, the first one that we got, and say, “Gee, for the first 45 minutes, we’re a teacher.”

Right from the start, Larry’s ebullience is met with skepticism. Esther reels him back to the “reality” of the school with mentions of legalities and policies impinging on teachers’ freedom. Yule’s somewhat cavalier comment suggests his willingness to put aside legal concerns and encourages the group to take chances and “let the chips fall [where they may].” This mode of communication characterizes the consistent tension between visionary and pragmatic thinking found in Inquiry. Larry favors the moment’s vision over pragmatic concerns. Trading his identity as a math teacher for a general teacher who is committed to children, Larry does not fear consequences and embraces possibilities. As the discussion continues, the pace picks up: Esther: Well, I think it’s an interesting idea. [several people talking at once] Ellen: We could bring the sizes down and it would be most interesting (her emphasis). Esther: Actually, it would be an interesting experience. Sam: That would be kind of fun. Ellen: I would love it. Yule: We’d have to have an 80% vote. (laughter) Are we just talking about it in theory or are we really interested? [several people talking at once] Sam: Needs more structure. Yule: I would actually put a grade on it as well. Elexis: You mean get a grade in class. Yule: Some type of assessment? SSR hasn’t worked because of that. Larry: I envision the teacher interacting with the students. Ellen: To have the freedom, too. There’s no limit to the ideas that teachers can come up with. Go to your department and see how it flies.


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Yule: Only I don’t know how the actual thing would look, except I want to hold the kids accountable for doing the work, not pretending. Part of the kids pretend. Esther: I think we have to really inform the parents about all this and what we’re really trying to achieve with this. Ellen: There’s no sense to inform the parents. We’re at a first level here. Esther: Oh, right. I’m just looking down the line. You gotta make sure.

Notice the language in this exchange. Although there are still concerns about structuring the reading time that Larry suggests and seeking the appropriate support for it from the faculty and parents, the tone sounds excited, engaged, and enabling. The words “love,” “fun,” and “interesting” describe the participants’ anticipation for an agreement that the members have long sought. The prospect of a literacy program addressing one of the most pronounced dilemmas on campus also excites them. Ellen’s sense of “freedom” relates the joy she expects to feel when she finally helps children in a concrete way. Larry’s dream mode in the phrase “I envision” showcases the uplifting message of a reform driven by teachers. At this point in the discussion, basically everyone in the room is participating. The conversation is so lively, the participants talk over one another and struggle over dialogue space. Yule: That’s a strong idea. That’s a proactive idea and that’s what appeals to me. Something that we all can do, if this is a need that we have as opposed to talking about the good old days. Esther: Well, but I think we all agree the kids can’t read. We all agree they can’t read as well as they should. What better time to get it under control? If they didn’t get it under control in elementary school, we can give them this gift before they leave middle school. Larry: The ideal time might be just before lunch. Think that’s the one time of day when you have the biggest number of folks on campus. If you do it before the first period of the day, then those people that have a prep will be ticked off that they have to come to school to teach that. Or if you do it after the last period of the day, then those people that have an eighth period or leave early, now they’re forced. It seems like the one time of day that doesn’t impinge upon anybody’s personal, professional freedom [is right before lunch time].

As Monroe’s principal, Yule supports Larry’s vision for its proactiveness, experimental overtones, and progressive outlook. Fighting against ghosts of the past, Yule understands the dangers in romanticizing “the good old days.” Despite her initial concerns, Esther welcomes the challenge and constructs reading as a “gift.” In contrast to literacy as a skill to be learned, literacy as a gift represents a form of exchange (Bataille, 1997; see also McLaren, Leonardo, and Allen, 1999, 2000). Teachers are faced with the gift (i.e., a challenge) of inequality and they respond with their own gift by

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professing their commitment to end the student literacy problem. As teachers face more serious forms of oppression, they escalate the stakes of their gifts to match the current challenge. At each progressive level, their gifts become more “luxurious,” correlating with problems more grave than the previous gift. As far as Larry is concerned, the students should receive the teachers’ gift before lunch, a time when most of the students and teachers are present. Sensing the group’s high emotions, Elexis reintroduces the tension between difference and consensus. Appealing to the group’s resolve to experiment despite the possibility of failing to establish consensus with other faculty members, Elexis asks the members to contemplate their personal commitments and the extent of their urgency. Elexis: I’m wondering now what if there wasn’t buy-ins by the entire faculty, but there was some agreement and some understanding at this table? Is there agreement here that this is something worth exploring and would the people at this table be worth exploring even with the possibility that not everybody else in the whole school would? Again, I’m reflecting back to the beginning of today’s conversation about that whole notion of having to wait. Can we start thinking about ways we can make this happen now, even if it emerges just from this small group? [several people talking at once] Larry: Let me see if I can take it and personalize it. What you’re basically saying is if it didn’t go anywhere, what could I do? Elexis: Uh-huh. Yah. Larry: Yes, I could do that as opposed to what I’m doing now, and that would be a step. It would be a different step. I see it as a step forward, some of the kids may not. Elexis: No. I’m just reflecting on our collective frustration, knowing that the system isn’t working for bunches of kids, a whole lot of kids, and that notion of waiting for something to happen with the system. What seems to be happening right here is that we’re all looking to ourselves about what changes can be made and so that’s why I posed that question. You know? Yule: My mind’s whirling with the possibilities. Elexis: What I’m saying is the excitement that is right here and right now, if we don’t have buy-in from everybody else, do we just let that fizzle? I’m just posing that because certainly I need to take ownership of my own feelings about this. I have felt deep frustration with myself at waiting for something to happen, some kind of external something to happen that’s going to bring about some changes which I know need to occur. That’s all. I’m wondering out loud about the commitment that we’re talking about here.

At this juncture, the discussion is being pulled in different directions. On one hand, Larry’s call to action excites and inspires the group to such an


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extent that Yule admits, “My mind’s whirling with the possibilities” Esther’s initial pragmatism reminds the group of their responsibilities to the public. Elexis’s “rational” break in the discussion should not be mistaken as a sign of her disagreement with Larry’s position. In fact, despite the fact that her statements intervene with sobering force, Elexis concurs with Larry’s felt need to “take a step” after years of Inquiry discussion. Although Elexis seems to burst the bubble of excitement bouncing around the room, her concerns are legitimate for the viability of reform. As a commentary about the dialectic between micro and macropolitics, Elexis’s discourse on agency demands individual action and collective goals. Larry’s response signals the end of this insightful moment. Larry: Personal frustration. That’s a frustration that maybe a lot of people feel in the Inquiry. It’s sort of like: Talk, talk, talk. When do we get off the dime and do something? Esther: I hear what you’re saying. One, if this was to come to be, it probably would never start until September, if we were lucky, right? Or could we conceivably start this before? Larry: Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to start this afternoon with my period that comes in after lunch. I’m going take a couple of kids that are notoriously poor readers in my class and I’m going to pull them over on the side with their reading books, or maybe one-on-one. I’m going to read with some kids this afternoon. But for me right now, I just need to take a step. I need to take my left foot and put it out in front of my right foot and do something a little bit different. Elexis: We need to stop now, but I’m just wondering, is there an agreement right now about each of us individually thinking about what we might be able to do to move forward on this? Even if it’s small, even if it’s, for example, Larry started with what he’s doing today. Can each of us think along those lines and bring that back next time?

