Journey in Social Education: A Primer

Journeys in Social Education

Journeys in Social Education A Primer Edited by

Cameron White University of Houston, USA

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM/BOSTON/TAIPEI

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DEDICATION

For Dylan and Lori

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Journey ............................................................................................................... ix Cameron White 1. Experiencing Social Education ......................................................................... 1 Sabrina Marsh 2. Visualizing the White Spaces: Beginning the Journey toward Social Education.............................................................................................. 15 Susan McCormack 3. Our Social Education Journey ........................................................................ 29 Chris Witschonke, Susan McCormack, Traci Jensen, Sabrina Marsh, Bernardo Pohl and Debby Shulsky 4. Rethinking Social Studies for Social Education .............................................. 41 Cameron White 5. Social Education – Sacrality in Education ...................................................... 49 Jacob W. Neumann 6. Cultural Re-Location and the Appropriation of Underrepresented Voices................................................................................. 67 Emily J. Summers 7. The Schools We Deserve................................................................................. 79 Amy Mulholland 8. Culture of Fear: Addressing through Alternative Texts .................................. 93 Samuel Brower 9. Five Years Later: A Student-Educator Dialogue........................................... 111 Douglas Edwards and John Reyes 10. The Moral Crisis in Special Education: Redefining the Social Model of Disability............................................................................. 133 Bernardo Pohl 11. Recognizing and (Re)cognizing Ageism in EC–12 US Social Education.......................................................................... 147 Emily J. Summers and Amy Esdorn vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

12. The Pop Connection: Engaging Popular Culture in Social Education........... 163 Cameron White 13. Heteronormative Assumptions Embedded in the Cartoonworld and Beyond: Cartoonworld Constructs of the Nuclear Family............. 175 Emily J. Summers 14. Michael Moore, Baby Einstein, and Student Council Elections: Social Education Brings Unusual Pieces of Life Together....................................... 195 Christopher Witschonke 15. Critical or Negative? The Search for Social Education in Unique Spaces .... 211 Traci Warren Jensen 16. Social Education Teacher as Activist: Bridging Theory and Practice in Democratic Activism..................................................................................... 227 Tony L. Talbert and James B. Rodgers 17. Social Education and Transformative Teacher Education............................. 241 Chris Witschonke, Susan McCormack, Traci Jensen, Debby Schulsky, Sabrina Marsh and Cameron White Author bios........................................................................................................... 251

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A JOURNEY

Social education is quite a journey. Yes, it really is about the journey and not the destination. It began for me many years ago; sure, school and all that, but perhaps more so with the presidential election of 1964 and church during my “formative” years. I fondly remember my third grade teacher, Mrs. Barnes, who allowed me to explore and question, even at the age of 9. But it was the experience of handing out LBJ literature that sticks with me to this day. That, and standing up in church at age 12 and asking “why?” and “are you sure?”of the preacher. I have loved history, politics, and current events since I can remember. I knew from an early age I wanted to do something in the “social sciences.” I generally had cool history teachers in high school and excellent history and political science professors in college. I was pushed toward law school but education won out – thank goodness. I think I have pretty much always been one to question the status quo, especially with respect to school and politics. Fortunately, it hasn’t gotten me into too much trouble. I did my share of protesting in high school and college – but I always kept it safe. I did the same as a teacher – never really one for rules that kept kids from being kids or from allowing anyone to ask questions. Again, as a teacher I seemed blessed by administrators who allowed me to do my own thing. I didn’t have management problems and my kids did well on tests, despite my always resisting teaching to those tests. I taught social studies for 15 years, proud that often students left my class smiling. I tried always to make it all about them. What in geography or American history connects with you I would ask at every opportunity. They told me, too. They wanted to do history and geography. They didn’t want to sit and have it “done to them.” So, that’s what we did. We debated, we questioned, we made movies, we marched the halls, and we learned the neighborhood. They taught me more than I could ever teach them! Life experience leads us in our social education journey. Learning to play the school game, vacations to state capitals and civil war battle sites, reading, volunteering, then trips abroad… all contributed to my social education story. But perhaps as important formatively as any other was the 1972 presidential campaign. I was 16 and seven of my friends and I spent hours campaigning in Houston for George McGovern. When he lost I remember driving the endless freeways of Houston until the early hours of the morning screaming out the window that all was lost. I really think that pushed my cynicism to the edge. Is has been a constant struggle ever since – and the social education journey has provided the balance. I often tip over the edge and shout out about injustice, fascism, or the like – but I do come back. The seeds were sown… but it took the freedom of the academy to allow for further development. Beginning with traditional social studies education and bridging from there with collaborations with prospective teachers, graduate students, other professors, schools, teachers, and the community, allowed additional critical investigation. The social studies program area morphed into social education with courses ix

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focused on critical pedagogy, popular culture, and social issues. Projects took hold focusing on global education, international experiences, and rethinking American history. Students graduated carrying a torch for something called social education – something that has no “true” definition, that is always evolving and always questioning, but nevertheless is comprised of some general themes. Given the ongoing debate and struggle with “defining” social education a graduate student provided a working definition to encourage dialog…The following was placed on our bulletin board outside the social education lab and can now be founding program syllabi, on our brochures and web site: “While we resist “defining” social education, we believe that social education emphasizes three areas of study: critical pedagogy, cultural/media studies, and social studies education. We also stress that education, interpreted broadly, has the potential to advance social justice.” Thus emerged social education… a lifelong journey for all of us – to question, to challenge, to do, and to create. And through the years, especially as a professor, the dominoes started to fall… at least regarding the possibilities… social justice, activism, cultural studies, popular culture, critical pedagogy… and yes, the foundation – social studies… Now there are teachers, administrators, and professors out there struggling in the social education journey. Through a lifetime along the journey, many have come along for the ride. Connecting present and past, merging current issues with traditional curriculum, integrating alternative texts and perspectives, empowering and emancipating kids and educators, transforming schools and society – the transgressions of social education scream out. Dewey, Freire, Kincheloe, Zinn, Greene, Giroux, Apple, hooks, McLaren, Kozol, Loewen, Said, Chomsky and many others have provided the impetus. May we make them proud! The essays within this text demonstrate various journeys in social education. They are meant as stories, not maps or scripts. They are intended to serve as a primer of sorts, for those interested in a similar journey. Hopefully, this can be a meaningful experience for many – students, educators, parents, and society as a whole, of course. Well… the journey and struggle continues… Have fun! Cameron White, PhD

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SABRINA MARSH

1. EXPERIENCING SOCIAL EDUCATION

The point of departure of the movement lies in the people themselves. But since people do not exist apart from the world, apart from reality, the movement must begin with the human-world relationship. (Freire, 1971, p. 72) Isadora Duncan (1927/1996) famously said “What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print” (p. 60). Taking my cue from Isadora, I begin this chapter by dancing around barefoot with two very basic questions: what are the issues involved with modeling a social education philosophy around genuine communal experiences? And can communal experiences and the concepts of social education ever exist in a vacuum as two distinct pedagogical entities? As social educators, we have a moral obligation to do more than read and discuss and endlessly debate with like-minded individuals in a safe classroom. We need the experience of community outside ourselves to ground us and make us aware that social injustices are not something that is merely happening to “someone else over there”, that critical awareness is not just a catch phrase for academics but rather the defining reason for our existence as social educators. It is vitally important to us, as educators and as members of a larger world, to conceptualize a curriculum centered upon community experience, and to visualize social education as part of an educational philosophy that “embodies forms of experience in which teachers and students display a sense of critical agency and empowerment” (Giroux, 1988, p. 87). This type of curriculum, by necessity, must explore the concepts of teachers as intellectuals who are capable of establishing classrooms where they and their students are free to discover, debate, and embrace an experiential language of knowledge and skills. The first concept toward integrating community experience and social education should be aimed at an exploration of what it means to be a social educator. The second concept should focus on reorienting educators’ perceptions of the role direct communal experience plays in critical thought and empowerment. And the third concept should explore the effort to democratize knowledge and power by reconceptualizing through experiential learning the traditional educator’s role as the sole purveyor of knowledge. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SOCIAL EDUCATOR

I believe social education serves to consolidate two essential elements of critical pedagogy: a thoughtful criticism of traditional truths and a celebration of a socially just community. If what we learn experientially, and indeed teach in schools, could C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 1–13. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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be represented as a mere ideology, if it were presented as just the practices of the dominant culture it would be easier to shake off its influence in our minds and critically examine it for what it is. But our lessons are presented as socially legitimate knowledge that is made available to students. At no time are students encouraged to critically question and actively explore: Who determines this knowledge is important? Who does it serve and why is it presented in the way it is presented? Why is it taught this way to this particular group? All these questions center on the issue of social justice, of course. And addressing these questions requires more than just a new way of thinking consciously, for it demands a need for a complete restructuring of schools and society, as well as a rethinking of the social contract that binds us together. I see the greatest hope of a truly transformative and emancipatory vision of education in social education. Social education is not a universal pedagogy that transcends all situations and offers a solution to what is wrong with education today. But I do envision it as a link between critical social theory, critical pedagogy and actual educational practices. Social education has the power to function as both a political mechanism and a pedagogic tool. The very act of students, teachers and communities engaging one another and theorizing around the languages of resistance and possibility can become the framework, and in many cases the tentative beginnings, of transformative practice. As Paolo Freire (1971) said, education that attempts to be neutral succeeds in supporting the dominant ideology. Advocates of social education realize that education must be capable of being fundamentally rethought to arrive at a state of critical consciousness. This critical consciousness in turn allows for a more complete and in-depth understanding about our selves and our world while working toward a freedom from oppression for every member of the community. Michael Apple (2003) called this rejection of neutrality within our thinking, while simultaneously becoming aware of our own complicity within the community and the classroom, “repositioning.” Grounded in critical theory, repositioning says that “the best way to understand what any set of institutions, policies and practices does is to see it from the standpoint of those who have the least power” (p. 99). By active explorations of communities, by examining the reality of those who have the least power, social educators begin to understand the implications of a curriculum based on accepted standards and traditional knowledge. Tellingly, by creating a “one size fits all” curriculum that advances a sham of equality for all, we render ourselves and our students helpless in the face of differences. The current state of education, which supposes that students are of a cookie cutter like sameness and respond in the same way to the same curriculum, suppresses our ability to recognize diversity within others in the community, and makes critical thinking impossible. Freire (1971) said “those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly” (p. 47). Throughout my studies in social education I have constantly struggled with how to define just what social education might look like through my eyes and as seen by others. Indeed I have come to believe, especially on my more darkly cynical postmodern days, that not only does it defy 2

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definition but that by the mere act of defining it we reify it and render it toothless. Constructing boundaries serves to keep things out, but those same boundaries also limit how far we can travel and experience. However, this much I do believe about social education. That it rests on a foundation of the fundamental “rightness” of critical theory and critical pedagogy to transform both educator and student lives. That it accepts the postmodern viewpoint that there are no correct answers, and that there are as many different versions of the truth as there are individuals to tell them. That it celebrates the individual experience within a larger social framework of community and society. And that its goal is the thoughtful reflection-action model that Freire (1971) spoke of as necessary to attain a level of critical consciousness within that is necessary to change the world without. THE ESSENTIALS OF COMMUNAL EXPERIENCE

In Democracy and Education (1916) and again in Experience and Education (1938), John Dewey stressed that people develop intellectual and moral growth in and through the world around them from democratic involvement within the community. Dewey was highly critical of curriculum-centered education apart from the genuine experience of community. In fact, Dewey’s (1902) appraisal of traditional forms of education was that teachers and their administrators tend to view students as somehow disconnected from the community that surrounds them. Students are viewed as identical interchangeable parts, capable of producing the same answers at the same time with the same stimulation, all while remaining on the same page. Dewey’s observations of community within education revolved more around liberation of the human communal spirit through experiential means. Indeed, in the entire second chapter of Experience and Nature, Nature, Dewey (1925) addressed the hard work involved in self-realization and the consummatory experience within a communal setting. Dewey (1916) defined community as “common history and objects of allegiance” (p. 4). Yet despite this rather traditional definition, Dewey was conscious of the obligation of educators to create a social order that nourished all peoples’ inner as well as outer lives. He saw community experiences as shared paths to self-actualization and discovery. This logic of discovery refers to future experiences, and expects received truths to be regarded critically as something that should be tested by new experiences rather than something that is dogmatically disseminated and learned within a classroom setting. Even the most carefully constructed truths then become open to further inquiry. I believe this questioning of the truths speaks directly to social education. Dewey (1920/1948) saw our existing body of knowledge within a classroom setting as something made up of two parts: one is an examination of the mistakes and prejudices of our ancestors organized around accident, class interest and bias; and the second is the construction of accepted beliefs that come from an instinctive and dangerously biased human mind. These two bodies of knowledge revolve around mental inertia and sluggishness and, Dewey (1920/1948) believed, could only be 3

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counteracted by an “actual adventure of travel and exploration [which] purged the mind of fear of the strange and the unknown” (p. 40) and that allowed the mind to be opened up to critical examination of existing knowledge. Maxine Greene (1992) spoke admiringly of community as “different voices conditioned by different perspectives” (p. 251). This is a very different conception of the notion of community from Hirsch (1987) and D’Souza (1991), who claim the idea of “variousness” distracts from the commonality to be desired in all communal experiences and serves to disunite. Evers (1997) said different voices and outlooks would “defeat the most important ends of education in democracy,” which is achieving “as high a level of common culture as possible” (p. 11). Yet community for many of us speaks of a place not of conformity but rather a place that is attuned to diversity through the multi-layered voices we hold in common. Indeed, for Maxine Greene (1992) “the many who ended up ‘lying outside history’ diminished the community, left an empty space on the common ground, and left undefined an aspect of reality” (p. 253). That reality becomes a sum of all the experiences by all the people. In the words of Fenwick (2000), “adults don’t learn from experience, they learn in it” (para. 35) through a process of cognitively analyzing and reflecting upon a problem they have encountered and through further reflecting during and after the experience in ways that serve to reconstruct existing beliefs. Students and educators must be willing to investigate and understand the roots of their beliefs and to be able to courageously explore opposing perspectives within a community that allow for connections between individuals, education and the social order. In this way, experiential education within a community setting provides students and educators with a way of actively engaging in an authentic experience that has recognizable consequences. Kraft and Sakofs laid out the framework for experiential education within the community in 1988 as: Students make discoveries and experiment with knowledge themselves instead of hearing or reading about the experiences of others. Students also reflect on their experiences, thus developing new skills, new attitudes, and new theories or ways of thinking (as cited in Stevens & Richards, 1992, para. 2). According to Kolb in his 1984 book Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, experiential learning stands apart from cognitive theories of learning that tend to give heavy emphasis to acquisition, manipulation, and recall of abstract symbols, and from behavioral learning theories that deny any role for consciousness and subjective experience in the learning process. Experiential learning is a holistic integrative perspective that combines experience, perception, cognition, and behavior. In the case of experiential pedagogies, the learner is viewed as inextricably linked with his experiences, as being-in-the-world (Kolb, 1984). Because of this viewpoint, experiential pedagogy would seem to be straddling the line between the two extremes in education that Dewey (1916) identified – traditional and progressive education, between the stances of traditional education’s goal to further the transmission and transference of cultural knowledge and the more progressive outlook that the role of formal education is to allow for complete 4

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freedom and individual expressions of needs and interests within the context of a school setting or a community. True experiential education allows for formal education to support students in their efforts to make sense of their subjective experiences within a cultural and social framework. Over the past one hundred years, education has involved “the purposeful manipulation of students toward predetermined ends and ignores the experience of the students themselves, viewing it as a contamination of the process” (Hopkins, 1994, p. 12). Traditionally, children learn in school at an early age that there are right and wrong answers to most questions. Their curriculum is prescribed in small doses that attempt to limit knowledge that might be controversial or upsetting, avoiding ideas that are difficult to quantify or define (Hansen, 2000). I believe this ideology of passivity and non-critical absorption threatens to define many educators. Experiential social education calls for a fundamental shift in the role of the teacher. Experiential education calls for students to experience an action or a communal event before they make an effort to synthesize knowledge (Stevens & Richard, 1992). Students’ explorations frequently take them outside the classroom walls, placing the onus on teachers to become active learners along with their students. Traditionally, teachers at any level of instruction are not encouraged to collaborate with their students, and experiential education forces them to reevaluate their role and become more than the engines that disperse curriculum decisions and school policy as they experience with their students, reflect upon the learning opportunities they have designed, interact with differing communities and ideas, and respond to their students’ reactions to these experiences. If, as Walter and Marks (1981) suggested, fully half of an individual’s reality resides in action, might not an experiential curriculum provide the bridge for those students who are struggling to adjust to an educational world that holds no meaning to their sense of identity in the real world? In Democracy and Education, Dewey (1916) stressed that students should become “active learners” (not his phrase but rather a catch phrase currently in vogue in education, probably as a result of Dewey’s influence), responsible for their own learning. He emphasized that teachers should never take it for granted that students have the necessary experiences within themselves to make sense of what they are seeing. Rather, Dewey (1916) believed teachers should continually provide students opportunities for real experiences within an educational framework. Additionally, teachers should never assume that what they are teaching is suitable or even desirable for their students’ existing experiences. Dewey (1916) postulated that there are three different approaches to curriculum that build increasingly upon an experiential approach to learning. The first form of lesson, and indeed the most common in Dewey’s time up to current times, stands alone and treats each lesson as an independent whole within a controlled classroom setting. This approach to learning relieves the students of any responsibility for their own knowledge acquisition and does not encourage them to search for commonalities in what they are learning in other subject areas and in their lives. According to Dewey (1916), this is the least desirable method of learning. 5

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A second lesson type draws upon earlier lessons learned within a classroom. This is more desirable in terms of learning experience, but once again it fails to connect the subject to those other subjects outside the students’ course of study, and does not take advantage of personal and communal out-of-school experiences. In most cases these personal experiences are much more relevant to what the student knows than what is force-fed the student in the school setting. The third type, and that which was most desirable in Dewey’s eyes, involves not only what has gone before in the curriculum but also what is going on in what Dewey (1916) has called the experiences and realities of everyday life. When teachers make an honest effort to design lessons around the third type of experience Dewey (1916) advocated, education becomes interactive in important ways. Students and teachers share the responsibility for learning, and students are no longer passive receptors of knowledge handed down from arbitrary authority figures. In this form of experiential learning, the teacher maintains authority only as someone who enables students to form connections by providing them with experiences that let them explore for themselves what is being taught. Knowledge constructed in this fashion is not transmitted, but rather created by both teachers and students. This leads to education which becomes emancipatory for both the teacher and the student. Wink (2005) described it as “the difference between reading the word and reading the world” (p. 90). Generalizing this educational model to life lessons, Dewey’s program of experiential education becomes a radical agenda of educational reform and emancipatory participation that can serve as life-long learning. In the words of Dewey (1916), “we use our past experiences to construct new and better ones in the future” (p. 134). In this way, “the very fact of experience thus includes the process by which it directs itself in its own betterment” (Dewey, 1916, p. 134). Writing shortly after the end of World War I, Dewey (1920) stated “when experience ceased to be empirical and became experimental, something of radical importance occurred” (p. 134). What occurred was that experience explored outside the bounds of classroom and pragmatic concerns allows us to extend a sense of freedom into every part of our lives. We begin to critically investigate problems, to question and learn for ourselves, and to take the crucial step toward developing standards and values as we go along independent of external authorities. Experience becomes constructively self-regulating and emancipatory. DEMOCRATIZING EDUCATION

Education is full of inequalities, and it is not a neutral process. Educators, whether they choose consciously to be or not, are involved in political acts of power and knowledge (Apple, 1996, Apple, 1999; Apple, 2003; Apple, 2004; Freire, 1971; Foucault, 1977; Giroux, 2003; Giroux, 2005; Gramsci, 1930/1971; Greene, 2003; Jardine, 2005; Kincheloe, 2004; Kincheloe, 2005; McLaren, 2003; Shor, 1992; Shor, 2003). When examining the role of a social educator, social justice becomes the most cogent framework for organizing thoughts and actions in relationship to the reality of education and its role with the world. In the words of Paulo Freire (1971), 6

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it becomes imperative to realize that educator efforts “must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization” (p. 62). With the emancipatory writings of Paolo Freire in the 1970s, a new wave of experiential education emerged, which many researchers describe as “post-experientialism” because of its attempt to move beyond traditional experiential thinking by deconstructing traditional views of experience. Proponents of post experientialism, driven by influences from post-modern theory, began by incorporating issues of power into what had heretofore been viewed as the rather neutral phenomenon of experience. Giroux (2005) said that citizenship and community do not, in fact, have any transcendental significance “outside the lived experiences and social practices of individuals who make up diverse forms of public life” (p. 5). The ideal, an emancipatory form of community, would aim at eliminating oppressive social practices and building forms of moral reawakenings that strengthen the possibilities of human existence as individuals situated within their common realities (Giroux, 2005, p. 6). Karl Marx, writing in 1845 in the Theses of Feuerback, stated that he was particularly drawn to the historical embeddedness of consciousness, or the assumption that a person’s view of the world and of self is profoundly shaped through the reality of everyday communal living. To Marx (1845) “all social life is essentially practical” (para. 8), and community and the individual are “the highest point reached by contemplative materialism” (para. 9). Marx (1845) stated “the standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity” (para. 10). To understand and critically question ideologies, one must first understand that most ideologies have in common three distinct features (Apple, 2004). These are legitimation (the justification of group actions and social acceptance), power conflicts (the distribution of authority and the allocation of rewards that are always present even if the people involved refuse to acknowledge this dimension) and style of argument (rhetoric that reinforces solidarity and seeks to persuade and convert). Any discussion of community and social education must necessarily revolve around these three components of power. Keeton (1976) argued for including experiential education in education for five reasons: it directly acquaints the learner with realities referred to by words and ideas in theories, it evokes greater interest and more sustained motivation than words or ideas alone, it facilitates memory, it provides unmatched means for practice and skill development, and it provides a means for questioning the truth of concepts and for testing the adequacy of concepts for application to intended realities. Giroux and McLaren (1986) called for an interdisciplinary approach to learning theory that crossed the boundaries of fields like education, literary studies, media studies, and social theory. Explorations of experiential learning have the potential to address all these different contextual frameworks while concurrently opening the door to a more democratic and emancipatory form of learning. In ways which we have not yet visualized, and with the emergence of new technologies to integrate with relevant instruction, experiential education has the potential to serve as a powerful component of educational reform. 7

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Experiential education would appear to serve more than the individual sense of awareness. With its interest in acquainting learners with realities greater than themselves, experiential education allows us to question the truths we have been taking for granted. Greene (1992) assured us “to open up our experiences (and yes, our curricula) to existential possibilities of multiple kinds is to extend and deepen what we think of when we speak of a community” (p. 254). Freire (1971) called the act of becoming critically conscious “conscientization,” which means breaking through prevailing myths and ideologies to reach new levels of awareness. The process of conscientization involves identifying contradictions in experience through dialogue and becoming a “subject” with other oppressed subjects. In this way we become complicit in changing the world. Freire (1971) wrote that “the pursuit of full humanity […] cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity; therefore it cannot unfold in the antagonistic relations between oppressors and oppressed” (p. 85). As part of an understanding of oppressed subjects, Freire (1971) worked with the concept of the “culture of silence.” Alienated and oppressed people are not heard by the dominant members of their society. The dominant members prescribe the words to be spoken by the oppressed through control of the schools and other institutions, thereby effectively silencing the people. Critical inquiry goes missing. Dialogue and self-determination become impossible. Within the parameters of the culture of silence, concepts of “struggle, debate, community, and democracy have become subversive categories” (Giroux, 2005, p. 4). Henry Giroux (2005) wrote that America is quickly becoming what he called “a land without a memory” (p. 4) because only historical memories in the form of lived experiences allow us to “transform the seemingly fixed and internal in our lives into things that can be changed” (p. 3). He wrote that this is in part because the people in power have worked toward developing a public philosophy that “distorts the desires and experiences of many people in this country” (Giroux, 2005, p. 4). Apple (2004) stated the most relevant way to gain insight into another person or a different ideology is to begin to question what to them is unquestionable. One does this through critical theory, by situating their activities in a larger arena of economic and social conflict. Such critical examination would result in a laying bare of ideas that are uncritically accepted by turning a spotlight on hidden curricula and tacit teachings of values and norms within a communal setting. This involves a level of commitment to the thing being examined and our own complicity, as well as a sort of Marxist viewpoint to historical conflicts that brought the whole thing about to begin with. Critical theory helps to call attention to serious structural issues in ideologies. While individuals may be said to “learn” something through a process of change, “education” is commonly defined as a transaction between teacher and student and must take into account power/knowledge and the educational system as a whole. I would argue that there are aspects of individual and collective knowledge which are unavailable and unspoken through dialogue and unarticulated through any action. I believe any attempt at exploring experiential learning in the classroom 8

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must address meaning making and identity construction through these transactions of power and knowledge. According to Michael Apple (2004), traditionally education acts in two important ways within a society: to reproduce inequality and to preserve cultural capital. Apple (2004) said there are four distinct steps to situating education and ourselves within this context: place the knowledge that we teach within this larger framework, examine the social relations that dominate educational settings, address the school as a mechanism of cultural and economic distribution, and finally place ourselves as educators within this context. The key to understanding these very complex interactions between institutions and individuals within an educational framework lies within the concept of hegemony as introduced by Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks from the 1930s, which became the groundwork for critical pedagogists that followed. According to Marxist scholar Chad Raphael (n.d.), Gramsci defined hegemony as: The process by which the dominant classes or class fractions, through their privileged access to social institutions (such as the media), propagate values that reinforce their control over politics and the economy. These values form a dominant ideology. The dominant ideology in any society is a set of common sense assumptions that legitimates the existing distribution of power. Ideology makes this structure of power seem “natural,” “normal,” or “inevitable,” and therefore beyond challenge. (para. 4) Hegemony, in Gramsci’s vision (1930/1971), is much more than an examination of class structure. Hegemony (Gramsci, 1930/1971) describes a class system laden with ideologies and values that are all-pervasive throughout society and culture. So much so that those ideologies are taken as a form of truth at all levels of society and therefore become removed from examination, criticism or challenge. Furthermore, Wink (2005) admits that “from Grasmci I have learned that in subtle and insidious ways, we can all be part of maintaining myths” (p. 94). There is a fundamental disconnect in education between the actual communal experiences of youth and the culture of schools, with its emphasis on capitalism and print-based materials. This exists because of a tunnel vision present in our schools, our communities and our nation that continues to advocate a narrowly defined reality that serves only a few (Apple, 2002; Giroux, 1988; Jardine, 2005; Kincheloe, 2005) and a hypocritical illusion of democracy. Dewey (1902) said one avenue of exploration might come by “getting away from the meaning of terms that is already fixed upon and coming to see the conditions from anotherpoint of view and hence in a fresh light” (p. 339). Apple (2004) stated the most important concept within hegemony is that hegemony “saturates” our very consciousness until it becomes our only world. So much so that all our educational, economic and social interactions, as well as the commonsense interpretations we place on those interactions, are lived. Thus hegemony needs to be understood as existing beyond a mere abstraction; it is more than an ideology, more than “mere opinion or manipulation” (Apple, 2004, p. 4). According to Raymond Williams (1976), hegemony experienced as practices and expectations 9

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becomes “reciprocally confirming” to the point that it “constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society” (p. 205). Many different things are said to be just or injust; not only people and groups but also institutions and ideologies. Rawls (1999) defines social justice in the following way: The intuitive notion here is that […] various social positions and that men born into different positions have different expectations of life determined, in part, by the political system as well as by economic and social circumstances. In this way the institutions of society favor certain starting places over others. These are especially deep inequalities. Not only are they pervasive, but the affect men’s initial chances in life; yet they cannot possibly be justified by an appeal of the notions of merit or desert. It is these inequalities, presumably inevitable in the basic structure of any society, to which the principles of social justice must apply (p. 49). EXPERIENCE AS ESSENTIAL

As I move through my life as a social educator, I continue to believe absolutely that learning is a series of experiences, some formally within the classroom educational system but increasingly informally situated in the world. Education is still just the means to the ends of understanding my experiences. I don’t believe experience has ever been much valued in education, and certainly not the individual experiences that color the thoughts of both children and adults. Education as it currently stands does not contribute to learning in any real sense of the word because it doesn’t allow for the individual experiences that come before and the communal experiences we bring to any discussion. Nor does it allow for critical transformative thinking that allows us to place ourselves in the world and identify the injustices we see all around us. After touching the surface of Freire’s concepts of critical pedagogy and reading Dewey’s insistence in his work that experience be the heart of the educational process, I have began to form a philosophy of education that is increasingly based within a framework of experiential education within the community. In the concept of experiential education I see the value of the individual and the approach to education as a holistic means to a more compassionate thoughtful person. Which I believe to be the purpose of education at the most fundamental level: to make a more compassionate thoughtful world. The sense of helplessness we feel as educators confronted with the truth of social injustices points to the absolute need to examine hegemonic principles within the classroom, the community and ourselves. I believe this to be the purpose of social education. We need to examine our daily thoughts and actions as educators in light of their ramifications for cultural, communal and economic reproduction. In this way we are not merely challenging traditional educational practices, but actively working to break them apart. Education which is liberatory encourages learners to challenge and change the world, not merely uncritically adapt themselves to it. 10

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Ira Shor, working closely with the ideas of Paulo Freire, attempted to define and conceptualize this idea of critical engagement through experience. In his book Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change, Shor (1992) defined critical pedagogy in broad experiential terms: Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse (p. 129). For educators and students to have the chance to become more critically aware, I believe opportunities need to be provided within the community to experience different realities about teaching and learning in ways which allow them to critique their own views of education and their role within it. Educators need to develop an awareness of the historical perspectives of their cultural and structural ideologies. Until teachers can do this, they cannot clearly understand or express their own attitudes, feelings, interests or motives as positions which have a cultural history and a social context. Nothing is absolute; everything must be constantly re-evaluated and remade to meet our current needs. Everything, including our methods of knowing and free will, is open to critical examination and modification. Any method that fails to see beyond the narrow borders of education and stifling problem solving techniques is insufficient to our needs and merely situational and of the moment. Experience, and the intelligence and self-awareness it brings about, is enduring. It is my hope that common experiences designed around a basic belief in the rightness of social education to transform individuals and communities may help inform views of experiential learning and reflective knowledge construction, and open the way in the classroom for emancipatory critical dialogue among multiple voices. REFERENCES Apple, M. (1996). Cultural politics and education. New York: Teachers College Press. Apple, M. (1999). Power, meaning, and identity: Essays in critical educational studies. New York: Peter Lang Publishers. Apple, M. (2003). Making critical pedagogy strategic – On doing critical educational work in conservative times. In I. Gur-Ze’ev (Ed.), Critical theory and critical pedagogy today: Towards a new critical language in education (pp. 94–113). Haifa, Israel: University of Haifa. Apple, M. (2004). Ideology and curriculum. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum. In R. Archambault (Ed.), John Dewey on education: Selected writings (pp. 339–359). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: The Free Press. Dewey, J. (1920). Reconstruction in philosophy. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Dewey, J. (1925). Experience and nature. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Touchstone Press. 11

MARSH Dewey, J. (1948). Reconstruction in philosophy: The definitive edition. Boston: Beacon Press. (Original work published in 1920) D’Souza, D. (1991). Illiberal education: The politics of race and sex on campus. New York: The Free Press. Duncan, I. (1927/1996). My Life. London: W. W. Norton & Company. Evers, W. (1997). What’s gone wrong in America’s classrooms. Stanford, MA: Hoover Institution Press. Fenwick, T. (2000). Experiential learning in adult education: A comparative framework. Retrieved August 20, 2007, from http://www.ualberta.ca/~tfenwick/ext/pubs/print/aeq.htm Fishman, S. M., & McCarthy, L. (1998). John Dewey and the challenge of classroom practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 (C. Gordon, Ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. Freire, P. (1971). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Giroux, H. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers. Giroux, H. (2003). Education incorporated? In A. Darder, M. Baltodano, & R. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 119–125). New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Giroux, H. (2005). Schooling and the struggle for public life: Democracy’s promise and education’s challenge. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Giroux, H., & McLaren, P. (1986). Teacher education and the politics of engagement: The case for democratic schooling. In P. Leistyna, A. Woodrum, & S. Sherblom (Eds.), Breaking free: The transformative power of critical pedagogy (pp. 301–331). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review. Gramsci, A. (1930/1971). Selections from the Prison notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Greene, M. (1992). The passions of pluralism: Multiculturalism and the expanding community. The Journal of Negro Education, 250–261. Hansen, R. (2000). The role of experience in learning: Giving meaning and authenticity to the learning process in schools. Journal of Technology Education, 11(2), Spring 2000, 23–32. Retrieved January 14, 2008, from JSTOR database. Hirsch, E. (1987). Cultural literacy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hopkins, R. (1994). Narrative schooling: Experiential learning and the transformation of American education. New York: Teachers College Press. Jardine, G. (2005). Foucault and education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Keeton, M. (1976). Experiential education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kincheloe, J. (2004). Critical pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang Publishers. Kincheloe, J. (2005). Critical constructivism. New York: Peter Lang Publishers. Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Kraft, D., & Sakofs, M. (Eds.), (1988). The theory of experiential education. Boulder, CO: Association for Experiential Education. Marx, K. (1845). Theses on Feuerbach [Electronic version]. Retrieved December 9, 2007, from http:// www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/original.htm McLaren, P. (2003). Critical pedagogy in the age of terror. In I. Gur-Ze’ev (Ed.), Critical theory and critical pedagogy today: Towards a new critical language in education (pp. 69–94). Haifa, Israel: University of Haifa. Raphael, C. (n.d.). Theory of hegemony and ideology [Electronic version]. Retrieved January 22, 2007 from http://codesign.scu.edu/chad/120/heg.html Rawls, J. (1999). On justice as fairness. In M. Clayton, & A. Williams (Eds.), Social justice (pp. 49–84). Bodmin, Cornwall: Blackwell Publishing. Roth, R. (1962). John Dewey and self-realization. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 12

EXPERIENCING SOCIAL EDUCATION Shor, I., & Freire, P. (2003). What are the fears and risks of transformation? In A. Darder, M. Baltodano, & R. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 479–496). New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Stevens, P., & Richards, A. (1992). Changing schools through experiential education. Charleston, WV: Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from the ERIC database. Walter, G., & Marks, S. (1981). Experiential learning and change. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Williams, R. (1976). Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory [Electronic version]. In R. Dale (Ed.), Schooling and capitalism: A sociological reader (pp. 3–16). London: Routledge. Wink, J. (2005). Critical pedagogy: Notes from the real world. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Sabrina Marsh Ed.D. College of Education University of Houston

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2. VISUALIZING THE WHITE SPACES Beginning the Journey toward Social Education

THE TRAVELER

The journey between Social Studies and Social Education leads this traveler down a mysterious path with “white spaces” on the map that continuously needs to be examined. Like others, my exploration into the heart of Social Education has been fraught with twists and turns requiring me to occasionally realign my internal compass. Navigating this journey I have discovered that each traveler’s itinerary is an individualized process allowing for divergent teaching and learning opportunities. In this context, the “white spaces” are rough hewn educational landscapes that create exhilarating learning experiences that are well worth the effort in the end in spite of the difficulties one encounters when exploring the road that is “wanting wear” (Frost, 1920). Following are shared moments from my travel log, which highlight my attempt to defy the “well-trodden” Social Studies path to choose the “less traveled” toward Social Education (Frost, 1920). A metaphor in travel is most apropos for me as I entered Social Education via the geography discipline. Early in my teacher preparation program I listened to geography professors speak of the “white spaces” and was captivated by the stories of exotic places. Hearing the professors speak, I remembered moments from my childhood when I was introduced to these strange places through children’s literature that were read during stolen moments when the required class work was completed early. I never dreamed that I would ever visit them, but was intrigued by stories of golden fish, kimonos and pomegranates. Later, attending teacher-preparation classes, the wonder grew stronger as professors’ lectures described actual locations across the globe, and I envisioned them as blank outline maps that simply needed shading with a variety of map colors. Moving into the teaching profession through the geography discipline, I wanted high school students who were enrolled in my course to be curious about the white spaces and eagerly developed strategies to make that happen. Although I believed that students might enjoy researching different countries, I was convinced that they would love filling in the white spaces vicariously by constructing maps, so I introduced a year-long assignment, which required students to create world atlases. Every three weeks, students were presented with a list of locations that were to be carefully graphed, plotted and colored on oversized, blank (white) paper using precise mapping skills. Every three weeks, I was faced with reality that many students were tortured by the task and were not inspired to seek out the white spaces on C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 15–28. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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their own. I could not understand why students did not share my passion for mental travels and did not realize that creating maps of the random spaces were nothing more than plotting numbers to students. What was missing from my teaching and students’ learning experience that might stoke their curiosity? My beloved atlas assignment illustrated a traditional approach to teaching geography that was defined by technical details. Students were charged with the task of carefully plotting points and labelling selected countries, cities or physical features on the blank paper. They did not choose the places, which were chosen by me for a variety of reasons related to the curriculum. I had been comfortable with students’ viewing geography through a scientific lens by merely examining the space and place on the Earth’s surface (National Geographic Society, 1994) and then neatly “reporting” the findings. The focus was the “where” or “what” of geography. Students enrolled in this course were able to point to a place on the map and accurately recall the name, but what did that prove? My early views on teaching strategies followed Comte’s assumptions whereby truth could only be found through scientific and factual inquiry (Kincheloe, Slattery & Steinberg, 2000). This is the path that so many educators take when they begin their teaching careers; sadly, most will never move beyond this tradition to attempt anything more rigorous. It is like driving a familiar rode, but not looking beyond the pavement to see the scenery. In my heart I knew that changes (reform) needed to occur in this teaching trek and I tentatively took one eye off the road to consider looking beyond the straight and narrow path. The Straight and Narrow Path: Examining Tradition Transformations in my educational philosophy began through a personal journey, but Kincheloe (2001) argued that reform could only be realized through a radical overhaul of the entire educational system. For me, I needed to forge this trail in the Social Studies discipline because it served as the umbrella over geography. In the Social Studies overall, we have been bombarded with so many theories aimed at reform that pedagogical choices are often wrought by confusion or indecision (Ross, 2001; Stanley, 2001; Evans, 2004; Kincheloe, 2001; Dewey, 1908). For decades we have lauded and encouraged “experts” to define the teaching and learning environment by allowing them to choose what we teach and how we teach it without questioning the viability of their choices in our own courses. The curriculum content most often mirrors traditional values (Meuwissen, 2006). For me, as a beginning geography teacher, choosing curricula or strategies was linked to time and personal perceived competence. Similar to others in the early trek to teaching I was overwhelmed with the rigors of the profession. Consequently, I looked through my rear view mirror to locate models to help me “get through” the first year of teaching. And the view was always traditional In most cases I would depend on the district adopted textbook to guide me through the journey. I did not feel as though I had the credentials, the license to think beyond the traditional manner of teaching and did not trust myself to look for alternate routes. I secretly wondered how students would learn if they followed these illustrious footsteps. 16