The preceding discussion serves as a compendium for the general climate and direction of Inquiry dialogues. It exemplifies the push and pull of school reform in all of its ideological grandeur. Reform is nothing less than the communicative agony displayed here. Ideologically mobilizing, Inquiry dialogues bear the rudiments for action. Before discussions institute concrete action, ideological struggles such as the ones analyzed here are crucial to radical reform. The conflicts between pragmatism and utopianism, difference and consensus, and dialogue and action form the complex whole of a reform concerned with systems of meaning that relate to domination. Putting one’s left foot out before the right foot is an apt representation of the ideological considerations teacher-reformers must engage. For there is an ideological difference between walking toward another place and changing the ground on which one walks.

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In this chapter, I have tried to show the ways that Inquiry participants challenge systems of meaning that maintain relations of domination. The analysis put forth offers evidence for the third and positive dimension of ideology. As an empowering mode of reform, Inquiry highlights those existing spaces of power to which teachers already have access. Like power, ideology is a force teachers wield for transformative purposes. Seen this way, ideology does not distort a world, but promotes an alternative and less oppressive relationship among students, teachers, and parents. Building bridges between communities, the participants’ coalitional discourse recognizes two important factors to the change process. First, schooling is produced by social processes. Social forces of domination, like capitalism, racism, and patriarchy, are main targets of reform critique. Two, combating inequalities is viable from the perspective of a collectivist politics. Individualist politics fails to gather enough energy and support to threaten the status quo. In contrast, collectivism links together the various narratives of oppression that otherwise isolate subjects from each other. Last, a proactive ideology establishes an experimental ethos between Inquiry participants. Understanding that transformation requires a utopic vision, the Inquirers embody a discourse of hope. In order to disrupt unequal arrangements, Inquirers transgress the stagnant discourses of social control and political apathy currently evidenced in U.S. schools. They realize that domination is not endemic and subversion through experimentation is a necessary risk. As a positive force, ideology galvanizes teachers toward school reform.

CHAPTER 8

School Reform and the Uses of Ideology Critique The Inquiry study analyzed here offers promising insights and new directions for school reform and critical pedagogy. It treats as significant the often-taken-for-granted language of reform. Also, it synthesizes current theories of ideology to arrive at a fuller understanding of the unfulfilled promises of ideology critique. Despite its strengths, however, there remain several limitations to the study. First, because I entered the reform in medias res, or in the middle, the analysis lacks a comparative appeal involving the participants’ discourse before, during, and after Inquiry. Without longitudinal evidence, the study cannot assess the difference that Inquiry has made on the participants’ ideological commitments toward change. In other words, a causal link between Inquiry as reform and the participants’ change orientation cannot be established. Though it would be safe to assume that Inquiry has made an impact on the teachers’ discourse on reform, whether Inquiry is responsible for their ideological positions is difficult to determine. On more than one occasion, several participants pointed out that their stance on change predates Inquiry and is partly a product of their continuing dialogue over the years. Thus, the extent of the caesura in “schooling as usual” that Inquiry generates remains ambiguous. Second, because the study focuses on the Inquiry participants’ discourse and meanings, the analysis does not represent non-Inquiry teachers’ issues or those of subsequent Inquiry groups. The absence of these other spheres of meaning has more to do with the politics of access than with methodological neglect. For example, in the second year of the study the principal requested that researchers not participate in the subsequent

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Inquiry groups in order to allow the participants to establish their direction without the presence of “outsiders.” Inquiry’s emphasis on selfreflection and interrogation of value systems creates an enlightening condition, but one where participants sometimes feel vulnerable. Encouraged to examine their beliefs about schooling and children, teachers expose and explore the fundaments of their pedagogy. The level of scrutiny and interrogation they perform during Inquiry sessions represents a revolutionary trend in reform, but one that often creates apprehension and fear of judgment in teachers. Confessing that one is sometimes complicitous with domination is a necessary but difficult admission. With respect to non-Inquiry teachers, access to their classrooms and time again proved challenging. Because I attended the Inquiry sessions, gaining access to the members’ daily routines, classrooms, and interview time was conveniently negotiable. The same cannot be said for nonInquiry teachers, whose school experiences are unrepresented here. More important, because Inquiry is a sensitive reform, every decision involving the research was sensitive as well. I was careful not to disrupt Inquiry’s reform goals. Including other teachers may have jeopardized my research relationship with the group due to possible apprehension involving cross comparisons. In hindsight, respectfully navigating the research site and respecting the participants seemed the higher good over the need for a more thorough protocol. Third, the study is an ideology critique of discourse. It does not make a direct attempt to explore teachers’ actions and their relationship with Inquiry discourse. The analysis put forth is a discursive analysis of language as speech-acts that inform actions, not a causal link between words and action. It may be the case that many of the teachers’ actions have not changed substantially due to institutional constraints as well as previous ideological commitments. Participants often reported the various ways Inquiry dialogues affected their classroom practices. However, I received only their testaments to such changes and was not able to observe the performances themselves. In addition, the direct causality between words and action is often tentative and was difficult to ascertain. School reform benefits from future research, which makes an effort to trace actions to their signification. Notwithstanding these limitations, the study of Inquiry provides valuable insights into educational reform. Although it would not be warranted to formulate a causal relationship between the participants’ ideologies and Inquiry, the study documents the fact that Inquiry provides the context for their ideologies. Inquiry is the discursive environment that inscribes the ideologies explicated here. Moreover, the study examines the much-needed ideological work that precedes any meaningful action. For inevitably, a praxiological reform combines reflective discourse with political action. Before school reform tenets become institutional policy, many


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discussions, debates, and deconstructions have to take place. Participants challenge existing beliefs and justify new ones. As said earlier, educational research has historically neglected these ideological struggles, especially as they are embedded in the discourses of people involved in reform. The analysis offered here makes it clear that ideology critique is essential to understanding the deep structures of reform language. In particular, at the heart of ideology critique is the problem of domination made intelligible through discourse. As such, meaning becomes a site of interrogation. For it is at the level of meaning where domination is either accommodated or resisted. The meaning teachers achieve from daily interactions in schools becomes a target of a critical, reflective discourse attempting to denaturalize them (Adler, 1991). By denaturalizing meanings, teachers question the tacit beliefs that ostensibly derive from them, not in order simply to improve their pedagogy, but to work toward a social justice of everyday life (Gore and Zeichner, 1991; Zeichner, 1993). Ideology critique exposes the limits of reflective teaching absent a political project. As the saying goes: “There’s ‘reflection’ and there’s reflection.” The fact that teachers engage in the act of reflection does not suggest that they are critically doing so. Without a critical discourse to accompany the process of reflection, the act of thinking about one’s beliefs and values does not offer teachers an alternative framework from which to interrogate these systems. It begs the question: On what are teachers encouraged to reflect? The reflective practitioner is bound by an ongoing dialectic between reflection as a mode of selflearning and problem-solving as a form of action (Schon, 1983). The case of Inquiry insists that reflection must be tied to larger social processes and promote acts that commit, if not contribute, to transforming them. It also acknowledges the reality that changes begin with local places, such as schools, and with individual people, like teachers. If reform is expected to produce change at the local context, teacher language must guide the reform process (Calderhead, 1987). Guiding the reform process, however, is not the same as critiquing it. Since experience finds its articulation in language, teachers’ daily interactions in schools provide a beginning point of critique. Domination is not waged only at the level of policies and initiatives. It is the hum in the background noise of teachers’ everyday discussions and negotiations. Hegemony lives and functions in symbolic interactions as much as it does in commonly acknowledged political arenas. In order to understand how teachers already make sense of their world, a reform that makes ideology critique central to its tenets must consider the heterogeneous and sometimes conflictive discourses teachers bring to bear on their school experiences (Zeichner, Tabachnick, and Densmore, 1987). Critique necessitates working with teachers to transform common-sense language in order to foster critical reflection over the experiences that guide reform.

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Without the benefits of social critique, reflection degrades into introspection—or worse, speculation. For example, Inquiry participants devote much text to inverting the relations of power between teachers and students. But to Smyth (1992), mainstream reflection often encourages teachers to displace themselves from the center of control while still making control central to effective teaching, thus leaving the political status of power intact. As a result, “the social relationships of centralized power have remained firmly in place and unaltered” (Smyth, 1992, p. 271). Interrogation of relations of power, a critique of global capitalism, and scrutiny of social contradictions fall by the wayside because they become topics too inefficient for reflection in these times of standardization. Classroom management takes precedence. Fostering individual self-questioning and a laissez-faire ethos absent social perspectives become the hidden goals of the move toward an unqualified, reflective practice. In short, as long as teachers and educators are “busy reflecting” on their own practice, social relations remain unquestioned, and consequently, unthreatened. As Zeichner (1993) writes, there is “the frequent assumption that teaching is necessarily better merely because teachers are more deliberate and intentional about their actions. This view ignores the fact that greater intentionality may help, in some cases, to further solidify and justify teaching practices that are harmful to students” (p. 7). If teacher reflection is going to be empowering, then it must extend beyond its sloganeer status and approach the contours of ideological reflection. Reflection is not a catchall term, as if the answer to each educational problem were: “Go back to your classroom and reflect on it some more.” It must be grounded in an ethico-political justification. Ideology critique provides the discourse conducive to this move. Ideology critique is a form of reflection that holds dear the ethical right and political good. It helps to reflect, for example, on teacher labor and how it inscribes the very process of reflection. Otherwise, reflection becomes the opiate of the masses of teachers. In the methodology section of this book, I explained the difference between “method” and “methodology.” The first is composed of research strategies for data collection and the second denotes the ideological underpinnings of social research. A commentary on the construction of “pedagogy” mirrors a similar tension. As it is currently constructed, pedagogy denotes the constellation of teaching strategies that practitioners use to promote student learning. Pedagogy is like a “box of tools” that teachers retrieve for their appropriate uses. In short, like research methods, pedagogy has become a technical sign of manipulation. In contrast, pedagology represents the ideological study of pedagogy; it is the point where ideology and pedagogy meet. Pedagology critiques the ontological, epistemological, phenomenological, and political basis of education. The concept of pedagology introduces a new signifier in ideological studies of educational reform.


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First, teaching becomes a pedagological issue when it claims certain ways of student being as the telos of education. Discourses that construct students as subjects to be emancipated as opposed to controlled represent ontological differences. Second, knowledge production is pedagologically imbricated with value judgments when certain forms of knowing are officialized and others are stigmatized. Knowledge is a social construction and as such is subject to the rules of discourse. Furthermore, access to knowledge ideologically positions subjects within the social division of labor. Third, pedagology is invoked when school phenomena are bracketed in order to arrive at the essence of schooling. Depending on the phenomenological discourse subjects use to peel back the epiphenomenal layers of schooling, the essence discovered can differ greatly. Fourth, the pedagogist understands that schooling represents a struggle over power and the control of the means of education. Like methodological concerns in social research, using a pedagogical lens in education signifies teaching and learning as ideological struggles. To address this problematic, Giroux (1988) suggests making the pedagogical more political and the political more pedagogical. He encourages teachers to adopt the stance that pedagogy is a political practice. He also urges that political discourse should become more central to the enactment of pedagogy. I would add that educators must cultivate ideological discourse, which is more specific than politics. To this end, I have strongly recommended that reformers use a three-dimensional theory of ideology in order to account for the ways teacher-reformers use reform for their own purposes, perpetuate hegemonic meanings, and challenge relations of domination. This is done in order to avoid a purely negative critique. A three-dimensional critique of ideology constructs a broader, more dialectical, assessment of the possibilities and limitations of reform. In order to cultivate ideology critique in schools, reform efforts must work to destigmatize it. Rather than fear its aggressiveness, teachers can aggressively employ its liberating potentials. Ideological reform of schools means that teachers must become more comfortable with the concept of ideology. Like power, ideology can be positive. I found that practitioners and reformers engage an ideology critique of practice through the practice of ideology critique. Like any other skill, ideology critique is honed and perfected. But unlike other skills, such as playing sports, ideology critique is a political practice. Its goal is not simply improvement, but liberation. By saying this, I recognize that many educators currently avoid ideology critique. Those who practice it are often regarded as “political” or “subversive.” This is very far from the truth. One, to eschew ideology is itself a political act of complacency with the status quo. Ideologists are not political by nature of their position on educational matters, as if to avoid a position suggests that one is nonpolitical. Ideologists embody a particular politics of engagement with power, the social, and the pedagogical. Two,