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The use of textbooks was widely recognized in my teacher preparation programs. In some cases, we examined the various textbooks in teacher education courses to show how well they were structured toward our national and state standards. We were taught that the first years of teaching were taxing and believed that texts could solve the problem of time management that so many of us lament during our first years of teaching. Why would I move toward a different path and leave the textbook behind? While Kincheloe (2001) claimed that teachers were the catalyst for a true reform effort, believing it would be the key to the process. Belief in one’s ability might empower educators like me to be change agents and promote decisions that could affect their own practice; scholarly development began with the simple act of choosing curriculum. Is it possible to choose what I teach and how it should be taught? Kincheloe, Slattery and Steinberg (2000) believe this decision is more often driven by profit seeking corporations with insidious goals to promote a dominant national agenda thereby effectively eroding away teachers’ public status. Thus, a major roadblock for most reform efforts is teachers’ heavy reliance on curriculum designed by perceived experts. Most recently this has been illustrated at the state level in Texas as the State Board of Education considers revisions to the decade old state level social studies objectives (SBEC, 2009). In lieu of transformative, culturally responsive curricula, proponents for the continued traditional treatment of social studies have defied, classroom teachers serving on restructuring committees. Many proponents for the traditional treatment of social studies education have no experience in the field leaving one to question the nature of the “expert.” Who are the perceived Social Studies experts? Adler, Dougan and Garcia (2005) define the role of experts in Social Studies teacher preparation: [It] involves colleges of education and the liberal arts, K-12 schools, state departments of education, Social Studies/social science professional organizations, and accrediting agencies. These major players are influenced by societal trends; by interest groups; by research in Social Studies, in the social sciences, and in education; and by society’s proclivity for developing programs that are costeffective, well grounded in research, sufficiently flexible to be implemented in a variety of settings, and capable of satisfying the ever-changing demand for teachers. Moreover, the preparation of Social Studies teachers is influenced by the ideologies espoused by the various groups involved in this complex enterprise (p. 396). And, the various groups involved in this endeavor introduce their expert interpretations through profit driven programs and to a lesser degree, when referring to public school educators, professional journals. Tread carefully though, because even though interest groups etc. are listed as experts, they must also align their philosophical stance with tradition. Often, educators conform to a structure that is predetermined by corporate programs, if one believes that the “[e]xperts are best positioned to determine what ought to be taught and how in schools” (Mathison, Ross & Vinson, 2001). This common practice promotes lack of attention that does 17

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not ensure that students will actually learn (Fordham, Wellman & Sandmann, 2002). In the recent argument in the Texas State Board of Education, what is taught is tradition. It is Giroux’s technocratic policy and follows the assumption that teachers’ behaviors are controlled and the experts continue to do the thinking (Marker, 2000). Paulo Freire (1998) strongly opposed curricula of this nature and argued that it served as the antithesis for professional development of educators, essentially teacher proofing curricula. The assumption was that by packaging the course the expert created materials, or by distributing goals endorsed by the State Board of Education, there would be no way that teachers could mess it up, a process of deskilling teachers (Kincheloe, Slattery & Steinberb, 2000). This further sponsored the ideas that teachers are incapable of creating their own teaching materials and may serve to demoralize educators who might construct valuable curriculum in their classes. Off-road Trails With tentative steps off the beaten path, I began my new journey toward Social Education by rejecting the prescribed “teacher-proof ” curriculum and co-designing a replacement. Interested in thinking about how to make geography come alive in our own high school classroom, several colleagues and I excitedly constructed geography curricula that were aimed at big themes and ideas - a radical thought (I believed) considering that most geography courses were traditionally designed from a regional perspective. This transformation began soon after colleagues and I attended a geography educators’ professional conference. During the course of the conference, we were introduced to a number of educators who proudly rejected many of the district sponsored texts and worked hard to bring the concepts to life in their classrooms. But we also became lost in the maze of prescribed programs offered to “good” teachers interested in engaging students. We saw games and books and numerous strategies that would energize any classroom. All came with a predetermined map to guide educators in their teaching. One of the most memorable lessons introduced me to an organization called Zero Population Growth (populationconnection.org). It presented higher level strategies and concepts not fully discussed in texts. I was immediately engaged and questioned my existing practice because I did not require my students to use any of the complicated graphing strategies related to population growth. I was fascinated, but also a bit intimidated, because I was not certain that I would be able to create the same kind of learning space in my own class. We each vowed to try the strategies in our own classes within the ensuing weeks making the work more challenging for the students. Regrettably, our tentative steps toward transformation were slow to move beyond the standards-based treatment and completely focused on “covering” the material making sure that we included all of the state and national standards in our coursework. This function was so important that when designing the course to incorporate the new material, I frequently worked from two documents: first, I aligned the state 18

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chosen objectives with the Geography for Life (1994) standards posting that publication on the top of my desk to ensure that I could mark off each objective as I created a space for it in my scope and sequence. Not once did I stop to consider the expert or their rationale for including one theme or goal over another. Still, in this way, I managed to present big themes/topics supported by groups like ZPG to students with a clear sense of what information I wanted them or wished for them to acquire. Each lesson was equipped with a firm notion of “right” and wrong” answers to assist me in measuring how well students processed and retained the information. We plodded through each unit at a careful pace making sure that I provided clear explanations regarding the ordered systems of geography. The course presented a rigorous treatment of geography asking students to construct and interpret complex material like the “J Curve” (figure 1), which demonstrates the huge population shift in the last hundred years. The textbook only hinted at this type of instruction. The program sponsored by ZPG allowed students and me to dig a bit deeper into the skills required for geography proficiency. Teaching like this was my interpretation of proficiently handling the standards. But this treatment of a curriculum created by the educator was further proof that the experts had a solid hold on how I viewed curriculum. Did they know more than I? Could I feel confident riding on their shoulders? In spite of the fact that students enrolled in my classes were likely to participate in rigorous activities not common to textbook material and using methods for learning in collaborative groups, I took solace in the fact that I still chose the curriculum for my own agenda, which was similar to the state/district agenda and highly focused on a traditional view of the standards. However, Freire (1970, 1993, 2002) would describe the teacher/student relationship in the above educational setting

Figure 1. Human population growth since 1 AD. 19

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as “narrative” (p. 71); the teacher is the narrator or the Subject and the students are listeners or the Objects. The treatment of the material was still a superficial treatment in many ways. My preferred “surface” treatment of geographic topics and my reliance on single interpretation answers continued to follow Freire’s (1970, 1993, 2002) banking concept in that I imagined that I could pass on my supreme “knowing” of the state and national curricula to students who would act as passive receptacles waiting to be filled with information that was static and quantifiable (Kutz & Roskelly, 1991; hooks, 1994; Marker, 2000). The above, well-worn path for learning is often unquestioned and even expected in the classroom (Brooks, 2004). I was actually rewarded for staying on that narrow pathway to learning. It was reinforced in each of my teacher preparation classes and through formal teaching evaluations. I was expected to participate in my courses with a clear picture of the educational process. There was little room for questioning the methods. We all had practiced the behavior in our own experiences, so few found reasons to change the status quo (DeWitt & Freie, 2005). While my Geography course was not the only discipline guilty of this practice, it should be stated that this trend is most prevalent in the Social Studies genre and is perpetuated by the social studies methods courses (Kincheloe, 2001). Depending on the educator, a Social Studies methods course may follow several routes, but the most common path is one in which students experience “simplistic, rote-based exercises” which are “marked by an absence of analytical questions about and critical examination of the nature of the Social Studies curriculum” (Kincheloe, 2001, p. 19). I felt like I was presenting a critical learning environment and was convinced that I was on the right trek. Widening the Path Moving into higher education coincided with my pursuit of Social Education. As I becoming involved in teaching Social Studies methods to pre-service teachers, I became more concerned about the role of the educator with regard to their interest in developing curriculum. I wanted to model thinking and refused to adopt textbooks for my course that would define the course. Constructing curricula was important and would empower beginning teachers to seek information beyond anything that they would learn in the short time they would be in my course. Their journeys could not be neatly mapped out for them, but would have to be forged out of the experience. It became important to reconcile the practice of teaching with the “where” and with the “why.” I strongly reconsidered the long held views and traditions associated with the Social Studies, How might this expected route for learning be rejected to forge a new path? How might we encourage ninth grade teachers of geography and other Social Studies disciplines in public schools to see through the white spaces? The most important step is to contextualize teaching and learning (Kincheloe, 2001; Kincheloe, Slattery & Steinberg, 2000). This word, contextualizing opened the door for a greater understanding of teaching for me and allowed me to pursue other ways of thinking about teaching in general. Until I was introduced to the ideas of making learning relevant to kids, 20

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I had never considered the students in my preliminary decisions regarding choosing, planning and teaching the curriculum. There was another consideration. I always thought that teaching and learning involved the teacher actively imparting wisdom. Now, I needed to look at it a different way and to encourage students to take on a greater role in the learning environment. Why is it important for students to realize their roles in the educational system? What are the benefits or consequences for challenging students to consider the “lived dimensions” of the contexts of their lives (Kincheloe, 2004)? Making meaning of pedagogy in methods courses, inexperienced instructors frequently rely on strategies introduced through scholarly publications strictly related to strategies applied to the discipline - a view that Kincheloe (2001) calls the “nonconceptual, technical view of Social Studies teaching” (p. 19). This teaching is characterized by a lack of concern for the nature of Social Studies curriculum and a disregard for the connections between the Social Studies discipline and larger socio-political issues. I began to question: how is it possible to teach Social Studies without contextualizing it? Is it possible to teach US History without educating students on both civic competence or responsibility and Constitutional history? If civic education is the hallmark of Social Studies, should Social Studies education be removed from the elementary curriculum? More importantly, what is actually meant by civic responsibility? The answer to these questions has long placed Social Studies instructors like me in the middle of a seemingly unsolvable quandary (Stanley, 2005; Ross & Marker, 2005; Singer, 2005; Leming, Ellington & Porter-Magee, 2003; Adler, Dougan & Garcia, 2005). Critically considering the debate signifies my awakening transition between Social Studies and Social Education. NCSS (1994) explains that “democratic societies are characterized by hard choices” which “involve personal behavior” (p. 9). The choices become problematic when they involve issues that pit values against one another. In the case of Social Studies Education, fundamental values are questioned. Social Studies scholars charge teachers with the pedagogical decision – “transmission or transformation” (Stanley, 2005). White (2003) argues that “reforming, reacting, improving, acquiescing, and adapting are not approaches or methods we should be using. Educators need to be thinking in terms of transformation” (p. 2). Teachers have a choice when determining what they will introduce to students. Influences on pedagogical practice should be determined only after careful reflection on philosophical alignments. One of the most important wide-awake revelation came when I realized my complicity in the miseducative process. The Fork in the Road The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence, he inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples (Amos Bronson Alcott). I borrow this quote as it perfectly illustrates my path toward the Social Educator. I am a teacher. I am a learner. Becoming a life-long learner was revolutionary and became my first steps toward teaching Social Education through a democratic 21

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education. I also wanted to remove the hierarchical barriers between students enrolled in my courses and me. To achieve this, I needed to move beyond the teacher/sage relationship with students and to empower them to be involved with the learning choices. They also needed to see that I was still learning. But it was more than this. To embrace Social Education, I needed to understand critical pedagogy ideas where the classroom is a laboratory for the empowering pursuit of democratic goals (Kincheloe, 2005a). I cannot pretend to “know” all of the answers, nor could I become the “expert” that students expected me to be. I began to learn that democratic education was a complex practice, and one that I attempt to practice in all aspects of my professional life. The difference is profound. We will return to the ideas sponsored by ZPG to illustrate this point. Without critical thought, teaching through any corporation varies little from teaching from the textbook. Students really did not seem to care that they were learning valuable skills, because we did not consider the larger implications. One day teaching for democratic purposes revealed itself. Consider the following story. The introduction to corporations/organizations that shared educator resources through the geography conference allowed me to stay on course during my first years of teaching. But the reality was that teaching in that manner, using their resources left no room for me to breathe life into the instruction and had become mundane practice for my colleagues and me. It had become the “teacher-proof ” curriculum that critical theorists associated with Social Education caution educators to avoid (Kincheloe, 2000). Why would students care about population growth? The introduction to population growth was a fun lesson, because the organization provided a visual representation of the growth of humankind since 1AD. During a one minute video small white dots appear on a black physical world map to represent one million people. The dots are accompanied by a ticking clock or metronome that increases tempo with the rise in population. The students loved looking at different times in history when population decreased as a result of plagues, wars or famine like the Black Plague. Now the white spaces on the map accounted for a human element that we had not considered when we were merely labeling and coloring in the white spaces to represent place. Students were amazed at the broad spaces occupied by humans and were even more interested in the population in the future that was projected by the map. But viewing the video and deconstructing it in the class provided little opportunity to talk about the implications. What did this astonishing growth actually mean? To discuss this meant to move into dangerous landscapes and allow students to discuss controversial information that led to uncharted paths. The journey led us to a fork with two options: one demanded action to conserve valuable and rapidly depleting resources. This seemed easy enough, because there would be little controversy in the issue of recycling. Students became active citizens engaged in locating recycling bins and presenting options for limited resources. But the other path was more difficult for me to incorporate into class discussions, because I worried that it bordered on indoctrination when I shared my growing realization of humanitarian issues and my resulting views. But, I also knew that this would be the only way to facilitate a critical Social Education learning 22

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environment. Changing the curriculum would be a monumental, time-consuming task. Remember, we were and continue to be fighting tradition. In Texas, as discussed previously, there is a wide-spread notion of acceptable or taboo curriculum. One controversial topic relates to population/birth control. One of the most controversial issues is immigration. When considering teacher resources not associated with state/district adopted texts, one runs the risk of alienating a conservative population if the conversation related to a current political quagmire is underway. During the surface treatment of population through ZPG, we could see the growing population. What we did not realize was the staggering population associated with human migration. According to ZPG, migrants make up the fifth largest country. This is a staggering number, but out of context means nothing. How might this affect students in the state of Texas? The US accepts 38.4 million immigrants, the largest number across the globe (Martin, 2009). In Texas this is more complex when one considers the relationship between the borders and the perception of illegal immigration. The issue is so contested that in 2006, the Texas legislation would attempt to bypass the 14th Amendment, which outlines civil rights for citizens (Booth-Thomas, 2006; Library of Congress, 2009). Specific to schools, there is a growing population of students who were born of illegal immigrants to Texas and they attend public schools. Conservative groups argued that the students of immigrant parents were placing a burden on the tax payers and wanted to deny rights to these students in spite of the fact that they were actually born in the United States (Booth-Thomas, 2006). State legislators also argued that many public services were strained as a result of this growing population entering the United States with eyes on the bountiful resources available once the child is born. This information does not appear in the textbooks. It does not appear in the corporate sponsored documents like ZPG, which offers solutions to the growing population through immigration issue – limit the number of births each year. The complex issue of illegal immigration affects my students on a variety of levels and will continue to do so in many years to come. So, should we ignore this simply because it is taboo or because it is difficult to facilitate debate and discussion? Does my responsibility to teaching Social Education limit me to teach curriculum that aligns to the university endorsed NCATE, state and national standards and goals? Will I come under censure if I talk of issues that relate to social justice? What ought to be done? Do students enrolled in our classes need to be involved in controversial discussions that are bound to create havoc in the classroom? I often question these goals and their stifling effect on academic freedom. With great resentment, there are frequent revisions between the courses taught by our collaborative and the state and national standards. Alignments are required when the state legislation and board of education revises policy. Consciously Leading Others Down the Path If the choices for curriculum development are extended to each participating faculty, what are the students’ roles? To be truly democratic, would the students be involved in mapping out their educational path? Kincheloe (2001) argued that the existing 23

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curriculum is disconnected from the realities of their lived worlds. As a critical pedagogue, I understand that teaching and learning are not isolated to the traditional space of the classroom, but that they emerge through experience (Dewey, 1938/ 1997); society, culture and media all serve as strong bodies of knowledge for teachers and learners alike (Kincheloe, 2005a). And everything that we experience outside schools influences or even interferes with the learning environment within the formal classroom (Hinchey, 1998/2005). Should children be allowed to sprinkle the path to learning with their own stories? Will students of immigrant families finally have a forum to discuss their experiences? Will this allow them to unpack critical moments in their lives when they have been treated in undemocratic ways? Critically examining the intersection of personal knowledge and academic knowledge is a theoretical playground for me and becomes the nexus for my research pursuit (Kincheloe, 2005b) in Social Education. The curriculum currently presented to students enrolled in my course also embraces the peripheral influences on educational practice. Specific units model the impact through literature, art, music and media genres, which I refer to as Alternative Texts - because they have the capacity to educate or miseducate depending on the circumstances. Through this course, students interact with Alternative Texts in variety of learning contexts including: museums, movies, service organization and even cemeteries. Teaching through these texts allows leverage for students to determine which resources will better inform them and allow them to process the world in a manner that is suited to them. They identify and are better able to relate to the instruction when allowed to use alternative texts. Rejecting traditional texts promoted by “experts” whether they are corporate or non profit, to utilize resources that reflect students’ interests provide a new path for curricula design and implementation. Imagining possibilities for engaging and challenging instruction is a shared endeavor. I come to “know” them [students] through their music, their media choices and their stories. This means that the curriculum is constantly changing as does the daily global influence on their lives. It is modeled during the day-to-day class proceedings at the university level in the hopes that pre-service teachers will also use the strategies and resources in their own teaching assignments. Weekly agendas are co-constructed to itemize the goals and skills to be modeled. It seems that this is a never ending balancing act. In spite of the attempt to humanize the curriculum, to introduce critical inquiry and debate and to think about curriculum from a personal level, I am ever conscious of the pre-service teachers’ exit requirement that also assesses content knowledge. I struggle with returning to the basics. I struggle with returning to tradition even more. What is the method for packing all of the requirements in the same bag? For this part of the journey, I try to blend all aspects; specific content knowledge is highlighted each week. For example, the Civil Rights Movement is a theme which requires due respect. For most whom were taught through curriculum that was steeped in tradition, it was an historical topic which was addressed by identifying a list of notable names associated with a different aspect of the movement. The specifics were forgotten long ago, because students do not understand (or did not consider and debate) the relevance to them. Most difficult in a class that focuses on 24

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democratic values, I try to introduce Civil Rights as a value laden concept, but realize vital information related to landmark court cases is a state focus; this aspect seems obscure and difficult material for students to manage. I collaborated on the project to develop Civil Rights through Visual Literacy unit, which provides one solution to the problem. Using art as an Alternative Text and teaching visual literacy, pre-service teachers deconstruct key pieces of art (photography and paintings) and are asked to interpret the art to “tell its story.” I will admit that the selections of art were not chosen by the student, but they help to illustrate important court cases that have been difficult to interpret for many presservice teachers. When they analyze the case through art, the “story” comes to life and allows them to internalize the specifics of the case. For example, Plessey versus Ferguson was a landmark case in 1896, which upheld segregation under the auspice of “separate but equal” clause. It is difficult to imagine what that actually means until one examines the compelling photograph “Negro Drinking at Colored Water Cooler in Streetcar Terminal, Oklahoma City, OK” (Lee, 1939). Suddenly, students make sense of the concept and have immediate visceral reactions. Often, this instruction awakens conflicting emotions, which might lead to even more critical and controversial discussions. Becoming a critical educator, they are encouraged to capture their thoughts and reflect on the implications for their own lives. One challenge for me to keep this process interesting by locating a variety of Alternative Text resources; we have used provocative toy dolls to teach women’s marginalization, protest music to learn revolution, and popular children’s literature to capture students’ attention and present a different paradigm for teaching and learning social studies education. As I closely observe and reflect on students’ experiences with these texts, I enthusiastically encourage them to also reflect on those experiences as they maneuver through instruction facilitated through each of my courses - including social studies and other teacher education courses. The ideal goal is to encourage students to be part of the process to share their own resources. Performing the reflective process mentioned above identifies with the notion of academic “rigor,” and is identified with Critical Constructivist teaching (NCSS, 2002, Kincheloe, 2005b). Teaching content such as the Visual Literacy through Civil Rights may lead to a forum for controversial discussions such as those on race and privilege, both embedded in critical pedagogy philosophy (Kincheloe, 2005a). For me, it is impossible to disregard the issue of race, class and privilege in a social studies education situated in social justice (Wade, 2007), because it has been ignored by traditional social studies for far too long. I recognize that with controversy comes conflict, which often leads to student discomfort. At the beginning of my journey, I would avoid this discomfort. Now, I seek it. The National Council for Social Studies (NCSS, 2002), founders for the NCATE recognized social studies standards, suggest that content must include examination and understanding of multiple points of views and values to ensure that we are committed to goals of a democratic society. This is the only way that we can promote a citizenry devoted to others’ rights - a goal aligned to the foundations of my educational philosophy - social justice (Wade, 2007). 25

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Conclusion The aim of this layer of my journey is to promote transformative learning environments where one avoids the crippling practice of the educational banking system (Freire, 1970/2007) in exchange for one that engages students in the production of knowledge through a critical dialogic process. I present this with the understanding that the type of instruction involves tremendous rigor that rankles many students (Kincheloe, 2005b). In spite of this discomfort, students must examine multiple perspectives so they may better serve students’ needs in communities undergoing rapid demographic changes. Nowhere is this more relevant than in Texas where we are faced with the complex issue of immigration mentioned before. Unfortunately, objections from students who strongly reject the philosophy and rigor of the course are barely disguised during the semester through subtle online discussions; they voice their discomfort in the end through course evaluations, which tempts me to teach critically in spite of the objections. My travels are bumpy as I realize that not all students share the same road nor have they traveled down the same path as I. This leads to great tension as I continue to build Social Education in my courses. Forever a geographer searching the white spaces on the globe, but now interested in the context of those spaces for humanity. For me, the journey is an ongoing process that reveals hidden paths and possible thrills at every turn. REFERENCES Adler, S., Dougan, A., & Garcia, J. (2006). NCATE has a lot to say to future social studies teachers: A response to Sam Wineburg. Phi Delta Kappan, 87(5), 396–400. Alcott, A. B. (1841). The Dial I:1:85–98 (July 1840); I:3:351–361 (January 1841); II:4:423–425 (April 1842), ‘Days from a Diary’ (P. S. Christensen, Ed.). Retrieved from Orphic Saying website: http://www. alcott.net/alcott/archive/editions/Orphic_Sayings.html Booth-Thomas, C. (2006). Taking aim at immigration in Texas. Retrieved from Time Website: http:// time.com Brooks, J. G. (2004). To see beyond the lesson. Educational Leadership, 62(1), 8–9. Dewey, J. (1980/1906/1908). The educational situation. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 17(2), 104–119. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Simon and Schuster. DeWitt, S. W., & Freie, C. (2005). Focusing methods on goals: Problems and possibilities. The Social Studies, 96(6), 241–245. Evans, R. W. (2004). The social studies wars: What should we teach the children? New York: Teachers College Press. Fordham, N. W., Wellman, D., & Sandmann, A. (2002). Taming the text: Engaging and supporting students in Social Studies readings. The Social Studies, 93(4), 149–58. Freire, P. (2000, 1993, 1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Frost, R. (1920). The road not taken. In Mountain interval. New York: Holt and Co. Hinchey, P. (1998). Finding freedom in the classroom: A practical introduction to critical theory. New York: Peter Lang Publishers. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. New York: Routledge. Kincheloe, J. L. (2005a). Critical constructivism: A primer. New York: Peter Lang. 26

VISUALIZING THE WHITE SPACES Kincheloe, J. L. (2005b). Critical pedagogy: A primer. New York: Peter Lang. Kincheloe, J. L. (2001). Getting beyond the facts: Teaching Social Studies/social sciences in the twentyfirst Century (2nd ed.). New York: Peter Lang. Kincheloe, J. L., Slattery, P., & Steinberg, S. (2000). Contextualizing teaching: Introduction to education and educational foundations. Allyn and Bacon. Kutz, E., & Roskelly, H. (1991). An unquiet pedagogy: transforming practice in the English classroom. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook. Lee, R. (1939). Negro drinking at “colored” water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, OK. Library of Congress call number LC-USF33- 012327-M5 [P&P]. Leming, J., Ellington, L., & Porter-Magee, K. (2003). Where did Social Studies go wrong? Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Retrieved from http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/ publication.cfm?id=317 Library of Congress. (2009). 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Primary source documents. Library of Congress. Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/14thamendment.html Marker, P. (2000). Not only by our words: Connecting the pedagogy of Paulo Freire with the social studies classroom. In D. W. Hursh & E. W. Ross (Eds.), Democratic social education: Social studies for social change (pp. 135–148). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Martin, P. (2009). The fifth largest country: International immigrants. Retrieved from Population Connection http://www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/Immigration.pdf?docID=501 Mathison, S., Ross, E. W., & Vinson, K. D. (2001). Defining the Social Studies curriculum: The influence of and resistance to curriculum standards and testing in Social Studies. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (pp. 87–102). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Meuwissen, K. W. (2006). Maybe someday the twain shall meet: Exploring disconnections between methods instruction and “life in the classroom”. The Social Studies, 96(6), 253–258. National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Expectations of excellence: Curriculum standards for social studies. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. National Geographic Society. (1994). Geography for life: National geography standards 1994/Geography education standards project. Washington DC: National Geographic Research & Exploration. Ross, E. W. (2001a). Social studies teachers and curriculum. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (pp. 3–15). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Ross, E. W. (2001b). Remaking the social studies curriculum. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (pp. 313–328). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Ross, E. W., & Marker, P. M. (2005a). Social studies: Wrong, right, or left? A critical response to the Fordham Institute’s where did Social Studies go wrong? The Social Studies, 96(4), 139–142. Ross, E. W., & Marker, P. M. (2005b). Social studies: Wrong, right, or left? A critical response to the Fordham Institute’s where did social studies go wrong? (Part II). The Social Studies, 96(5), 187–188. Shah, A. (2009). Today, over 25,000 children died around the world. Retrieved from Global Issues http://www.globalissues.org/article/715/today-over-25000-children-died-around-the-world Singer, A. (2005). Strange bedfellows: The contradictory goals of the coalition making war on Social Studies. The Social Studies, 96(5), 199–205. State Board for Educators Certification. (2003). Texas examination of educators standards: Preparation manual – 101 Generalist EC-4. Austin, TX: State Board of Education and National Evaluation Systems. Stanley, W. B. (2005). Social studies and the social order: Transmission or transformation? Social Education, 69(5), 282–286. Stanley, W. B. (2001). Social studies: Problems and possibilities. In W. B. Stanley (Ed.), Critical issues in social studies research for the 21st century (pp. 1–13). Greenwich: Information Age Publishing. Texas Education Agency. (2002). Texas Administrative Code (TAC), Title 19, Part II Chapter 113. Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. Austin, TX. Thompson, B. (2000). J curve. Eco Tracs. Salt Lake City. 27

MCCORMACK Wade, R. C. (2007). Social studies for social justice: Teaching strategies for the elementary classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. White, C. (2003). An indictment of social education. In True confessions: Social efficacy, popular culture, and the struggle in schools (pp. 1–9).

Susan McCormack Edd Assistant Professor of Social Education University of Houston Clear Lake

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CHRIS WITSCHONKE, SUSAN MCCORMACK, TRACI JENSEN, SABRINA MARSH, BERNARDO POHL AND DEBBY SHULSKY

3. OUR SOCIAL EDUCATION JOURNEY

INTRODUCTION: A FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH SOCIAL EDUCATION

What is Social Education? This question becomes the underpinning of many subsequent conversations after entry to the Social Education program at the University of Houston. Central to these ongoing conversations are doctoral students who have filtered in and out of the program yet are intricately woven into the fabric of the Social Education cohort. Our cohort is not the traditional cohort in that each of the members is at different stages in the program and in their lives. Those who have long moved on to different professional and personal spaces still collaborate; theirs is an expanded mentorship that distance has not faded. The tools in this bricolage are our own personal stories, the stories of the others with whom we come in contact; and the stitches that bind our patchwork are the stories of the critical pedagogists who have molded and shaped our discussions and philosophical tenets. Similarly, our stories begin. Ask each of us what is Social Education and our responses will contain a grain of familiar rhetoric interlaced with a large dose of our personalities and experiences. The cohort constantly searches the basic. Chris Social education is a difficult concept to define and explain. Trying to accomplish tasks such as these can be likened to the proverbial nailing jell-o to the wall. Debby When I am asked to define Social Education, I find myself at a loss for a neatly packaged answer. I still feel as if defining Social Education is much like wrestling with a wet cat; you think you have it in your grasp and then it just slips through your fingers. Sabrina In critical pedagogy and Social Education, I found the answer to the universe. Or at least, some of the possible viewpoints. Because the first thing I learned pretty much shook my world foundations: there are no answers, only more questions. C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 29–39. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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Susan How do you know that Social Education even exists? I compare this journey to a religious pilgrimage. I think I’m a better person for pursuing it, but don’t have enough faith that it can ever really exist. It is impossible to define – people made of sterner stuff have failed in that pursuit. Like all spiritual endeavors, you know it when you see or hear it. Traci “Are we there yet?” “How much longer til’ we get there?” It’s a familiar scene. If you have kids or once were a kid it’s a rite of passage. But within the context of social education I have found it to be the unanswerable question that plagues my very reason for being here. It is clear that we do not really expect to find the answers to this inquiry. We resist a traditional definition of Social Education, as it refuses to be labeled, unlike the branding that permeates many concepts in traditional education settings. Our conversations are lived experiences, not something static to be put on the shelf and used occasionally. They are deeply respected and revered within each of us, yet at the same time we recognize the risk of flying too close to the sun. We risk exposure to “the knowing” and the dissatisfaction of the consequences (Greene, 1978). On the Search for Critical Pedagogy Green (2003) describes the task set before our cohort. We have “come freely together in speech and action to take care of something that needs caring for, to repair some evident deficiency in [our] common world” (p. 105). The dialogues undertaken by the cohort have come at a troubling time in education. We are charged with extraordinary tasks that seem to tear the seams of our souls. We recognize the problems facing schooling and struggle against the status quo to engage in ideas for reform. This reform requires careful analysis and critical thought on behalf of educators and students alike. Debby At the very basic level, I began alongside my students to construct my understanding of Social Education. This very rudimentary insight offered the concepts of critical questioning, social justice and social action as foundational elements within Social Education. In retrospect, the simplistic articulation of these pillars provided me an elementary foundation to what I would discover to be critical pedagogy. Sabrina In fact, it wasn’t until my beginning in the Social Education doctoral program that I discovered that there was a whole universe awaiting my exploration in a little thing called “critical pedagogy.” 30

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THE TIES THAT BIND: FOUNDATIONS IN CRITICAL PEDAGOGY

We sift through the notion of Social Education through the context of critical pedagogy. Many scholars essential to critical pedagogy continue to resurface in ways that illuminate and illustrate our conversations of what Social Education could be. Their voices echo in each of our stories and continue to play a crucial role in how we perceive ourselves and our place in this transition. Of the many, four scholars resonate most often during the conversations central to this paper. They are: Joe Kincheloe, John Dewey, Paulo Freire and bell hooks. JOE L. KINCHELOE

Advocates of critical pedagogy are aware that every minute of every hour that teachers teach, they are faced with complex decisions concerning justice, democracy, and competing ethical claims (Kincheloe, 2005, p. 1). The works of Joe Kincheloe are deeply etched in our Social Education framework. For many in the cohort, he was our first text. He challenges us to reflect on the status-quo and to conceive a more rigorous response to educational practice. Kincheloe (2001) asks teachers to “cultivate a profound intellectual ability to acquire, analyze, and produce both self-knowledge and social knowledge” (p. 164). It is a task that prompts our cohort to take the ideas of emancipatory education and make them reality. Chris My first exposure to the idea of social education came by way of Kincheloe (2001). Since I was thinking as a social studies teacher while reading Kincheloe’s work I came away with a definition of social education in terms of curriculum. As I understood it at the time, social education was a re-working of the social studies curriculum into one that would help students understand and participate in both their current and future social world. Further, a social education approach would asks students to go another step and question why they were being taught one set of facts over another (Kincheloe, 2001). Debby [W]ithin the pages of Kincheloe’s Critical Pedagogy I have found a language that offers me a firmer grip on the way in which I can begin to express the essence of social education. In short, I have come to interchange both critical pedagogy and social education. Susan Worried about the status of my teaching and its persistent reliance on standardization and the reluctance to enlist critical learning objectives, I have explored and introduced alternative teaching objectives through Kincheloe (2001). Connected to Social Education; critical pedagogy embraces grand ideas related to reform. In this context, Social Education is grounded in justice and 31

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equality. It rejects the notion of standardization and leans toward emancipatory education. Kincheloe (2005) reminds us that education is a political act and motivated by power. He teaches us to look inward to examine our own pre-conceived notions to “contest oppressive forms of power” to seek multiple perspectives that champion marginalized voices. JOHN DEWEY

I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. (Dewey, Pedagogic Creed, 1897) Dewey is more to us than his traditional role of educational philosopher and hopeful reformer. We take his writings on experiential education and aesthetics and democracy in education and incorporate them into every aspect of our lives. We discuss them endlessly, we integrate them into our papers and dissertations, we build whole class dialogues around them, and we spread the word to our pre-service teachers and feel a surge of pride and hope when those same students begin to incorporate Dewey into their conversations and papers. It was Dewey (1916/2002), more than any other, who taught us that education is alive, that it is more than a mere collection of facts, disparate and irrelevant to our lives and the lives of our students. One of Dewey’s main concepts, that our past experiences should be incorporated into our present and future ones, speaks deeply to our concept of Social Education as a philosophy of teaching that celebrates the individual. Bernardo I was working in the special education office when suddenly another teacher said, “I hate it when they talk. My perfect day is when they simply sit down, shut up, and get to work.” At that time, memories from the immediate past started to resurface. I started to remember when one teacher just told me that they were just lazy, or when another teacher just told me to be realistic about them. I remembered when a diagnostician told me I was the ‘big’ exception to the rule. Once, a teacher told me they (special education students) were lucky if they keep a job for six months, and said that their big chance in life is the military. I also remembered the countless times when my counselor told me to be realistic about ever going to architecture school or even college. Through Dewey’s (1938/1997) concept of quality of experience situated in events we tentatively at first and then more confidently began to explore alternate educational tenets among ourselves and with our students. His conception of an “experience” as something that avoids dualistic distinctions of perception and objective reality (Dworkin, 1959, p. 7) outlines the social influences we struggle to overcome each day. His belief in Experience and Education (1938/1997) that experience is based on continuity and interaction is the cornerstone of our dialogues with each other. 32

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Bernardo How do I reconcile my own feelings about being disabled, and the fact that I never wanted to be with disabled students when I was in high school? Despite having such questions, I did not know how to articulate my argument. I firmly adhered to the notion that special education kept the disadvantaged marginalized in the current state of affair. In the practice, I struggled to visualize how. Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed, written in 1897, is as alive and relevant today as the day it was written and the thoughtful concern it takes to illustrate the compassion and caring Dewey felt for all children are plainly seen throughout. When Dewey states “I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing” (Dewey, 1897), he is not stating some sort of abstract goal for the future of education; he is dwelling in the here and now, in the real. Dewey is, above all, a “participatory democracy theorist” (Caspary, 2000, p. 8). In Dewey we see all the promise of education, and a near-perfect echo of our Social Education beliefs, individuality and interactions. Bernardo Besides a theoretical need, social education for the disabled emerged from the realities of oppression that I encountered. PAULO FREIRE

To be human is to engage in relationships with others and with the world. (Freire, 2005, p. 3) Sabrina In one of my first doctoral classes I was asked to do a book report on a “classic” educational text. Alarmed at having to do a book report at my level in the program, I chose Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848/1955) as a way to show my disapproval of the system. No one had introduced this book to me at any level of my education. It was pure genius but it needed more, it only explained a part of what I was seeing. Hence Marx flowed naturally into Gramsci (1949/1971), and I learned the most beautiful word, hegemony, and I marveled at how one word could say so much. From Gramsci I found Freire and suddenly, everything started to come together. Susan Kincheloe introduced me to significant problems in the field. He also introduced me to foreign concepts and significant people like Freire who challenged my thoughts. For the first time, I was introduced to words like hegemony. (I had to look this word up and refer to it again and again until I understood what it meant and could rattle it off with precision at just the right time in discussion with my new colleagues.) 33

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Paulo Freire’s educational philosophy deepens our understanding of the forces at work that serve to oppress. In doing so, Freire lays the foundation to our studies in critical pedagogy. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970/2002) Freire expands upon the post Marxist concept of hegemony as put forth by Antonio Gramsci in The Prison Notebooks from 1949. Freire writes of “fear of freedom” (1970/2002, p. 31) as a system that binds the oppressed to the oppressor through a method of prescription that dictates and transforms the consciousness. Using his concepts we began to reconfigure and expand not only our role as educators but our role as humanists. Sabrina For most of my adult life, somewhere in the back of my mind, was this little niggling doubt that things weren’t right. And things weren’t right, I felt, because things weren’t fair. I would search other peoples’ faces and ask tentative exploratory questions in a vain attempt to find out if other people were seeing what I was seeing. I would read the news, looking for articles to explain why the world was in such a sorry state, with so many oppressed people and greedy uncaring corporations and politicians and melting icecaps. I didn’t have a vocabulary to describe what I observed everywhere around me and it frustrated me. Freire (1970/2002) states that duality in thinking is impossible, that people must realize that both they and their oppressors are “manifestations of dehumanization” (p. 33) on the most fundamental levels. His concepts hum with humanity; he speaks of “the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they [the oppressed] can transform” (1970/ 2002, p. 34). Bernardo As a social education student, I read Freire’s (1970/2000) Pedagogy of the Oppressed many times. In my blue days, I read it with frustration and anger. In my up days, I read it with ease, and everything made perfect sense. I knew that oppression was a key ingredient of special education; however, I was unable to make the connection with critical pedagogy in an articulate manner. Through Freire’s (1970/2002) concept of critical consciousness we began to realize the value in questioning what we continue to see in the world and of using those questions to inform our concepts of a more democratic society. His emphasis on a dialogical approach to examining the inequalities we experienced around us liberated us to scrutinize our own roles with each other and within the educational system. Over time Freire’s conscientization has come to encompass our concept of progressive education as holistic and engaged with life. Traci How do I express to them [my students] that we must look outside our comfort zone? That the profession of teaching includes examining and reexamining what is going on in the world? How do I explain to them that a good educator 34