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ideology critique begins from the premise that certain social relations, like class exploitation, racism, and gender domination, need to be subverted. That this move is subversive is a far cry from dogmatism. Like all modes of critique, there are rational as well as irrational ways to conduct ideology critique. Critiquing ideology does not suggest dismantling the knowable world. It seeks the hope in it and transforms the excess of domination. Critical reformers must reclaim the concept of ideology and use it responsibly. It is neither a tool used for intimidation nor a sign of righteousness. Ideology critique is a form of intellectual labor seeking its unalienated form, of living with and working through contradictions. It is intersubjective and seeks the other as a partner in solidarity. However, by itself, ideology critique does not eradicate educational inequalities or eliminate domination. It offers no guarantees. Eradicating disparities in student attainment requires political mobilization and planning. Eliminating social and economic domination takes commitment and solid organization. That said, ideology critique begins the process by linking experiences with their problematic determinations: mainly capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. By observing and documenting Inquiry for two years, it became obvious that revolutionizing the structures of schooling takes work and commitment. Teachers oriented toward such an endeavor can accomplish their goals only to the extent that they spend time with one another to build “group solidarities” (Kanpol, 1991). Problematizing the perpetual dilemmas of schooling is a collective problem. Or as Kanpol writes: The distinction between the individual and the group is based on a simple notion. Teachers’ lives are individually lived. In their class confines, teachers are separated. They stand alone in class. Teachers teach different subjects and have different interests. Time spent together as a group is limited. (p. 139)

Individual teachers do not muster enough influence to change schools. Moreover, individualism heightens teachers’ sense of alienation. Through collectivism, they stand a better chance of creating the changes they desire. Dialogue begins the change process and may provide its means. However, this says nothing about the content of dialogue. The exploration of Inquiry suggests that dialogue inheres at least three ideological contents that need attention. As such, dialogue does not exist for itself but for subjects who come to consciousness in particular ways. Consistent with Freire (1993), it is through communicative dialogue that teachers challenge one another and understand each other’s perspectives in an in-depth way. It is through dialogue that they enunciate their notions of change and concepts of learning and teaching: in short, their discourse on educational reform. An ideological critique of reform examines the structures of thought that are responsible for, as well as those that challenge, domination.


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What I have presented here is an ideological study of language at work. By elaborating on the power of language, the study gives educators more options in reform language. Understanding that reform is a product of the constellation of discourses practitioners have access to, emphasizing the discursive aspect of reform suggests there is little that separates it from the language in which it is understood. In conjunction with my emphasis on ideological critique of school reform, I have argued for the importance of critical discourse. Critical reform discourse is invaluable in both constructing a reform that prioritizes essential social issues and providing participants with a discursive arsenal to engage deeply those same issues. The importance of this point cannot be emphasized enough. Bringing different discourses to bear on educational issues does more than merely present different ways of looking at particular problems. Discourses differ in their ability to unpack the fundamental interests and deep structures of thought responsible for school and social conditions. Critical reform discourse exposes the limits of common-sense language in order to transcend it by liberating its assumptions. Reform participants create multiple events when they represent change in the different contexts of language. Depending on the language they choose to represent their ideas, the implicated changes vary. The fundamental undecidability of signification suggests the agency that subjects, like teachers, possess in constructing their own meaning from reform. They are able to invoke different worlds with their words. However, that meaning is undecidable does not prevent reformers from deciding on particular directions, despite the difficulty in choosing a course of action. In order to deal with these difficulties, educational reformers labor to make their assumptions and meaning discursively overt. Moreover, participants work together at unpacking the investments in their meaning and work toward a critical consensus wherein subjects critique the way that language positions them. For, as much as subjects use language to position themselves in a discussion, debate, or argument, language positions them as effects of discourse. It is through discourse that they come to know themselves as subjects. For instance, the Inquiry analysis has shown this property of language as the participants reacted to how colleagues positioned them as subjects of their statements. A critical approach to language provides the necessary heuristics for proactive research. It is attentive to the uses of language beyond its function as a medium for description. Language is an active, constitutive, and dialectical weapon for or against domination. Highlighting the intersection between school reform and ideology propels our understanding of change by deploying contemporary theories on language, many of which are being forged outside of education. This necessitates the building of an interdisciplinary approach. I have tried to understand educational theory and practice by problematizing how we

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“talk” about reform in the first place. For example, I have suggested that theory cannot be radically divorced from practice. This does not suggest that educators practice what we commonly preach. For there are many examples of educators talking one way and acting another. But as subjects, our theories of the world pervade our actions at the general level. As Dewey has insisted, theories do not exist in a vacuum and practice does not exist devoid of theory. Sometimes, educational theories are so embedded in school settings that they no longer appear as theories to practitioners and become naturalized. For example, the practice of classroom management finds its theoretical home in the school of social efficiency or scientific management (see Kliebard, 1995). As a result, and in light of their experience, many practitioners would rather not examine their current theories and instead desire the “quick fix” reforms that call for cognitive-technical outcomes (Giroux, 1985). Given this condition, there is no fundamental gap between theory and practice that we often hear from academics. Instead, there seems to be an all-too-perfect fit! A critical look at ideology and language can begin to crack the plaster of this mold by first making obvious that which is hidden and by introducing strange theories to disrupt familiar places. Freire reminds us that radical practice is empty without radical theory. Theory and practice are distinct but not ideologically separable. Practicing theory and theorizing practice are accomplished through the medium of language. With respect to theory, I have made it explicit that theories, like meaning, are social constructions that inform our actions. There exists no natural relationship between experiences and the meaning that teachers gain from them because apparently, experiences can always be signified otherwise. However, this does not imply that subjects make meaning any way they want. Race, class, and gender ideologies provide a gravitational field that warps the social space of the individual teacher. The theories they construct about schooling bear the mark of the social. We should not confuse the fact that meaning is socially constructed with the notion that all meanings are equal. Depending on the ideology subjects take up, the theories they advocate produce different consequences. Despite the undecidability of meaning, teachers are able to construct decisive theories that combat the many faces of oppression. The key is to arrive at the ideologically “correct” theories that produce favorable and more democratic material conditions. With respect to practice, I have implicated a couple of areas involving the actual enactment of reform. For example, I have emphasized that reform is an ideological struggle and researchers must confront this fact in their methods and missions. Eschewing the practice of critique in favor of a technicized reform eventually leaves the social contradictions unaddressed. Eisner (1992) describes the educational reform scene like this:


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Trying to covert schools from academic institutions—institutions that attempt to transmit what is already known—into intellectual ones—institutions that prize inquiry for its own sake—will require a change in what schools prize. Most efforts at school reform fail to address this challenge. The tack taken in most educational policy papers is typically superficial and the language is technical. The problem is often thought to be solvable by curriculum “installation”; we are to “install” a new curriculum and then “align it” with other curricula. We typically employ a language of change that reveals a shallow and mechanistic conception of what real change requires. (p. 612)

Reform-oriented teachers and administrators must closely examine language use in order to problematize their own conceptions of the purpose of schools. Ideology critique is a political practice and it must be honed through an appreciation of the power of language. Also, I have found that critical Inquiry must be an ongoing process. It suggests that critical Inquiry should begin curriculum reform in teacher training programs where school curricula are designed by curriculum experts and teachers, as opposed to ones crafted by politicians and bureaucrats (Apple, 1995). By transforming the relationship between scholars and teachers in efforts to reform school curricula, educators may produce educative conditions that truly are democratic. This brings up the importance of curriculum reform as a specific application of lessons learned from Inquiry. As Apple (1995) notes, part of the problem with setting the curriculum agenda is that politicians have taken an active role in diminishing the authority of academics and teachers in setting curriculum goals. This rampant attitude bespeaks mistrust of scholars and practitioners. In addition, when scholars have had influence over curricular direction, they have been more concerned with behaviorally oriented models that emphasize better pedagogical procedures rather than asking more difficult questions about power, privilege, and the politics of knowledge. This acritical move produces the unhelpful consequence of marginalizing cultural struggle and silencing political conflict. Inquiry has shown us that, as experts, academics and practitioners must take back control of curriculum reform by first politicizing their own involvement with school change. One unhelpful assumption behind mainstream reform is that it paints a picture of harmony when the opposite, that of struggle, may be a more productive platform to base discussions around change. For example, resistance during reform is deemed an obstacle to goal setting. As a result, reformers have tried to discourage or eliminate teacher resistance to reform, as opposed to regarding it as a collection of actions that shows moments of “good sense” (Gitlin and Margonis, 1995). The substance of ideological struggle is exchanged for a hasty, uncritical consensus. Of course, I would also add that research must be able to differentiate between resistance as an expression of oppositional politics and resistance

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as a form of personalistic transgression. As reform decisions are made, the voices of curriculum scholars and teachers are muted. Part of the problem lies in the way curriculum scholars are themselves generally trained to regard curriculum as ahistorical and apolitical. In order to put curriculum reform back into the hands of scholars and the teachers they work with, both groups must work collectively to throw themselves into the fray and risk their voice or lose it altogether. The language used by reformers produces particular ways of signifying the curriculum. As such, curriculum formation is an issue of representation. In opposition to the language of objectivity, Giroux (1995a) urges educators to construct a curriculum language that is concrete. School curricula have never existed in an autonomous, historically transcendent space. In fact, they are outcomes of struggles over power, authority, and legitimacy, which are decided in historically specific ways. In saying that curriculum is partly an issue of representation, Giroux suggests that the “meaning” of curriculum is always imbricated with the politics of location. Educators do not occupy innocent, objective places of knowing the world as it exists but are instead actively making it through everyday social practices. One goal for democratic schooling is to direct this activity toward emancipatory practices. But educators cannot expect liberation to happen without taking some risks. Teachers can take control of their own labor and reinvent teaching as a form of social critique and, as Giroux suggests, go for broke. Transformation starts with forging “a new [critical] language, a new way of naming, ordering, and representing how power works in schools” (Giroux, 1995a, p. 44). This new language is self-reflexive, a critical component of viable reform. As such, we must problematize traditional notions of “democracy” and its long-standing educational cognate, “equality.” Critical democracy is the empowerment of everyone involved in liberating education. In addition, teachers must be redefined as “intellectuals” who interrogate all aspects of the public sphere in order to see schooling as part of a wider struggle for democratic living. Popular culture, “real world,” and working conditions are some of the targets for interrogation. And finally, “cultural difference” must become a defining principle in any effort to reform curriculum. Equally as important, teachers must be encouraged to adopt a language of social justice. Currently, technicist languages dominate our schools. Teachers who adopt a position of social justice are not only part of the few; they are regarded as idealist, in its derogatory sense. Teachers who wear their oppositional politics on their sleeves are stigmatized as rabblerousers, or worse, as having ideological bad breath. At a time when a language of justice becomes even more urgent, teachers who talk about cultural emancipation are reduced to silly dreamers. But there could be nothing more silly than to help maintain relations of domination. There is


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no better time to rebel against inequality. And the future yearns for ideals grounded in concrete observations of real people. A language of justice must become the new common sense, and reform helps pave the way. Imagine a school where all of the conversations in the teachers’ lounge revolve around problems of oppression and creating pedagogical conditions that alleviate such a condition. Imagine a school where teachers inquire about their daily practices every day and not just during special events, like Inquiry. Last, imagine a school where the problems of class exploitation, racism, and patriarchy are not dialogical anomalies but are central to any discussion. Such a school represents a doorway to an alternative world, which with a simple twist of the knob, opens possibilities.

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Index

action: from Inquiry, 214 – 31; need for, 213– 14, 231 Adorno, T., 59 – 60 affirmative action, 211 African American students: grades of, 3; hair braiding of, 164– 65; in schools, 133; and sports, 133 agendas, negative aspects of, 36 Ain’t No Makin’ It (MacLeod), 48 Alston, K., 48 Althusser, Louis, 25 – 26, 38 – 40, 41–43, 76 – 77 analogies in Inquiry, 137 – 39 anger, 194, 200 – 201 Annenberg Foundation, 3, 126, 203 Anyon, Jean, 25 Apple, Michael, 8 Aronowitz, S., 2 Asian American students, 28, 176– 77 Austin, J. L., 16– 17 authority, aspects of, 17 baby steps, 188 – 89, 205 Bakhtin, M., 56 – 57, 67 – 68 “banana on the table,” 105– 6 Barthes, Roland, 54 basketball, 130 – 31, 137 – 38 Baudrillard, Jean, 7, 35, 55– 56, 57, 58 behavior, modeling correct, 108 – 10