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is constantly trying to rise above their own educational inadequacies by taking charge of personal, life-long learning as a model to those they are trying to educate? How do I demonstrate the need to question and be questioned? How do I teach them to see education beyond schooling and to make real changes within the community and themselves? Through our readings of Freire, this is the concept with which we struggle: how can we as Social Educators rise above a system of oppression, given our complicit role? How can we avoid the banking of education that Freire speaks of so passionately and compassionately? Freire (1970/2002) speaks of an act of love and its existentiality in praxis. We strive to incorporate this love into our interactions with ourselves, each other, our students, and our world. BELL HOOKS

It is crucial that critical thinkers who what to change our teaching practices talk to one another, collaborate in a discussion that crosses boundaries and creates a space for intervention (hooks, 1994, p. 129). Through critical pedagogy we learn to interact with the world based upon a critique that is focused on issues of power especially related to race, culture, class and gender. A transformative, critical educator asks teachers to “transgress boundaries” that would limit students’ freedoms to guide students in questioning themes related to oppression and power and how it affects individuals and communities (hooks, 1994). Critical educators are transformative agents. By nature, transformation occurs organically and messily (hooks, 1994). The experience for both students and instructors is uncomfortable in classes steeped in critical pedagogy. For them, their world view is being challenged for many of us, our world view is challenged. Often this causes tension and dramatic resistance; an expected outcome of critical interrogation (hooks, 1994). Debby I have my students a mere twelve weeks. With this short time frame, I have recently felt an unbearable sense of urgency to provide an experience that constructively confronts my students’ view of the world (Hooks, 1994). Traci It was slowly and over a period of years working in a public school and university that my traditional educational trappings were chipped away and replaced with the critical point of view. It is a revelation that made sense. Why wouldn’t every educator get it too? I became impatient. Those twelve weeks make it a sprint to the finish line where I gather my students under my wing and show them the true way to educational enlightenment. The reality is, I may never see the true affect of what I do. As bell hooks said, I need to submit to the idea that I will not have confirmation of my successes (hooks, 1994). 35

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It has become more difficult to practice freedom because our schools are wrought with hegemonic “biases” (hooks, 1994, p. 29). Critical pedagogist, hooks posits a rethinking of old ways to recognize cultural diversity and to “restore life to a corrupt and dying academy” (p. 30). Critical educators should welcome the opportunity to alter our classroom practices creatively so that the democratic ideal of education for everyone can be realized. WEAVING THE CLOTH: SOCIAL EDUCATION THROUGH NARRATIVE INQUIRY

In narrative inquiry, the focus for those involved in schooling is to make meaning from the events related to teaching and learning (Hug & Moller, 2005; Connelly & Clandinin, 2000). The stories within our narratives provide a methodological framework, which allow discussions (the dialogic process) to become research texts thereby creating the knowing (Craig, 1997). This knowledge is not fixed; rather it flows in storied forms and is subject to change depending on the cohort’s focus. Narrative inquiry is a logical way to organize this paper since it is “assumed that people think, remember, anticipate, act and dream in a narrative mode” (Conle, 1997. p. 206). We continue to demonstrate the interlacing between each of our stories by tracing the recurrent patterns related to our journeys through Social Education. “Narrative Inquiry is a multi-dimensional exploration of experience involving temporality (past, present and future), interaction (personal and social), and location, (place)” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2004). Thus far, we have described how our journeys began and how they are woven together by sharing pieces of our dialogues. The stories are both personal, in that they reflect our own histories and social in that they reflect the broad philosophies within the Social Education context. We do these within the safety of our cohort. Reflecting on our reactions to our ongoing conversations worked as a method to organize thoughts about limitations and possibilities for Social Education’s transformative promises. PEACEWORK: OUR MULTILAYERED STORIES

Although each part of the inquiry begins on a personal level, it is important to examine the interweaving of our different perspectives through our dialogic process. Our collective conversations provide a multi-faceted image of the many transformations we envision through Social Education. Conle (1997) explains this phenomenon: Tracing the biography of individual parts is precious to narrators, because narrators operate from an inside-out perspective: our attention moves along with the individual person or thing described, while simultaneously we are always aware of contexts, that is, for example, of the places, actions, moods and of the atmosphere that that surrounds an individual teacher. The story of the individual will never tell the whole story – there are innumerable individual stories in the whole (p. 210). 36

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Although simply translating this knowledge through the cohort’s stories does not constitute narrative inquiry, it is a crucial element to the overall purpose of this dialogic process – the transformational process that we all desire. The stories of our gradual transformative practice begin with the initial confrontation regarding the state of our practice. Chris This transformative process first began when [I] entered graduate school. I began my experience with several preconceived notions in mind. First, largely thanks to my undergraduate experience, I believed that there was a disconnect between what was being taught at the university level and what was happening in the middle schools. Professors, I believed, had a tendency to paint an idealistic picture full of theory with no basis in reality. Second, having my bachelor’s degree in history, I did not believe that I had anything further to learn content wise. Finally, I believed that because of my content background and practical experience I would be able to take the idealistic theory taught by my professors and put them into a practical context. Now that I have completed my work as a graduate student, I can look back at these ideas of mine and laugh while considering the totality of my transformation. The answer to the questions of how and why this growth took place is social education. Susan As I encountered Kincheloe’s (2001) arguments regarding critical pedagogy, which were posed as intellectual journeys to promote rigorous debates about the status of my own teaching, I begin question the educator’s limited role within the hyperreal world – “a place with so much input that we have difficulty finding meaning or making sense of the chaos of the data we encounter” (p. 4). Wouldn’t it be easier to simply transmit information or transform the social order? Reading Kincheloe revealed my deepest sin – I was complicit in forwarding oppressive practices so often associated with the powerful dominant culture. Analyzing the dialogues, it is easy to demonstrate the power of our collaboration as we assist each other in making meaning. Sabrina When collecting other peoples’ stories I try to connect their experiences not only through my own eyes but through theirs, and by thus seeing how they see life to then turn that spotlight back on my own thoughts through reflection and lived experiences. Throughout this exchange of wonder I am reminded of a phrase in Clandinin and Connelly (1988) that states: “We were challenged to understand negotiation, ethics, and collaborative researcher roles as notions not held apart by theory and principle but unified by the personal knowledge of participants” (p. 270). I guess you could say I get by with a little help from my friends. 37

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Susan I began my studies with a cohort of doctoral students in the university setting. New to the cohort, I leaned on those who were well entrenched in the social education rhetoric. Their conversations swirled around me as I tried to make sense of the personal connections each would make. We were “all over the place.” Several of us were teaching methods at the university level. Several were teaching in the K-12 public school setting. All of us had some background teaching in public schools – most in the social studies. Through it all, I felt as though we were supportive of each other – even when we argued salient points. We each facilitated learning sessions and structured readings around topics of our own personal interests, but I struggled to find meaning in each session. Often, it would take weeks of reflections before I would grasp the connection to realize that social education was omnipresent. On the value of the journey… Now after having looked at, questioned, argued with, and contemplated the concepts and ideals of social education for several years I have come to a conclusion. I may have transformed during my time as a graduate student from a middle school social studies teacher into a social educator, but that transformation is not yet complete. In fact it is a transformation that I will be undergoing for the rest of my life. Social education is much more than a new curricular approach to the classroom. For me it has become a new outlook on life that must be applied not only to the schools, but myself and my relationship to the rest of humanity. (chris) I have made choices which determined my destinies, just as all people since the beginning of time have made. Our lives are a series of risks for which we can never be absolutely sure of the outcome. I believe my road through the Social Education landscape is worth the risk. Reflecting on the experience of my choices is what matters, and celebrating the free will that brought them about. And sharing all this with my students and my friends. I believe this, ultimately, is the value to be found in my story. (sabrina) For me, Social Education offers an avenue in which we, as critical educators, can awaken the consciousness of our students. We can teach students to step beyond the obvious messages of the dominant culture and hear the unheard stories of the silenced. We can teach them to question and protest the injustices of the world. We can teach them to look beyond themselves and connect with one another separate from their differences. We can guide them on a critical inquiry that compels them to discover their voice in the world and inspire them to actively engage in making a difference in the world; these are the reasons for Social Education. (debby) I did not readily accept the ideas of Kincheloe when first exposed to them. In fact I tried to be clever and find ways to poke holes in his arguments and ideals. I began by asking myself whether or not Kincheloe could really believe 38

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in all that he wrote. For if he did, then he was actually calling on me to question what he was saying. Furthermore, if I questioned what he was saying should I not be also be questioning the necessity of asking questions in the first place. (chris) REFERENCES Caspary, W. (2000). Dewey on democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Clandinin, J., & Connelly, F. (1988, October). Studying teachers’ knowledge of classrooms: Collaborative research, ethics, and the negotiation of narrative. The Journal of Educational Thought, 22(2A). Conle, C. (1997). Images of change in narrative inquiry. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 3(2), 205–219. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (2000). The narrative understandings of teacher knowledge. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 15(4), 315–331. Craig, C. J. (1997). Telling stories: Accessing beginning teacher knowledge. Teacher Education, 9, 61–68. Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. The School Journal, LIV(3), 77–80. Retrieved October 27, 2007, from http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/dewey-john_my-pedagogic-creed.html Dewey, J. (1938/1997). Experience and education. New York: Simon & Schuster. Dewey, J. (2002). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press. (Original work published 1916) Dworkin, M. (1959). Dewey on education: Selections. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University. Freire, P. (2005). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. (Original work published in 1974) Freire, P. (2002). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. (Original work published 1970) Gramsci, A. (1971). The intellectuals. In Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith (Eds. and Transl.), Selections from the prison notebooks (pp. 3–23). New York: International Publishers. (Original work published 1949) Green, M. (1978). Landscapes of learning. New York: Teacher College Press. Green, M. (2003). In search of a critical pedagogy. In A. Darder, M. Baltodano, & R. D. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 97–112). New York: Routledge Falmer. Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress. New York: Routledge. Hug, B., & Moller, K. J. (2005). Collaboration and connectedness in two teacher educator’s shared selfstudy. Studying Teacher Education: A Journal of Self-study of Teacher Education Practices, 1(2), 123–140. Kincheloe, J. L. (2001). Getting beyond the facts: Teaching social studies/social sciences in the twentyfirst Century (2nd ed.). New York: Peter Lang. Kincheloe, J. (2005). Critical pedagogy: Peter Lang primer. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. Marx, K, & Engels, F. (1955). The communist manifesto: With selections from the eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Capital. Northbrook, IL: AHM Publishing Corporation. (Original work published 1848) McLaren, P. (2003). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Olson, M. R. (2000). Linking personal and professional knowledge of teaching practice through narrative inquiry. The Teacher Educator, 35(4), 109–127. Purpel, D. (1989). The moral and spiritual crisis in education: A curriculum for justice and compassion in education. Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvy Publishers. Thoreau, H. (1989). On the duty of civil disobedience. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company. (Original work published in 1849)

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CAMERON WHITE, PHD

4. RETHINKING SOCIAL STUDIES FOR SOCIAL EDUCATION

INTRODUCTION

What really are the purposes of schooling and education in our society? What are the roles of other institutions in society within the context of teaching and learning? Are socialization, assimilation and passivity all we desire of our institutions? Are we so uncomfortable and wary of our “way of life” that we can’t even trust ourselves? What good is a society that won’t question itself? These and others are the questions that aren’t being asked. What of higher goals such as transforming and transgression? Is the nature of humanity such that comfort is the ultimate…and given the current state of society, perhaps comfortably numb? Why does it seem that reaction is the method rather than proactive engagement? Why does it take extreme events to lull us awake as to possibilities? Social studies is a culprit… it is guilty of facilitating individuals, a society, and a world that is making little progress for the betterment of humanity. Our kids are caught in a system that exists for its own sake. Status quo rules and anything “out of the box” is a threat to our comfort. Socialization and passivity are the true goals. Social studies classrooms remain text-based and teacher centered with kids generally sitting in rows copying lecture notes to regurgitate on the unit “objective” text. But we must think more broadly… Yes, it is a cliché to indict social studies with its Eurocentric and ethnocentric focus… The facts remain, however… Social studies text books and curriculum is dominated by this focus. Loewen (2009) states that promoting socialization and allegiance to “American ideals” are the primary goals for social studies and schooling. So, what is wrong with thinking globally and acting locally? Is blind patriotism and jingoistic verbage keeping us form meeting basic human needs? What has happened to the concept of community? Are we held captive by our desire for complacency? Social studies should be about emancipation; it should be about controversy; it should be about dissonance; it should be about allowing for and asking the hard questions… and ultimately having the courage to seek… An opportunity awaits… social studies can be a tool for engaging, and it should be a tool for challenging – ourselves, others and our world. Allowing for differing visions and enhancing a variety of stories encourages the transcendental – encourages progress beyond some market driven media defined conception of growth and justice. All education should be focused on efficacy and empowerment of both students and teachers (Freire, 2002). We are blissfully mired in the past – that is what social studies has become… but where oh where is the present and future … and the context and connections C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 41–48. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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therein? We gaze dreamingly into the abyss “when things were better, when things were simpler, when things were safer.” The mythology of the past is easy to devise and assemble to meet a need…and the elite, the dominant, the powerful do just that. Social studies should be more than co-opting democracy in favor of capitalism, a market mentality, or the glories of globalization. We tell the stories of the white males heroes of history and provide lip service to the other in the form of celebratory months. Many stories are missing. We have deadened social studies to the point of meaningless pabulum. Most no longer care about who did what to whom and when… and no wonder, as we are constantly reminded that there is one “right” answer – and this to a question no one really wants to ask anyway. We have placed everything into neat little categories so as to make sense of a difficult world. And these categories only serve to hinder. Perhaps the most accepted approach regarding social studies is transmitting essential knowledge and skills in history, government, economics and geography. We equate more information with knowledge and learning and place this information in subject disciplines. But do we go through life moving from subject to subject in these easily compartmentalized categories; or do we integrate more holistically? We need schooling and social studies that encourages participation, critical analysis, and action (Kincheloe, 2005). Social Studies for Social Justice Social studies need be about social justice for social efficacy, empowerment, and emancipation. What is the role of schools in promoting social justice? How do the current practices in education and the teaching and learning process impact social justice? The overt goal of our schools is to enhance knowledge, skills, and dispositions development for our children. Unfortunately these goals are more often than not centered around very basic components that decision-makers have perceived as “essential” for being productive citizens in this country. These goals therefore seem to be driven by the ultimate goal of preparing our youth for the world of work. Social studies traditionally has not been about questioning or inquiry. Corporate America desires good obedient workers and our schools serve them up on a platter. Ultimately, we must prepare children for active participation as global citizens; and this means that we have a responsibility to teach for social justice and a more critical teaching and learning. This critical pedagogy is aware and unafraid of childhood desire, often connecting it to children’s efforts to understand the world and themselves. Childhood desire is a natural phenomenon that is unfortunately often driven and dictated by the dominant culture. The idea is to critically analyze these issues and also provide the critical efficacy children need so as to facilitate this natural desire and wonder for learning about and coping with their world. What then is meant by teaching for social justice? Social justice education moves beyond traditional essentialist practice by suggesting the inclusion of student and issues centered approaches to teaching and learning. Advocates for social justice education suggest that our schools are often demeaning and disempowering places where children are either bored into submission or where the transmission and 42

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socialization techniques destroy any hope for critical thinking and problem solving development. The opportunity for teaching social justice in schools is great but we must discard the traditional transmission model of social studies in favor of a transformational model.. Social studies must allow for investigating controversy and issues in history rather than memorizing bland facts. Strategies such as debates, simulations, role-playing, cooperative projects, and what if inquiry investigations facilitate a transformational model. Social studies should be a transformational process for both the individual and society (Hope, 1996). Many suggest that social justice be a major focus of social studies curriculum and instruction in our schools. The contention is that traditional social studies education may very well be the bad guy in this debate; for the history of social studies traditionally has been to perpetuate the status quo and often only allows one viewpoint regarding history. With the focus on essential knowledge and skills and the growing accountability movement, social studies education remains reactionary so as to placate critics. Debate within social studies rarely centers around social justice or issues-oriented curriculum. The debate has been on what content should be taught and how that content should be “covered.” American History for example is chronological moving from war to war and hero to hero with any context or connections to our kids’ lives sorely missing. A curriculum is needed that encourages participation, critical analysis, and action. Directly tied to teaching for social justice as stated previously is the concept of social efficacy. If one looks at the traditional goals of social studies, one can interpret these goals are at least somewhat implying some form of social efficacy. The critique here is that both social studies and efficacy mean much more than we have traditionally applied them in the teaching and learning process. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view, the truly meaningful and lifelong connections in social efficacy have been provided outside of the classroom, especially outside of the social studies classroom… And this is the real issue. Social studies should be about allowing kids and teachers opportunities for choice, investigation, creativity, questioning, and debate. These are skills vital for a sense of self-efficacy and for promoting a progressive democracy. These ideas suggest the development of responsible citizenship for the propensity for thinking, valuing, and acting, rather than for the promotion of particular thoughts, actions, or values (Stanley, 1992). Issues We are now finding that social studies is really secondary to mathematics, language arts, and science education, again due to accountability measures currently employed and due to corporate America deciding the essential curriculum for life. Elementary social studies is quickly becoming endangered and may very well become extinct in the not too distant future. When schools do include social studies, it is often as an add-on or even used for standardized test review practice. Secondary social studies on the other hand is alive and well, at least in regard to ensuring the transmission of essential knowledge and skills. And we are now seeing more accountability in 43

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secondary social studies in the form of end of course exams, state tests, and other forms of standardization. What can be expected in social studies other than teaching to these tests? The standardization and accountability movements really contribute to this demeaning situation. What we have here is yet another example of the increased corporatization of schooling. Competition is the driving force. “My scores are better than yours,” are heard in conversations between kids, teachers, and administrators. Extrinsic methods rather than intrinsic methods are the focus. The concepts of critical thinking, problem solving, and issues-centered education are antithetical to this movement as a market mentality is the driving force. If we encourage children to question and investigate themes and issues in depth, then the status quo and hegemonic powers might very well be threatened. The power elite are threatened by a social studies that promotes a diversity of perspectives and global issues. These movements now dominate the education process in this country. Ultimately, the goal seems to be to ensure that social studies teaching and learning (at the very least) remain focused on transmission of essential knowledge, skills, and values. We seem to be attempting to “standardize” our children. Free market capitalism replacing democracy as the governmental ideal is perpetuated by these endeavors. Examples include the increased commercialization of the web, Channel One, and advertisement agreements between companies are schools for marketing their products. The place for social studies in a democratic society should be to provide fodder for dialog and critical analysis of this “essential” knowledge, skills and values curriculum and instruction. A social justice approach is critical of transmission, essential knowledge, and the “ideal” of free market capitalism, thus is antithetical to these standardization and accountability movements. Teaching for social justice is the answer to the “conspiracy” enveloping our schools and society. Current social studies approaches preach the joys of being a democratic society, yet democracy often cannot be found in our schools. Our classrooms are often very authoritarian with little feeling of empowerment. Our society claims to be open and just, but school praxis has all but made our schools like prisons. Kids are prisoners subjected to the whims of the prison-like bureaucracy of the schools where teachers have become the guards. Kids are in schools to be molded into appropriately acting citizens. These citizens go along with the crowd, pleased as punch to be living in the greatest country in the world. It is time to really address power, domination, and issues with the lack of democracy in our schools (Beiner, 1995). Teaching for social justice suggests that story and controversy be returned to social studies. It suggests that life and learning is full of controversy and that we owe it to our kids to allow for investigating of social issues, past, present, and future. The premise is that a society not open and comfortable enough to allow for critique cannot progress and is a society in decline. Where is the democracy is this? MOVING TOWARD SOCIAL EFFICACY

How do we address difficult societal issues in schools? Should we allow for controversial issues in teaching and learning? What is the connection between 44

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controversy and the development of social efficacy? And how can this lead to a culture of peace? Today’s schools often fail to address the needs of the students because we often ignore the difficult issues and hard questions. We do not allow critical investigation of controversy because we do not want the status quo threatened in any way. School should be for cultivating the human spirit, nourishing the imagination, and promoting self-expression (Purpel and Shapiro, 1995). Social studies has traditionally occupied a unique place in the education system. This is an area where the goal is for our youth to become well-informed active participants in a democracy. However, the traditional approach to teaching social studies is neither active nor democratic. How do we expect today’s youth to become active participants in society without any experience? And how do we hope to address issues of rage and conflict with our children without allowing them to investigate hard issues and controversy? A social studies classroom should be a place where students are given the opportunity to voice their opinions and pursue social topics that are relevant to them. This would motivate students to become active participants in the classroom. Students who participate actively in their education are better able to make sense of their world and in turn are better able to engage in problem solving and decision-making, and to engage in peace making. Social studies should give students the opportunity to gain experience in debate, public speaking, research and decision-making by investigating controversy. Students who are given an opportunity engage in critical analysis of issues and voice their opinion gain confidence and with confidence they are more likely to continue to participate in society’s decisions after graduation. When citizenship education becomes purely socialization, many fundamental issues for facilitating democracy arise (Gutman, 1990). There are many questions that we all will most likely have to think about in our lifetime. What is your view on abortion? What do you think of the death penalty? How do we address violence in society? What is your political preference? What do these four questions have in common? They are also divisive issues that people are likely to be very opinionated about. These are difficult topics to talk about for many people. Discussion on controversial issues like these can lead to questioning the status quo. Many people decide to just not talk about these issues. Unfortunately many of these people include teachers, and our education system reinforces this practice. The history of the world includes many controversial issues, but unfortunately schooling has taken the controversy out of history and social studies. This must change. If you take away the controversy, you take away the depth; you take away the passion and intrinsic motivation. Social studies students will not be able to understand the ideas presented to them if the depth of their learning is shallow, and thus meaningful social efficacy will suffer. Classrooms that ignore or homogenize controversy and social issued are not conceived with student growth and development as a top priority. These classrooms produce students who, at best, can regurgitate facts and, at worst, are demeaned and disempowered. 45

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THE TEACHER’S ROLE

The dominate method of teacher-directed instruction with students taking notes, completing questions at the end of the chapter, or filling out worksheets is demeaning to students and to the goals of the education process. The focus on knowledge and comprehension ignores more important strategies that enhance learning. Students and society deserve more with pedagogical praxis in our schools. Teachers should model classrooms that are empowering and challenging for our students. Teachers should also model a variety of strategies that enable students to be examples for their fellow students and reach higher levels of affective and cognitive engagement. A social education classroom should then provide opportunities for applying knowledge and skills. Students at all levels deserve to be allowed to think for themselves, make decisions, and construct their own learning. We have taken controversy and story, that which makes social education exciting, motivating, and relevant to students’ lives, out of curriculum and instruction. We have homogenized social education to the point of making it boring and meaningless. Social education can come alive through progressive and transformative modeling and applying that include literature and primary source-based, controversial and thematic curriculum. A “powerful” social studies as advocated by the National Council for the Social Studies (1994) that calls for teaching and learning that is meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active is an encouraging sign. The issue remains whether our society really desires such an approach, for it seems antithetical to all that has gone before. We must address these hard questions and move toward the application of empowerment of students and teachers at all levels of education. This is what is meant by social efficacy. STUDENT-CENTERED CLASSROOMS

Social education classrooms need not be dominated by teacher talk and passive instruction. This is disempowering and demeaning to students. Any learning situation becomes more exciting and motivating if students are asked to participate in the pedagogical process. A number of strategies exist that facilitate such a process including cooperative learning, role playing, simulation, role playing, inquiry, problem solving, technology integration, learning centers, and project development. The key remains that students deserve to be active, that a more positive attitude will be promoted through active involvement, and that learning will be enhanced. Social education should occur in a number of situations outside of the traditional four walls of the classroom. Internships, service-learning, and community-based projects all facilitate the efficacy of students as citizens. Students deserve the opportunity to make sense of their world through their social efficacy development. Education should be experiential focused on the process that learners engage in (Dewey, 1991). We preach and teach the wonders of our democratic society, yet schools are one of our least democratic institutions. Just what message are we providing to our youth? The hidden curriculum is not so hidden after all. We must make efforts to facilitate democratic classrooms. Students deserve to take a more active role in classroom 46

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decision-making with social studies classroom obvious places to actively involve students in democratic practice. Problem solving projects, simulations, communitybased activities and just allowing students choice and input encourage democratic ideals. PROMOTING THINKING AND REFLECTING

Students and teachers need to reflect more on what is happening in their classrooms, in their learning, and in their world. We desperately need to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills in this society although the primary argument by many concentrates on the acquisition of content knowledge the focus. Every opportunity should be provided to encourage thinking regarding issues and problem solving to address those issues. Journals, writing projects, small and large group discussions, and technology applications such as web 2.0 appliucations facilitate reflection. Our society has a hurry up and go mentality. The suggestion is to slow down and process ideas, actions, and events through a variety of dialoging. A less is more approach to social studies would enable students to process content and ideas, and develop an in-depth understanding, rather than a surface understanding of facts that will soon be forgotten. Dialog is an empowering process, for when are students actually encouraged to express their ideas in schools? Developing a Community of Learners Integrating a progressive and empowering approach to social studies including modeling and applying, involving students actively, and developing reflective individuals contributes to the idea of developing a community of learners, an absolutely essential component in our classrooms. Unfortunately, the current organization, goals, and methods in our schools does only harm to the concept of community. The prevalent idea is that of competition, individualism, and everyone out for themselves. We must evolve to a more humane, cooperative atmosphere in our schools, and our society for that matter. Whether we ever really had a concept of community is definitely an argument. What is not up for debate is the need to develop some sense of community in neighborhoods, cities, countries, and the world. Schools should be a place that facilitates such an idea. Social studies classrooms again should be the model for this endeavor, for social studies is the study of community in the past, present, and future; it should provide the essence for social efficacy development. Many state that classrooms are microcosms of society; so why not move away from authoritarian, passive, and demeaning classrooms in favor of democratic, active, and empowering places for learning and critical problem solving to improve society. This will encourage citizens who desire progressive approaches to societal issues. CONCLUSION

Schooling and social studies education need not be the archaic and disempowering endeavors that they presently are. Our children and the future of the globe deserve 47

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more. Progressives have too often allowed the powers that be to establish and maintain the status quo. Activist educators should be proactive by encouraging critical and empowering approaches in schools with social studies education taking the lead. A “powerful” social studies education that focuses on the suggested approaches by reestablishing the controversy, story, problem solving, and relevance of social studies for social efficacy is vital. These classrooms can become empowering and meaningful through the model suggested. Social studies can be made a transformative process for individuals and society. The development and transformation of social efficacy for our kids really demands this. A major rationale for schooling is to prepare students for their future. Schools should therefore allow controversy into their classrooms because students will have to encounter controversy and social issues throughout their lives. Instead of resorting to complete withdrawal or violent rage, students would be encouraged to develop peace-making and conflict resolution strategies. But many students will not have exposure to controversy and social issues in their classes. Social studies without controversy cannot really be social studies. It is more like social studies light. This is a disservice to students, teachers, and society. A transformative social justice framework need be the focus of social studies. Only through such a framework can we hope to counter hegemony and other social issues exacerbated by capitalist and corporate dominance. It is high time to rethink social studies for social justice. A society not open and comfortable enough to allow for critique cannot progress and is a society in decline (Loewen, 2009). Critical teaching and learning for social justice sees the true purpose of education as the democratization of society, the highest good, not the protection of the interests of the establishment and unethical minority which dominates American political, economic, and social culture (Apple and Beane, 1995). REFERENCES Apple, M., & Beane, J. (1995). Democratic schools. Alexandria: Association for Supervision and curriculum Development. Beiner, R. (Ed.), (1995). Theorizing citizenship. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Dewey, J. (1938/1997). Experience and education. New York: Simon & Schuster. Freire, P. (2002). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gutman, A. (1990). Democratic education in difficult times. Teachers College Record, 92, 7–20. Hope, W. (1996). It’s time to transform social studies teaching. The Social Studies, 87(4). Kincheloe, J. (2005). Getting beyond the facts. New York: Peter Lang. Loewen, J. (2009). Lies my teacher told me. New York: Touchtone. National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Expectations for excellence: Curriculum standards for social studies. Washington, DC: NCSS. Purpel, D., & S. Shapiro. (1995). Beyond liberation and excellence. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Stanley, W. (1992). Curriculum for utopia. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Westheimer, J., & J. Kahne. (1998). Education for action: Preparing youth for participatory democracy. In W. Ayers, J. Ann Hunt, & T. Quinn (Eds.), Teaching for social justice (pp. 1–20). New York: The New Press.

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JACOB W. NEUMANN

5. SOCIAL EDUCATION – SACRALITY IN EDUCATION

THE QUESTION

What is social education? Is it a thing? A course of study? A branch of the social studies, such as government or history? Is it a way of thinking about education? An outcome, something educators hope for regarding students? A survey of the historical uses of the phrase indicates that no definition of social education seems to last; as Ross and Marker (2005) write, “Dissention in the ranks of social educators is not news” (p. 142). Sometimes the label is used without its meaning being actually discussed (Epstein, 2001; Horlick, 1971). Often social education is equated with social studies education (Schug, 1994; Joyce & Weinberg, 1964). Yet, for the past hundred years, social education has also meant anything from civics education (Passe, 2001) to a program for helping college students become socially acclimated to their college environments (Froe, 1950) to a system for helping people to improve social contacts, including practice in “being well-liked,” “being healthy,” “being able to work with others,” and “being happy” (Gaw, 1930). In most articulations, the social of social education receives emphasis, but as Kincheloe (2001) tells us, social education involves “the overarching relationship between the social domain and the life of the individual” (p. 163). In this light, social education stresses both the individual and the social. It reaches to that nexus where the individual and the social meet, where “I” and “we” collide. But as the history shows, it is argued from that place as well, also from that nexus of “I” and “we,” as scholars, each embedded within her or his own cultural and temporal space, interacting with the social world which always and continuously influences and shapes their thinking, offer yet another and another articulation of social education. This continuous rebirth tells us that social education speaks to the possible. And it is here, at this juncture with the possible, that I want to add my interpretation to what might be called the current critical, postmodern push for social education, because within this current critical push, social education grasps not merely towards the possible, but towards the impossible. Pre-critical, pre-postmodern articulations of social education forecasted the possible. They formulated plans and dictated procedures. But, as I plan to argue, a social education worth its salt looks not merely to the possible, but to the impossible, to what cannot be imagined… only hoped for. And it is at this place, where education reaches for the impossible, where I find something John Caputo (2001, 2006, 2007) might argue to be religious. Admittedly, juxtaposing social education with religion presents conceptual obstacles and might instantly raise many educators’ feathers – especially of those calling C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 49–66. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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themselves social educators! Therefore, to assist the reader on this path, I will enlist Caputo’s help, since Caputo articulates an idea of religion that opens us to the possibility of the impossible and grounds us in meanings that I find embraced by anything worthy of being called social education. As this chapter will argue, this spirit of religion, this social education, embodies itself within education in the forms of three practices: the practice of love, the practice of faith, and the practice of justice. These practices reflect the mechanisms of education, but, more importantly, they reflect a spirit that is both call and hope. It is a call for action to do love, to do faith, and to do justice. Yet since these practices reach towards the impossible, they also embody a spirit of hope, hope for “visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, in our schools” (Greene, 1995, p. 5). Such is the social education I shout for in this paper, and such are the mad educators who, along with me, hope for the impossible. Wrestling with Definitions Before I jump further into the religious nature of social education, let me trace some of the history of the phrase…beginning with my own. For much of my time as a doctoral student, an inside joke with a colleague was that even though we spent semester after semester in a doctoral seminar that incorporated “social education” into its title, neither of us could ever explain to laypeople what social education meant. A coherent definition eluded us. For my part, early in that graduate school career, when asked about the meaning of social education, I would often simply say, “like social studies, but broader.” “Like social studies” made sense, I think, simply because of the word “social” in the title, and because those comparisons were often made by class members. But after reflection, and more experience, I realized that we actually did not discuss what are often considered classic social studies areas; we spoke little in class about teaching history or economics or geography. In fact, we only occasionally discussed actual teaching methods at all. Subsequent personal definitions also failed to hold. Sometime further down the road my personal definition of social education changed to “a holistic inquiry into education which usually emphasizes issues of social justice.” Yet, after a time, that too began to feel incomplete. Like Greene (2003) searching for critical pedagogy, I experienced my own search for social education. Perhaps it was the inaugural semester of that social education seminar that set me on the path towards uncertainty. The professor led a few class sessions, but at one point in the semester he also asked each student to lead part of a class, for, say, an hour and a half. Each student was to select a reading and lead a discussion of that reading: nothing unusual. What threw me, however, were the readings students selected. One student had us read through sections of the USA Patriot Act. Another had us read Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha. Add to this the essays by Dewey on individualism that I selected, and my head was spinning. The range of ideas in those texts alone is huge: no stereotypical social studies there. Just what were we talking about? 50

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Future seminars provided no more concrete definitions. One summer, “doing social education” meant field trips galore, from walking a historic black neighbourhood that was rapidly being gentrified and forcing long-time residents to move elsewhere followed by a tour of several historic predominantly-black churches in the area, to exploring old shipping docks and downtown areas. Another semester, the class studied media, and in still others the topics studied ranged from spirituality to questions specifically asking “what are schools for?” (Miller, 1992). Obviously, these doctoral seminars in social education casted a wide net. It often seemed that almost anything could be argued to be social education. A survey of articulations of social education proposed over the last two centuries supports this inference. Often, social education has been explicitly linked to social studies education. This linkage is articulated as either a component or a causal relationship. Some scholars consider social education to be a part of social studies education. Cordier (1946) offers social education as a combination of economics and government studies. For him, the “purpose is to make the socioeconomic and political world in which children live intelligible and meaningful to them” (p. 362). Knapp (1947) seems to see social education as a form of geography, in that he uses it as a way of highlighting the study of specific regions of the United States. Joyce (1972) offers a more thorough analysis. He considers social education to be one of three dimensions of social studies education: the personal, social, and intellectual dimensions. “The purpose of the social dimension of the social studies is to prepare citizens who can perpetuate and improve their society” (p. 4). Conversely, other scholars see social education as a result of social studies education. Joyce and Joyce (1966) claim that social studies is used to give students a social education. Hursch and Ross (2000), while adding a critical element, mirror this idea that social studies is a means and social education is a result. In other words, these scholars argue that through social studies education do students become socially educated. For much of the twentieth century, social education has also been conceptualized as a conservatizing process, in stark contrast to current thinking about social education, which often holds it as a means for critical investigation (see Hursch and Ross, 2000; Kincheloe, 2001). Among conservative scholars, social education is seen as a system for ensuring social cohesion. Owen (1907) writes of social education as a form of common social training for students. He promotes experimental methods that search for a desired conservative end, stating that “the school… should be marked by a wise conservatism in its activities” (p. 20). Otto (1956), echoing Owen, writes that “social education implies deliberate instruction designed to promote children’s social development in desirable directions” (p. 34). “In the USA,” Otto explains, “social education means the induction of our youth into the traditions, the mores, the ethics, and the ideals which characterize the so-called ‘American way of life’” (p. 35). Todd (1935) seeks not social indoctrination, but the creation of particular social attitudes, “a proper combination of stability and flexibility” (p. 28). He advocates for “fixed principles of conduct alongside of and related to a marginal flexibility of outlook” (p. 28). Voelker (1921) too saw social education as a process of social shaping. For Voelker, the individual must be taught to consider the social bearing of his conduct, to suppress his anti-social impulses, 51

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and must be socially motivated (p. 1). Here, social education develops a sense of social solidarity and strengthening of social coherence. This emphasis on behavior is also reflected in Straughan’s (1988) position, placing social education within the context of teaching children to “be good,” that social education is a moral endeavor in that “it takes place within a social context and is designed to fulfill various social purposes” (p. 24). During World War II, such attitudinal conditioning took even more extreme forms, as Murra, Wilson, and Hartshorn (1944) demonstrate in considering social education to be “a tool or process” for conditioning students’ attitudes regarding the war. Sample lesson titles in their pedagogy include “education for the air age,” “maintaining morale,” and “economic factors in war and peace” (p. 357). In contrast to these explicit efforts to control and narrow students’ thinking, other scholars have thought of social education along more Deweyan lines as a project that, as Muschinske (1976) puts it, “consists of making explicit to school children what it is to live in a community in an intelligent way. It is an attempt to develop those habits of communication, participation, sharing, trying, and critical evaluation that enable a community to function “(p. 340). In this effort, “social education includes social understanding and the ability to collaborate with other people, both nationally and internationally, in order to promote peaceful solutions of human problems” (Hans, 1962, p. 232). This is a project not to conserve, but to revitalize. These revitalization efforts include “constructive participation in larger and more complex forms of group life” (Richards, 1944, p. 40). These efforts are not necessarily tied to social studies curriculum. Rather, they are connected to the entire curriculum, not isolated courses. The content is broad and ill-defined, in that “the human processes, which are generated automatically whenever people gather, irrespective of their stated purpose or immediate task, thus constitute the content of social education” (Davies & Gibson, 1967). This thinking is active and participatory, desiring to create “learning experiences which will acquaint [students] with (1) the contemporary nature of the world in which they live, (2) historical antecedents for why the world is the way it is, and (3) methods of inquiry to enable and inspire students to assume active roles as architects of the future” (Allen, 1948, p. 142). Creating a Public Even if one disagrees that the purpose of public education is to create a public (Postman, 1995), one is hard-pressed to disagree that students will nonetheless enter and re-form the public when their formal schooling is completed. Through the historical examples above, we can infer how the spirit of particular times impacted scholars’ visions for social education and the qualities of the public they wished to create. This is most apparent in Murra, Wilson, and Hartshorn’s (1944) attempts to condition students’ attitudes during wartime, but it is also apparent in, say, Todd’s (1935) efforts at producing a “stable” public in the middle of an economic depression. Our current time is dizzying as well. It is a wild mixture of militarism and fear; terrorism and recrimination; predatory capitalism and soaring financial problems; and hyper-media where every other person, it seems, walks around 52

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connected to an iPod or Blackberry but often disconnected from intimacy with other human beings; yet it also contains a tremendous appetite for hope as evidenced by the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. This stew of distortion and disconnection, of hope and challenge requires a public capable of critical inquiry and equipped with not simply the tools, but the will not to speak truth to power, but to find power within their own truth and in shared truths. This need for a civically engaged public exists within all democratic systems. Only, today the urgency for such a public seems to be increasing. Multinational corporations control increasing percentages and areas of our lives, and what little social safety net the United States might have once had is rapidly eroding. Obama’s election demonstrated that ordinary citizens can effectively exercise a political voice through both grassroots and Internet organizing. What remains unclear, however, is if these voices cannot simply sustain, but increase to further effect meaningful social and economic change. In other words, these times require a public capable and confident in sustaining critical democratic participation, one that does not merely cast a vote and then hope for the best between election cycles. Yet, inquiry and action alone are insufficient for this hoped-for public, because they say little about connection. Our current era of escalating factional violence – fundamentalist American/fundamentalist Arab, Israeli/Palestinian, Russian/Chechen, Hutu/Tutsi – demands a public capable of seeing past the idea of factions. On what differences are factions between people based? Differences in skin color, religious belief, ethnic background, nationality, etc are seen as something real, something tangible, when actually they are merely differences of belief. In other words, differences in religious affiliations, for example, are differences of opinion. Groups of people might believe in different ideas about religion, but the differences between them are only about what they think. Even differences based on skin color are actually differences based in belief, because the differences arise in what people think about skin color, not in skin color itself. From this reading of history and this understanding of the contextual, even liminal pressures exerted by a given age, one conclusion feels inescapable. Social education means almost whatever one wants it to mean. Current articulations that reflect an emphasis on social justice are no more valid, no more correct, no more valid, than older, more conservative versions. They simply reflect cultural shifts and the priorities of a given author at a given time. This by no means devalues or trivializes social education. Instead, I submit that it reinforces the argument that social education is less of a process and more of a philosophy about learning and schooling. It is less of a “what” and more of a “why.” This understanding teaches us that when articulating a position on social education, we are not claiming what is. We are claiming what should be. In other words, social education is an argument. We have seen that social education can represent a number of perspectives, some polar opposites from each other, both progressive and conservative, both narrow and broad, and in each of these, the author is arguing for a certain end-in-view for education (Dewey, 1997a) and a position for how education should impact both the individual and society. Social education is simply a philosophy of education that argues for a particular vision for society. 53

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REACHING INTO THE RELIGIOUS

“You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of the work” (Easwaran, 2000, p. 13). To meet the current challenges presented by our age, social education today holds ambitious goals: peace among all people, for all people to live happily and healthily, the non-violent resolution of social problems, and a collective emphasis on social justice. It emphasizes critical inquiry, as expressed by Kincheloe (2001), but also fosters affective qualities. Postman argues for a public that is “imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, [and] a respect for learning and tolerance” (1995, p. 18). Houser (2005) writes that social educators “seek ways to prepare students for participation in the development of a more just and caring society and world” (p. 45). White (1996) focuses on encouraging the growth of what she calls “democratic dispositions” in students: hope, confidence, courage, democratic self-respect, friendship, trust, honesty, and decency. Given the tumult and flux of our time, these goals often feel impossible, like an ideal never to be reached. This is not to state that peace, health, and non-violence are impossible to effect, that they could never come into being. No, by “impossible” I mean that they are of such magnitude and of such difficulty to produce, that creating these conditions often seems so far beyond the scale of what is thought of as humanly possible, that they appear to be impossible goals. Caputo calls the impossible “something of whose possibility we just cannot conceive” (2001, p.10). Its coming to fruition escapes our envisioning, lying beyond our imagination. Social education today does not merely work towards small goals such as social conditioning, but imagines the impossible and is infused with love. In fact, social educators spill over with mad love, because to work for the impossible ends of justice and peace is to love. To push against the dam of globalizing corporatism and incessant reductionism is to love in the hope for what can only be hoped for. It is to love in spite of the impossible, in the face of the impossible. It is here in this place of loving when confronted with the impossible, in reaching and hoping for the impossible that social education connects to religion, entering the realm of the religious. Because I am sensing defensive shields being raised at my suggestion of religiousness, let me spend a moment with this idea and draw John Caputo into the conversation to help guide us along this potentially thorny path. My purpose here is not to present an extended discussion of the history of reason and religion. Instead, I wish to simply show that social education can be equated with religiousness without worry of proselytizing – or without succumbing to the Church/State divide. As Caputo tells us, there was a time when the idea of the “secular” did not mean something entirely disconnected from the “sacred.” In fact, “‘secular’ did not describe a sphere separated from ‘religion’ but referred to someone who was not a member of a monastic order” (Caputo, 2001, p. 43). “Religion” existed everywhere. This sense of living in a Christian world – or a Muslim one – pervaded everything. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were all over the place, covering everything, seeping into every crevice, constituting the very air everyone breathed. 54

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But it is just for that reason that “religion” in the modern sense, as some separate sphere, apart from the “secular” order, did not exist (p. 43). Artists and philosophers and kings alike were “in varying degrees religious or irreligious.” Even the forebears of modern science, such as Galileo and Descartes, were often devoutly religious. The beginning of the divorce between philosophy and theology is commonly placed within the Enlightenment. Enlightenment philosophy sought to “assert the rights of reason, of free and independent inquiry independent of the power of the church (faith) and of traditional authorities like Aristotle” (Caputo, 2007, p. 21). Connected to discoveries by Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler regarding the relationship between the Earth and the universe, Enlightenment philosophy created a sphere for reason separate from the church. This was seen, in part, as philosophers, such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz (Stewart, 2006), began to argue for the existence of God in philosophical terms, using arguments based in thinking, not revelation. Religion, even where the arguer was demonstrably religious, such as Spinoza, began to be articulated not in terms of faith, but in terms based in the language of reason. Kant’s later “discrimination of the lines to be drawn among knowledge (the true), ethics (the good), and “aesthetics” (the beautiful)” merely continued along this trajectory, becoming the ground from which he carved out a space “for religion within the limits of reason alone” (Caputo, 2001, p. 47). Religion at last became, at least to many philosophers, subservient to reason, even superfluous, as current atheistic scholars continue to argue (Dawkins, 2006; Harris, 2006; Hitchens, 2007). Under the inspection of reason, and in the hands of Nietzsche, religion, finally, becomes yet another way of looking at the world. But as Caputo tells us, borrowing this logic from Nietzsche, the atheistic argument against religion is also just another perspective for seeing the world. Nietzsche argues “for the historical contingency of our beliefs and practices, all of which… are ‘perspectives’ that we take on the world and that have emerged in order to meet the needs of life” (Caputo, 2001, p. 58). Caputo writes that all these reductionistic critiques of religion turn out to be, on Nietzsche’s own account, more varieties of what Nietzsche called the “ascetic ideal,” a belief in a rigorous and unbending order of “Objective Truth.” For Nietzsche’s assertion that “God is dead” had a wide sweep that included Absolute Truth, Physics, and the Laws of Grammar, anything that tries to hold the center firm. The declaration of the “death of God” is aimed at decapitating anything that dares Capitalize itself, which included not just the smoke and incense of the Christian mysteries, but anything that claims to be the Final Word. That had the amazing and unforeseen effect of catching-up hardball reductionistic and atheistic critiques of religion in its sweep (2001, p. 60). Thus, Caputo (and Nietzsche) frees religion from the court of reason and allows it to speak on its own terms. He tells us one need not play only by reason’s rules and that in invoking the term “religion” one need not also heft the accompanying baggage reason piled onto it. 55

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For Caputo does “not confine religion to something confessional or sectarian, like being a Muslim or a Hindu, a Catholic or a Protestant” (2001, p. 9). Caputo values religious traditions, but he has no patience for bogging down in the definitions thrown up by the court of reason. Instantiations of religious difference, such as theism, atheism, deism, and agnosticism, all hold weight in our society and students can benefit from exploring these ideas (Noddings, 2008). But to delimit any discussion of religion to the conceptual boundaries imposed by modernity is to shrink down religion, to “cut [it] to fit the principles of reason” (Caputo, 2006, p. 28). Caputo holds that the religious predominantly lies in our experience of life: in a religious spirit and a religious sense of life. In fact, religious spirit and a religious sense of life foreground religion as an essential component of experience. Where Dewey articulated experience in mainly cognitive terms and as cognitive action (Dewey, 1997b), Caputo sees experience as something essentially religious. Experience itself, all experience, has a religious character, whether or not you march yourself off to church on Sunday morning….That religious edge to experience, that notion of life at the limit of the possible, on the verge of the impossible constitutes a religious structure, the religious side of every one of us, with or without bishops or rabbis or mullahs (Caputo, 2001, p.11). The religious edge sits at experience’s juncture with the impossible, in that all of our actions connect to a future, which Caputo separates into an “actual” future and an “absolute” future. We plan for the actual future: curriculum goals, 401Ks, college savings, vocational training. But we cannot plan for our absolute future. This future is unforeseeable, unplanable. With the “absolute” future we are pushed to the limits of the possible, fully extended, at our wits’ end, having run up against something that is beyond us, beyond our powers and potentialities, beyond our powers of disposition, pushed to the point where only the great passions of faith and love and hope will see us through (p. 8). The absolute future sets “foot …on the shore of the religious,” where our religious sense of life comes alive. And it is also where social education, with its goals beyond the rote and the mechanistic, beyond the “actual” future, radiates with this religious spirit as it hopes and calls students and teachers, our society even, towards the impossible goals of faith, love, and hope. THE PRACTICES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION

“The offering of wisdom is better than any material offering, Arjuna; for the goal of all work is spiritual wisdom” (Easwaran, 2000, p.27). As this analysis moves back into education, we can utilize this space Caputo clears for reconceptualizing the practices of teaching, and we can make religious associations with less worry about our analysis being reduced to simple proselytizing, as if an association implied membership in a religious tradition. This is also part of my point, that the religiousness of social education exists separately from any 56

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one specific religious tradition, even though its religious qualities may be found in all traditions. Social education’s religiousness is found in its hopes – for the impossible! – and in its practices within the classroom. This religiousness is embodied in the forms of three practices: the practice of love, the practice of faith, and the practice of justice. Social education emerges through these practices, and it is through these practices that social education radiates its religiousness. I see love, faith, and justice not as three distinct entities in social education, but as interrelated aspects of the larger idea of social education. Thus, when I discuss student-centered learning as a manifestation of the practice of faith, for example, I in no way intend to segregate it from the qualities of love or faith: each practice imbues the others and none predominates. Each of these practices speaks to something larger than simple, mechanistic goals for education. They speak to things not seen, to Caputo’s “absolute” future; they embody the impossible hopes of social education and the belief social educators hold for what is not yet, but should be. While I use the term “practice,” we can also utilize the idea of themes, for within each practice/ theme lays the daily actions of teaching. In other words, these practices are evident simply within the commonplace actions of teachers in classrooms, in what social educators do as they engage and relate and exist with their students. Love “That devotee who looks upon friend and foe with equal regard…such a one is dear to me” (Easwaran, 2000, p. 68). Social education is a practice of love firstly because it involves care, requires care, demands caring on the part of educators, because creating a public involves not just students as they are at any given now, but students as they will become. Creating a public, and, thus, social education is a moral endeavor. Just as the practice of teaching contains moral qualities (Hansen, 1998), larger discussions about curriculum and instruction are also moral projects. The effort to present and enact a philosophy and practice of social education is a moral exercise. By moral, however, I do not imply that social education teaches specific moral values, such as kindness or honesty, but that any discussion of the outcomes of education is an intrinsically moral endeavor. To call for the creation of specific qualities in a public is a moral exercise because in these discussions we do not only declare the type of world in which we wish to live, but the people we wish our students will become. In essence, we try to create our future neighbors, since we will continue to share space on this Earth with our students well after they leave our classrooms and our schools. Appiah’s (2008) recognition of the fallibility of thinking also informs our deliberations and cautions us against articulations that are too rigid or too biased on personal desires. The reading of the history of the phrase “social education” also reminds us that the articulations we make today are grounded within a context that shapes our thinking in ways we will only be able to identify in retrospect. These understandings caution us against imagining finality and remind us that any articulation of social education is only what we wish now, in this present moment, knowing that future moments might call for something different. 57

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Another aspect of social educators’ practice of love is their acceptance of difference. St. Augustine writes that “it is not Your will that we should love You only, but our neighbor also” (Sheed, 1942, p. 204). The practice of love sees difference as variety, like the colors within a rainbow. Callahan (2002) tells a story about Pando, a quaking aspen grove in northern Utah, covering 106 acres and perhaps one million years old. According to Callahan, “a grove of aspen trees is, in fact, one individual” (p. 199). Each aspen stem is what we call an aspen tree. In the ground underneath the aspen grove lies a web of roots, not separate, not simply tangled together, but connected – not connected, but one. One thing that sends up yet another aspen tree/stem. Following Callahan, the aspen grove is one thing, one organism, not an assortment of related but distinct, but separate, but isolated individuals living together. A practice of love looks through Callahan’s eyes and, applying this to humanity, sees people as Pando. Cosmopolitanism is one approach to the world, embraced by social educators, that reflects “Pando” thinking. Commonly dated to the Stoic philosopher Diogenes, it is thinking that bridges the local and the universal. It co-values local traditions and indigenous knowledge with the need for global communication and the respect for difference. In other words, a cosmopolitan mindset values local culture while respecting that other localities value their own cultures as well. Yet, cosmopolitanism also keeps an eye on the universal, because, as Appiah (2008) puts it, “It’s worth listening to others because they may have something to teach us; it’s worth their listening to us, because they may have something to learn” (p. 86). Two scholars, Hansen (2008) and Appiah (2008), have recently articulated possibilities for integrating cosmopolitanism into the curriculum. Hansen writes of the possibilities for curriculum to generate a “cosmopolitan sensibility” in students, while Appiah develops a theory of cosmopolitanism “to be considered by anyone wishing to introduce cosmopolitan ideas as part of the school curriculum” (2008, p. 92). While these are two different perspectives on cosmopolitanism, they each offer a means for the social educator to introduce students to this idea. For Appiah, “cosmopolitanism is a double-stranded tradition:...universality plus difference” (2008, p. 92). It is universal in that “every human being has certain minimum entitlements – many of them expressed in the vocabulary of human rights” (p. 94), but it is not universalizing, in that it does not try to convert people to a totalizing universal belief, as fundamentalists do. Rather, it appreciates difference, because it “begins with the philosophical doctrine of fallibilism – the recognition that we may be mistaken, even when we have looked carefully at the evidence and applied our highest mental capacities” (p. 93). This theory stresses a commitment to pluralism, meaning that “there are many values worth living by and that [one] cannot live by all of them” (p. 96). Hansen, on the other hand, moves into the idea of curriculum as cosmopolitan inheritance by suggesting “that the questions [a] student enunciates here [and now]…can be those of any student, any time, anywhere on the planet” (2008, p. 299). This inheritance speaks to “the unpredictable transaction between student and what has given life in the first place to the subject matter at hand” (p. 299). This sensibility recognizes that the world continually speaks to each of us and that, 58

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as each person engages with the world, we also inherit the engagings from everyone who grappled with a given idea before us. In other words, the world addresses us, beckons us to engage with it, and that “address from the world to every student is neither inherently local nor universal” (p. 300). Curriculum as cosmopolitan sensibility finds connection through our common engagement with the world and understands this nexus between the local and the universal as ever fertile with the possibility of the new. Faith “Our faith conforms to our nature, Arjuna. Human nature is made of faith. Indeed, a person is his faith” (Easwaran, 2000, p.85). Caputo writes that “the passion for the impossible is the passion of faith” (1997, p. 63). The faith of social education is not a faith of surety, but a faith of slippage. It is a faith that cannot be grasped – only practiced. Social educators practice faith in students. But what does that mean? That students are intrinsically good, positively motivated, and able to form a desired public? Some, even many are, but others might not be. In other words, outcomes for students are not determined. At best, educators practice hope as they nurture students, only to then send them on their way as they continue through the world. To practice faith in students, then, is to have faith in an idea about students, for students, for the world. Faith is not knowledge. The religiousness of social education lies here in the slippage. It requires a letting go, similar to Heidegger’s decree to “let learn” (Heidegger, 1968). Caputo, leaning on Jacques Derrida, calls this a faith without faith, an un-determined faith. Using religious language, this faith is like a prayer without a certain destination. As Caputo argues, “faith without faith is precisely – faith” (1997, p. 63). We send out the call, plead with hope, offer our prayer, and like Augustine asking God, “What is it that I love when I love you?” (Sheed, 1942), we practice no less faith than if we knew the address for our prayer. As Caputo nicely puts it Faith is not calculable in advance, cannot be counted on to coast on its own, cannot be taken for granted, but must be given again and again, without calculation…in a faith without faith, a faith which is reinvented from moment to moment (1997, p. 66). Social education hopes for what it cannot see, what it cannot control, what it cannot predict. This hoping requires faith, is an act of faith. The faith of social education calls educators to evaluate two connected concepts in education - what is considered student-centered learning and generic academic standards - because each connects to educators’ practice of faith: in learning and in students. One cannot discuss studentcentered learning without also discussing academic standards, for they drive each other. Faith rejects normative academic standards and calls for student-centered methodology in which students fuel the educational initiative and are trusted with driving educational inquiry. Faith recognizes that “there is an inherent problem in setting goals or objectives for other people” (Noddings, 1995, p. 79), because such goal-setting is the opposite of faith. Social educators trust that all students 59

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have meaningful interests and concerns and that when given the responsibility to inquire into these concerns, unimagined new knowledges are created. They have trust in people, believing that, “it’s best…when people live by ideals they themselves believe in,” (Appiah, 2008, p. 93) and do not to try to force through schooling, in contrast to those who believe that people need to be continually conditioned, the ideals people should value. The faith of social education rejects “the deeper and deeper levels of coercion” that is foisted upon students when schools demand “accountability because [they] neither expect nor encourage responsibility” (Noddings, 1995, p. 83). Social educators reflect on the idea that meaningful academic standards are reflected in the types of people students become, not in the amount of content coverage they receive or in their scores on a standardized test, recognizing that “the measure of a classroom lies outside Sandardisto edicts” (Ohanian, 1999, p. 5). Standards advocates commonly make two arguments, one cultural, one economic, about the need for academic standards. Yet neither of these arguments practices faith. The cultural argument demonstrates a lack of faith in people to find meaningful ways to come together in community without rigidly imposed external value structures, and the incompleteness of the economic argument serves to hoodwink students into belief structures that may not fully serve their interests. The cultural argument asserts that all Americans must have a common body of background knowledge if the U.S. is to continue as a viable, democratic nation. Scholars such as E. D. Hirsch (2006; 1987) and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1992) insist that Americans need both a common vocabulary and shared historical understandings if they are to effectively communicate with each other. Like Noddings, I also “shudder when [I] hear of high school graduates who can’t read, who cannot place the Civil War in the correct century, [and] who do not know that the United States used atomic bombs in the war with Japan” (1995, p. 78). But lived experience subverts the reasoning that participation in cultural and civic affairs requires a detailed common vocabulary. For example, during the recent presidential election, television news programs continuously aired reports regarding voter’s reasons for supporting or not supporting one of the presidential candidates. These voters were people who were involved in our political process, not disaffected, uncommitted, uninvolved naysayers. Yet in evaluating a candidate, they often focused on personality traits such as “trustworthiness” or “values,” vague qualities that required no historical knowledge at all to assess, and not on detailed historical analyses of policy positions. The economic argument holds that American economic prosperity – both social and individual – depends on the academic achievement of U.S. students, i.e. that U.S. students score higher on achievement tests than students in other countries. Education is certainly one factor in students’ future financial health. But so are larger political decisions regarding living wages, health care costs, college tuition rates, and whether or not their current schools are adequately and fairly funded. What standards advocates seem to forget is that if our society is to function, we need every manner of worker. The shame is not in being a manual laborer, a waitress, or a health-service aide. The shame is that we refuse to pay these people a living wage (Ohanian, 1999, p. 15). 60

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The practice of faith also calls educators to rethink what is commonly considered to be student-centered learning. Social education stresses the “importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct [his or her] activities in the learning process” (Dewey, 1997b, p. 67). Much of what is commonly considered social education, however, simply leads students through teacher-directed questions. In one commonplace example, the objective of a lesson for middle school students on the Constitution found in Social Education, a journal published by the National Council for the Social Studies, asks students to “identify how the Bill of Rights makes an impact on their daily [lives]” (Fieth & Deason, 2005, p. 241). This objective might make perfect sense to a teacher, especially one who feels it her responsibility to engage students in “important” issues. But even if the students collaborated in groups to discuss the question, to how many middle schoolers is this actually a pressing concern? Critical pedagogy is one philosophy that engages students in asking questions and uncovering hidden truths. But all too often, critical pedagogy also simply leads students through problems situated by the teacher. Duncan-Andrade and Morrell (2008), for example, write about “critical pedagogy in an urban high school English classroom” in which they direct the readings, the activities, and the projects, with students adding input as the prescribed lessons proceed. While such pedagogy can have uses and benefits for students, students also, and primarily, need practice in asking and exploring their own questions. Towards this goal, teachers should emphasize a student-centered philosophy that substantially gives students the responsibility and authority to ask and explore their own questions. Goodson (1998) and Postman and Weingartner (1969) each offer examples of a rigorous student-centered pedagogy that set a high standard for any methodology calling itself student-centered. This student-centeredness requires that students explore questions that interest them. For Goodson, student-centered learning requires students to “sort out” their questions, collaborating with the teacher mainly to focus the route of exploration, not to create the question. In one example, Goodson allows students time to sort through both materials and ideas with “a lot of copying out of books, drawing of pictures, collecting of unrelated bits and pieces of knowledge” in “a process of exploration in which the student, often unconsciously, feels around the topic to locate the real source of its attraction” (Goodson, 1998, p. 36). It is only as the student begins to shape the topic that the teacher collaborates to help the student direct her inquiry. Goodson’s methodology creates a student-focused collaboration between the student and the teacher, with the student primarily directing the inquiry. Postman and Weingartner (1969) chart a different route in their student-centered pedagogy, one that follows the Deweyan thought that “educational practice revolves around the provision of obstacles, problems, for children to conceptualize and then solve” (Schutz, 2001, p. 270; emphasis in original). In this pedagogy, teachers create problems with and for students, but always from the students’ interests. As they write, “in an inquiry environment, the lesson is always about the learner” (Postman & Weingartner, 1969, p. 96). “In short, the content of [the teacher’s] lessons are the responses of [the] students” (p. 36). 61

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Justice “Do your work with the welfare of others always in mind” (Easwaran, 2000, p. 19). As much as the religiousness of social education is embodied in practices of love and faith, it is and must also be embodied in a practice of justice. To love and to faith is certainly to do justice, only here I speak to a different scale. With love and faith, I speak to the local; with justice, I reach towards the communal, a larger doing of justice, one that “is what is called for and what calls on us” (Caputo, 2007, p. 63). I reach towards justice in the sense of community and relationship, justice both dependent and interdependent. The justice of love and faith localizes in the individual; the practice of justice I speak to here spreads as if fostering a culture of justice. This practice of justice demands that educators do justice inside classrooms, because “justice has to do with the one lost sheep, with the one lost coin, the widow, the orphan, the stranger” (Caputo, 2007, p. 65). This practice of justice recognizes that schools must serve as laboratories where students can experiment with both democracy and critical inquiry. Educators should create classroom environments in which students can learn to think and act democratically and to learn the inquiry skills that are essential for effecting justice. For justice is never finished, never completed, it is “always to come, never realized, always soliciting from ahead, but at the same time justice is demanded now” (Caputo, 2007, p. 68). In other words, doing justice in the classroom must address the “insistent present” (Whitehead, 1956, p. 14) even while preparing for the always unknown future. Ira Shor (1996) vividly describes his attempts in trying to teach his students to think democratically. Shor recounts his efforts to share power with his students in an English course at the College of Staten Island. Shor practiced democracy by negotiating grading procedures, administrative policies, and, through a mechanism he called an “after class group,” the directions the class took in their learning. The greatest challenge for Shor was not that his students came unprepared for sharing power with a teacher. The challenge came when the students confronted him on his core conflicting beliefs by challenging his required attendance policy. He faced a dilemma of principle. As he states it, “How to be democratic and still require attendance?” (p. 105). He was against “compulsion masquerading as freedom,” but wondered how he could “practice [his] vocation as a critical teacher and educational change-agent if the class disappears?” (p. 105). Ultimately, Shor did not budge on an attendance policy, creating a contradiction that he recognized as a clash with his democratic intentions. Shor’s experience holds lessons for all teachers with democratic intentions. First, schools, as they are constructed in our society, are not fully democratic environments. If they were, they would resemble something like A.S. Neill created at Summerhill (Neill, 1960). Yet, they can be labs where democracy is practiced. Shor would not budge on required attendance, and his teacherly authority allowed him the power to make that decision. But he could also practice democracy through his “after class group” and through negotiating grading requirements. As Shor puts it, 62

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“As the teacher, I am inviting and allowing the students to practice democracy rather than they having won this right for themselves” (p. 74; emphasis in original). Shor’s practice of justice transformed the usual authoritarian environment of a school into a place where students could learn to think and act democratically. A practice of justice also demands that educators help students develop the critical skills necessary to unearth and fight against injustice. Paulo Freire’s “problem-posing” method serves as an archetype for such a practice. “In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves” (Freire, 1993, p. 64). Freire contrasts problem-posing education with what he calls “banking education,” education “in which the scope of the action allowed to the students extends only so far as receiving, filing, and storing deposits” (p. 53). Neither does problem-posing present distant issues or facts to students for critical study, but articulates elements of their lived experience to them as a problem, creating a venue for them to conceptually and analytically wrestle with elements of their lives. Freire writes that “it is not our role to speak to the people about our own view of the world, nor to attempt to impose that view on them but rather to dialogue with the people about their view and ours” (p. 77). The content, then, is “constituted and organized by the students’ view of the world” (p. 90). This practice of justice is a practice of freedom which “affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming – as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality” (p. 65). According to Freire, it is also a practice of faith, “an intense faith in humankind, faith in their power to make and remake, to create and re-create, faith in their vocation to be more fully human” (p. 71). Freire’s faith resembles Caputo’s faith – faith in the incoming, faith in the impossible. It is faith in people, faith in students, faith in conscientizaçāo, “the deepening of the attitude of awareness characteristic of all emergence” (p. 90). Freire practiced justice – and faith – with rural peasants in his native Brazil under an angry military government. He exercised justice/faith not when things were easy, but when they were hard, when they were through a glass darkly (Caputo, 1997). The religiousness of this practice comes from this tension. It calls out the money-lenders, demanding justice in the lived context of people’s lives, not when things are easy, recognizing that “the more credible things are, the less faith is needed, but the more incredible things seem, the more faith is required, the faith that is said to move mountains” (Caputo, 2007, p. 45). THE SACRALITY OF SOCIAL EDUCATION

“As men approach me, so I receive them. All paths, Arjuna, lead to me” (Easwaran, 2000, p. 24). To state that social education has religious qualities, that the practices and goals of social education embody a religiousness is not to advocate for religion or to imply that social educators even need to feel themselves as religious. Nor is it to state that social education is itself religious. Rather, it is simply to state that social education lies in the realm of the sacred. 63

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Nobody chooses to be born. Each of us is thrust into this bewildering world, some into fortunate circumstances, some into less fortunate, but all are rudely confronted with the uninvited task of making some sort of sense out of it. Education and religion are two mechanisms that help us in our sense-making. Schools offer us shared meanings and some intellectual tools that can assist us as we continue through our lives. Religion provides us an orientation, a framework with which to structure our lives. Mircea Eliade (1987) contrasts the sacred and the profane, “two modes of being in the world, two existential situations assumed by man in the course of his history” (p.14). In archaic societies, life was entirely founded upon religious beliefs, from the construction of a village and a home to daily activities such as eating or bathing. It provided not just an ontology: it created a world. Through what Eliade calls a “hierophany,” the sacred manifests itself into reality in the form of some ordinary object, a stone or a tree….In each case we are confronted by the same mysterious act – the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural “profane” world (p. 11). This manifestation of the sacred provides an orientation to the world and a “central axis for all future orientation” (p. 21). The sacred transcends the profane – a world without transcendence. The sacred is something set apart from the profane. The sacred is not an aspect of a particular belief. Beliefs found themselves within the sacred, as it orients us to being – to why we find ourselves here in the first place. Eliade writes that for most of human history, people lived lives saturated by religion – by a connection to the sacred. He argues that the non-religious person, the person living in disconnect from the sacred, is a relatively new phenomenon. “Modern nonreligious man assumes a new existential situation; he regards himself solely as the subject and agent of history, and he refuses all appeal to transcendence” (p. 203). Because of the saturation of the sacred into life, the nonreligious person had the task of desacralizing the world. “To acquire a world of his own, he has desacralized the world in which his ancestors lived” (p. 204). The break of science with religion discussed above resembles, and in many cases represents, a break of the profane, the non-religious, with the sacred. Yet, as Eliade tells us, “a purely rational man is an abstraction; he is never found in real life” (p. 209). Countless parts of our lives, even in our often profane modern world, embody vestiges of religious practice, including initiation rituals; consecration rituals, whether of a home or of a marriage; even Marxist eschatological myths. In fact, “the majority of the ‘irreligious’ still behave religiously, even though they are not aware of the fact” (p. 204). Social education falls into this category. Because it is a philosophy and a practice that orients teachers and students to a world, that hopes to create a certain public, that attempts to create its own ontology, it connects to this ancient holding of the sacred in life. Put differently, social education transcends the profane as it reaches to create an ever-new world. Thus, to recognize and value the sacrality of social education is to value its reaching for transcendence, towards the religious belief that the world can be created anew. 64

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REFERENCES Allen, J. (1948). Social education: Choice, motives, and emphases. Peabody Journal of Education, 26(3), 139–144. Appiah, K. A. (2008). Education for global citizenship. In G. D. Fenstermacher (Series Ed.) & D. L. Coulter, & J. R. Wiems (Vol. Eds.), The 107th yearbook for the National Society for the Study of Education: Vol. 1. Why do we educate?: Renewing the conversation (pp. 84–99). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Callahan, G. N. (2002). Faith, madness, and spontaneous human combustion. New York: St. Marten’s Press. Caputo, J. D. (1997). The prayers and tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without religion. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Caputo, J. D. (2001). On religion. London: Routledge. Caputo, J. D. (2006). Philosophy and theology. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Caputo, J. D. (2007). What would Jesus deconstruct? Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Cordier, R. W. (1946). Cultural understanding through social education. Journal of Educational Sociology, 19(6), 359–364. Davies, B. D., & Gibson, A. (1967). The social education of the adolescent. London: University of London Press. Dawkins, R. (2006). The God delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Dewey, J. (1997a). Democracy and education. New York: Free Press. Dewey, J. (1997b). Experience and education. New York: Touchstone. Duncan-Andrade, J. M. R., & Morrell, E. (2008). The art of critical pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang. Easwaran, E. (Trans.). (2000). The Bhagavad Gita. New York: Vintage. Eliade, M. (1987). The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion (W. R. Trask, Trans.). New York: Harcourt, Inc. (Original work published in 1957) Epstein, T. (2001). Racial identity and young people’s perspectives on social education. Theory into Practice, 40(1), 42–47. Fieth, S., & Deason, N. (2005). Lesson plans on the Constitution. Social Education, 69(5), 236–247. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Froe, O. D. (1950). A program of social education. The Journal of Higher Education, 21(3), 141–146 + 168. Gaw, E. A. (1930). Techniques for social education. Educational Research Bulletin, 9(11), 289–323. Goodson, I. F. (1998). Towards an alternative pedagogy. In J. L. Kincheloe, & S. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Unauthorized methods: Strategies for critical teaching (pp. 27–42). New York: Routledge. Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Greene, M. (2003). In search of a critical pedagogy. In A. Darder, M. Baltodano, & R. D. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 97–112). New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Hans, N. (1962). The role of research in social education. Comparative Education Review, 5(3), 232–233. Hansen, D. T. (1998). The moral is in the practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(6), 643–655. Hansen, D. T. (2008). Curriculum and the idea of a cosmopolitan inheritance. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(3), 289–312. Harris, S. (2006). Letter to a Christian nation. New York: Knopf. Heidegger, M. (1968). What is called thinking? (J. Glenn Gray, Trans.). New York: HarperRow. (Original work published 1954) Hirsch, E. D. (1987). Cultural literacy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hirsch, E. D. (2006). The knowledge deficit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hitchens, C. (2007). God is not great: How religion poisons everything. New York: Twelve. Horlick, A. S. (1971). Phrenology and the social education of young men. History of Education Quarterly, 11(1), 23–38. Houser, N. O. (2005). Arts, aesthetics, and citizenship education: Democracy as experience in a postmodern world. Theory and Research in Social Education, 33(1), 45–72.

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NEUMANN Hursch, D. W., & Ross, E. W. (2000). Democratic social education: social studies for social change. New York: Falmer Press. Joyce, B. R. (1972). New strategies for social education. Chicago: Science Research Associates, Inc. Joyce, B., & Joyce, E. (1966). Searching for strategies for social education. The Elementary School Journal, 66(5), 272–283. Joyce, B., & Weinberg, C. (1964). Using the strategies of sociology in social Kincheloe, J. K. (2001). Getting beyond the facts. New York: Peter Lang. Knapp, R. H. (1947). American regionalism and social education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Miller, R. (1992). What are schools for? (2nd ed.). Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press. Murra, W. F., Wilson, H. E., & Hartshorn, M. F. (1944). Trends in social education. Review of Educational Research, 14(4), 348–361. Muschinske, D. (1976). John Dewey – Hero? Villain? Social educator? The Elementary School Journal, 76(6), 338–347. Neill, A. S. (1960). Summerhill: A radical approach to child rearing. New York: Hart Publishing Company. Noddings, N. (1995). Goal setting in education. In R. Miller (Ed.), Educational freedom for a democratic society (pp. 77–85). Brandon, VT: Resource Center for Redesigning Education. Noddings, N. (2005). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education. New York: Teachers College Press. Noddings, N. (2008). The new outspoken atheism and education. Harvard Educational Review, 78(2), 369–390. Ohanian, S. (1999). One size fits few: The folly of educational standards. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Otto, H. J. (1956). Social education in elementary schools. New York: Rinehart & Company. Owen, W. B. (1907). Social education through the school. The School Review, 15(1), 11–26. Passe, J. (2001). Social education versus vocational education: Can they coexist? Social Studies, 92(2), 79–83. Postman, N. (1995). The end of education. New York: Vintage Books. Postman, N., & Weingartner, C. (1969). Teaching as a subversive activity. New York: Delta. Richards, E. S. (1944). Migration and the social education of the negro. The Journal of Negro Education, 13(1), 40–46. Ross, E. W., & Marker, P. M. (2005). (If social studies is wrong) I don’t want to be right. Theory and Research in Social Education, 33(1), 142–151. Schlesinger, A. M., Jr. (1992). The disuniting of America. New York: Norton. Schug, M. C. (1994). Public choice theory: A new perspective for social education research. Social Studies, 85(6), 275–280. Schutz, A. (2001). John Dewey’s conundrum: Can democratic schools empower? Teachers College Record, 103(2), 267–302. Sheed, F. J. (Trans.). (1942). The confessions of St. Augustine: Books I-X. Kansas City, KS: Sheed, Andrews, and McMeel. Shor, I. (1996). When students have power. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Stewart, M. (2006). The courtier and the heretic: Leibnitz, Spinoza, and the fate of God in the modern world. New York: W.W. Norton. Straughan, R. (1988). Can we teach children to be good? Basic issues in moral, personal, and social education. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Todd, A. J. (1935). Social education and social change. Journal of Educational Sociology, 9(1), 23–33. Voelker, P. F. (1921). The functions of ideals and attitudes in social education. New York: Teachers College. White, P. (1996). Civic virtues and public schooling. New York: Teachers College Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1956). The aims of education. New York: Mentor Books.