Bell, Derrick, 42 bias, effect of, 48 Biesta, G., 64 Black Collegiance, 121 –22, 168, 170, 193 – 94 black consciousness, 26–27. See also race Bloom, Allan, 63 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 21 bounded systems, 80 Bourdieu, Pierre, 6, 18, 70–71 bourgeoisie, 44 –45 Bowles, Samuel, 25 –26 Boyer, Ernest, 9 “Brain-Dead Mother Has Her Baby” (Hartouni), 31 –32 Brunner, Diane, 62 Bryant, Kobe, 138 Burbules, N., 69 Calhoun, C., 65, 70 campus cleanup, 107–8 capitalism: destruction of, 44 –45; exploitation by, 24, 42–43; influence of, 46, 146; and patriarchy, 33–34 change: critical, 58–59; for the sake of change, 195; meaning of, 14 choice programs, 4 Chubb, J., 4, 7

260 civil rights movement, 227 class exploitation, 15– 16 classrooms: inequalities in, 116; management of, 89– 91, 117, 144, 236, 240 class size, 89– 90, 99 – 100 class status, 12, 95 collectivism, 224 collectivity, 204 – 5, 206, 212 – 13 Columbus, Christopher, 218 commodity fetishism, 23, 24 – 25 common ends, 212– 13 common sense, 78, 139, 150, 173 communication, 50, 94 – 95 community, importance of, 201, 208 compliance, 176– 80, 183, 208 conflict, importance of, 196– 97 conformity, focus on, 8 Connerly, Ward, 30 consciousness: double, 166; false, 12, 35–36, 38, 44, 49 consensus, 106, 154, 230 Corby (student), 122 correctness, concept of, 148 Cousy, Bob, 137– 38 critical mass, 203 – 5 critique: clarity in, 72 – 73; Inquiry, form of, 73– 74; language of, 72 – 73; narratives of, 118 – 27; negative, 129– 30, 185 Cuban, Larry, 73 – 74 Culler, Jonathan, 55 culture: codes of, 44– 45, 70 – 71, 80; constraints in, 51; patterns in, 40; predatory, 138; race in, 29; in schools, 41; sensitivity to, 165– 66 curriculum: bias in, 48; differentiated, 25; language of, 242; math in, 148, 149– 50; official, 144 – 45, 186 – 88; politics in, 241; reform of, 56, 216, 241; texts in, 10 – 11, 181 – 82, 221; uncertainty in, 220– 21 de Beauvoir, Simone, 31, 33 defensiveness, 94 democracy, 64, 242 de Tracy, Destutt, 21– 22, 40

Index Dewey, John: and education, 9, 217; reading of, 73; and reform, 4–5, 79; on theory, 240 dialogue, 5–6, 214–15 difference: fear of, 151, 153; between students, 160–61 Dippo, Don, 5 –6 discourse: and experience, 65–68; and identity, 62–65, 166; and ideology, 35; and knowledge, 57–60; and power, 68–71; styles of, 53, 89, 155 – 56; use of critical, 71 –74, 235 discovery, logic of, 218 discursive familiarity, 157 discussions, range of, 84–85 distortion, theory of, 40, 42 domination: aspects of, 129, 176; challenging, 205, 212, 224–25; gender, 31, 32 – 33, 34; and ideology, 15–16, 46; and language, 15, 41; perspectives of, 127; and power, 18; problem of, 234–35; racial, 164; relations of, 15, 87, 114, 118, 185, 232; in schools, 178–79; and social relations, 14, 129 –30 Do the Right Thing (movie, Lee), 27 –28 Dragon Wings, in curriculum, 181 D’Souza, Dinesh, 30 Du Bois, W. E. B., 27 Durkheim, Emile, 39, 63 Eagleton, Terry, 49, 53, 81 Ebonics, 179–80. See also language education: challenges to, vii–viii; purpose of, 83. See also schooling Einstein, Albert, 145–46 Eisner, E., 11, 240–41 employment mobility, 198–99 Engels, F., 22, 24, 46 Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (Bell), 42 family stories, 119–20, 122 Fanon, Frantz, 26 feminism, types of, 33–35 Fine, Michelle, 1 Firestone, S., 34

Index Fordham, S., 27, 30 Foucault, Michel, 7, 57, 61– 62, 69 – 70 fractions, knowledge of, 146 Frankfort School project, 2 Freire, Paulo, 195 – 96; communication theory, 6, 71; and education, 9; on literacy, 141; and reform, 8; on teachers’ interactions, 238; on theory, 240; writings of, 158 friend, critical, 3, 88, 190 Frow, John, 56 – 57 Fullan, M., 7 Fung, Richard, 27– 28 Gardiner, Michael, 47– 48 Geertz, Clifford, 40 gender: dynamics of, 147; and ideology, 30; oppression, 32 – 33; relations, 162 German Ideology, The (Marx and Engels), 22– 23, 46 Geuss, Raymond, 2 Gintis, Herbert, 25– 26 Giroux, Henry: on choices, 67; on curriculum, 242; on Gramsci, 46; on identity, 68; on ideology, 35 – 36, 43; on intellectuals, 196; and reform, 8 Gitlin, Andrew, 5 Goodlad, John, 9, 212 Goodman, Nelson, 59– 60 Gouldner, A., 50 – 51 grade level, 116 – 17 grades: acceptance of good, 121– 22; effect of family on, 101 – 2, 124 – 25; importance of, 110, 111 – 12, 175 – 76; inflated, 124 – 25; low, 117 – 18, 140, 155; as punishment, 174– 75; stigmas in, 173– 74 grading: importance to teachers, 153; partial credit, 123– 24, 149; problem of, 110 – 14; process of, 91 – 92; reasons for, 24 – 25, 190; systems of, 111, 112–13 Gramsci, Antonio, 22, 43, 46, 78, 196 graphemic representations, 162– 63 Great Works, 56, 63 – 64. See also curriculum

261 Greek fraternities, as ethnic grouping, 171 Greene, Maxine, 223 groups: accountability to, 154–55; belonging to, 172; as a coping mechanism, 172; ethnic, 169 –70, 171; interest, 170–71; need for, 169 – 70 Habermas, Jurgen, 6, 9, 50, 162 hair, braiding of, 164–65 Hall, Stuart, 36, 54 Hargreaves, Andy, 3, 4, 9 Hartouni, Valerie, 31–32 Haymes, S., 29 Henderson, Marie Odette, 31 –32 heterophobia, 151 Hirsch, E. D., Jr., 63 Hirst, Paul, 39 Hispanic students: attitudes of, 192 – 93; education of, 1; grades of, 3; self-esteem of, 168. See also MeChA (Mexican/Chicano Association) History and Class Consciousness (Lukacs), 44–45 home environment, 123 –24, 125 human nature, 78 idealism, 22 –23 identities: border, 63; and discourse, 62 – 65; formation of, 63–64; group, 64 – 65; politics of, 65 Ideological State Apparatuses, 39 ideology: achievement, 198; capitalist, 23 – 24; effects of, 12–13; identification of, 81 –82; and language, 15, 56 – 57, 67–68; levels of, 15–16; necessary, 22, 35–43; negative aspects of, 21–22, 22–35, 75, 186; positive, 43 –48, 237–38; racial, 27, 28 – 29; and school reform, 239–40; socialist, 43–44; teacher, 15, 87–88; unavoidability of, 35–36; vs. discourse, 10 –11; and worldview, 40, 49, 78, 81 –82 Ideology (Eagleton), 49