Jacob W. Neumann, Ed.D The University of Texas – Pan American

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6. CULTURAL RE-LOCATION AND THE APPROPRIATION OF UNDERREPRESENTED VOICES

ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses the present status of the National Council for the Social Studies theme People, Places, and Environments and indicates directions the theme may need to take in EC-12 and university-level education to promote equity within educational contexts. This chapter aligns to a movement away from “social studies” towards “social education”. Traditionally, the former is understood to emphasize third person, imposed, objective perspectives of “the world” that are to be learned and recounted, while the latter focuses on the immediate, the subjective, the normative, and the local communities and individuals that compromise the ever-changing social fabric of “our worlds”. TRADITIONAL THOUGHT REGARDING PEOPLE, PLACES, AND ENVIRONMENTS

The title of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) theme, People, Places, and Environments (PP&E), more accurately reflects the relational balance that should inherently exist within what is traditionally called “geography”. Having never adapted well to being predominantly situated within academic ivory towers, I spend a considerable amount of time each week in EC-12 public schools. In these geography classrooms, I still see a multitude of map-based country, capital, and region tests, leading me to question if the interrelated ideals behind the NCSS theme’s bookend words “people” and “environments” are taking hold. Indeed, NCSS purposefully located the word “places” between the concepts of “people” and “environments” within the PP&E theme; yet the idea of “places” retains a privileged location on the geographic learning stage. This preference for content is a common iteration of the larger educational debate, which often favors static, traditional, and essentialist definitions over dynamic, open, and individualistic understandings (Egan, 1999; Soto & Swadener, 2005; White & Basile, 2003). This chapter focuses on (re)examining the everyday, backgrounded, and taken-for-granted environments. This chapter turns the geographic magnifying glass inward, redefining the US EC-12 and university landscapes as the exotic. These seemingly well-known environments are explored throughout the chapter on a continuum spanning from what is placed in the center outward toward what is marginalized. C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 67–78. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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HISTORY AS GEOGRAPHIC APPROPRIATION: THE LANDSCAPES OF LEARNING ABOUT THE PAST

“Each consciousness pursues the death of the other” (Hegel, 1977, p. 113). By its very nature, history is an appropriation of people, places, and environments. Historians examine, re-examine, record, and re-record the happenings of people in a certain place and time. Although the environments often fade into the background, they provide clues as to why events happened the way that they did. The histories of Others1 are exported via the recordings of appointed, and often privileged, expert designees. These histories are then packaged and sold in bound texts. Perhaps history may even be conceived of as a nuanced form of human trafficking; instead of trading in bodies, it specializes in the re-location of people’s stories, enabling the free labor of an appropriated telling to extend beyond the lifespans of its “subjects”. By changing our lens to view history as the academic relocation of the common, we are able to see how a hierarchy of environments, peoples, and places is embedded into the very fabric of our knowledge about the past, as well as into our teaching about the past to present and future generations. Historians collect and sell other people’s stories, laced with their own incorporated additions, omissions, and elucidations. These imposed perspectives, whether arbitrary or purposeful, change the landscape and the people of the stories into assimilated possessions of a more dominate voice. How do we, as educators in the field of social education, deal with the difficulties of the appropriated vocabularies and understandings of various PP&Es throughout time and space? How do we go about the business of creating safe and open spaces for learning and dialoguing with people, places, and environments? Our own voices may be no more neutral than “expertly” written texts, but then perhaps neutrality should not be a goal of social education. Appropriated histories do not need to be thrown out; instead, they require dialogic re-evaluation. Adding our own voice to any historical text starts a dialogue, and models the opening of spaces for heteroglossia, or multiplicity of voices, within a text (Bakhtin, 1981). Social educators can then provide additional space and means for students to add their own voices and histories. This may sound complicated, but really the best tool educators and students have are our own voices and experiences. By valuing our own histories alongside traditional histories, we learn to (re)cognize the authentic first person voice of our own self and of others. By starting with histories of the self, educators can describe the PP&Es around them. These selfhistory narratives, including pictures with students’ verbatim dictations to provide authentic records of younger students’ words and voices, can then be read and understood within the contexts of local communities. Moreover, these multi-voiced histories can transform the landscape of traditional history, if nowhere else, at the classroom level. No two students share the exact cultural lens. Thus, at a minimum, the stories surrounding the cultural understanding of the same immediate land scape of PP&E will have shades of difference. Even within the same family, each individual’s cultural lens differs due to factors such as age, gender, and individual experiences. After exploring multiple lenses of local histories, students can transfer 68

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their skills and expand to investigate other PP&Es in their textbooks and a multiplicity of primary sources. It may seem difficult to educate in a world beyond fixed and absolute historical truths. One may argue that some absolutes exist and must be taught as “truths”. An example of an absolute truth often cited in geography is that any given county, state, country, continent, etc. has fairly constant and definable boundaries, even if the name and exact borders of a geographical entity may change over time. However, what about the dynamic people and environments inherently entwined with these perceived absolutes? They are not generally locked within such static boundaries. While it may seem educationally less challenging to teach and test that which is easily identified and named, doing so requires a predetermined set of facts. Such lack of dialogue may predicate a subclass of Others in its artificiality—an approach to teaching students which, I hope, seems even more problematic than concerns of openness and ambiguity of content. To avoid creating new categories of “others”, educators must allow the people and environments that create diverse conditions to be taught alongside the actual places named on maps. Why not explore life-long social education through a process of questioning why the borders are as they are, and why they may (or may not) change in the near or distant future? This approach teaches a set of transferable skills over a set of reproducible facts, which unlike specific country names and borders will not diminish over time. Providing depth in our teaching leads us into to the territory of higher-level thinking and adaptive learning tools. This method also offers inclusive and comparative approaches to geography, allowing us to experience what we all have in common, even though we may live in different environments in different times and places. Finally, such an approach helps us to avoid marginalizing, affirming, and creating Others, by questioning “why” rather than inculcating “what”. Once again, utilizing this type of pedagogy does not necessitate throwing away the geography texts; instead, it expands and deepens their reach and territory. THE ROOTS OF GEOGRAPHY: OF “OBJECTIVITY”, COMMON LANGUAGE, AND IMAGINATION

“All true thoughts have been thought through already a thousand times; but to make them truly yours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.” Goethe Geographical terminology builds on an understanding of space to form the base upon which many post-colonial and post-structuralist concepts rest. Ideas such as “borderlands”, “space”, and “margins” directly derive from physical geography and constitute the terminology linking the physical and the cultural concepts within PP&E. So why has the related and intersecting field of EC-12 geographic education not followed the same trend of interconnectivity that the academic fields of geography and educational research have? The literature in human geography continually grows to embrace concepts of embedded cultural habitation and its dialogic negotiation in relation to space. Meanwhile, EC-12 geographic education literature becomes more 69

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content driven, pushing the interconnected people and environments to increased marginalization. The trend of incorporating geographic terminology applied to space and culture is growing in almost all areas of higher education except its EC-12 subject of origin—geography. The academic field of geography, especially within the sub-fields of cultural and human geography, continues to make great strides in locating and dialoging with Others’ voices, while its educational EC-12 counterparts continue to move towards more limited, facts-based approaches, thereby further marginalizing Others2. For example, Texas students take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test in social studies in the 8th and 10th grades, and at the exit level. In 8th grade, six of the 48 test items are in geography; in 10th grade, 12 of 50 items are in geography; and, at the exit level, nine of 55 items are in geography. According to the TAKS blueprint, “the geography objective … consists of both content- and skillsbased portions of the curriculum (TEA, SSC, 2005)”. In contrast, Darder & Torres (2003, p. 94) assert that “Schools produce and perpetuate knowledge that serves as a silencing agent, in that it regulates legitimacy the abstract reality developed by prescribed knowledge, rather to the actual lived experiences that shape the knowledge that students bring to the classroom.” This quote captures how testing infringes upon the naturalistic development of the field of geographic education. Perhaps some social educators who teach (and test) geography feel that they are suffering Others within the boundaries of their own classrooms. If so, by knowing and owning our own experiences as Others at the hands of people external to our own schooling environments, we can (re)empower ourselves to enact curricular changes, utilizing the powerful tools of our own personal voices of witness and experience. We must remember that out voices may be the cheapest, nearest, and strongest tools that we have. What are traditionally considered the tools of geography in EC-12 classrooms? Perhaps two of the first teaching tools that come to mind are globes and maps. Most globes and maps are fairly good tools, in terms of place and location. Now think of what a map would look like if it were drawn by a student at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Most maps of children will contain their house from the viewpoint of themselves looking at their front door. Only as students academically move into middle and high school do we start to see the aerial viewpoint emerge3. Yet, even into adulthood, some people, if asked to draw a map of their house, will adopt the subjective, individually-centered rather than the aerial, objective viewpoint. I encourage you to try this with your students and adult friends. Whereas the aerial view may be considered more “advanced,” at least academically speaking, it is also more god-like and omnipotent in its viewpoint4. Arbitrary assignment of the aerial viewpoint as inherently being more “advanced” represents an academic favoring of a hegemonic positioning over individual, subjective, narrative, normative, and community perspectives. Juxtaposing globes, maps, narratives, and first person primary sources within one teaching concept expands voices and viewpoints and minimizes the shortcomings of isolating each approach. Let’s circle back to the question of neutrality within social education classrooms. Are maps and globes neutral? Examine the geographic materials in your classroom, and ask yourself the following questions: Are my maps and globes constructed 70

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to scale? Which scale was chosen and why? What accuracies are sacrificed to achieve this visual representation? Do they show represented bodies of land in relative proportion to the actual bodies of land? What is in the center? What is located toward the top? What exists at the margins? How do you feel when holding the map? How do you feel when holding the globe? How does the map or globe feel? What languages are used on countries’ names: their own, native languages or imposed and colonizing languages? Consider the notion that maps and globes are cultural artifacts and not representations of objective truth. They show us how people view “their world”. They are normative creations, and yet schools treat them as objective tools. I am suggesting the (re)examining of “our world” from the perspective of one or more culturally agreed-upon viewpoints, rather than accepting “the world” as objectively represented. CURIOUS GEORGE: MOVING FROM A COLONIAL TO NEO-COLONIAL OUTLOOK VIA A PP&E LENS

The Curious George series earned some criticism from its inception (Cummins, 1997; Brockmann, 2003; Greenstone, 2005), but deep study of this children’s classic is lacking. The transformation of Curious George from a classic children’s book to a big screen, multimillion-dollar movie reflects changes in US cultural attitudes in relation to the Other—from the other as an object of colonization, to more subtle relationships of absorption, appropriation, and incorporation. Consider the direct intentions of the man with the yellow hat in the original Curious George book: What a nice little monkey, he [The man with the yellow hat] thought. I would like to take him home with me. The hat covered George’s head. He couldn’t see. The man picked him up quickly and popped him into a bag. George was caught. In contrast to George’s passive and sudden capture in the book, the 2006 movie production tells a more nuanced and subtle history of how the story begins. The movie portrays an active relationship developing between two main characters, as on several occasions the man with the yellow hat attempts to persuade George to stop following him. In the movie version, it is George who wins the bid for power and initiates his trans-Atlantic voyage to New York City by sneaking on the boat to satisfy his curiosity and infatuation with the man with the yellow hat. Only two facts from the original story hold true: 1. “This is George.” and 2. “He [George] lived in Africa.” Thanks to the movie, the man with the yellow hat forever has a name, Ted. Beyond augmenting the story via its appropriation and overwriting, the naming inhibits learners from building broader connections to colonization by making what is already familiar, via the books, personalized. While perhaps inadvertent or even innocent, the act of naming the man with the yellow hat is irreversible and unforgettable. I contend that the namelessness of “the man with the yellow hat” alongside the named monkey, George, is purposeful. The original story’s marked contrast guides our associations toward George and distances us from the man that captured George. 71

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The movie also adds a love interest, in the character Maggie. One interpretation is that her character provides a point of access for children and educators. Maggie is a teacher. Her class is not like the majority of public school classes, in that they take frequent field trips, including regular visits to the museum and the zoo to look at caged animals and encased exhibits. Still, like children in schools without small class sizes and expansive budgets conducive to multiple fieldtrips, these children’s educational experiences are mostly passive. The ending of the film, in which George and the children intermingle with newly redesigned interactive museum “displays”, (re)affirms that museums should be open spaces where children can learn via multisensory engagement with accessible exhibits. In the movie, the children get the public classroom they need and deserve. An alternative interpretation of the inserted role of Maggie is that her positioning opposite the man with the yellow hat serves as a clarification of the man’s heterosexual identity for anyone who wonders about the sexual orientation of a middle-age man who spends most of his time with his monkey. At the most basic level of individual survival, humans share with other animals the need to distinguish between “own species and other, dominance and submission” (Leach, 1970, p. 39). Categorizing at a basic level keeps us safe. We must balance the innate instincts that tell us what keeps us safe, in terms of imposed physical and emotional space, and differentiate between that which may have a high probability of harm versus that which we may only perceive as harmful. “Language is symbolic action, frequently compensatory action, addressing depravations it helps its users overcome” (Mackey, 1992, p. 53–54). As humans, we are fallible and perhaps as Leach asserts, our nature leads us to label and exclude. Nevertheless in being human, we can overcome our biological limitations, once we know that our actions of inclusion do not lead us to imminent danger or harm. Jakobson and Halle (1956, p. 60) observe that “the binary opposition is a child’s first logical operation”, but we can learn to overcome this instinct through our learning and experience. Our myths and folktales overflow with binary opposites5; thus, we construct cultural experiences in the same way we learned about our world and its embedded cultural constructions. The table on the following page explores the paired signifiers in the stories of Curious George, in which its landscape of dualities become clear. The mapping of paired signifiers confirms Zornado’s (2001) contention that Curious George “reproduces the dominant ideology of the child-as-slave” (p. 128); although, one cannot confirm that the narrative voice represents either George’s point of view or that of the man with the yellow hat. The covers on all the books in Table 1. Paired signifiers in Curious George- Zornado (2001) Character The Man with the Yellow Hat Curious George

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human

leaves

animal

waits

Paired signifiers rescuer sender addresser troublemaker

receiver addressee

large

fixed

small

movable

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the Curious George series, with the exceptions of a few board books published after 19986 feature dominate yellow covers that engulf George. Even though George is featured prominently, the color yellow, which reminds the reader of the man with the yellow hat, is surrounding him. The yellow boxes George in on all sides and overshadows him by its unnamed, but symbolic presence. Three of the four books that feature non-yellow covers do not have the man with the yellow hat anywhere within the text. In addition, the titles of these three non-yellow covered books indicate that each is “Curious George’s” book, and are thus narrated in his voice. Curious George’s three books are interactive, presenting a questioning dialogue with the child rather than adopting the traditional Curious George format of telling a tale. The fourth board book, Curious George and the Rocket, does not begin the title with the words “Curious George’s” like the three other differentiated books. It is unique among the four books with differently colored covers in that it is based in the classic style. To extend our exploration of color within the Curious George books, the man with the yellow hat is always displayed as White in appearance, with skin tone ranging from white to peach. Curious George is always a shade of brown, except for the area of his face encompassing his eyes, mouth, and nose, and the separate circles surrounding his ears, hands, and feet.. Choices involving color communicate to an audience of children7, and, as educators, we must be sensitive to these intended and unintended messages within children’s books. One understanding of color use in the Curious George series is that yellow, representing the man with the yellow hat, locks both George and the story within its grasp. Furthermore, all of George’s access points for experience (eyes, nose, hands, and feet) and communication (hands, mouth) are surrounded by areas shaded the color of the man in the yellow hat’s skin. Throughout the books, the man with the yellow hat’s name is truncated to just “the man,” echoing a historical notion of power. The stories reinforce the messages implied by the color selections; the man with the yellow hat mediates George’s communications, his locations, and his access. Whatever George sees, hears, touches, tastes, smells, and experiences is done via the lens of the man with the yellow hat. The non-expressive and non-experiential parts of his body remain brown, which leaves his appearance predominantly brown. This disproportional amount of color, in relation to the significance of the locations of the coloring, masks George’s forced myopic viewpoint, which is shortened and re-focused by the direct and colorrepresented influences in the power of the man. As one dives deeper into the lives of the Curious George authors, the questions of voice and colonialism become less ambiguous. Borden’s (2005) book, The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey, helps students to understand the Reys, their love and romance, and their journeys. Margret and H.A. Rey carried Curious George, in idea and in written form, away from Nazi-occupied Europe. After exploring Borden’s book, one possible and painful realization is that the Reys may have seen themselves not only as the man with the yellow hat, but also as the new immigrant George—a refugee who could no longer return to his homeland. In the words of the original Curious George book, “The man with the big yellow hat put George into a little boat. A sailor rowed them both 73

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across the water to a big ship. George was sad, but he was still a little curious.” The same might be said of the Reys; though they were sad, they were probably also still curious, and eager to make the best of their new lives in the Americas. By allowing students to explore Borden’s stunning book, educators can help students to understand the importance of the NCSS PP&E theme. Conversely, utilizing a lens of PP&E makes the key difference in understanding Curious George. Understanding more about the authors might help change the perceptions of many who imposed colonizing sub-themes on the series. For example, Galbraith’s (2000) article, What Must I Give Up in Order to Grow Up? The Great War and Childhood Survival Strategies in Transatlantic Picture Books, places the work of Curious George around the era of WWI, instead of during the disruptions of the thirties that encompass the beginnings of WWII. Borden’s historical account, which she based on primary documents, clearly places the voice of Curious George in the era of Nazi occupation, rather than in the era of Western domination. This (re)framing adds dimension to the PP&Es behind the story. Borden wrote her book at a late elementary/early intermediate reading level, which makes it a perfect tool for students to use the historical journey of Curious George to explore the theme of PP&E in relation to re-located and underrepresented voices. We began by contrasting the original colonizing text of George’s capture and forced journey with a neo-colonizing movie telling of the tale that softened and named the man with the yellow hat. The environment of Hollywood de-voiced George by first erasing and then appropriating his history of forced removal and relocation. We also came to understand how we can view Curious George within the light of a new children’s book, based on primary documents, as yet another iteration of neo-colonization, but one that helps to (re)align George’s forced journey within the contexts of his own history. By examining the transition of the Curious George story from the books to the movie, we come to understand that the embedded binary relationship between that which is George and that which is the man with the yellow hat is unchanged. Adding a PP&E evaluative lens allows us to see the changes in the subjects’ positioning, which now closely resembles historical charts of neo-colonization. Examining Borden’s work, in conjunction with the re-positioning of George in the context of the film, shows the authors’ interchangeable relation to the characters; this highlights the lead characters’ roles more acutely in relation to the gap between their power. The relationship between the man with the yellow hat and George is not isolated and static, but systemic, and thus more broadly applicable. The man with the yellow hat is not, himself, the lone and ultimate colonizer. In the movie version, he is shown to be subject to his own colonization, albeit to a lesser extent than George is. The primary colonization occurs at a system level where subjects are perceived and treated collectively as if they were objects. Therefore, what was once understood to be like the column on the left in the chart below is now understood to be like the column to the right. The story of Curious George in the film tells a kinder and gentler version of the man with the yellow hat’s experiences under the oppression of a Bigger Man with a Bigger Yellow Hat. While personalizing and naming the man with the yellow hat, 74

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Table 2. Systems level colonization of the main characters The Man with the Yellow Hat

Curious George

Through the PP&E lens is understood to be more like this Æ

The Bigger Man with the Bigger Yellow Hat The Man with the Yellow Hat Curious George

along with giving him a significant other, softens him to audiences, it also serves to exclude some of the Reys’ intent. This expanded view allows us to understand some of the man with the yellow hat’s broader life experiences. We start to recognize why he may do what he does to George, as well as how he may seek a path toward redemption. The introduction of his employment at a museum posits theoretical socioeconomics into real contexts; the horizon expands to unveil a larger exploitive system underlying and motivating his actions. Perhaps we do not mean to write oppression tales, but these are the stories we have lived within the larger world environment; thus, they become the stories we tell. All too often, they become the stories we (re)write or un-write upon the canvases of Others’ histories. Much like the cycle of violence, colonization is a perpetually repeating tale of being colonized and the offsetting and ensuing need to subjugate Others. To further push the PP&E lens of examination, it is important to look not only at the Rey’s individual voices, but also to look at other Jewish voices from that time, as they tried to creatively express their experiences of a Nazi-occupied Europe. Researchers are considerate to a generation that experienced the Holocaust as lived history, so the academic approach has been both compassionate and conservative, giving space for people to speak in their own voices. Hollywood, on the other hand, has already overshadowed the silence of many survivors by (re)interpreting the events and experiences of the Holocaust, inducing catharsis for the masses. Konigsberg’s (1998) article, Our Children and the Limits of Cinema: Early Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, provides a perfect context as to why the Reys may have chosen children’s books as the medium to tell stories about the marginalization, absorption, appropriation, incorporation, and oppression of voices. The article centers on Yiddish films produced immediately following the Holocaust in Europe, attending to how Jewish people tried to make sense of mass mourning. Konigsberg argues that many survivors adopted a geographic solution to mourning by leaving Europe, either to help establish Israel in 1948 or to populate other far-away destinations. Films released immediately after the Holocaust with direct historical content won awards, but quickly faded from viewing, thus limiting direct, creative outlets, but not the need for expression. Students and educators armed with the set of primary and direct secondary historical sources presented in this chapter could re-evaluate Curious George as a story of PP&Es and compare it with other histories, including their own. The idea is to expand one source, such as a textbook, and to investigate other points of view regarding the PP&Es under examination. Then students can apply this knowledge to their own histories or popular culture, in order to make personal connections. 75

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Personalized understandings can be compared to stories of other people, other places, and other environments in the same or other spaces of time. Educators do not need to use daunting post-modern language, such as hegemonic understanding, negotiated understanding, or counter-hegemonic understandings, to lead their students through these concepts of re-evaluation. We only need to be guides in teaching and modeling the skills of locating and evaluating additional sources to our textbooks, including our own powerful primary voices. CONCLUSIONS AND CLASSROOM CONNECTIVITY

As educators, we play many roles in helping students (re)locate and (re)evaluate knowledge. By emphasizing interactions and first-person experiences, we help students to assess and learn from the hype and moneymaking agenda of textbook and media produced sources, which are more than ready to educate our students into accepting the status-quo. By transforming students from consumers into cocreators, we invite them into the process of actively entering the stories of PP&E, thus minimizing marginalization. As educators, we are actors either in perpetuating inaccuracies or in bringing about change. There is no neutral ground. Our silence speaks volumes in what we believe about the teaching of people, places, and environments. We are advocates standing alongside our students, to make sure that they have tools, in addition to facts, to help them find commonalities with, and spaces for, all voices—starting with their own voice and the voices of their classmates. As educators, we are accountable for our students’ knowledge, but we also hold the broader role of knowing our field and the directions that it is and could be heading. We can drive the bus towards the future of geographic education, or take a seat in the back along with our students and get off at whatever destinations the educational and media bus-drivers choose to stop. We have a job to help our students (re)locate their own voices. We model this by refusing to silence our own voices. In choosing to (re)explore territories clearly mapped in our textbooks, by comparisons with primary and secondary texts, we give our students clearer insights into the interconnectivity of people, places, and environments. We also provide our students access to the tools of prediction and evaluation for when they explore other issues within PP&E. We have the power to (re)locate curriculum to environments favoring interactions and dialogues over inculcation and absorption of predetermined knowledge. In making these educational choices, we help to producing lifelong learners, instead of terrific, but transient, test takers. We must not forget that we are educational professionals and experts; we hold everyday lived knowledge about students and their real and imagined environments. We must mirror such classroom reforms with professional negotiating involving our own internal and external power structures. We must proactively communicate both our own and our students’ educational needs, instead of limiting our participation to reactive internal diatribe concerning the direction of education. We have the right and the duty to interact with, and co-create educational environments, working with all educational stakeholders to construct learning experiences for ourselves and our students. 76

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This chapter covers a significant amount of PP&E territory, but still only manages, however briefly, to provide a few samples of what needs to be covered. In offering examples of how the social education theme of PP&E can be utilized to both empower and marginalize underrepresented voices, I hope to raise awareness of this theme’s classroom and community implications. Our PP&E implementation choices as educators can serve to promote the homogeneity of the status quo or to expand the fostering of inclusivity. Education has traditionally defined its borders at the schoolhouse, but the territory of social education extends to wherever children and youth are—to whatever real or imaginary lands these may be. Social educators draw academic and geographic boundaries at the risk of losing our students and their voices. As educators, the way we choose to cover the PP&Es in our curriculum content directly influences how we will build our educational legitimacy and legacy. Will we choose a limited and closed notion of place, or will we accept the challenge to embrace the interconnectivity of the NCSS people, places, and environment theme? NOTES 1

2 3 4 5 6

7

See Spivak, G. 1995 and Lacan, J. (1977) for elaborative underpinnings of the distinction between “Other” and “other”. See Soja, 1996; 1999. See Blaut, 1997. See Robbins, 1999; Cosgrove, 2003. See Dundes, 1997. See Curious George’s Are You Curious, Curious George’s Opposites, Curious George’s 1 to 10 and Back Again, and Curious George and the Rocket. See Brown’s Goodnight Moon or The Runaway Bunny.

REFERENCES Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. In M. Holquist (Ed.), The dialogic imagination: four essays (pp. 259–422). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Blaut, J. (1997). Piagetian pessimism and the mapping abilities of young children. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87(1), 168–177. Borden, L. (2005). The journey that saved Curious George: The true wartime escape of Margret and H. A. Rey. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Brockmann, S. (2003). Virgin father and prodigal son. Philosophy and Literature, 27(2), 341–362. Brown, M. W. (1991). Goodnight moon. Los Angeles: HarperFestival. Brown, M. W. (2005). The runaway bunny. Los Angeles: HarperFestival. Cosgrove, D. E. (2003). Apollo’s eye: A cartographic genealogy of the earth in the western imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cummins, J. (1997). The resisting monkey: ‘Curious George,’ slave captivity narratives, and the postcolonial condition. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 28(1), 69–83. Darder, A., & Torres, R. D. (2003). After race: Racism after Multiculturalism. New York: New York University Press. Dundes, A. (1997). Binary opposition in myth: The Propp/Levi-Strauss debate in retrospect. Western Folklore, 56(1), 39–50. Egan, K. (1999). Children’s minds, talking rabbits & clockwork orange: Essays on education. New York: Teachers College Press. 77

SUMMERS Galbraith. (2000). What may I give up in order to grow up? The Lion and the Unicorn, 24(3), 337–359. Greenstone, D. (2005). Frightened George: How the pediatric-educational complex ruined the Curious George series. Journal of Social History, 39(1), 221–228. Hegel, G. W. (1977). The phenomenology of spirit. (A. V. Miller, Trans.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jakobson, R., & Halle, M. (1956) Fundamentals of language. The Hague: Mouton & Co. Konigsberg, I. (1998). Our children and the limits of cinema: Early Jewish responses to the Holocaust. Film Quarterly, 52(1), 7–19. Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A selection. London and New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Leach, E. (1970). Lévi-Strauss. London: Fontana Modern Masters. Mackey, N. (1992). Other: From noun to verb. Representations, 39, 51–70. Rey, H. A., & Rey, M. (2002). Curious George’s box of books. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Rey, H. A., & Rey M. (2005). The adventures of Curious George: Box set. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Robbins, B. (1999). Feeling global: Internationalism in distress. New York: New York University Press. Soja, E. W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Soja, E. W. (1999). Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. London and New York: Verso. Soto, L. D., & Swadener, B. B. (2005). Power & voice in research with children. New York: P. Lang. Spivak, G. C. (1995). Can the Subaltern speak? In B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, & H. Tiffin (Eds.), The postcolonial studies reader (pp. 4–28). London: Routledge. Universal Pictures (Producer) & Matthew O’Callaghan (Director). (2006, February 10). Curious George. [Motion Picture] United States: Universal Pictures. White, C. (2003). True confessions: Social efficacy, popular culture, and the struggle in schools. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Zornado, J. (2001). Inventing the child (children’s literature and culture series): Culture, ideology, and the story of childhood. New York: Garland Publishing.

Emily J. Summers Texas State University—San Marcos

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AMY MULHOLLAND

7. THE SCHOOLS WE DESERVE

Indulge me for just a moment I have two stories to tell. As a parent of a special education student in Texas, each year I attend an annual ARD (Admission, Review and Denial) meeting for my son with Asperger’s Syndrome. As both an educator and as a parent I have attended many of these meetings, which determine what services and modifications students receive for the coming year. My middle school aged son has friends and makes good grades but because of his behavior that seems odd at times and his difficulties reading social situations, he is teased and bullied. Last year it got so bad that he was put on a student’s hit list. The roller coaster ride that is middle school can leave my son feeling depressed, confused, out of place and worst of all abandoned by the adults in schools. I attend these meetings each year because I am hoping to but a network of adults on campus that support and advocate for him. The reality has been different; the counselor, the speech therapist, the special ed. tracking teacher and the psychologist do not communicate even when an incident occurs such as my son’s name on the hit list. Which bring me back to this year’s meeting, the ARD committee was suggesting that since my son had no office referrals and had scored near perfect scores on his Math and Reading TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) tests that there was no need for the psychological services to continue. I was angry and protested so the services are still in place. I was reminded in the meeting that what is important is test scores and behavior but only if it causes problems that disrupted instruction causing lower test scores. Now for the second story, last year my youngest son started taking the TAKS tests, he was in the 3rd grade, which means he needed to take the Math test and then later in the year the Reading test. He needed to pass the Reading test in order to be promoted. As I drove home the night before the Math test, I called my son who told me he got the note I sent to school and he really liked it. The week before his teacher asked the parents to write an encouraging note to be delivered to students the day before they take the test. I typed a cheerful note using blue ink (his favorite color) and put a clip art picture of a champion race car driver (he loves cars) and a picture of a Optimus Prime (he loves the Transformers). Lastly, his father and I each handwrote a few words about how proud we are of him and how much we love him. I am glad he liked the note. When I got home, I made sure that he went to bed a little earlier and that he had eaten the balanced dinner I had left. In the morning, I woke him up on time and feed him a hot breakfast of eggs instead of the usual cold bowl of cereal or a pop tart. I kept the mood light, even when he asked me if commended performance was like getting an A or a B. Commended performance is like an A+ I told him but I would be happy with any score as long C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 79–91. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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as he passed. The day before, the school told him not to bring anything except his lunch so even though he typically buys a lunch he packed one instead. I generally walk him to school each day and on the way we pick up his two friends; today he just wanted to get to school to be sure to be on time, so we did not stop for his friends. I waved good-bye to him, wished him good luck and told him I was proud of all his hard work. Then I got ready for work. As I sat in the cross-town traffic, I sent him good thoughts and I just hoped he would pass. I am so disgusted with the whole situation that just thinking about it even a year later makes me cry. My nine year old knows that it is all about the test. I tell these two stories because not only are they obviously close to my heart but also, as a public school educator, they are representative of students that I have taught. Writing as I am in the midst of an election year the presidential candidates have each stated their educational policies and neither has any plans to move away from testing as our primary source of measuring educational outcomes. So what is the big deal, don’t we need some type of measurement to know if our children are receiving a good education? More and more I think no compromise is possible on this issue. Tests do a good job of evaluating how well the knower, knows a fact, a two dimensional process or a paper based skill. I will concede that some facts, processes and skills are necessary starting points; however, these are not enough on which to build a society. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, technicians certainly need a level of expertise in their fields but if we want to continue to build a more equitable, justice and free society, these skills alone are not enough. Any skill or fact represents a view of knowledge that reflects a particular belief system wholly embedded in a social and political context. To limit knowledge in schools in such a narrow way means that we ignore the contexts of our lives, by ignoring those contexts we ignore our students. Maxine Greene (1978) writes, “The positivistic separation between the knower and the known, along with stress on what is finished, objective and given, increases the possibility of individual submergence” (p. 10–11). I think submergence is a great word. Children, their teachers and the public at large are being submerged – drowned – by someone else’s definition of what it means to learn, to know and ultimately what they can accomplish. George Bernard Shaw famously said, “Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” If that is the case, what are we saying about ourselves when we continue to rely on standardized tests scores as the measure of our education? What kind of citizens will these good test takers be? Will they be engaged community advocates? Or will they be narrow thinkers looking for the right answers? Certainly every child needs to learn to read and to have basic math skills but is that enough? What opportunities are lost when we stop there? Currently there is worldwide financial crisis, genocides in both the Sudan and Congo, and rising global poverty rates. These are complex issues that require much more than technical rational solutions. What we need is the ability to sit down, talk, problem-solve and create solutions that do not benefit some at the expense of others. What I have seen is a much more business-oriented solution. Repeatedly I hear that voucher will lead to competition, which will lead to better schools. President Bush’s compassionate conservatism promised to address 80

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the needs of the disadvantaged, close the gap between rich and poor, improve accountability and provide more financial resources for schools and disadvantaged students (Giroux, 2003). The reality has been somewhat different, the extensive influence of business over education policy in Texas means that school reform considers the needs of business first and knowledge is what is most easily tested (Salinas & Reidel, 2007). However, along with the push towards standardized tests comes an increased focus on test taking strategies and specific ways of doing things, rather than learning to answer open-ended questions (Dorn, 2007; Giroux, 2003). Over the years, standardized testing was described to me as a moment where students demonstrate what they know, as if knowledge and intelligence can be compacted in an externally determined listed of multiple choices questions. My children had other much more meaningfully educative experiences that the state enforced testing devalued. Fieldtrips, fine arts and physical education classes have all played an integral part in teaching my sons about themselves and the world in which they live. Art class was a haven for my youngest son Nathan; as he struggled to learn to write, this was the time when he was able to express himself, story tell and show us what he was learning. When it becomes all about standardized test scores, experience and reflection are ignored (Giroux, 2003; Hansen, 2002). Of greater concern was that the current testing climate seemed to suggest that what we value most in children of today is their ability to take tests, not, for example, being an artist, a musician, or otherwise be creative (Giroux, 2003). Testing does not allow students to explore alternatives (Dorn, 2007; Giroux, 2003). Each year my sons visit the counselor’s office to discuss their previous year’s scores and ways in which they can improve. From elementary to high school, my sons can tell you their scores, their rank and their goals for the next years test. We are treating our students like “customers in the marketplace rather than an engaged critical learner” (Giroux, 2003, pg. 73), and what we are selling is the promise of better test scores which does not equate to improved learning (Salinas & Reidel, 2007). As Paolo Freire (2003) says, everyone has the ability to look critically at the world. I believe that school is about more than coursework and that ultimately what students take with them from grade to grade is an assessment of themselves, the world and how they fit in it. “No one’s self is ready-made; each of us has to create a self by choice of action, action in the world” (Greene, 1978, p. 18). As I continue to navigate the school system, I keep returning to the frustrating conclusion that we are missing the point. Inherent in notions of competition is the idea of winners and losers. If I am able to choose the best schools for my children then someone must have been forced to choose a poor school. Why are we so willing to accept that some will get a good education and others will not? Benazir Bhutto said in an interview with Ron Suskind (2008) that the way of the world was that we all must go together. The point is not how do I get my child into the best school, but how can we all get there together. We cannot afford to compromise on this. If we continue to let tests dictate the business of schools, we will sacrifice the communities that support the lives in schools. It is at the intersection between communities and schools that I believe we will find the sites for the dialogues that will bring about change towards a more equitable, just and free society. It is here 81

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that I want to propose that we consider new ways of evaluating schools. I am not suggesting a new report card, a checklist or another way of ranking schools. I am offering a new place from which to start the conversation. What if instead of evaluating test scores, we considered how well schools encourage the exploration of what it means to be fully human, to be free and to engage in dialogue. SCHOOLS AS PLACES TO EXPLORE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FULLY HUMAN

What does it mean to be fully human? It means to be wide-awake (Greene, 1978), to maintain a continued capacity for growth (Dewey, 1944), to be free from oppression (Freire, 2003), to alleviate suffering (Kincheloe, 2004) and to recognize that all aspects of life are interconnected (Miller, 1997). To realize what it means to be fully human in this way, I believe will allow us to reach our fullest potential. In order to be aware of possibilities and to continue to strive for more, we must be free, and because we are all connected, everyone must be free or no one is. For some of us these ideas are abstractions, we are doing our best to live lives that are satisfying and meaningful. Words like oppression and suffering bring to mind slavery, abuse or torture which seems to have no place in our modern lives. However, for others these ideas are very real. It does not take any imagination to realize that the, so called, ‘Lost of Boys of Sudan’ were hunted down like animals. Or that marriage in America is defined solely in a religious context that does not allow others outside of our heteronormative ideal to marry. It is also not hard to see that standardized tests do not measure these aspects of society and schooling. What we all want for our children is to be successful and to have a good life. Most parents would probably also say something about wanting their children to be happy and good people. However we might define ‘success’, ‘a good life’ and ‘a good person’ is dependant largely on the society and culture in which we live. This might mean having a high paying job, a spouse and children, prestige or recognition. For some this may have a religious or service based aspect. All this depends on the community in which the child is raised. Schools act as the agents for the culture helping to raise and shape students in ways that benefit the wider society. In general terms, schools are successful when they instill an understanding of the complex symbols and systems of the society. The ultimate goal of schools is to aid students in the process of becoming adults. Education is seen by many as the great equalizer which provides anyone who works hard a way to a better life. This seems fairly common-sensical and while we might accept this as benign and the way schools ought to be structured, what does the impression that our schools are in crisis suggest to us about our society. In order to have an educational crisis we need someone to fail. The purpose of standardized tests is to identify, sort, and rank individual performance so that we know who is failing. If no one is failing then something must be wrong with the test, or more likely teachers have gotten too good at teaching to the test. So, the answer has always been to create a 82

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new test. There have always been those, like my son, who despite their hard work, do not do well on the tests. Ethnic minorities and the poor continue to fall behind when compared to whites on both test scores and graduation rates. Not only does everyone not succeed, it is even worse than that. Schools harm students. My middle son feels betrayed by the school personal that failed to act when he was bullied. My youngest son who works hard and struggles to pass the standardized tests feels “stupid”, defeated and like he is at fault. I believe that schools are a mirror of our society, a society that seems to be saying, some have less potential, and not all can be successful. Reliance on standardized tests is a political act, one that has an enormous impact on the content and teaching methods that educators choose and are forced to choose. Kincheloe (2004) said it best, “Any time teachers develop a pedagogy, they are concurrently constructing a political vision. The two acts are inseparable” (p. 9). Kincheloe (2004) explains that a “critical pedagogy mandates that schools don’t hurt students – good schools don’t blame students for their failures or strip students of the knowledge they bring to the classroom” (p. 13). He goes on to remind us that we should not be surprised when students are hostile and angry in a school that that views them as failures. These students reject the schools and academic work that they are repeatedly told they are incapable of completing (Kincheloe, 2004). These students have thinking skills and worth, and critical teachers should work to help students recognize what they already know. Critical educators have a role in encouraging students to deliberately and actively build an understanding of the power structures within their schools communities in order to advocate for themselves. Critical pedagogy requires that the role of the dominant culture in the marginalization of others be a part of the curriculum. What schools are in actuality replicating is our hierarchical social structures (Kincheloe, 2004). That is to say, we are a classed society with definite distinctions between the poor, middle and wealthy classes. Kincheloe adds that scripted curriculum and standardized tests are some of the vehicles used by schools to ensure this social stratification. According to Kincheloe, memory-based instruction that dictates the content covered also potentially, and often does, silence students. The marginalized students become the ignored causalities of our educational system. “Poor, non-English as first language, gay, lesbian, and bisexual, physically challenged, nonathletic, non-white, overweight, shy, and short students often find themselves oppressed in various ways in school” (Kincheloe, 2004, p. 24). Writing specifically about the poor, Giroux (2003) adds that they are often the causalities of the reform movement as money is diverted from public schools in order to pay for school programs such as vouchers, testing and scientifically based reading instruction. Character education, another often lauded instrument of school reform, often further serves to marginalize students by ensuring the institutionalization of values such having the right answer, being polite and keeping the classroom clean, without including anything about social responsibility and active democratic participation (Giroux, 2003). In an echo of Kincheloe’s comments, Giroux finds, “Young people are under siege in American schools because far too many schools have become institutional breeding grounds for racism, right-wing 83

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paramilitary cultures, social intolerance, sexism and homophobia” (p. 100). Critical pedagogy requires that we examine these issues. That we consider whose interests are being served and whose are not. Within these critical conversations, we can provide a place for our students to have a voice and develop a sense of compassion, tolerance and fairness. Notice Kincheloe’s use of the word oppression and Giroux’s description of students as causalities. Society through its schools is oppressing and causing the suffering of the very people who will one day be in charge of the society. We are molding our children to do more of the same. We getting exactly the democracy we deserve. It seems though that we should want more for our society and ourselves. Society is not some abstract machine that works on us at for its own pleasure. I think we can and should require ourselves to envision something different, schools that stopping mirroring oppression and suffering but instead help us become more fully human. I think Nel Noddings (2003) gets at the same idea when she suggest and alternative and speaks of schools as places where students learn about happiness. Schools should help students become their best selves, which involves considering what will make someone happy. However, this is a deeply personal idea, one that, while it might be influenced by society, will remain unique to the individual. Noddings is careful to point out that suffering does not lead to happiness nor is it necessary in order to define what makes us happy. Standardized tests and curriculum so allow us to individualize, to recognize what it is that makes us happy, and what connects us to the community. It is our perceived level of happiness that Nodding’s contends is the measurement of the quality of our lives. Given that schools are sites of our preparation for future lives, happiness as a life goal then becomes the purview of schools and a legitmate part of our curriculum. In the discussions of schools, we talk a lot about what to teach and how to teach it, but we almost never talk about why we teach it. I think we should listen more to students who ask “why do I need to know this?” They deserve a better answer than because it is on the test, or because you will need it to do your job. Will knowing this make them happier? Will it make them more fully human? We teach about the American Revolution – why? To make us better citizens? What it that made the founding fathers good citizens? We teach about slavery and the civil war – why? Because it is important to know, where we come from? What if you do not come from here? Is it so that we will never allow slavery again? Human trafficking is still happening today. I would argue that what we teach and how we teach it has little to do with becoming more fully human and much to do with the replication of societal norms. Right, I have already said that but my point here is that society, schools and being fully human should be the same thing. Ultimately, shouldn’t the goal be to make us all happier, more fully human? Wouldn’t a school that made this their goal be a better place to have our children spend their childhood? Imagine if the people you came into contact with each day were educated in a school that encouraged them to be happy and fully human rather than to successfully pass a series of standardized tests. 84

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SCHOOLS AS PLACES TO EXPLORE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FREE

Recently my middle son had to memorize the beginning of the Declaration of Independence and while I can think of more meaningful ways for my son to explore the document, I have to admit hearing him say the words instills in me this sense of pride in the document and what it suggests America stands for. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (The Declaration of Independence, 1776). There is a cadence, a rhythm to these words, which suggests something important is being said. These stirrings words tell me that I have rights, which no one can take away. One of those is liberty; I am free. Well, I am not totally free. My freedoms have to be balanced with those of the wider society. I have to follow the federal, state and local laws. I do have some rights when it comes to criminal matters but those can be suspended in times of crisis or war. Luckily, I am a citizen, heterosexual, and not a convicted felon because the list of my freedoms would be even shorter. So what does it mean to be free, when my unalienable rights, endowed by my creator can be infringed? I suggested earlier that one way in which we might evaluate schools is in their ability to help students become more fully human and now I want to suggest that we also consider the ways in which schools help students explore what it means to be free. While being free is certainly embedded in much of the discussion about what it means to be fully human I think a separate discussion is warranted. Ask a room full of parents what freedom means for their children and I will bet you that they will say things like freedom to do what they want, to live where they want, to have the job they want and to be independent. We all want our children to be able to determine the type of life they would like to live and then to be able to attain it, that is freedom. That is also, where the discussion usually stops. If the government has to suspend some of my rights, say for example, they listen to my phone conversations without a warrant it is only because America is being threatened and they want to protect my rights. But did I become less free? After all, I can still live where I want and have the job I want. What are the non-negotiables of freedom? Freire (2001) writes in the introduction to his book Pedagogy of Freedom that a reoccurring theme in his writing is “the unfinishedness of the human person, the question of our insertion into a permanent process of searching” (p. 21). Greene (1988) too writes of change when she describes human freedom as “the capacity to surpass the given and look at things as if they could be otherwise” (p. 3). Greene and Freire have a similar notion of freedom in that freedom is not something we possess. With these definitions, freedom is more than a state of being or something guaranteed upon citizenship, it is an active condition of imagining and searching. For many freedom simply means being left alone to do as one pleases; and when one accepts such a narrow definition of freedom, the opportunity for growth and a deeper sense of humanity is lost. To say “I have freedom” is in essence to say that freedom is a possession that is owned. This also suggests that there has never been something denied or a challenge to be faced. To be free requires a reaching for more, a push beyond the 85

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everyday. The struggle for freedom involves the recognition of the limitations in our lives and a conscious effort to engage both individually and collectively to move beyond those barriers. It is naive to think we could go through life and never experience any sense of limitations or barriers placed upon us, so the issue then becomes how we prepare students for action when they have those experiences. Here is where schools could potentially have a role. If we begin again with the idea that schools are where society ensures that norms and values are maintained and symbols and systems are explained, then what are our schools teaching our students about their rights and freedoms and how those rights and freedoms are exercised in a democracy? Where are they learning to imagine new possibilities and to search for those things that make them human? Freire (2003) said that it is the historical task of humans to liberate themselves; the world is a problem that needs to be worked on and solved. To present democracy as static prevents students from engaging in the problems of their world and as a result denies them freedom. Students confront problems every day. They and their families experience injustice, discrimination and intolerance. More and more of our students have firsthand knowledge of immigration issues, war and other serious issues. All too often, we ask students to leave those things behind at the school doors and to take on the role of the generic American student. We assume a common understanding, goals and interests. We tell our students that citizenship guarantees freedom and then leave it at that. What we miss is the opportunity to use the lives of our students to help them see possibilities. Teachers and students are both works in progress, and their lived experiences have the potential to provide opportunities to explore possibilities. We cannot do this to or for our students. We cannot assume that immigration is an issue of concern and then create a unit of study that lead students through the issues. We have to allow students to generate these problems and then provide support as they direct the study. This is for me the idea behind teaching for social justice. So why should we make a conscious effort to teach for social justice? Maxine Greene (1998) writes that justice, “a primary value of political life,” is an idea about how people ought to live (p. xxviii). Giroux (2003) suggests that terrorism is not the greatest danger facing Americans today; it is the need to expand the principles of justice, freedom and equality. These are big concepts that are difficult to define let alone translate into action; helping students to understand the many viewpoints, which make up an in depth understanding of these concepts makes teaching more complicated. At the same time, it becomes more interesting, engaging, and powerful. I feel it is the job of teachers to open up the world to their students, to show them the possibilities of what they might become and to compel them to move beyond the obstacles placed in front of them: “The fundament message of the teacher for social justice is: You can change the world.” (Ayers, 1998, p. xvii) What teaching for social justice brings in to focus for me is the many ways in which we are not free and we are not equal. Individuals in our society cannot escape the intrusions and limitations that society places on their freedoms. Teaching a critical pedagogy has been for me one-way in which to ground my teaching in social justice 86

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issues. Building on the works of Dewey and the social justice educators, critical pedagogues recognize the dialectical nature of the relationship between individuals and society (McLaren, 2003). Critical pedagogy recognizes the difficult decisions that educators make concerning democracy, justice and ethics (Kincheloe, 2004). It recognizes that these decisions are made in the context of institutions that are inherently political. In America, cultures and social classes are divided and stratified in such way that their members have different levels of political and economic power (McLaren, 2003). McLaren goes on to explain that through the process of hegemony, the dominant class maintains power of the subordinate not by sheer force but through the use of social practices, forms and structures that both have consented to follow. If schools were to provide a platform for students to begin to address the big issues in their lives schools could begin to allow students to reach their potential. If we believe that freedom is about choosing the kind of life that you want to live and to be able to realize that dream then we have to allow students the chance to explore what it is they want for themselves and what is potentially lost and gain with that vision. My middle son would like to attend a school that feels safe to him. The easy answer is to say that we are free to move him to another school or to home school him. The problem is that these answers do not require any real change. This may feel like freedom but is it freedom within the status quo. Middle school boys do not have to learn how to get along, the administration does not have to learn how to be responsive and nothing will be done to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future. The schools response to my son’s bullying incident was that it was not really a problem because his grades and test scores were fine. It horrifying and heartbreaking to realize that schooling and what defines an education has been reduced to grades and test scores. Schools that recognize and include an expanded definition of freedom and ground their teaching in social justice issues will be forced to move beyond this narrow view. To do this we need to be in a continuous cycle of acting in the world, reflecting, and acting on the change. It is in the process of reflection and action that we exercise our freedoms. I find myself returning to a quote from Maxine Greene (1988) which reminds me of the role, both teachers and students play in the search for freedom: A teacher in search of his/her own freedom may be the only kind of teacher who can arouse young persons to go in search of their own. It will be argued as well that children who have been provoked to reach beyond themselves, to wonder, to imagine, to pose their own questions are the ones most likely to learn to learn (pg. 14). SCHOOLS AS PLACES TO EXPLORE WHAT IT MEANS TO ENGAGE IN DIALOGUE

I have been trying to make a case for a reconceptualized vision of schools that includes a search for what it means to be more fully human and to be free. I also hope that what is becoming clear is that neither of these is possible without an 87

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expanded idea of what it means to be in a community and to engage in dialogue. Students need to take part in a discussion of the ways in which they can expand their possibilities and chart new pathways. Freire (2003) describes dialogue as the “encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world” (pg. 88). In order for dialogue to occur, we must recognize and exercise our right to speak and be heard. Through the process of dialogue and the naming of the world, the world is recreated and this Freire insists must be grounded in love and faith in our vocation to be fully human. As both a parent and an educator, more and more, I see a schools system that is disconnected from the lives of the students. All too often students and teachers, or students and administrators will sit down to talk but they outcomes seem predetermined. No one in school ever sat down to talk to my middle son when he was bullied, in fact whenever there is a similar complaint the first thing students are asked to do is sit down and write it out. This is then read, investigated and acted on, sometimes without ever coming back to the student. It is more efficient sure, but it keeps students at arm’s length and denies them the opportunity to work through these problems with other students and supportive adults. Solutions are done to the students and not with them. In the school district in which I worked, there is a lot of language about making students better critical thinkers. Some of this seems to be in response to the multiplechoice nature of standardized tests, which makes it difficult to engage students in more in-depth and open-ended questions. So, we work to make the questions harder, we use Bloom’s Taxonomy as a scaffold to ask increasingly more difficult questions. Again, I would argue that is easier, more efficient and requires less change to keep trying to fix the test. It would certainly be less efficient and more personalized to use actual events to teach students to be better critical thinkers, but it would also be more engaging and meaningful. My youngest son will be taking a new round of standardized tests this year Math and Writing. The school continues to work hard to provide the necessary support in order for him to do well on the tests. My son’s modifications, and those of the Special Education students that I taught, are often provided without discussion. At the ARD meetings each year, the school staff arrives with the forms already filled out and the decisions made. Often parents and students are silenced in schools, what are the lasting effects? This idea of dialogue as a part of the process to become free and more fully human goes to the very heart of what I believe it means to be a citizen in a democracy. Dewey (1944) would certainly have agreed that schools have a role in citizenship preparation, but his view of educational purpose was much broader in scope. Given that, the role of schools is not just to provide knowledge of democracy and other basic skills but also to educate students in the complex social relationships and symbols used by societies. The quality and value of the socialization that students receive while in schools is directly dependent on the customs of the people (Dewey, 1944). Dewey said another important function of schools is to help students as they move out into the world beyond the boundaries of their immediate community. Additionally, society is too complex to be understood as a whole so it needs to be broken up in pieces. Schools, he argued, were uniquely 88

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positioned to do this. Lastly, Dewey found that schools helped people escape from the limitations of their community by exposing them to the broader possibilities of society. He felt that it was superficial to look at democracy as resting on the shoulders of an educated public. Education, while certainly necessary, is not enough; citizens should also actively work to widen their “personal diversity” and “areas of concern” (p. 87). The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is the equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity. (Dewey, 1944, p. 87) To describe and consequently limit the goal of schools to educating citizens suggests that citizenship is a product, something finite that results in service to the government. Dewey’s concern was that we would find ourselves educating citizens and not men. The individual certainly has rights within a democracy; we must remember that those rights are exercised in a community. Dewey (1944) felt that democracy is really a form of associated living, suggesting that the communities we live in determine our experience, meaning, value and knowledge. As a result, citizens need the ability to find ways to relate within and between communities. Citizenship in democracy can then be described as part of a tradition of “struggle, over forms of knowledge, social practices, and values that constitute the critical elements of that tradition” (Giroux, 2005, pg. 5). Dewey felt that schools should be the site of citizenship education as they are uniquely positioned to balance the conflicting forces and individual biases, which can influence agency. Consequently, citizens need more than basic facts about the foundations of democracy; they need the skills necessary to participate actively in the struggle Giroux describes. Democracy is a developing social form and, as such, requires participants who can actively question and problem solve. Giroux (2003) feels that in order for democracy to be effective criticism, disagreement, and social justice must be part of the ideal exchange. Giroux (2003) strongly argues that instead, we have come to equate a critique of the government with a lack of patriotism. Fulfilling their role in the social process, the educational system reflects the functions and goals of society. Unfortunately, schools currently reproduce the values, social practices and skills needed for the corporate order (Giroux, 2003; Giroux, 2005). We are getting exactly the citizens and democracy that we deserve, those whose primary role is that of consumer. Rather than injecting democratic activism, schools use standardized tests and accountability systems to reflect societal qualities of competition and corporate self-interest. As this top-down order is imposed on schools, students increasingly find themselves without opportunities to experience and engage in societal critique. In an interesting twist on the definition of democratic life, students now learn that to critique the government is unpatriotic (Giroux, 2003; Giroux, 2005). The priority is on how to become a better customer in the 89

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marketplace and not to question or discuss why the marketplace exists and who are its winners and losers. Additionally, as the corporate model is superimposed on schools, what is public is branded as inefficient and inept (Giroux, 2003). Not only are we teaching students to view their role of citizen as synonymous with that of customer but we are also devaluing the very places in which these ideas might be exposed, examined, and discussed. The choice for parents then becomes not how to engage and improve schools but how to choose the best alternative. The Bush Administration policy towards schools shows a push towards limiting and redefining public to mean school funding source and not a place for educating active, participating citizens (Giroux, 2003). In other words with this legislation the definition of public has changed from a site of ‘public’ interaction to an institution that receives ‘public’ funds. Without a forum for engagement, students are less apt to feel equipped to move between communities and build understandings from which to act as Dewey suggested. Teachers who wish to develop in their students the necessary skills to become fully involved members of a democratic society (ie. Discursive, free and fully human) must develop in them a sense of urgency to act, so that together they will create the needed “remediation, palliation and repair” (Greene, 1998, p. xxx). Freire also embeds the notion of action and change within his idea of dialogue. When analyzing the components of a dialogue Freire sees the words used not as a vehicle in which to engage in dialogue but as representative of their component parts: reflection and action. One without the other is meaningless; resulting in either idle chatter or shallow activism. In the same way that our engagement in the process of becoming fully human and claiming our freedom, dialogue must be engage authentically and wholly. I contend that schools can still be sites of public discussion. They can be the places where we come to openly engage in the problems and issues, which confront the lives of our students. Freire (2003) argues that dialogue is a central component of a cognitive and narrative problem posing that allows students to develop the skills necessary to be critical thinkers. Students must be present in their narrative and thinking critically about the events in which they are participants. Dialogue and problem posing can be the foundations for an education, which portrays the world as a reality in the process of transformation. It potentially gives students the tools necessary to resist the style of banking education that is increasingly the norm (Freire, 2003). CONCLUSIONS

We have exactly the kind of democracy we deserve; our schools make sure of it. The problem is that I want more and more importantly I think we deserve more. Schools and other public sites have to power to help us find the possibilities that exist, but only if we require them to. Currently, our educational system narrows and limits knowledge to what is easiest to test. We curriculum content not to expose our students to more but to maintain a narrow, one sided view of what it means to 90

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be educated in America. Freire defines critical consciousness to mean, “learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to take actions against the oppressive elements of reality” (Freire, 2003, pg. 35). The results, for students who are denied the opportunity to become critically conscious (becoming fully human, free and engaged in dialogue are all components), are lost creative power and passivity. They do not see the world in anyway other than how they are told and they are not able to seek change or problem solve. Freire adds that students should become “critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher” (Freire, 2003, p. 81). Schools are denying students this opportunity. REFERENCES Ayers, W. (1998). Foreword popular education - teaching for social justice. In W. Ayers, J. A. Hurt, & T. Quinn (Eds.), Teaching for social justice (pp. xvii–xxv). New York: Teachers College Press. Dewey, J. (1944). Democracy and education. New York: Free Press. Dorn, S. (2007). Accountability frankenstein: Understanding and taming the monster. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Freire, P. (2001). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Freire, P. (2003). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group. Giroux, H. A. (2005). Schooling and the struggle for public life. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Giroux, H. A. (2003). The abandonned generation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Hansen, D. T. (2002). Dewey’s conception of an environment for teaching and learning. Curriculum Inquiry, 32, 267–280. Kincheloe, J. L. (2004). Critical pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang. McLaren, P. (2003). Life in Schools. New York: Pearson Education Inc. Miller, R. (1997). What are schools for? Holistic education in America. Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press. Noddings, N. (2003). Happiness and education. New York: Cambridge University Press. Salinas, C. S., & Reidel, M. (2007). The cultural politics of the Texas educational reform agenda: Examining who gets what, when, and how. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 38(1), 42–56. Suskind, R. (2008). The way of the world: A story of truth and hope in an age of extremism. New York: Harper Collins. The Declaration of Independence. (1776, July). Retrieved November 30, 2008, from U.S. History: http:// www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/index.htm

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8. CULTURE OF FEAR Addressing through Alternative Texts

INTRODUCTION

Fear grips American society. People embed it in almost everything they do. Fear limits people’s decision-making process. Fear blinds people to solutions. It requires a plan of action that addresses only the fear and not necessarily the problem. It controls whom people vote for, whom parents let their children play with, and which laws legislatures pass (Furedi, 2002). The educational system contributes, and helps lay the foundation for fear in America. Students go through an educational system where everyone lives in fear, trickling down from the administrators, to the educators, and to the students. Whether it is fear of losing a job, schools closing, failing a test, or not lining up properly, there is a constant fear of something in the current educational system. In many ways, the institutional fear in schools is a form a disciplinary power (Foucalt, 1995). Administrators and educators are so fearful of stepping outside of the norm, that they perpetuate the fear by imposing it on students. Social Education provides an opportunity to address the fear that exists in schools. One key focus of Social Education is the use of alternative texts. An alternative text is any text an educator uses in the classroom besides the traditional textbook. Hence, they are alternative to textbooks. Art, music, film, nonfiction books, and literature are some of the most commonly used alternative texts. However, alternative texts in this chapter will encompass more than texts that are alternatives to textbooks. Alternative texts can help empower students (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2007). Texts that can help empower students go beyond being simply alternatives to textbooks. They challenge the traditional historical narrative. They force students to challenge and question the information they encounter. They go beyond being a resource to engage students and make content more relatable. They help build students’ critical questioning skills while promoting social justice and equality. According to Joe Kincheloe (2008), education should be empowering for students. Justice and equality should be the goal of education. The appropriate use of alternative texts can help support Kincheloe’s vision. One major issue is that the disciplinary power in schools pushes educators away from using alternative texts. Alternative texts do not maintain the status quo. Therefore, they are not widely used. They also require more work than the use of the traditional textbook. Textbooks often work in tandem with resource packets, videos, and worksheets designed by textbook publishers to not require a lot of independent work from the teacher. C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 93–110. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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It is much easier for the teacher to rely on the textbook than to seek out alternative texts that could enhance their students’ learning experience. Furthermore, since alternative texts can provide a space for multiple voices and multiple perspectives that may challenge traditional American ideology, educators do not use them because the American social studies curriculum does not allow for multiple perspectives because of fear (Kincheloe, 2001). Fear is a determining factor in establishing curriculum in schools. This chapter will look at how fear works in society, how fear influences education, and how to address fear through alternative texts. The first part looks how fear can take hold in America by looking at 9/11 as a case study of what people are willing to support when they are scared. The second part focuses on the culture of fear in America and how the media promulgates it. The media builds off existing fear and creates new fear in adults by over reporting stories that will arouse existing apprehensions in the viewer. The third section describes the fear associated with high stakes accountability and how that fear affects administrators, educators, and students. High stakes testing is strangling education. The fourth part evaluates how fear influences the social studies curriculums in Texas and California. The boards of education in both states do not want educators to teach a complete history to students. The final section of this chapter concentrates on how alternative texts can challenge the culture of fear. By using alternative texts, students can learn to address complex issues as adults, as opposed to being fearful of them. They can also learn that history is not as narrow as is traditionally taught. Thus, providing an opportunity for them to judge and evaluate past actions supports the development of skills that are necessary to judge and evaluate problems and solutions that they will face as adults. By providing students with multiple voices and perspectives, they will also move beyond the fear of others, and hopefully appreciate and recognize the value that inherently exists in other individuals. The purpose of alternative texts in this framework is not simply to include a variety of perspectives to promote multiculturalism. It is to develop critical thinking and questioning skills amongst students. It is trying to move students in a direction where they challenge the information they interact with daily. Democratic education should be the goal of education (Dewey, 1997). While an educator only using alternative texts is not going to achieve democratic education, it can be a contributing solution to that goal. Alternative texts allow students to deconstruct the traditional historical narrative, empowering them to have the ability to challenge and critically question the status quo that exists in America. FEAR IN AMERICA

When people are afraid, fear consumes them so much that it is difficult to look beyond it. People do not look at all the solutions available. Instead, they look for immediate answers (Furedi, 2002). Those in power can harness this fear to gain support for their political agendas. When former President Bush and his administration wanted to invade Iraq, he fabricated the fear of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) getting into the hands of terrorists by misrepresenting that there was a 94

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link between Iraq and 9/11 (Palast, 2006). Bush pushed this fear home by connecting the War on Terror to Iraq. During his famous “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln he stated, “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001 and still goes on” (Bash, 2003). The Bush administration planned to use Iraq’s alleged possession of WMDs as a reason to go to war eight months before the invasion (Palast, 2006, p. 131). After the attacks on 9/11 people were afraid. They were afraid because another attack could come at any time. Fear surrounded the now uncertain future people were facing. September 11th provided the Bush administration with an opportunity to manipulate America’s fear to push forward his agenda. He lied about the possible connection between 9/11 and Iraq (Snow, 2006, p. 148). By giving the American people an immediate threat, he created fear that demanded an immediate solution. Bush, Cheney, and the administration provided that solution by actively supporting military action in Iraq. Instead of looking at alternatives to war with Iraq, a large majority of the American people and American Congress supported military action against Iraq. According to a Gallup Poll conducted in March of 2003, seventy-two percent of Americans supported the U.S. war with Iraq. Seventy-five percent did not think the U.S. had made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq (Gallup, CNN, and U.S.A. Today, 2003). Two hundred and ninety-seven Congressional Representatives voted for Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. That is an overwhelming majority of just under seventy percent. In the Senate, it was an even greater majority, with seventy-seven Senators voting for military action against Iraq. Why was there broad support for the Iraq War early on? How is it possible that so many Americans were so willing to succumb to their fear and believe the Bush administration? First off, a very strong propaganda machine supported the Bush administration. More importantly though, the Iraq War is just another example in America’s history where Americans willingly submit to a leader who promotes his/her agenda by using fear as the foundation. Americans are good at being critical of other nations, but looking inward is not something that is valued or fostered. CULTURE OF FEAR

In Culture of Fear, Frank Furedi argues that fear reinforces apprehensions that already exist in individuals (2002). It affects people’s decision-making ability and the way they conduct their lives by reducing risk taking. For example, parents use the precautionary principle when raising their children. They restrict their mobility and their contact with strangers. Children in the both the United States and United Kingdom are now experiencing a lack of overall fitness possibly leading to a spike in obesity amongst children (p. 116). Fewer children are allowed to cross the street on their own, more parents are driving their children to school, and children are acting independently about half as much as they used to (p. 115). The restriction on childhood mobility and limits on independence have detrimentally influenced children’s development and coping skills. It is essential to allow children a modicum 95

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of independence if are to learn from their mistakes and develop necessary life skills, (p. 117). When parents shield their children from strangers, they will not learn to distinguish friend from foe. They will not learn to interact independently with others. They will also learn to be dependent upon their parents and others to make decisions for them. When they become adults, it will be more difficult to break their mode of dependency and reliance (p. 119). Instead of looking for resolutions to issues independently, they will be prone to look to others for answers. Children are being protected from “undefined risks and risky strangers” while parents are extending the period of childhood dependence and potentially developing adults that may be less self-sufficient than in the past (p. 121). The fear for a child is a natural concern for a parent. When fear influences decisions though, it can have unfortunate and unseen consequences. While it is known that a child is more likely to be abused at home than at the hands of a stranger, the abundance of media reports of pedophilia strike a deep fear in parents (Critcher, 2003). Chas Critcher argues that the media promulgates moral panics (Critcher, 2003). Pedophilia is a startling example of how fear combined with excessive media reporting can affect society. Critcher chronicles that between 1990 and 2001 there was an increase in pedophilia related reports (pp. 100–108). The reporting of pedophilia related crimes fed parental fear. That fear has led to sex offender laws that require that communities are informed when sexual offenders move into their neighborhoods (Critcher, 2003, p. 115). The public can now search for sexual offenders in their area online complete with mug shot photos and the offender’s criminal record. Bill O’Reilly of The O’Reilly Factor and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted have led a media blitz to garner support for Jessica’s Law (O’Reilly, 2006). The law mandates that first time child sexual offenders will be punished by minimum of twenty-five years and a maximum of life in prison. O’Reilly maintains a website that shows which states are “heading in the wrong direction”, “heading in the right direction,” or have partially passed the law (O’Reilly, 2010). So far, only six states are moving in the wrong direction according to O’Reilly. Critcher argues that the problem with the overexposure of parents to pedophilia related stories is that it misrepresents the potential threats to children. Children are far more likely to be hurt in an accident than adult violence. Moreover, a family member, or someone close to the family, is significantly more likely to abuse or kill a child than a stranger. However, “stranger danger” is the number one fear for parents (p. 112). According to Furedi, this is because fear of others buys into apprehensions that parents already have. Therefore, parents support sweeping legislation because they are fearful of the unknown and want their children to be safe. As is seen with the pedophilia example, when there are pre-existing apprehensions, people are even more likely to support legislation and decisions based on fear. The harnessing of fear is not always for devious purposes such as with former President Bush. Legislation intended to protect children passes because of fear. While pedophilia is a very real problem, when fear is the overriding factor, people overlook other issues and problems. Fear does not allow for rational thinking and criticality. Unfortunately, those are ideals that America does not seem to value. 96

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FEAR AND EDUCATION

Administrators and educators frequently teach children not to question and not to be critical. Questioning those in authority is unacceptable in schools. They raise children in a culture of fear and obedience. This culture hinders criticality and thinking. Why would adults be capable of critically thinking and questioning if schools are socializing them to be obedient and not to think? Diane Ravitch writes in her latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, of how the current educational system is failing students (2010). The current high-stakes accountability system places so much importance on test scores that principal and educator’s jobs depend upon how well their students do on tests. Administrators have resorted to bludgeoning their educators into compliance because the stakes are so high. Educators are subjecting students to what they know is harmful because of fear. Ravitch chronicles how the San Diego school district gave control to Alan Bersin. Bersin’s style was to force people to go along with his programs or quit. As one San Diego educator noted, “People complied because of fear. All up and down the system, there was fear” (Ravitch, 2010, p. 62). Bersin’s totalitarian style left educators feeling angry and unwanted. Instead of empowering teachers, he was shoving his programs and reforms down upon them. Teachers were unwilling to speak out because of fear. Schools placed students into programs, such as three hour long test taking strategy classes, that educators knew were harmful, but they had no outlet. This is what fear breeds in the education system. It breeds obedience and compliance. Students then receive the brunt of this fear. Principals force them into programs that require little critical thinking. Rather, they force students to become compliant test-takers and unquestioning individuals that are spoon-fed direct instruction to their detriment. In their article, “Avoidable Losses: High-Stakes Accountability and the Dropout Crisis,” professors Linda McSpadden McNeil, Eileen Coppola, Judith Radigan, and Julian Vasquez Heilig show how high-stakes accountability in schools leads administrators to unconscionable decisions out of fear of losing their jobs or their schools being closed (2008). The authors write about how administrators knowingly hold back students because they are “liabilities” on state mandated tests (p. 5). By holding students back in grades that are not tested, the students will not reach testable grade levels. Thus, their scores cannot detrimentally affect the school’s rating. The authors focus on the Texas model that former Secretary of Education Rod Paige and former President Bush implemented nationwide with the passage of No Child Left Behind. They show how educators teach to a test while administrators knowingly force the students to drop out that will produce poor test scores. The focus is not on the quality of education. The focus is on getting students to pass a test. If the student cannot pass the test, then they are “triaged” out of the system (McNeil, Coppola, Radigan, & Vasquez Heilig, 2008, p. 36). Administrators force educators to reshape classes to focus on passing the test. Since critical questioning and thinking is not easily tested, teachers do not teach them. With increases in dropout rates and classes focused on teaching to the tests, the result is going to continue to be adults that are unwilling to question the solutions that 97

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politicians present to them at times of crises. Students are not being prepared to handle the problems that will face them as adults. In an increasingly globalized world students must be “globally competent” (Reimers, 2010). Schools are not preparing students to deal with the complex issues that have a variety of resolutions, some of which may be controversial (p. 185). Teaching to deal with complex issues is not a part of our current educational system. Direct instruction, which is what teaching to a test relies on, is not enough for global citizenship education and human rights education (p. 191). Students must engage with issues through a variety of methods. Students need to develop the skills necessary to address issues they will face as adults, not be strictly prepared for tests and given direct instruction. Allowing students to address complicated issues on their own is a cornerstone in developing globally conscious citizens that can explore multifaceted solutions. Without these skills, students will continue to be unquestioning adults consumed by a culture of fear. FEAR IN SOCIAL STUDIES CURRICULUM

It is difficult to counter the culture of fear as adults because state standards embed fear into the current social studies curriculum. There is a fear that if education does not socialize and indoctrinate American children into xenophobic and conservative ideologies, they will not be contributing citizens as adults (Loewen, 2007). This traditional American ideology acts as a form of power that helps to maintain the dominance of the elites. By not viewing traditional history with a critical lens, students will only learn how America is exceptional, unique, and a progressively good nation. According to the traditional narrative, over time, the U.S. has extended rights to more groups and the nation has gotten progressively better. This narrative negates the negative impact that the United States has had on groups of people inside and outside the U.S. Analyzing and deconstructing the social studies curriculum provides a window into the way those in power maintain that power in America. California and Texas are the two most populous states in the United States. Their curriculums have a tremendous impact upon the national curriculum because of their purchasing power. Textbook companies cater their textbooks to California and Texas because they want their textbooks to be on the approved adoption list in both states. Therefore, the California and Texas standards are a strong starting point to study American social studies curriculum. This chapter will focus on the 11th grade United States history standards in both states. That is the grade level for the social studies exit exam in both states, and thus usually contains the most important information that students are required to learn. California standards, for the most part, focus on facts, dates, and major events. There is not a lot of questioning involved in the standards. Students are expected analyze, describe, discuss, and examine, but they are rarely asked to judge or evaluate. The State Boards have decided already what they need to know. More importantly, they have also decided how it needs to be known. Standard 11.9.1 reads: Discuss the establishment of the United Nations and International Declaration of Human Rights, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and General 98

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Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the importance in shaping modern Europe and maintaining peace and international order. The writers and approvers of this standard have already decided for the student that the United Nations (UN), International Declaration of Human Rights, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and GATT have been important in maintaining peace and international order. There is another side to issue though that the standards overlook. Standards do not teach how the UN, IMF, and the World Bank have worked in conjunction to stranglehold underdeveloped nations into complying with their trade demands. They regularly will loan out money to countries as long as those countries only use the money to trade with the countries making the loans (Klein, 2007). Therefore, are they really maintaining peace and international order, or are they maintaining order for the countries in power? Standards are teaching students to not question authority. The standards take for granted that the organizations in power are good. As an alternative, standards should allow students to investigate the organizations on their own with a full understanding of their history. If students need to select from a variety of complex solutions as adults, they need to polish these skill while they are in school. Standard 11.9.1 is listed under the broad heading “Students analyze U.S. foreign policy since World War II” (California DOE, 11.c.4.D) While Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in the formation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the United States has not wholly supported this declaration. America has arrested and illegally detained foreign nationals, denied equal rights to the gay community, and denied rights to “illegal immigrants.” If the standards prop up the UDHR as a symbol of U.S. foreign policy, it should note that the U.S has not fully supported it. Both California and Texas have standards that address the imperialism of the United States in the South Pacific after the Spanish-American War. However, both standards have labeled it “U.S. expansion” (TEA, 113.41.c.4.A & California DOE, 11.4.2). These standards fall under sections on the U.S. emerging as a world power. When Japan and Soviet Russia expanded though, the standards did not call it expansion. Rather, it is labeled aggression. By selecting expansion to label the U.S. actions and aggression to label the Japanese and Soviets, these two standards are teaching students that when the U.S. takes control over foreign lands through force, it is okay. An evaluation of whether it was okay to conquer the Philippines amidst a popular uprising led by Emilio Aguinaldo should be a part of this historical analysis. These standards do not allow this type of analysis because of such a strict framework. According to the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), when Soviet Russia and Japan expand, it is not okay and students should view it with fear. When someone is an aggressor, someone must stop him/her. Thus if a country is acting as an aggressor, it too must be stopped. By labeling Soviet Russia and Japan the aggressors, it justifies the United States’ previous actions against both countries. It justifies the dropping of the Atomic bombs and the Cold War. It nicely labels one side good and the other side evil. It provides students with easy, tight categories that they do not need to deconstruct in this paradigmatic framework. Once again, as 99

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students get older and are voting for politicians using rhetoric laced with fear, they need to be able to dissect the rhetoric and make an evaluation of it. If students do not practice in schools, they will not to be able to deconstruct rhetoric as adults. In 2010, Texas went through a revision of their standards. A major theme of the new Texes Essential Knowledge Skills (TEKS) is a move towards the celebration of the free enterprise system and conservative economic policies. A previous standard read, “analyze causes of economic growth and prosperity in the 1920s” (TEA, 113.41.c.13.A). The new standard reads, “analyze causes of economic growth and prosperity in the 1920s, including Warren G. Harding’s Return to Normalcy, reduced taxes, and increased production efficiencies” (TEA, 113.41.c.16.A). Former President Warren G. Harding gave his famous “Return to Normalcy” speech on May 14, 1920. He called for citizens to independently pull themselves up and not rely on the government. “The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship” (Harding, para. 5). The theme of his speech was a call was for smaller government and increased economic deregulation. What the Texas standards overlook is that lack of government oversight and reduced taxes contributed greatly to the Great Depression. Similarly, lack of government oversight and the Bush tax cuts contributed to the current global recession. Combining Warren G. Harding’s “Return to Normalcy” and a call for reduced taxes is the current Republican economic philosophy (Republican National Committee, 2008). The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has decided to promote and reinforce Republican ideology through the standards. They are fearful that students will not support the Republican Party when they graduate unless educators teach that it is the correct party while they are in school. Students do not learn to analyze economic issues from a variety of perspectives. Rather the SBOE tries to socialize them into Republican philosophy. It is supporting the culture of fear by limiting the ideological breadth educators teach students. By limiting information based on ideological allegiance, they are teaching students to be apprehensive and fearful of other ideologies. In addition, they are teaching that other ideologies do not have any value or they would have included them in the curriculum. Another example of the SBOE pushing Republican ideology onto students is two standards focusing on Presidents Nixon and Reagan. The two standards read (A) describe Richard M. Nixon’s leadership with China and the policy of détente; (B) describe Ronald Reagan’s leadership in domestic and international policies, including Reaganomics and Peace Through Strength; (TEA, 113.41.c.10) The reason why the SBOE would select these presidents is to reinforce a conservative ideology by glorifying conservative presidents. Scholars and historians have been questioning Nixon’s presidency since he resigned from office. Watergate has forever tainted his legacy, but is not included in the celebration of his leadership. 100

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By celebrating Nixon and Reagan’s leadership, the SBOE is attempting to teach students to be apprehensive towards those that question either president. They are reinforcing their ideology while teaching ignorance and fear at the same time. Including Reaganomics in the standards is another promotion for Republican economics. Two central goals of Reaganomics were to reduce so called “entitlement” programs and reduce taxes. Economists contest the success or failure of Reaganomics. Proponents of the Milton Friedman philosophy of economics point to the uptick in economic growth during the Reagan years (Rutledge, 2004). Keynesians argue that Paul Volcker, head of the Federal Reserve, caused the upward trend, not Reagan’s reduced taxes (Krugman, 2008 and Greenspan, 2007). They point out that to cover the federal budget-deficits caused by reducing taxes, Reagan raised the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion (U.S. Department of Treasury, 2010). This debate is one that currently carries on presently. Allowing students to evaluate both sides of the debate, as opposed to telling them which side is right, is one way to prepare students to evaluate issues as adults. Fear of students learning that there is an alternative to Republican philosophy reduces the multiple solutions that educators show to students. Because of the SBOE’s fear, the curriculum is littered with standards that limit critical thinking and questioning. They are imposing their fear onto students by maintaining a strict paradigmatic framework in the classroom. Another issue that arises when analyzing the social studies standards is that the SBOE directs educators to only teach information about individuals and events that the SBOE considers “safe.” Students are taught Nixon is a great leader, but not that he was forced to resign because of the Watergate scandal. Another individual, whose whole story both SBOEs omit, is Dr Martin Luther King Jr. In both the Texas standards and the California standards, students read King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The state boards consider these speeches safe because they promote unity and justice for all while not attacking the United States or its government. What the standards neglect to include are his opposition to the Vietnam War and criticism of the U.S. government. In his speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”, he argues against that war. Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. (King, para. 44) The two SBOEs do not include this narrative because it challenges the traditional narrative. The traditional narrative does not account for dissenting opinions, especially not from individuals that are propped up to be exemplars of how good Americans should act. What is evident after analyzing these standards is that there is a fear of dissent and questioning amongst the state boards in Texas and California that they exhibit throughout 11th grade U.S. history standards. These standards try to push forward 101

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the belief that America is an exceptional nation that has a strong and righteous history. This history negates and overlooks nonconforming views of history. These standards teach conformity and obedience, not critical questioning and thinking. It is no wonder that students are unable to address complex issues as adults. Out of fear, the Texas and California state boards repress and replace critical questioning and thinking with regurgitating safe facts that perpetuate the status quo. ADDRESSING FEAR THROUGH ALTERNATIVE TEXTS