262 improvements, incremental, 127 Inquiry: as an added responsibility, 91; and collectivism, 199 – 214; as confession, 110 – 18; context of, 2–14, 84 – 86; critical, 6; and difference, 151– 73; and empowerment, 186– 99; format of, 55, 233– 34; interventions during, 147; language of, 13, 56– 57; limitations of, 233– 36, 234 – 35; naturalizing, 130– 50; participants in, 76– 77, 203, 204– 5, 234; points of conflict in, 82; pragmatics of, 88 – 91; purposes in, 128; and rationalization, 173– 83; in reform, 86; seeking help through, 91–99; sessions of, 79 – 81; social aspects of, 71– 72; usefulness of, 213; venting in, 99– 110; vs. criticism, 49 – 50 installations (school project), 119 – 20 interviews, individual, 83– 84 Jordan, Michael, 132, 138 Joyce, James, works of, 177– 78 justice, 9, 43, 47 Kanpol, B., 238 Kincheloe, J., 79 knowledge: and discourse, 57 – 60; division of in schools, 25– 26; from experience, 143 – 44; expert, 219 – 20; as fact, 59, 78– 79; fetishizing of, 24–25; in Inquiry, 77 – 78; and language, 61; and learning, 143; official, 70, 180– 82; and power, 144– 45; production of, 77– 78, 142– 43; resistance to by black students, 27; social aspects of, 195, 237; student, 94; usefulness of, 146 – 47 language: differences in, 61, 64, 70– 71; and domination, 16, 18; Ebonics, 179– 80; in everyday life, 41; and ideology, 13, 14, 51; importance of, 53–54; in Inquiry, 11 – 12, 56 – 57, 66; power of, 7, 15; and race, 29, 172; in reform, 47– 48, 57, 60 – 61, 137; in schools, 122– 23; skills in, 149 – 50;

Index in social relations, 62, 67, 68 –69; stigmas about, 180; as a system, 54 – 57; theoretical, 73, 155–57; use of, 6– 7, 60–61; at work, 239; as worldview, 66 law of unanimity, 29 leaders: and change, 206; students as, 97; teachers as, 47, 120–21 learning: and knowledge, 143; vs. information gathering, 5 Learning to Labor (Willis), 16 Lee, Spike, 27 –28 legitimation, 15 Lenin, V. I., 12, 22, 43–44 linguistic actions, 16–17 literacy: critical, 163 –64; cultural, 164; definitions of, 142, 161–62; and difference, 158, 161–62, 163; instruction in, 227 –31; in Monroe Middle School, 227 –28; role of, 140 – 42; types of, 163 –64; universal, 157 – 58; word calling, 141 –42 lockouts, 108 Lukacs, Georg, 12, 15, 22, 43–46, 46 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 43, 57, 59–60 Macdonell, Diane, 23 Macedo, Donaldo, 71, 141, 160 MacLeod, Jay, 48 Mannheim, Karl, 49 Martin, Emily, 31 Marx, Karl: on choices, 67; on hegemony, 46; and politics, 36; on religion, 50; theory of ideology, 12, 15, 22 – 24, 42–43 Marxism and women, 30 M*A*S*H analogy, 90 math, 148, 149 –50 McLaren, Peter: on identity, 63, 68; on ideology, 35, 79; on language, 66 – 67, 69; on meaning, 7; predatory culture, 138; on racism, 27; and reform, 8, 215 meaning: negotiation of, 126; production of, 7 MeChA (Mexican/Chicano Association), 171–72. See also Hispanic students

Index Memmi, A., 151 Meszaros, Istvan, 21 methodology, 75 – 76, 76 – 79, 236 Mitt, James, 121– 22 model minority myth, 176– 77 Moe, T., 4, 7 Monroe Inquiry, 9, 126 Monroe Middle School: description of, 3, 84– 86; literacy in, 227– 28 Morgan, D., 80– 81 mother, definition of, 31– 32 myths, ideological, 58 naming, politics of, 170 narratives, critical discourse, 67 negative dialectics, 59– 60 Negative Dialectics (Adorno), 59 Noddings, Nel, 34 norms, 11, 176 Oakes, Jeannie, 6, 9, 25 observation by participants, 84 organization, personal, 126, 179 parent-figures in schools, 127 parents: communication with, 174 – 75; involvement of, 93 –95, 100 – 102, 130– 31, 200 – 201; as resources, 199– 200, 201 Parks, Rosa, 227 Pass/No Pass grading system, 112 – 13 past, romanticization, 139– 40 Pateman, C., 46 Patrick (professor), 3, 84 pedagogy, xi, 10, 144– 45, 236 – 37 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 158 Peirce, Charles, 55 point of view, student, 97, 98– 99, 113 policies, disciplinary, 106 politics: identity, 65, 172 – 73; lesbian, 34, 35; of naming, 170; participation in, 204 – 5; racial, 171 – 72 poststructuralist movement, 57 – 59 power: described, 69; and language, 156; nature of, 196; positive aspects of, 188, 194; relationships of, 195, 215– 16, 236; and worldviews, 38 preconceptions, cycle of, 194