If critical educators are going to challenge the traditional narrative the current standards teach, educators must utilize alternative texts. They can provide an opportunity for multiple perspectives and voices to enter the classroom and students’ minds. They challenge preconceived apprehensions by addressing stereotypes and misconceptions. They do not provide a sugar coated recount of history. In contrast, they show how power has been historically maintained, offering insight on current power struggles. They also show that problems in history are complex and the solutions available were not simple solutions, but rather multifaceted and difficult to manage. James Loewen’s book, Lies My Educator Told Me, counters historical lies, whether they are blatant or unintentionally omitted, in U.S. history textbooks (2007). His book takes on complicated issues in American history and attempts to address the singular narrative provided by American textbooks. He analyzes six of the most popular textbooks and points out where their authors got it wrong or mislead American students. It is a strong historiography that directly challenges the tale that America has progressively gotten better as a nation since its inception. Loewen points out that at different times people evaluate individuals, ideas, and movements differently. For example, textbooks have depicted John Brown in vast extremes over time. John Brown is a famous abolitionist that attempted to start a slave revolt at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (Reynolds, 2005). Before 1890, textbooks depicted him as a sane man. From 1890 to 1970, textbooks showed that Brown had somehow gone insane and was full with rage. Since 1970 though, he has slowly regained his sanity. This type of historiography shows that students must view history in context. An alternative text such as this, teaches students that history is often a social construct. History is frequently time-period specific to the American culture and society during which time historians are writing history. He shows that there was a nexus of race relations between 1877 and the Civil Rights Movement that changed the public opinion on slavery and the Civil War. Historians reversed earlier narratives and began to demonize supposed Northern “aggression” during the Civil War and radical Reconstruction (Loewen, 2007). This is something that students should view in context though, because the South was demanding this revisionist retelling in textbooks. Textbook publishers met this demand by supplying textbooks that coincided with popular Southern beliefs about the Civil War. Similarly, Texas demands new conservative textbooks that will change the landscape of the popular narrative. The new textbooks will have to reflect the new Texas standards or the Texas SBOE will not place them on the approved adoption list. Texas holds a tight 102

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grip on textbooks in the nation because its buying power is so large. Smaller states receive textbooks that meet Texas’ standards and not necessarily their own (Elliott, 2009). Students using a book such as Loewen’s could deconstruct how historians wrote the historical narrative in the past. From there, they would be better prepared to deconstruct the current historical narrative they are faced with in social studies classrooms. Another potential alternative text is Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States (2003). It focuses on the history of the American people and not those in power. History is normally a retelling of major events, dates, and famous white males. Standards often ignore how the decisions of those in power affect the people that must live with the consequences of those decisions. They also ignore how common people’s decisions affect those in power. He shows how the decisions of those in power are often not in the best interest of the people. Rather, they sustain the elite’s dominance over the people. It provides a counter-narrative to popular textbooks by telling the “people’s history” and not the history of those in power. By only teaching the history of those in power, educators are inadvertently helping to maintain their power in the United States. Educators need to teach students to question those in power so students do not blindly follow politicians. They need to be able to critically question politician’s agendas to look for potential motives that may not be in the best interest of the people. As shown above, American adults regularly make decisions based in fear. Textbooks and conservative curriculum foster that fear by not developing critical skills students need to address the issues that they will face as adults. Zinn’s book can help counter that fear by educating students that those in power have often made decisions that have been detrimental to the American people while being beneficial to politicians and/or their supporters. If students are not prepared to question politicians, they will be unable to do so when they are adults. Instead, they will potentially let fear be the overriding factor as they make decisions. Loewen’s and Zinn’s books are two of the most popular alternative texts. They are excellent to use because they are well documented and written at a level that is readable for most high school level students. They reinforce critical questioning and thinking because both of their premises is that traditional history has either gotten it wrong or neglected the history of various groups. Their books have reached a large audience and have helped in shifting the historical narrative to a more critical one. In many ways, the revised Texas standards are trying to counter books such as these. Both are national bestsellers and educators are using them in their social studies classrooms. By narrowly refining the standards, the Texas SBOE is trying to push books like these out. The book, America on the World Stage: A Global Approach to U.S. History, is an alternative text that attempts to provide a global approach to U.S. history (Reichard & Dickson, 2008). This alternative text directly addresses the xenophobic nature of California and Texas’ standards. While those standards attempt to negate the impact the world has had on the United States, this book places the U.S. in a global context. It is a series of essays written by both historians and high school American history educators. The book reverses the historical narrative of American history. 103

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Educators normally teach U.S. history from a limited perspective. What is going on within the U.S.’s borders or directly affecting the U.S. is the primary focus. Textbooks normally only include events beyond America’s border if they play a major role in United States history, such as the tearing down of the Berlin Wall or World War II. Rarely do American history textbooks focus on how the social and cultural happenings of the world influence the United States. They limit the scope to American society and culture and its influence on other nations, not the reverse. American on the World Stage though, attempts to teach students that globalization is not a new phenomenon. Countries have been dependent on each other for thousands of years. Therefore, the development of the United States has not been an isolated event. While it may be the most powerful nation in the world now, it has historically relied on other nations and will continue to do so. By using an alternative text that places U.S. history in a global context, educators would teach students that other nations are valuable. It teaches that other nations are important to the success and failures of the United States. It directly challenges the xenophobic nature of social studies standards. The Texas standards ask students to “describe how American values are different and unique from those of other nations” (TEA, 113.41.c.22.A). The Texas SBOE also expects students to “identify the impact of popular American culture on the rest of world” (TEA, 113.41.c.25.C). The goal of these standards is for students to recognize the United States as distinctive from other nations. U.S. history, in this framework, is independent of other nations. The California State Board of Education wants its educators to teach that the United States is a model to other nations (California DOE, 2000). It is true that the United States has served as a model for other nations. For example, other nations have used the U.S. Constitution as a model for their own (Maddox, 2007). On the other hand, the United States has also used other nations as models. When African-American soldiers fought in World War II alongside foreign integrated units, it was a precursor to the demand for integration at home (Gaines, 2008). By limiting the scope of the standards, both Texas and California are teaching students to be xenophobic. These narrow-minded curriculums ignore the affect of other nations on the United States. Educators can address limited curriculums with alternative texts that promote a globalized view of history that recognizes that value of all nations. They can counter a curriculum that places one nation on a pedestal above all others. Film as an alternative text can be a very commanding tool in the classroom. The danger in using films is that they can frequently take over the curriculum as opposed to enhancing it. Rarely should educators show an entire film. Rather, using short clips from films to add to the lesson is preferential. Films are powerful because they can take students to a time and place that they otherwise would not have the opportunity to experience. Furthermore, they can help educators challenge the culture of fear inherent in the standards. Oliver Stone’s self proclaimed Vietnam Trilogy addresses the Vietnam War on a personal level that the standards overlook. The standards focus on major events in the war. They look at the opposition to the war from a distance and include it as part of a single objective with the draft, the 26th Amendment, the role of the media, 104

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the credibility gap, and the silent majority (TEA, 113.41.c.8.F). In California, the standards relegate the Vietnam War as simply one of the many consequences of Cold War policy (California DOE, 11.9.3). Stone’s three films, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, and, Heaven and Earth, show both the grittiness of the Vietnam War and its cultural effects (Kopelson, 1986; Kitman Ho & Stone, 1989; Stone, 1993). Using films similar to these that challenge the retellings of war can show students the deep emotional impact that war can have on individuals. It can help deglorify war for students while showing that politicians should look at war as a last result and not the first option. Music can also be a very powerful alternative text. Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell show in their book, The Art of Critical Pedagogy, that using music can be a useful resource for a critical educator (2007). They use the lyrics and music of Tupac Shakur to connect their students to social struggles (Shakur, 1993). They use the lyrics as an alternative text with the intent of showing their students there is a narrative beyond the textbook that preaches social justice and equality. There are current artists that students are listening to that also engage in similar dialogue. The Flobots are a rock/hip-hop group out of Denver, Colorado that engage in a socially conscious dialogue. Their music addresses current issues with the intent of raising awareness amongst their listeners. They have developed a website that encourages community involvement. They actively organize community events and encourage participating in the political process. The beauty of their music is that it goes beyond student engagement and provides a viewpoint that challenges many of the current political issues. They believe that one cannot separate music and politics. Their goal is to move and motivate people through their music. Their hope is to write music that is inspiring and then provide an outlet for people to become active in their local communities. They have developed a non-profit organization, flotbots.org, which focuses on trying to teach youth how to make a difference in themselves and their communities through music (Flobots.org, n.d.). In their song “Defend Atlantis,” they write about the potential outcomes of global warming (Flobots, 2010). They write about what could happen if the polar ice caps melt into the ocean and the water level rises. The song’s purpose is to bring awareness to the problem of global warming. Then, they want to get the youth actively involved in addressing global warming. In a different song, “White Flag Warrior,” they focus on the war in Iraq and militarism in the United States. The song argues for peace and negotiation. The Flobots are willing to help in any way possible, as long as “they are not forced to kill” (Flobots & McIlrath, 2010). They argue that war is child abuse and not necessary. They also write songs on other controversial topics such as Hurricane Katrina, gay marriage, the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, and other issues that students are currently facing. Using the Flobots’ music in the classroom would allow for discussions that go beyond traditional textbooks. Their music is intentionally controversial. It provides an alternative viewpoint to the message in the standards. The goal of using music such as the Flobots is to engage students in a process of critical questioning (Montgomery, 2008). Just as educators should have students dissect and question the standards, they should also have their students dissect and questions the 105

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Flobots’ lyrics. Educators should not present anything as being unquestionable and holding uncertain truth. Rather, educators should teach students to question everything they come across. The Flobots are a nice counter piece to textbooks. They also show students that want to get involved in their communities ways that they can by joining local volunteer organizations. Teaching students critical questioning with music addresses fear by showing that there are alternative voices out there. Regardless of whether students agree with the alternative texts they engage with, the act of engaging with these texts develops critical skills necessary to address the fear filled rhetoric they will face throughout their lives. In The Art of Critical Pedagogy, Duncan-Andrade and Morrell argue culturally relevant pedagogy fosters a counter-cultural community of practice, intent on addressing the social and structural inequalities that exist in urban communities and schools (2007). Part of their culturally relevant pedagogy is the use of what they call culturally relevant texts. The authors start by getting to know the cultures and communities of their students. From there, they are able to develop a culturally relevant pedagogy. They then combine classical canon with alternative texts (music lyrics, films, music, poetry, and literature) that are culturally relevant to the students. The students are able to make connections between the texts they are more familiar with and the classical works. They then feel comfortable reading and challenging the traditional texts. By using a multicultural or critical reading, students were able to critically question the portrayal of people of color and the class issues in the texts. In each instance, students achieve at a higher rate than what would be expected based on the statistics of their peers (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2007). Students are taking AP exams, graduating, and going to four-year universities at much higher rate than their urban peers. At the same time, the students are engaging in critical praxis. This is the main benefit of alternative texts if used properly in the classroom. As Duncan-Andrade and Morrell have shown, educators can use alternative texts to empower students. They used alternative texts, or what they call culturally relevant texts, to help educate students to a point where they were comfortable engaging in traditional textbooks that they had previously feared. These students always knew the traditional textbooks did not provide a narrative of their history, but now they had the language and skills to express those feelings in a powerful way. At the same time, these students were passing AP exams and graduating at a much higher rate than their peers. The authors also implemented a Futures program and a summer seminar program. The Futures program was a four-year program where the educator followed the students through all four years of social studies (the junior year turned into a research seminar because of conflicting schedules). The authors introduced the students to social and critical theory, engaged them in alternative texts, and finally had the students implement the cycle of critical praxis. The purpose of the programs was to help students obtain academic literacy that they would use in their professional and civic lives. The students also conducted participatory action research. Instead of learning about history or research, they actually went out and conducted research. The research challenged the social and structural inequalities of their communities. The use of alternative texts in this setting helps contribute to the empowering of 106

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students to change their lived conditions and the conditions of their community. Alternative texts were a part of the foundation that led to students engaging in critical praxis that was extremely influential for the students. The example of Duncan-Andrade and Morrell is a powerful one. They provide concrete evidence that utilizing alternative texts can help empower students. It can promote justice and equality. It can also equip students with the skills they need to challenge the traditional historical narrative that largely overlooks the issues they face on a daily basis. By equipping students with the skills to critically question and challenge, they are better able to deal with complex issues as adults and not let fear control their decisions. By using alternative texts to challenge conservative standards, empower students, and foster critical questioning, hopefully students will be better equipped to address problems and issues in the future. CONCLUSION

Education must address the fear that grips American society. Because those in power can harness this fear, to push forward their political agendas, educators must teach students how to deconstruct fear-filled rhetoric. Arizona recently passed a law that allows officers to question, detain, and require identification of people they “reasonably” suspect are in the country without authorization (Archibold, 2010). Governor Jan Brewer declared she was signing the bill because the federal government has refused to fix the crisis caused by illegal immigration (Brewer, 2010). Brewer claims the violence in Mexico is creeping north of the border into Arizona. She argues that drug cartels are threatening the quality of life in Arizona. She has done a great job of framing illegal immigration as a problem that Arizonans must be address. She builds off people’s existing apprehensions about violence to gain support for her bill. By doing so, she creates the framework under which people will discuss this issue. Since it is a problem, if one does not like her solution, he/she must come up with a better one. On the other side, those critical of the bill are also using fear-filled speech to argue against the bill. They are claiming it “institutionalizes racial-profiling” and violates the Fourth Amendment (Phillips, 2010). Writer Aaron Phillips argues that police officers could stop anyone, anywhere and request identification. Evangelical Christian writer Jim Wallis calls the bill a social and racial sin (Wallis, 2010). He questions if simply having “brown skin” will be reasonable suspicion enough to question and detain individuals. This rhetoric is drawing on apprehensions of historical racial profiling and police abuse to push forward their political agenda. This type of debate takes place daily in American politics. Both Republicans and Democrats try to gain support by using fear. The culture of fear in the United States buys into this rhetoric. Fear though, is quite reactionary and eliminates potential solutions. Education needs to prepare students to address similar situations when politicians argue with fear-filled rhetoric. Neither side is talking about the potential benefits of illegal immigration. The focus of the debate is solely on the bill and politicians are overlooking other issues. Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, has shown that illegal immigrants are actually 107

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a net benefit to the American economy (Hanson, 2005). Americans wrongly think that illegal immigrants hurt the economy (Campo-Flores, 2010). By labeling illegal immigration a benefit to the United States, as opposed to a “crisis,” it changes the way people view solutions. While I agree the Arizona law is unconstitutional and the Arizona legislature needs to be repeal it, I also believe that because of fearfilled rhetoric, people are ignoring possible solutions. If illegal immigration is a problem, then politicians must address it. If it is a benefit though, maybe politicians will want to determine how to harness the benefits while addressing the issues of drug cartel violence separately. This removes the stigma from illegal immigration and places it on drug cartel violence. Educators using alternative texts can help prepare students to address such issues, as they get older. Educators normally view alternative texts as a way to relate material to students. An educator will use a contemporary film clip to introduce students to a concept using a film the students might have previously seen. They can then relate it back to the material they want the students to know. While this is a noble effort by educators, it is not enough. Education should focus on empowering students for justice and equality. If educators are only using alternative texts to reinforce traditional notions of content, then they are simply more engaging forms of the textbook. They do not enhance the education of the students outside of being a better way to teach traditional content. Educators can use alternative texts as a tool to counter hegemonic power in the curriculum and help empower students. The goal should not be to teach the students a watered-down curriculum. Rather, the focus should be on developing the skills that students will need later in life to question and challenge those in power. If they are not comfortable in a classroom deconstructing historical narratives to see whom the narratives serves, then they will not be able to do so as adults. Duncan-Andrade and Morrell have shown that this is possible by using alternative texts as a piece of the process of empowerment. Student empowerment should be a goal of a critical educator (McLaren & Kincheloe, 2007). Using alternative texts can help educators navigate students through the transformative process of empowerment. Alternative texts foster critical questioning and thinking that is necessary to address issues. If future adults are unable to deconstruct the rhetoric they hear from politicians, the culture of fear will continue to perpetuate in the United States. As long as politicians perpetuate the culture of fear, the status quo will not change in the U.S. Those with power will continue to impose their ideology onto the curriculum. Students will learn a narrow view of history that will limit their ability to address issues as adults. If those who do not know their history are destined to repeat it, then hiding from history predetermines that people will make the same mistakes again. REFERENCES Archibold, R. (2010, April 23). Arizona enacts stringent law on immigration. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.html?pagewanted=print Bash, D. (2003, October 29). White house pressed on ‘mission accomplished’ sign. CNN Washington Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/28/mission.accomplished/ 108

CULTURE OF FEAR Brewer, J. (2010, April 23). Statement by Governor Jan Brewer. Office of the Governor. Retrieved from http://www.azgovernor.gov/dms/upload/PR_042310_StatementByGovernorOnSB1070.pdf California Department of Education. (1998). History-social science content standards for California public schools. Retrieved from http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/histsocscistnd.pdf Campo-Flores, A. (2010). Why Americans think (wrongly) that illegal immigrants hurt the economy. Newsweek, 23–25. Critcher, C. (2003). Moral panics and the media. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Dewey, J. (1997). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Free Press. Duncan-Andrade, J., & Morrell, E. (2008). The art of critical pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Elliott, J. (2009, September 4). Could Texas’ Gingrich-based high school history curriculum go national? Talking Points Memo Muckraker. Retrieved from http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo. com/2009/09/could_texas_gingrich_based_curriculum_go_national.php Flobots (2010). Defend Atlantis. On Survival story [CD]. Ft. Collins, CO: Universal Republic Records. Flobots, & McIlrath, T. (2010). White flag warrior. On Survival story [CD]. Ft. Collins, CO: Universal Republic Records. Foucalt, M. (1995). Discipline & punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage. Furedi, F. (2005). The culture of fear. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Gallup, CNN, U.S.A. Today (2003). Iraq poll. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/Iraq. aspx#1 Greenspan, A. (2007). The age of turbulence: Adventures in a new world. New York: Penguin. Griffin, J., & Hines, N. (2008). Who’s the greatest? The Times US presidential rankings. The Times. Retrieved from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article 5030539.ece Hanson, G. (2005). Why does immigration divide America?: Public finance and political opposition to open borders. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Harding, W. (1920). Return to normalcy. Boston. Retrieved from http://teachingamericanhistory.org/ library/index.asp?document=954 King, M. (1963). Letter from Birmingham jail. Birmingham, AL. Retrieved from http://www.africa. upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html King, M. (1963). I have a dream. Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://www.usconstitution.net/ dream.html King, M, (1967). Beyond Vietnam: A time to break silence. New York. Retrieved from http://www. americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm Kincheloe, J. (2001). Getting beyond the facts: Teaching social studies/social sciences in the twentyfirst century. New, York: Peter Lang Publishing. Kincheloe, J. (2008). Critical pedagogy primer. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Kitman Ho, A., & Stone, O. (Producer), & Stone, O. (Director). (1989). Born on the fourth of July [Motion picture]. United States: Universal Studios. Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Picador. Kopelson, A. (Producer), & Stone, O. (Director). (1986). Platoon [Motion picture]. United States: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Krugman, P. (2008, January 21). Debunking the Reagan myth. The New Yorks Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/opinion/21krugman.html Loewen, J. (2007). Lies my educator told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: Touchstone. Maddox, R. (2007). Consitutions of the world. Washington, DC: CQ Press. McNeil, L. M., Coppola, E., Radigan, J., & Vasquez Heilig, J. (2008). Avoidable losses: High-stakes accountability and the dropout crisis. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 16(3). Retrieved [date] from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n3/ Mee, C. (1983). The Ohio gang: The world of Warren G. Harding. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

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BROWER Montgomery, J. (2008, May 15). Flobots fight to make the world, and your cubicle, a better place. MTV News. Retrieved from http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1587563/20080515/flobots.jhtml O’Reilly, B. (2006). John Walsh weighs in on criminal issues. The America’s Intelligence Wire. Retrieved from http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-17538874_ITM O’Reilly, B. (2010). Bill’s thoughts on Jessica’s law. The Factor Online. Retrieved from http://www. billoreilly.com/outragefunnels Palast, G. (2006). The downing street memos, manipulation of prewar intelligence, and knowingly withholding vital information from a grand jury investigation. In D. Loo & P. Phillips (Eds.), Impeach the president: The case against Bush and Cheney (pp. 131–142). New York: Seven Stories Press. Phillips, A. (2010, April 25). Arizona Governor Brewer signs immigration law, institutionalizes racial profiling and discrimination. Tampa Progressive Examiner. Retrieved from http://www.examiner. com/x-42653-Tampa-Progressive-Examiner~y2010m4d25-Arizona-Governor-Brewer-signs-immigr ation-law-institutionalizes-racial-profiling-and-discrimination Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system. New York: Basic Books. Reimers, F. (2010). Educating for global competency. In J. Cohen & M. Malin (Eds.), International perspectives on the goals of universal basic and secondary education (pp. 183–202). New York: Routledge. Republican National Committee. (2008). 2008 republican platform: Economy. Retrieved from http://www. gop.com/2008Platform/Economy.htm Reynolds, D. (2005). John Brown abolitionist: The man who killed slavery, sparked the Civil War, and seeded civil rights. New York: Random House. Rutledge, J. (2004, June 11). The real Reaganomics. The Rutledge Capital. Retrieved from http://www. rutledgecapital.com/Articles/20040611_the_real_reaganomics.htm Shakur, T. (1993). Keep ya head up. On Strictly 4 my N.I.G.G.A.Z. Los Angeles: Interscope. Snow, N. (2006). Propaganda, lies, and patriotic jingoism. In D. Loo, & P. Phillips (Eds.), Impeach the president: The case against Bush and Cheney (pp. 143–160). New York: Seven Stories Press. Stone, O. (Producer & Director). (1993). Heaven and Earth [Motion picture]. United States: Warner Bros. Texas Education Agency. (2001). Texas essential knowledge and skills – U.S. History. Retrieved from http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/ssc/teks_and_taas/teks/teksushist.htm Texas Education Agency. (2010). Proposed revisions to 19 TAC chapter 113, Texas essential knowledge and skills for social studies. Retrieved from http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/social/HS_TEKS_1st Rdg.pdf Wallis, J. (2010, April 21). Arizona’s immigration bill is a social and racial sin. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/arizonas-immigration-bill_b_546842. html U.S. Department of Treasury. (2010). Monthly statements of the public debt. Retrieved from http:// www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/mspd.htm Zinn, H. (2003). A people’s history of the United States. New York: Perennial Classics.

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9. FIVE YEARS LATER A Student-Educator Dialogue

INTRODUCTION

I have often been confronted by the nebulousness of “Social Education.” I have thus worked to push our Social Education program area to define its goals and strategic direction. To provide some heft to our approach, I have called upon colleagues to identify core areas of study in our program. We have collectively decided that our program area emphasizes cultural and media studies, critical pedagogy, and transformative social studies education. We believe that these three core areas of study position us to consider how we might harness the power of “education” to advance social justice. Furthermore, I have challenged colleagues to escape the closed system that often characterizes higher education. Everything we do must connect to the material conditions of education. We need to align our goals to research and action with and for students in all levels of our educational “system.” Above all else, we must connect everything we do to students and schools. In considering the notion of a “primer” as a pedagogical tool, I hope that this chapter provides insight into one typically absent component of teacher education— that is, the need for sustained educator-student dialogues as a reflective tool for teachers and students alike. Others in this volume write about the centrality of critical pedagogy to their work. Critical pedagogy challenges us to disrupt the authority of teachers as knowledge-givers and knowledge-holders. If education is about learning, then what teachers “know” and “do” should not have as near as much priority as what students “learn” and “do.” Convinced of our authority and expertise as teachers, we do little to listen constructively to students and their ideas about education and learning. We think we know better; we say students learn from us. But this is dangerous thinking. In this chapter, I offer a dialogue I had with a former student of mine. By doing so, I hope I reveal ways in which such dialogues are productive tools for reflection and, more important, for generative action. The dialogue also introduces a number of concepts central to Social Education—concepts upon which other chapters in this volume will elaborate. To begin, I offer some context about my previous high school teaching career. SETTING THE CONTEXT

I began teaching at Alexander High School (pseudonym) after completing a Master of Arts in Teaching at Rice University. Alexander is a struggling school in a Houston C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 111–132. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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metropolitan school district. When interviewing to teach there, the principal seemed amused by my critique of traditional social studies courses. She felt it appropriate to assign me sections of pre-Advanced Placement World Geography. I attended two week-long sessions at the Rice University AP Institute in preparation for teaching the course. One week focused on pre-AP world geography; the other, on AP World History. Quite uncritically, I emerged as a teacher in love with All Things AP. I was convinced that a properly trained AP teacher could help elevate academics at Alexander High School. We accomplished much in my pre-AP world geography class in 2003–2004. I was even more proud of my AP World History students in 2004–2005. (Many had come from the previous year’s geography course.) Students worked hard, especially given that the majority began at a fifth- or sixth-grade reading level. No one doubted the demands of my course. I began with 39 students in one section, and that class dwindled quickly to 24 students. Many students transferred out my class to avoid working hard. My students had never experienced significant amounts of out-of-class reading. No teacher had expected them to engage in higherlevel comparative analysis. I provided as much reading support as I knew how at the time. We had workshops on those reading strategies that helped me make it through college. We learned about metacognition. My students engaged speed reading techniques. They practiced test-taking strategies. Students purchased test preparation guides, and they created flashcards. Like my own high school AP experience, an esprit de corps emerged. Other Alexander teachers disparaged my class. They thought I pushed my students too hard. They claimed my students were incapable of success. I shared this with students. It only further motivated them. They needed to prove those teachers wrong. Rather than eat in the cafeteria, students ordered pizza so they could attend an extra class with me during lunch. Students and I met at coffee shops in the early evenings to study. On one occasion, we took a “field trip” to my classroom all day so we could focus on history for ten hours. Several Saturday mornings, students and I met at breakfast places for world history review over pancakes and coffee. My students were serious about the class and about the impending test. Test day came. Students reacted to the test in diverse ways. Many felt they performed well, noting that the multiple-choice questions were easy. Some students were uncomfortable with an essay question about the Mongol Empire. They could not remember specifics about how the Mongols affected different regions of the world. Yet most students felt they performed well enough to earn college credit. They did not. Few students passed the exam, despite working harder in my class than they ever had before. I received phone calls and e-mail over the summer. Students were demoralized. Some were convinced they would not make it in college since they failed a college-level examination. A handful of students vowed never to take an AP course again. Others swore that they were stupid—that they just were not intelligent enough to beat the test. A few students were so despondent they even considered dropping out of school. Fortunately, these immediate reactions gave way to more measured responses. Students realized they were climbing an uphill battle. They thanked me for the 112

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course, and they are no longer convinced of their supposed stupidity. I am blessed to witness their growth as college students and as adults. Regardless of their exam performance, I was proud of my students. I made sure I let them know that. But I felt that the AP exam had stolen something from my students. I told my students how much their reading and writing improved. Many developed a love for history for the first time. I also discussed how admirable it was for them to take an AP course in their tenth grade year—a rarity at Alexander. In fact, while Alexander offered AP World History before my arrival, no teacher had required students to sit for the exam. And I shared statistics about how students who take an AP course are more likely to succeed in college than other students are. John Reyes was one of the students in that AP course. No doubt John was a deep thinker. I taught him for two years, and his writing ability grew exponentially during that time. He had a keen ability to understand historical relationships. Yet John was not the model student, at least in most teachers’ eyes. He skipped school often. He left campus during lunch. John expressed a keen interest in automotive technology; other teachers argued he was wasting his intellect on cars. In other words, John was not the typical teacher-pleaser. He did not seem like that student who would eventually rise to the top of his class and become an accomplished student at the University of Texas. I appreciated John’s quasi-rebelliousness. I taught high school for five years. I have encountered many students in my short teaching career. Luckily, I maintain contact with many of them. Yet John is part of a smaller circle of students with whom I developed substantive, lasting relationships. I have been reflecting much on my high school teaching career, largely to find my path as a future teacher educator and educational researcher. I thought it valuable to dialogue with John about our AP World History course for several reasons. First, I feel somewhat aimless as a graduate student on the verge of entering academia. I have been uncomfortable being out of the high school classroom. I need to explore this discomfort. Second, John challenges me. He is someone who tells it like it is. Finally, I feel it is important to tell my story through my students’ voices. Who I am today has much to do with them, though I hope I have had some small impact on my students as well. By writing this chapter together, John and I become colleagues. We disrupt the power relationship that can stymie productive teacher-student dialogue. We need more of this in education. Here is what John had to say about the chapter. REYES’ INITIAL THOUGHTS ON THE DIALOGUE

Earlier this semester, I came up with the idea of using an online blog to maintain notes on my course readings. I was juggling much reading about a diverse set of topics: NAFTA’s effects on immigration and rural Mexicans; state violence against Guatemala’s indigenous citizens; and discussions of casa chica in Central America. A blog allows me to organize these notes and maintain a virtual bibliography. When I began to implement my blog idea, I noticed that I began looking at my 113

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course readings from a different perspective. I’d read and re-read my notes, generating new comments to add each time. I told Doug about my plans for an online blog, and that helped stimulate ideas about writing this book chapter together. We wanted to create a written dialogue about education, much like a blog. I felt a bit odd about the idea at first. I didn’t think I would be able to offer constructive criticism of education. As we engaged different topics for discussion, I began to see that “education” involves a complex web of issues—from sexual education to the structure of Advanced Placement courses. Before our conversation, I had a high opinion of AP courses. But that opinion has now changed. And it has on a range of other educational issues, too. Like Doug, I tend to think about education from a structuralist perspective. My work in anthropology has reinforced this perspective. While thinking about my experiences in Doug’s course, I can see how I’ve evolved as a student. His course influenced me in significant ways, and it impacted my decision to major in anthropology. Since his course, I have developed a keen sense of the interconnectedness of events, people, and culture. Who I am today, as well, has much to do with the interconnectedness of things. Conversations like these have the potential of helping educators see the impact of their pedagogical choices—good and bad. It allows teachers to see their personal effects on students, and it allows them to see their students’ development over the long run. In some cases, conversations like these can expose the dogmatism that instructors may explicitly or inadvertently espouse. Revealing such dogmatism is crucial to promoting a more independent, free society. By this, I mean freedom of thought—freedom from the “cultural literacy” that is so emphasized in Western thought. I hope my participation in this dialogue challenges contemporary education. THE DIALOGUE

Edwards: Let’s start with a giant question, something we may come back to in our conversation. I was excited about teaching an AP course at Alexander, partially because I had many of you already your freshman year. I knew that y’all were coming in with at least some foundational writing skills and vocabulary. I felt that by having an impending AP examination at the end as a finite goal, students might be motivated to push themselves harder. So, in a way, I thought that the AP framework provided an impetus by which I could push rigor at the school. But now I’m not so sure if AP is a good thing after all. Now that you have been out of high school for awhile, what are your initial impressions about the value of AP courses? AP a good thing? Bad thing? Mixed bag? Reyes: I have mixed sentiments about AP courses. As with any other examination, it limits the possibilities of education. Though AP is broader in nature, it still produces a rigid curriculum. Edwards: What about our AP World History course was “rigid”? I can remember spending way too many days practicing the format of free-response questions. 114

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It seemed that success was built more on fitting into a particular format than innovative writing. Reyes: In that sense, there was a “limit” on the whole “certain way” things should be done. But of course, I believed that your course was more rigorous than regular courses at Alexander. For that alone, it was a good experience. Edwards: I keep coming back to that. I know my course was considerably more rigorous than most courses at the school. But I’m wondering if there were another way to create a rigorous environment absent an AP or AP-like framework. Reyes: Remember when we had independent panels in your class? It certainly promoted participation and a myriad of opinions, though not all students participated all the time. You know the circle discussions on chapters from Guns, Germs, and Steel, for example? Those inner-outer circle seminars? [Jared Diamond (1997) is the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel.] Edwards: Those seminars facilitated some of the most substantive conversations in our class, even though, unfortunately, not everyone participated as much as we all would have liked. Yet most of the time, those discussions deviated from AP exam content. I still wouldn’t eliminate them, but that wasn’t helping as far as AP goes. And frankly, most of the “best” moments, at least in my memory, had little to do with AP content. The more we addressed actual nitty-gritty “content,” the less things seem to roll well. Reyes: I remember as the semester went on, a cram mentality emerged. But I appreciated the causality diagrams we used to remember relationships between historical events. Edwards: I remember those damn diagrams too well. I feel as if I over-emphasized causality. In retrospect, “relationships” would have been a better word to use. But, in all honesty, I was coming to grips with the historical content myself. I did not major in history. Reyes: Were you just one lesson ahead for each class? Edwards: Ha. Not one. But several, maybe… I have held a nasty attitude toward history pretty much my whole life. I appreciated math and its clean algorithms. There were only a finite number of sequences to learn in math. But history always seemed like a big ball of mess to me. Facts everywhere. That’s why I needed to develop some kind of scheme to make sense out of history. That’s why I clung to causality and relationships, even if I over-emphasized that. At least that allowed me to piece all the discrete historical content together. I wanted to ask you about your own attitudes toward history prior to our course. My attitudes have certainly changed since then. And they have shifted again since my one-semester dip into graduate studies in history. [Prior to entering the Social Education program at the University of Houston, Edwards enrolled as a graduate student in history. One semester later, he transferred to Social Education.] 115

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Reyes: Prior to your course, I viewed history as a regurgitation of acts. A timeline of sorts. The AP framework seemed to emphasize a more dynamic approach to history—one that emphasizes cultural and social relationships. Edwards: I’m still not convinced I actually like history. However, I am interested that you referred to history as “dynamic.” I think we went too broad in the course. I appreciate themes and patterns. Yet I wonder if we focused on those themes and patterns so much that we lost some of the discrete historical content. More important, I’m concerned that we didn’t allow content to drive our exploration of themes and patterns. It seems that we did the opposite. I’m not sure I would approach the course the same way now. Perhaps we would examine the nitty-gritty content first, and then allow natural patterns and themes to emerge. Reyes: Do you mean cultivating a history course that is more deductive? You know, look at the “facts” and arranging them as we see fit? Edwards: Yes. Or, if nothing else, I should allow students to do more of the thematic treasure hunting. Reyes: I can see that as a good thing. It would promote independent thinking. Edwards: You have decided to minor in history, right? Reyes: Umm… I keep switching. Edwards: Oh? Are you switching minors within the social sciences, or are you branching out to other disciplines as well? Reyes: No. I’m sticking with the social sciences. I think art history is fairly interesting, though I am not certain if it counts as a social science. Edwards: Regardless, I find it interesting that you view history, at all, as a social science. Of course, I do, too. But some folks in my old history department vehemently disagreed with that categorization. Have you taken any history courses at the University of Texas yet? Reyes: I haven’t taken any… yet. Edwards: Be scared. Very scared. Reyes: Why? Edwards: Some university-level history courses will crush your soul. You may lose any interest you had in history, and that would be unfortunate. That was certainly my experience. In reality, this goes back to what we were saying about the social sciences. In history courses, classmates accused me of being too “theoretical.” Peers argued that I didn’t approach history with facts; rather, I approached content 116

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with an inappropriate bias. They accused me of being—and this is shocking—a sociologist! And they said sociological theory had no real place in the jargonaverse discipline of history. Reyes: Oh my gosh! Edwards: I know! Reyes: Well, if I encounter conflict like that as a history minor, I just may stick to art history. I can be a Bohemian. Edwards: Ha! I would challenge that, though. I hold onto a stereotype of art history majors as uptight folks who just like to memorize titles and dates of art works. Regardless, are you pretty solid on your decision to keep anthropology as your major? Reyes: Yes. I am pretty sure. I like to channel Jane Goodall. Ha! Actually, I pretty much decided on anthropology after taking an introductory course. In that class, we discussed NAFTA and its consequences for globalization. In particular, we examined what seems to be a contradictory phenomenon. Globalization has precipitated the dissipation of distinct cultures, and it has fostered the emergence of new, more homogenous “cultures.” This has disastrous consequences for those left out of this “new wave.” Edwards: Perhaps your interest stems from your emphasis on the interconnectedness of things. I remember that being a major feature of your writing as a high school student. Reyes: I would agree. This is why I also appreciate art. Works of art serve as good representations of interconnectedness. I also appreciate the social commentary many works of art provide. Ha. I am being nigh-existential. Edwards: Do you like models? Reyes: Six-foot models? Those kind of things? Edwards: Ha! No. I mean models… representations. Frameworks. Reyes: Yes. Yes, I do. Edwards: This is why I worry about your decision to enroll in history courses. I ran into problems with that. Reyes: Well, I really appreciate majoring in anthropology. I love the curriculum. I am about to take my first case-study seminars on indigenous groups in Nicaragua and Mexico. But it all started back in high school for me. I appreciated the small glimpses into daily life in Southwest Asia, for example. The geography course put a face on different cultures. 117

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Edwards: What do you mean by “put a face on” in this case? Reyes: We studied different belief systems in the class. We explored systems of socialization and cultural identity. While it was all fairly general, this was the first time I really learned about other cultures. Edwards: I wonder if we over-emphasized structuralism in the geography course. We discussed issues like gender and socialization as if they were deterministic, static, and universally true within a particular culture. I am a bit concerned about that. Yet I realize we had to start somewhere. So I decided that we really needed to examine the constructionist nature of societies and culture. Reyes: I certainly wasn’t stuck on some universal idea regarding gender. Here in the anthropology department, a department with which I have only been studying for one-and-a-half years, I have already learned about cultural groups with more than two genders. Edwards: Berdaches? Two-spirits? Reyes: Yes. But my point is that your course was a good starting point. It let us begin exploring gender as a social construct. Edwards: Good. I am glad I didn’t ruin it for you. But I do think we went too broad at times. And this spilled over into our world history class the following year. I am a forest person. Comparative history is certainly a forest. I wonder if we overlooked the minutiae and idiosyncrasies of history and, perhaps more important, specific individuals and their role in history. I know a colleague who is nearly the opposite of me in this respect. She teaches history via personal narratives. Students get to know “historical characters” really well. The teacher argues that this fosters engagement and personal connections. I think there might be some wisdom in that. It is certainly something I’d consider more carefully if I return to teaching high school again. Reyes: Personal connections? So you mean an interactive relationship with the material at hand? Edwards: Well, more like exploring the narratives of specific people. Reyes: I can certainly see that as engaging. But what kinds of narratives? Edwards: You know, the life stories of specific historical figures such as Genghis Khan, Jesus, Queen Elizabeth I, and Mao ZeDong. My colleague includes lesserknown folks, too. She develops caricatures of “typical” folk who have been ignored. Not necessarily a specific individual; rather, what one individual may have been like given a particular social status, culture, and time period. It’s about as far away from structuralism as you can get. And I think she’s on to something. Reyes: I love structuralism. 118