263 productivity vs. compliance, 176–77 prostitution, 32 purpose, determining, 223–24 “putting in time,” 116–17 quick fixes, 214, 240 race: and identity, 29–30, 168; and ideology, 26–27, 45; meaning of, 192 – 93; in society, 29, 168–69; in sports, 133; stigma of, 164, 172; and success in school, 165; white guilt, 194 – 95; and women, 32 racism, 16, 27, 42, 54, 129 Ranciere, Jacques, 39, 42 rape, as domination, 32–33 rationalization, 173, 183 reasons, universality of, 37 recognition of each week, 121–22 reflection, 236 reform: circles, 8 –10; critical, 2, 13; failure of traditional, 86; goals of, 4 – 5; and language, 12, 60–61, 72; political nature of, 196–97; process of, 10; resistance to, x, 154; of self, 193 – 94. See also curriculum; school reform reformers, 8 relationships, 38–39, 42, 106, 108 religious era, 50 research: critical, 78; educative, 5; methods and techniques of, 79 –84 resources, mobilizing, 189–90 retreats, 126–27 Ricoeur, P., 40–41, 66, 205 Robertson, Oscar, 137 role models, 121 Rome, fall of, 187 –88 rules: ambiguity in, 132; application of, 132– 33, 178–79; breaking, 117 – 18; compliance with, 109 Ruth, Babe, 132 San Juan, E., Jr., 7, 63 Sarason, Seymour, 3, 6, 45 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 16, 54 –57 SCAB books, 179 scaffolding, 219–20, 224

264 Scheffler, Israel, 78 schooling: as a game, 117 – 18, 130, 197, 198, 214; for material empowerment, 211 – 12; “the lie” of, 197– 98 school reform: analyzing, 75; and class differences, 58; democratic, 77; experimentation in, 217 – 18; extent of, 79; gender issues in, 31; and ideology, 239 – 40; power of language in, 60; process of, 196, 225; resistance to, 190 – 91, 241 – 42; viability of, 231. See also reform schools: as a “boat,” 199– 201; bureaucracies in, 3 – 4, 7, 102, 124; culture of, 3, 7, 37, 41, 45, 83; data reporting of, 36; expectations of, 115; goal of, 175; hyperrationalization of, 4; inequalities in, 25 – 26, 56, 173; misarticulation between, 103– 4; as part of the real world, 39, 178 – 79; race relations in, 2, 165– 66; resource allocation in, 105; rules of, 109, 117– 18, 132; success in, 215 – 16 schoolwork, parents doing, 101 – 2 science, privileged status of, 145– 46 Scott, Joan, 68 self-confrontation, 193 self-esteem, 167, 168, 169, 176 sexual harassment, 33. See also gender Siegel, Harvey, 36 – 37 signifiers, 54 – 55, 55 – 56 signs, theory of, 54, 55 – 56 Sirotnik, Ken, 6, 9 Sizer, Ted, 9, 63 skills development of, 133 – 34, 146 Slick (student), 48 Smith-Hefner, N. J., 64 Smyth, J., 236 soccer, 130 – 31, 133, 137 social groups: Black Collegiance, 121– 22, 168, 170, 193 – 94; Greek fraternities, 171; leadership in, 47; MeChA (Mexican/Chicano Association), 171– 72; as source of normalcy, 63 social justice, 242 – 43 social relations, 6, 24, 68 – 69, 129 – 30 solidarity, group, 238

Index Souls of Black Folk, The (Du Bois), 27 Spivak, G., 34 sports: evaluation in, 130 –32, 137–38; girls and women in, 133; social structures in, 132–33 staff meetings, frustration with, 202 stage fright and student assignments, 98 – 99 Stam, Robert, 67–68 standards, consensual, 136–37 standards, setting, 211 students: accountability of, 229; choices of, 222 –23; class differences in, 48, 104, 122 –23, 140; discouragement in, 114, 116; engagement of, 92 – 95, 95–99, 99–100, 153, 157, 209; evaluation of labor of, 113, 143; importance of grades to, 111; inequalities among, 223–24; interests of, 147; interpretation of material, 157–60; involvement of, 206 – 10; knowledge of, 134 –36, 219 – 20; marginalized, 48–49; motivation of, 163, 176 –78; performance of, 112 – 13, 115–16, 173–74; preparation of, 102 –4; problems at home, 209 – 10; role of in reform, 191–92, 206 – 7; self-esteem of, 114, 124–25; sense of responsibility of, 106–7; skills of, 102–3; valuing, 208 –9; work of, 89, 119–20, 155–56, 189 studies, critical, 10 subjectivity, 61–62 success, 132 support, cultural, 167–68 talent, 133– 34, 173 tardiness, 109 teacher-parent relations, 94 –95, 201–2 teachers: alienation of, 238; constraints on, 14– 15; culture of, 77, 109–10; experience of, 91, 118, 221–22; flexibility of, 139, 186 –88; guilt of, 113, 114 – 15, 116; independence of, 225 – 26, 228; influence of, 222 –23; interactions of, 126 –27, 192–93, 210 – 11; isolation of, 100, 118, 215; modeling correct behavior, 108–9;

Index as parents, 122– 26, 123 – 24; power of, 18– 19, 188; pragmatism of, 89–90, 151, 152, 155; in reform, 202– 4, 225 – 27, 234; responsibilities of, 110, 191 – 92; substitute and novice, 91; working conditions of, 91, 151, 185 Thebaud, Jean-Loup, 43, 59– 60 theory: and education, 240; grounded, 87; implications of, 8 – 10; and practice, 240 – 41; and school reform, 11 “the way things are,” 173, 182 thinking: difference, 151– 52; importance of, 117; transformative, 218–19 Thompson, John, 15, 17 To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee), in curriculum, 181– 82, 216 tracking, 102 – 3, 110, 132 tradition, 181, 182 transformers, 8 trash on school grounds, 106 – 7 triage, of students, 90 truth, politics of, 70 Tubman, Harriet, 158 – 59 tutors, 121 – 22, 170 TV exercise, 221 – 22 two-school phenomenon, 3 Tyson, Mike, 137, 138 unconscious, theory of, 38– 39 underground railroad, misconceptions about, 158 – 59

265 understandability, 155–56 upside-down work, 88, 208, 216 –17 value, theory of, 56, 139 values, 11, 176 violence, symbolic, 18 vouchers, 4 Washington school district, 3 Weber, Max, 15, 47 Weedon, C., 38–39, 62, 77–78 Weiler, Kathleen, 31, 71 West, Jerry, 137 What Is to Be Done? (Lenin), 43–44 White, R., 60 Williams, Raymond, xi Willis, Ellen, 65 Willis, Paul, 16, 48 will to learn, 176–78 Wilson, William Julius, 95 Wise, A., 4 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 12 Wittig, M., 34 women: domination of, 48; in Marxism, 30, 32; and race, 54; role of, 31 – 33; schooling of, 32 worldviews, 37 –39; respecting, 173, 185; of students, 161; of teachers, 88 writing: “fluency,” 104; inability, 162 – 63; standards of, 133 –36, 136 – 37, 157; uses for, 140–41 Zeichner, K., 236

ABOUT THE AUTHOR ZEUS LEONARDO is currently Assistant Professor of Education at California State University, Long Beach.

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