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Edwards: Me, too. Reyes: Well, it does make sense. Who else to explain the exploits of the past than those who actually lived in it? Edwards: Certainly. But I also think the teacher approaches history this way because this is a sure-fire way for people to connect to history. Particularly young folks: she teaches middle school. I think such an approach would probably be effective in high school as well. Sure. Reyes: Maybe the idea would be to find an ideal mix of your approach and her approach rather than the two extremes. Edwards: Ha! Now I am extreme. I think my approach stemmed from my own difficulties understanding history. I needed some kind of scheme for understanding historical processes. For me, history was a bunch of discrete facts that did not seem to form a coherent pattern. Thinking about history sociologically—in terms of patterns and structures—allowed discrete historical facts to fit together in an understandable way. Yet such an approach runs the risk of over-generalization. Some historians would absolutely challenge such an approach. They appreciate the nuance, the discreteness, the happenstance, and the unusual in history. Reyes: Well, a mix of the two would include both broad, sociologically-driven approach to history, and then one with a more personal touch. Edwards: For the historians I encountered, it’s all about change and difference— not patterns. Reyes: So, is it unacceptable to think broadly about history? Edwards: For many, it’s quite unacceptable. This is one reason why I was so miserable in the history graduate department. They argued that individuals should not approach history with some pre-conceived theory; rather, they should allow findings to emerge from raw data. Of course, given both of our affinities for postmodernism, I think we would agree that you don’t approach anything without some kind of structure or theory, even if you don’t want to admit it. Reyes: Ha! Very true. I was discussing this with some graduate students in history at the University of Texas. Edwards: Oh? What did y’all have to say? Reyes: Those graduate students seem to sit there, read a dozen books about some historical events, and then recite back what they just read. Nevertheless, some of what they had to say was interesting—especially when they began discussing their “History of History” course. 119

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Edwards: So the whole historiography thing comes full circle. Whee! What do you mean by them “reciting back what they just read”? Reyes: An undergraduate friend of mine said his idea of history was just factual regurgitation. Edwards: Well, that’s depressing. But, I do think it brings up the weaknesses of “disciplining” knowledge. This was something that bothered me when I was a history graduate student. I felt as if my peers and professors were boxing me in, attempting to limit my approach to history, all for my own good. Reyes: Dangerous thinking, Doug. But you know, I would like bring up the notion of socialization. It is certainly something we discussed in your class often. I am curious about how schools can (or cannot?) cultivate free, independent thinking beyond examinations. How can we liberalize learning when we live in a society that values what we know? I am not sure if I am capturing my concerns effectively. But I have a feeling there is this magical concept out there—that is, “things to know.” Edwards: When you mention “things to know,” this reminds me of Hirsch’s concept of “cultural literacy.” Hirsch argues that productive citizens must have an appropriate body of knowledge at their disposal. Productive citizens know about important historical events. They are familiar with certain literary allusions. The author argues that those in power share this body of cultural knowledge. Hirsch readily admits that this body of knowledge is overtly Western in nature. Yet he maintains that this “cultural literacy” is important if folks want to succeed in our society. Hirsch further argues this is why minorities often do not get ahead. Schools simply do not teach them cultural literacy. Is this what you mean by “what you know”? [E.D. Hirsch (1988) is the author of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.] Reyes: Seems like it. Edwards: I suspect you have problems with Hirsch’s argument. I certainly do. First of all, I think we need to be critical of any kind of bootstraps argument. It suggests a kind of deficit thinking I think is harmful to urban youth. I appreciate Hirsch’s point that students need access to a body of skills and ideas to be successful. And I agree that schools should take responsibility, at least somewhat, for cultivating these skills and allowing students to explore these ideas. Yet Hirsch’s cultural literacy argument assumes that students need to receive (passively) the gifts of cultural knowledge in order to access power. I argue that such an approach disempowers students. There is another way—that is, the path that critical pedagogy tries to offer. Critical pedagogy offers an explicit critique of the very power structure Hirsch tries to penetrate with his cultural literacy argument. Hirsch does not provide access to power; he reinforces it. Rather than viewing students as empty receptacles ready to be filled with knowledge, critical pedagogues view students as problem solvers capable of challenging hegemony. Critical pedagogy shifts power to students. 120

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Reyes: Alternatives… Marginality… Edwards: Yes. But realize that many students are scared to harness that power— especially in critical classrooms. Society socializes them into not wanting it. It’s rather powerful. Reyes: Then how do you tear down the traditional structure of the classroom? I am speaking quite literally. Last semester, we discussed the physical space in traditional classrooms. Symbols of power reside in the “forward-facing desks.” Those desks physically place students into submission. The teacher talks, and the students listen. Edwards: Few people challenge such aspects of the hidden curriculum. Reyes: This is why I appreciated our inner-outer circle seminars. I enjoyed them. Now I wish I had been a more active learning in middle school. I embraced a pessimism about any kind of success. I wish I hadn’t done that. I didn’t feel as if I participated as much as I should have. Now that I’m in a social science environment, discussion and debate are commonplace. Edwards: It seems like you are implying that your pessimism and apathy were byproducts of socialization. Reyes: Yes. Edwards: That’s why subverting classroom structures is difficult. Either way, I didn’t go far enough as a teacher. Not at all. Reyes: Speaking of “subverting classroom structures,” I always wanted to talk to you about the grade conferences we had in our class. What was your goal behind those grade conferences? Edwards: I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of grades. I am not convinced they do anything in terms of developing intrinsic motivation. In fact, for most folks, I do not think they cultivate any kind of motivation—intrinsic or extrinsic. I have always been too concerned about my own grades. That concern has travelled with me even into graduate school. In high school, I was overtly conscious of grades to the point that I did not take risks. I didn’t experiment with writing. I refused to take certain courses. Because, at all costs, I needed to make sure I earned an “A” in every single course. For me, schooling was about grades—not learning. And that’s a shame. I admit that learning is bound to happen when someone makes good grades. Yet I wonder what I overlooked and missed because of the pressure that, quite frankly, I put on myself. No one overtly pressured me to make good grades. But earlier in childhood, when it became clear that I was “smart,” good grades simply became an assumption. 121

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My concern for grades hurt me in college. I refused to major in mathematics or pre-pharmacy because I was scared. I knew those courses were rigorous. I still have a strong interest in the pharmaceutical sciences. Yet I dared not go there, because I knew it was probably impossible to maintain straight A’s in such a program. Certainly I am an extreme example. But I know the institutional practice of grading hurt me. And I am pretty sure it presents problems for other students as well. Rarely have I seen a student get excited about learning a new topic because he or she expects a high grade to emerge from it. That’s just not how learning works. Given that, I experimented with the idea of grade conferences. I wanted students and I to negotiate grades in a way that worked for the students. Yet students and teachers alike have been socialized into accepting grades as a natural part of education. I tried to fight this with grade conferences. But you remember how unsuccessful those conferences were. Students were confused. The school complained. Parents called me. I didn’t think carefully enough about how to restructure the classroom to fight against the institution of grades. I wish I had. Reyes: I think exposure is important in education. The educational institution is a major agent of socialization, especially because it involves teachers and peers. And I know research literature suggests that peers can exert a stronger influence on personality development than parents. I appreciated your efforts. Yet it seems to me that our previous experiences had socialized us into apathy. If nothing else, certainly the overall ambiance of the school did not help. Edwards: I agree that I made some strides. But like most individuals, I failed to venture “outside of the box.” We examined the nature of hegemony in historical and contemporary societies. We explored relationships among systematic inequality, economic systems, and political spheres. We analyzed gender patterns with an appropriate understanding of social constructivism. But I did little to cultivate a climate where students actually challenge hegemony in their own lives. The cerebral piece was there in many ways. The experiential piece was not. I do want to caution us both about overly emphasizing the role of socialization. We should critique deterministic models of human behavior. We should understand that while socialization is powerful, we are not helpless creatures. We must embrace our agency. I am reading a dissertation right now by a social education graduate—a theoretical piece called The Spiritual Risk of Education. This is a gross over-simplification of an incredibly nuanced dissertation: It argues that the very notion of “education” halts experience, thus limiting the very possibilities education tries to achieve. [Neil Liss (2005) is the author of The Spiritual Risk of Education, an unpublished doctoral dissertation.] Reyes: Experience? What’s experience? Edwards: That’s difficult. But the author argues that experience is “not thinking.” That thinking itself prohibits experience, because when thinking, you aren’t doing. Education is about thinking, thus not experience. And therefore, education poses 122

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a spiritual risk. Of course, I’m oversimplifying and probably misinterpreting. But it does raise the more general point of how education, as it is today, is quite limiting. Disciplining knowledge (and the body) is a major part of schooling. And it has dangerous consequences. Reyes: That’s an interesting idea. It would serve us well to develop a more nuanced ideal of education. Discipline can be limiting, but is sometimes necessary, in my opinion. Thinking allows some progress, but too much envelops people into confinement. You know, the whole Ivory Tower phenomenon. Edwards: Ha. Yes. And my history graduate school experience. Why is discipline “sometimes necessary”? Reyes: To whip people into shape! Nah. I feel it necessary to prevent a degree of… unprogressive thinking. A push, if you will. I’m being ambiguous. Edwards: But then how do you go about doing that as an educator without committing “educational bigotry,” to borrow a phrase from a colleague? Reyes: And what is his definition, of educational bigotry? Is it a sort of confinement to one view of learning? Edwards: It’s her definition. She’s a critical pedagogue. She is nervous about imposing her worldview while preparing pre-service teachers for the classroom. My colleague tries to avoid being dogmatic about the very criticality she is trying to cultivate. To get back to your question, I would say “confinement to one’s view of learning.” Yes. Reyes: I feel that’s… unavoidable. And this goes back to a general human tendency. We tend to categorize. It’s something that we haven’t escaped. Edwards: I think that’s what the dissertator was trying to capture: Derrida’s logocentrism. Language itself is confining. [“Logocentrism” is a concept found in Derrida’s On Grammatology (1976).] I am concerned that I was dogmatic when I taught our course. That I was being dogmatically liberal or dogmatically structuralist or something like that. I’m concerned, frankly, that I was engaging in educational bigotry. At the time, I justified it by saying that y’all got the other end of the spectrum everywhere else. Do you know if this bothered anyone? I suspect it did. Reyes: For some people, yes. Certainly the more conservative folks. You know, people tend to be impressionistic in high school. Many folks soaked in your views. I did, too. Wasn’t it I that used to call you subversive? Edwards: Precisely why I became a teacher. But I wonder if engaging in a counter-narrative is the best way to go about it. I am trying to resist dogmatism. But it’s hard. 123

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Reyes: I am not sure what you could do about it. Perhaps an ideal environment would include students going into an institution—an institution with the clear assumption that these students should come to learn and conduct research with little or no teacher intervention. Edwards: We can do that, you know. Reyes: Hmm. What would the State and our more right-wing neighbors say? Edwards: They would be scared. Those are the ones obsessed with standards and accountability. Education, it seems, has never been too concerned with education. Reyes: Ha. It seems much of the problem with “education” happens well before high school. I wanted to examine again the notion of education before high school. I am concerned by how conservative Christians have shaped education. Their agenda penetrates a range of subjects ranging from sexuality, world regions, and American history. Why don’t elementary students learn more about foreign cultures, ideas, and religions? Why is communism so evil? Edwards: I don’t know of many elementary schools that even address communism. But yes, elementary and middle schools are all about ethnocentrism. In Texas, seventh grade students typically take Texas history, and they take pre-Reconstruction American history in eighth grade. Of course, the eighth grade course focuses on the Founding Fathers—a concept that is rarely explored critically—and the United States Constitution. Other than the introduction of other topics, what other suggestions do you have for elementary and middle schools? Reyes: Our society is in a postmodern state. Even still, Christianity has a foothold in the United States. Younger students need to explore diverse ideas. For example, they can examine GLBT issues or conduct in-depth studies on foreign cultures. I certainly would have appreciated an exploration of Buddhism when I was thirteen years old. Yet I know all of this would concern parents greatly. Edwards: Most folks, including teachers, believe that young children are either too immature for these topics or simply would have no basis for understanding them. If nothing else, educators shy away from the topics because many deem them controversial. You and I both know thirteen year olds would probably be more mature discussing Buddhism than most adults would be. Reyes: I agree. Children are more open-minded. Adults are not. Edwards: Right. Reyes: Teaching children about homosexuality will not make them gay. Learning about Daoism will not necessarily cause children to drop Christianity. But children do need choices. And diverse points of view. 124

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Edwards: You are right. I recall some research literature about this. It argues that exposing students to diverse points of view helps them be more open-minded about difference. Of course, this is enough to scare many parents. This is particularly true for religions. Learning about other religions has virtually no effect on a person’s faith. But, what it does do is help that person be more tolerant and understanding of others. Scary, huh? Reyes: I know! Americans simply cannot be okay with Islam! You know, when money talks, all morality seems to go to the crapper, though. The whole “Hate Muslims; hate Arabs” thing just vanishes once new construction projects go up in Dubai. Now Muslims are cool. Edwards: Obviously the religion thing effects education in other ways. Allow me to bring up an episode I remember all too clearly: that day some random kid called me “Ma’am,” and I went off about the homophobia I experienced in high school. Were you in that class? Reyes: Yeah, I was in the class. Edwards: Okay, so you were there. I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t help but respond viscerally to that whole affair. I thought, “Screw this! I’m not dealing with all this again.” So I went off. Reyes: Was that the day you ran off after him? And the day a classmate came out? [Edwards left the classroom and literally ran after the student for about five minutes. Eventually, the student left the building and ran off campus. Edwards returned to class. Several days later, the student approached Edwards and apologized for his comment and for running out of the school.] Edwards: Yes, that was the day. But I don’t remember anyone coming out. Interesting how that memory fails me. Why I ran after that random kid is beyond me. But I was certainly really upset. It was like everything from high school came back to me, and I wasn’t going to be helpless about it again as an adult teacher. I’m still not convinced I did anything wrong by sharing my story. Of course, the principal said I shouldn’t share stuff about my private life. Reyes: Of course. Edwards: But I never discussed my sex life or anything like that with students. That’s what I would consider private. Reyes: A wedding ring is not a private thing. Edwards: I should be held to the same standards as anyone else. Didn’t everyone assume I was gay anyway? I mean, I never actively hid that. Reyes: Yep. Edwards: Was the controversy, then, that I actually said it? Was that the scandal? But really, what was the crisis? Was it breaking the taboo? 125

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Reyes: I didn’t have an issue myself. The only people I ever really noticed having one were the more bigot-oriented folk. Edwards: So maybe, for the most part, the whole affair was just hype. But parents did call. And the principal addressed the matter with me. He had several disturbing things to say. Reyes: Yeah, it certainly brought attention to something most of us knew. But it gave reason for folk to talk to their parents about the issue. It’s not like everyday I’d go and say, “Hey, my gay teacher taught blah, blah, blah today.” Edwards: Aha. Well, here’s how the principal addressed the matter. Quite interestingly, actually. First, he asked me about my approach to teaching. The principal said he had heard “interesting” things about the content of my course. That I was teaching about different religions. I shared with him we were currently embarking on a unit on South Asia. Specifically, we would be examining India and the historical legacy of its caste system. And that, to understand fully the nature of India’s caste system, you need to understand Hinduism. Here’s what he said: “Well, I don’t know about that.” I was aghast. I explained that study of other religions was part of the social studies curriculum. He maintained that I should be careful. I asked him about what I should be careful. And that’s when he, rather abruptly, transitioned into discussing my “sexual issues.” He said I should keep my private life private… that teachers shouldn’t discuss sexual stuff in class. I shared that I certainly didn’t discuss sexual stuff in class, and I emphasized that I keep my dating life private. Reyes: So, teaching foreign religions is gay? Edwards: I think he was trying to make the implicit point that I was a dangerous teacher. Because religion and social discrimination are not valid topics of inquiry in a social studies classroom, you know? Reyes: Ha. Dangerous. That’s funny. Looking back, I really didn’t view anything in your classroom as dangerous. I was semi-Catholic back then… and still now. Edwards: Funny. Semi-Catholic. Anyway, refusing to reference my sexuality explicitly, the principal talked about needing to keep order in the school. He wondered about two guys or girls walking down the halls holding hands. He said that a school simply isn’t the place for that. Of course, he did not criticize straight kids for showing affection in our school. Reyes: Implying the correctness of heterosexuality. Edwards: Right. And that’s almost exactly what I told him. But the principal didn’t seem to understand what I meant by “heteronormativity.” Reyes: Did you use that word, verbatim? Edwards: Yes. Obviously, that was problematic. 126

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But, much to my dismay now, I felt the need to reassure him that I wasn’t using my classroom as a platform for pushing a particular agenda. (Of course, that wasn’t true). The principal said schools are designed to encourage patriotism and to teach children right and wrong. I told him that I had significant problems with that idea. I think he sensed he wasn’t going to win this fight. So, again, in a move to reassure him, I emphasized that I don’t discuss my sex life with students. I also shared that I was not trying to create a scandal. The principal said certain parents had called. Usually, when a principal says this, he or she means one parent called. Principals exaggerate. I told him that parents were welcome to direct their calls to me. That I would love to have a conversation with them. He didn’t like that idea. So that was that. Reyes: Scared. Seems like the principal was just scared. Edwards: I agree. Reyes: You know, I’m scared about something else right now. It seems ridiculous that I am dealing with citizenship issues. There’s nothing wrong with my citizenship; rather, I have to deal with stuff regarding my stepfather. My mother and stepfather married when I was sixteen year old. But apparently, marriage doesn’t equal citizenship anymore. So I am filing for his citizenship now. Even though I am the bastard son. However, an issue has emerged. Apparently, we need to come up with an “extreme circumstance” for why the United States government should grant him citizenship. Edwards: Wow. Is this some kind of asylum application? Reyes: No, it’s not. But the whole process is stupid and convoluted. Edwards: Frankly, I think the whole notion of national borders is odd. I mean, this is the twenty-first century. And we have walls! Walls! It’s interesting how Americans disparaged the Berlin Wall in the 1980s. Yet now we are resurrecting a wall. I don’t understand why we are scared of other folks. Reyes: Recently I saw someone driving down the road in Austin with a bumper sticker that read “Secure Our Borders.” I really wanted to moon him. You know, people who come here, even when they are undocumented, usually pay taxes. And they certainly aren’t terrorists. Edwards: And if we documented everyone, then the United States government could enjoy even more tax revenue. Still, I know that citizenship, residency, and immigration are more complicated issues than that. What would you propose in a utopian America? Reyes: Get rid of the crazy conservatives. Edwards: Ha. That doesn’t seem particularly democratic, but I know you and I may want to fantasize about that. You know, if conservatives in power really wanted secure borders, they would simply shoot-to-kill as undocumented folks cross into 127

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the United States. They say one thing and do another. They understand better than anyone the economic benefits the United States enjoys thanks to the hard work of undocumented folks. So we get rid of the conservatives. Then what? Reyes: I would go back in time and keep NAFTA from happening. That would stop the impetus for millions of immigrants to flee to the United States each year. NAFTA resulted in thousands of people losing their small-scale farms. Domestic corn production was thrown to hell because American corn became available at a substantially lower price. Mexican farmers couldn’t survive. Edwards: But aren’t we the bastions of liberty, bringing neoliberalism to the poor folks of Mexico? We are doing God’s work there, right? Reyes: Screw that. Edwards: Okay, so we get rid of NAFTA. I think many people would agree with you. What else? Reyes: Perhaps we should return to the days of the good-old-fashioned immigration quotas. And the less-convoluted citizenship process of the past. Edwards: I don’t know if the immigration process were ever any good. But I certainly agree that substantive changes are necessary. I’m not sure if the world would collapse if we just opened the borders. Completely and utterly open. You know, schools should address this issue more often. And we should have in our course. It is interesting how the issue of citizenship was a big part of many students’ lives at Alexander, though we didn’t talk about it explicitly. That’s a mistake. Reyes: Regardless, I think I wrapped up the letter for Pops. It’s a bit cliché in parts, but it’s probably better than most of the letters they get. I wrote about my dependency on my parents for school. Mom asked me to fib a bit—that is, to embellish on some dramatic life-changing events. That’s what the secretary at our lawyer’s office said. I also had to bring a million documents proving that I attend the University of Texas. Edwards: Well, at least you are attending college. It’s just a shame that, by virtue of who you are, you have to deal with so many citizenship issues. I, along with many other Americans, get to take that for granted. Privilege at work again. EDWARDS’ REFLECTIONS ON THE DIALOGUE

The dialogue above engages a number of ideas relevant to Social Education and, more broadly, the work of advancing social justice in schools. In this section, I consider briefly several of those ideas, recognizing that other authors in this volume provide a more sustained discussion of some of concepts below. 128

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The notion of a “hidden curriculum” permeates my conversation with John (Klassen, 1992). The hidden curriculum encompasses learning that emerges from “social rules, arrangements, and power” within schools (Zinnecker, 1975, as cited in Klassen, 1992, p. 45). It also includes unintentional learning outcomes stemming from the formal curriculum. Whereas we might locate the formal curriculum within lesson plans and what is explicit taught in classes, we can find the hidden curriculum in the how of teaching, in what is not taught in classes, and in the power relations that comprise schools. The hidden curriculum emerges when teachers avoid subject matter they deem controversial (Wasburn, 1983), such as when John mentioned the avoidance of Buddhism in social studies courses. Classroom interactions harbinger unintentional political messages, such as when teachers exercise their authority, when students “learn” to wait patiently, when teachers favor particular students, and when examinations and grades differentiate students (Palonsky, 1987; Klassen, 1992). In particular, this differentiation works against students’ sense of political efficacy in the long term (Palonsky 1987). This is one reason why I had attempted “grade conferences,” where students and I would work together to negotiate grades. Yet this small attempt at participatory democracy failed when confronted with the years of socialization within bureaucratic schools (Ehman, 1980). That John discussed issues of citizenship is of particular relevance to the hidden curriculum. Much research establishes the fact that schools are a primary agent of socialization—research that hails back to the 1960s (Hess & Torney, 1963; Almond & Verba, 1967). Indeed, proponents of “traditional” social studies curricula advocate for courses that “teach” citizenship: we learn about the “expansion” of democracy in American history; we learn about checks and balances and the importance of voting in American government courses. Yet we simultaneously ignore the rich facets of citizenship in our students’ lives, such as when John mentioned the bureaucratic, de-humanizing red tape he must navigate to insure his stepfather remains in the United States. When we proceed without acknowledge the actual implications of citizenship in students’ lives, we further divorce “official” school knowledge from generative knowledge that might actually serve students. In some cases, schools actively ignore topics relevant to diversity within a burgeoning democracy, such as when Alexander’s principal chastised me for teaching about South Asia. In addition to the notion of a hidden curriculum, we can turn to the work of Foucault (1977) to highlight some themes that emerged in my dialogue with John. Foucault does not view “knowledge” and “power” as separate concepts; rather, he refers to “power-knowledge” in his writings. We might keep this in mind as we consider “disciplinary knowledge.” I shared with John my frustrations as a graduate student in history—that I felt “pinned in” to particular ways of thinking. The “discipline” of history has a particular epistemological framework—meaning, that traditional conceptions of the discipline dictate a particular theory regarding from where knowledge comes. While historians acknowledge theory, many feel their research, first and foremost, must be grounded in historical facts. Patterns may emerge from such facts, but such historians warn against predisposing research with firm theories in mind. Other disciplines have epistemological frameworks and 129

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“ways of knowing” as well. “Mathematical thinking” implies that one proceed with a particular set of algorithms and theories in mind. I am caught between a desire to encourage “rigorous,” disciplinary thinking and the notion that such thinking is actually constraining. Given that knowledge and power are inseparable, we must proceed cautiously when we find ourselves trapped in particular, discipline-oriented ways of thinking. The problems of the world require flexibility. Indeed, “the world does not issue problems in neat disciplinary packages” (Greenwood & Levin, 2008, p. 70). We would do well to remember this when caught up in debates about “content.” In this regard, we also consider Foucauldian notions of “examination.” The theorist argues that modernity has ushered in systems of power that make “examination” common place. Such forms of examination, instantiated in schools quite concretely through tests and grades, combine hierarchical observation and normative evaluation. Like disciplinarity, we must understand that examination is a form of power that does little to liberate students’ thinking and actions. Even a “good” test, like the Advanced Placement World History examination, involves hierarchical observation and normative evaluation. Indeed, the test makers argue strongly for a new disciplinary form of thinking that appropriately acknowledges the broader processes that have driven world history. While we might applaud innovations in the AP World History framework, Foucauldian thought cautions us to understand the inherent systems of power involved in driving learning through examination. Even if we agree on the role of disciplinarity in schools, we must address larger issues of purpose and relevance. We often address the “what” of history, but rarely do we address the “why” of studying it. We offer lame reasons to students, such as the oversimplified idea that “history repeats itself.” If not everything we do positions students to navigate our world successfully—including the study of history—then we need to consider strongly our goals for “content” and “subject areas.” We might get trapped by notions of “cultural literacy” (Hirsch, 1987). Hirsch’s argument is that students need mastery of a “core” set of knowledge and concepts, as such mastery allows them to succeed in a world where access to power assumes cultural literacy. However, when we proceed with the notion that students must “master” a set of “core” knowledge, we find ourselves back within the same power-knowledge paradigm against which Foucauldian thought cautions us. Furthermore, this framing of “cultural literacy” is largely about, once again, the “what” of education rather than the “why.” In the midst of such pedagogical concerns, my dialogue with John supports the reality that teachers and students are human beings with human urges. We act as if students and teachers should come to school, their minds prepared for learning and engagement. We rarely address the reality that we are bodied people with emotions, urges, and desires. In recalling the incident when I ran after the homophobic student, my students caught a rarely glimpse at my humanity. Certainly my actions were problematic and undoubtedly melodramatic and ineffective; but why are we so scared of such visceral emotions in the classroom? We do everything possible to reinforce Western notions that the mind and the body are separate ideas. But this simply does not make sense, and proceeding as such creates highly dehumanizing spaces for learning. 130

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As John reminds us, we are scared to address ourselves and our students as sexual beings, though we are undoubtedly sexual. When we fail to proceed with sex- positive and gender-positive teaching, we should not act surprised when promiscuity, sexual transmitted diseases, eating disorders, homophobia, and oppressive constructions of gender are mainstays of student life. When we force students to remain in seats—motionless and silent—we not only teach them about power and authority; we also deny their humanity. Perhaps we might envision an education that acknowledges our minds and our bodies. Of course, this is a highly political argument. But let us remember that all schooling—that is, all teaching and all learning—is fundamentally political. As stated before, we cannot act as if schools are not an agent of political socialization. Attention to the “hidden curriculum” reveals that schools often disempower students’ sense of political efficacy. Consequently, rather than attempt to remove the political from education, let us embrace the fact that education and politics are inseparable. Let us tap into that political power by transforming schools into sites that reinforce, rather than dismantle, ideas and learning that support diverse thought and democracy. If nothing else, my dialogue with John elucidates the need to speak with students about improving education. We usually turn to anyone else but them: professors, experienced teachers, experienced administrators, politicians, policy analysts, and other “experts.” John offers critical insight for educators. No doubt other students could offer insight as well. We should listen to them. REFERENCES Almond, G., & Verba, S. (1963). The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (G. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Diamond, R. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Ehman, L. (1980). The American school in the political socialization process. Review of Educational Research, Spring, 50(1), 99–119. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books. Greenwood, D., & Levin, M. (2008). Reform of the social sciences and of universities through action research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research (pp. 57–86). Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Hess, R., & Torney, J. (1967). The development of political attitudes in children. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Hinchey, P. (1998). Finding freedom in the classroom: A practical introduction to critical theory. New York: Peter Lang. Hirsch, E. D. (1988). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. New York: Random House. Klassen, C. (1992). The latent initiation: Sources of unintentional political socialization in the schools. Politics and the Individual, 2(2), 41–64. Liss, N. (2005). The spiritual risk of education. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Houston. Palonsky, S. (1987). Political socialization in elementary status and the social construction of violence. Sociological Review, 47(2), 308–332.

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Douglas Edwards Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Houston

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10. THE MORAL CRISIS IN SPECIAL EDUCATION Redefining the Social Model of Disability

INTRODUCTION

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, we have not been able to solve the riddles and contradictions of educating the disabled. As Joe Valentine (2007) argues, those involved in educating the disabled, myself included, often found ourselves in a constant state of “professional schizophrenia” (p. 127). While I am committed to educate and work with disabled students, I am not oblivious of the contradictions, dilemmas, and frictions facing the profession. Today, over 5 million students are enrolled into some kind of federally supported program for the disabled in the primary and secondary schools. In the light of this statistic, we are confronted with two main dilemmas in special education (SPED hereafter). The first involves the inclusion movement, which has gained overwhelming support in the last couple of decades. The key concept here is to educate the disabled student as much as possible within the general population— the least restrictive environment. The second dilemma is the overrepresentation of minority students in SPED. It has become clear that racial, linguistic, ethnic, and socio-economic issues are positioned at the front-and-center of the disability and education discourse. But it has been actually very disturbing, if not out right appalling, the reaction, or better said lack of reaction, from those involved in disability education: from the hallways of the ivory towers to the trenches of American public schools. Education Under Attack It is very unlikely that the current moral crisis and spiritual turmoil of American education would miss SPED and the education of the disabled. It would also be very improbable that the mountainous attacks from a disgruntled public, in the form of angry parents, ruthless journalists, homeschooling and free-market advocates, magnet school proponents, private school vouchers supporters, and religious groups, to name a few, do not affect the field providing services to children in special needs. It would be hard to believe that those involved in educating the disabled could remain immune to the current craze promoting standardized testing, curriculum assessment, multicultural studies, inclusion, portfolio requirements, ecological classrooms, Afro-centric and Latino-centric curricula, and an infinite sea of other concerns bombarding the rest of the profession. C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 133–145. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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The sad reality is that the field of SPED has not escaped these attacks. On the contrary, the disability field is the battlefield for inclusionists, tracking advocates and dissenters, social model proponents, medical model defenders, and radical visionaries as a modern version of a colonial war map. Parents have amassed a legion of legal protectors and advocates. Teacher are inundated by the demand to legally implement individual educational plans (IEP), modified curriculum, documentations, ARD (admission, dismissal, and review) committees’ demands, and the list goes on. Our Confusion Adding to this, it is the irony that these political, ideological, and interest groups, regardless of their specific interests, share some common concepts, beliefs, and assumptions about the purpose of American education. They might disagree about how to go about transmitting certain bodies of knowledge; however, the American public continues to hold public schools accountable for transmitting a certain body of knowledge and sets of cultural values to the students. The American public continues to believe that the state is responsible for molding our children into useful and productive members of our modern society. In that regard, there is very little quarrelling about the purpose of our schools. Furthermore, it is an accepted idea that the economy is a central institution of this nation; consequently, making the primary goal of education to equip students with the tools they need to succeed in the ‘real world’. As David Purpel (Purpel & McLaurin, 2004) argues, it is expected that school is the place where students learn how to read and write, do math, succeed in sports, be poets and artists, learn to cook and sew, and be dreamers and realistic achievers. We expect our schools to help our students decipher for themselves their deepest questions regarding sex, health, rituals, friendship, love, hate, and rivalries. We want our schools to be safe and decent places where we can send our children. Schools are the places where students are supposed to be ranked, evaluated, tested, and tracked. At the basics, these different interest groups might disagree in how to disseminate this body of knowledge and cultural values to our students, but there is no disagreement that education must accomplish these basic tenets. At the end of the day, this is what we believe that schools are for. It is clear that we cannot expect our schools to satisfy these demands with an equal amount of degree and intensity. This plethora of expectations and demands speaks volumes about our confusion regarding our views of education and the wider moral, social, and political puzzle in which we find ourselves entrenched when it comes to education. At the core, the current moral educational dialogue continues to reduce our concerns to questions regarding economic competition, sex education, book censorship, classroom prayer, and standardized testing, naming just a few. However, and at the end of the day, parents are left with the complex and arduous task of figuring out for themselves how to best educate their children in this particular time. They are left adrift to decipher how to be integrated in the debate of what constitutes 134

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a sound educational policy for their children. Unfortunately, the profession has failed to provide the public-at-large with the proper tools to participate in this titanic, paradoxical, and difficult dialogue. The Lack of a Dialogue It has become clear that an intense and deep dialogue on the meaning of education has not been conducted widely, at least not by the public-at-large. The profession has been very successful in detaching the most serious concerns for education from the discourse of our most solemn and profound matters. What is the meaning of life and death? How do we relate as a family, nation, and people? What constitutes a fair and just society? The irony is that it has become widely accepted that these are reflective questions, requiring a deep and intellectual knowledge, or an educated mind. Sadly, the reality is that society has become fragmented and detached from this argument, deciding that this discourse is reserved for particular institutions and individuals who are vaguely linked with the rest of society at best. As a result, we are left to wonder as to why the general public has not become engaged in this educational discourse. In other words, why academics, leaders, and politicians have not encouraged a serious analysis of the purpose of education in society? A clue to this can possibly be found in the public’s ambivalence toward education. The Dismal State of Education Given what we just said about society’s expectations for public schools, it is rather ironic how little resources our society tends to allocate for public schools in this nation. With very few exceptions, working conditions for secondary and primary educators continue to be appalling. Salaries for teachers continue to be at the lowest in the professional scale. Opportunities for professional advancement and intellectual growth are limited, and resources continue to be scarce and of very poor quality. It is rather ironic that society has accepted that this nation can spend billions of dollars on a military industrial machine, which provides marginal and downright dangerous results, but has accepted the notion that resources for education would be limited and slim. American faith in education has not matched the need to allocate vital amounts of assets and resources into the public education system. Again as Purpel (Purpel & McLaurin, 2004) argues, a central question regarding the lack of a profound discourse in education can be found in society’s willingness to accept awful low standards of education. We might have jumped into the wagon of standardized testing, demanding better results and higher productivity. Nevertheless, this is not the measure of standards that I want to mention. Somewhere along the line, we accepted the fact that elementary and secondary students will attend classes for six to seven hours a day. We also accepted the notion that teachers will teach between twenty to thirty hours of instruction per week. This is contrary to full-time college professors who only teach around nine hours per week and college students who only attend around twelve hours of 135

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instruction per week on the average, making college education a healthier learning environment. As usual, it is not clear how this reality came to be. Perhaps, it is our lack of awareness and acceptance with a combination of self-deception and disbelief, which can be aligned with our deep social distrust of public education as a national institution. However, one uncomfortable reality can be found in our suspicion for an intellectual process, resulting is our personal restraint regarding a profound educational discourse. It is nothing new that America has a history of ‘anti-intellectualism.’ Society’s apparent support for public schools is not the same as our support for education, or at least education as a hermeneutical process. One of the biggest social confusion lies in our apparent reverence for public education on one hand and our suspicion, if not a downright disparagement of those we label ‘intellectuals.’ Our tradition has always been to revere the mechanical and technical process. We are proud of our scientific achievements, and we place a significant amount of currency on the pragmatic, new, and useful. This is not to say that the technical, scientific, and pragmatic do not have a place in society. However, our lure for the pragmatic and applied is at the dismissal of more significant and profound questions regarding our lives, avoiding a rich and textured educational experience in addressing the urgent themes of our times. The Urgency of Our Times It is has become rather puzzling that the public school teachers, for the most part, have been regarded as a mere technical experts or a glorified clerks. It is incredible that most of the work done by educators and professionals in the field has been undertaken with little regard for cultural context. It is actually astonishing to see how when academics address social and cultural needs of education, the argument is reduced to the immediate present, vocationally and economically. In the first decade of the 21st century, we face the reality of economic and political revolution in third-world countries, widespread and massive famine, nuclear proliferation, the rapid depletion of vital natural resources, irreversible climate changes, and economic stagnation combined with an uncertain job market or at the very least with a serious lack of job security. Nevertheless, we are also finding ourselves in the midst of exciting fundamental debates and in the breakthrough of new paradigms in various academic professional fields. Yet, in the context of enormous problems and the promise of a fervent intellectual renaissance, what constitutes the focus of SPED? Apparently, like in the mainstream, such issues as closer evaluation and direction for teachers and students (e.g. merit pay, mainstreaming, placement and tracking, standardization, etc) are in the forefront. This incredible chasm between the profound challenges of our times and society’s trivial response is the basis on which to frame two very important questions regarding disability and schooling: (1) How can we continue to explain the trivial discourse of SPED and disability in our society? (2) What would constitute a point of departure for a serious conversation regarding the disabled, education, and society? 136

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SPECIAL EDUCATION IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

For decades, the discourse of disability studies has been dominated by the medical and social model (Gabel & Peters, 2004; Paul, French, & Cramston-Gingras, 2001; Tregaskis, 2002). In the medical model, disability is often viewed as something inherently wrong within the individual and, therefore, something within the individual needs to be corrected. In the social model, disability is a social problem that defines the individual incapable. As a result, the barriers and limitations are socially constructed. Both arguments have certain legitimacy within the discourse of SPED. However, it has become clear that the fields of disability and SPED have avoided deeper and more profound moral questions. I do not disagree that the disabled community has experienced discrimination, oppression, and dehumanization. However, it is rather appalling to me that deeper moral questions regarding society and education have not affected the field of SPED. How do our confusion and expectations of what education should be play themselves in the SPED field? What are our expectations, as a society, for SPED? From whom and for what has the field of SPED come under attack? Perhaps trying to figure out what would constitute a more dignified and proper educational experience for the disabled is what we ought to be seeking and discussing. The implementation of PL 94-142 and IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) is largely credited to the disability rights movement, which also has its origins in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s (Hehir, 2005). However, as Purpel (1989) states, what we saw in the civil rights movement of the 1960s were only ameliorating changes within the established rigid framework. What we did not see in those movements was a serious challenge to the fundamental goals and cultural values of curriculum and education. Therefore, I argue that what we saw in the craze for inclusion of the disabled were not fundamental cultural challenges to the system, but the complacency of working within the system and the placement of disabled students in the same denigrating, standardized, and watereddown classroom that the rest of the population was being placed. What we never saw was the conceptualization of what would truly constitute a quality and meaningful education for millions of disabled. In this new millennium, we are now experiencing the decline in the government’s concern for human welfare. We are also witnessing massive layoffs, continuing and extended unemployment, serious international competition, a state of social timidity regarding serious social challenges, and the erosion of labor unions. As more fervent calls are made to include the disabled student in the regular classroom, and some in the field profess to the benefits of including disabled students in the standardized testing programs (Hehir, 2005), it is rather abysmal that deeper questions regarding how the social issues mentioned above will affect the disabled. Is it just enough to make them part of the standardized curriculum? Or, should deeper moral questions regarding the current state of social affairs in relation to the disabled also be part of the overall educational discourse? 137

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Social Oppression Abberley (1987) criticizes the social model for not being specific in the concept of oppression. According to him, the concept of oppression has been used as an “obvious” outcome in the treatment of the disabled, but it has been “difficult to substantiate” (Abberley, 1987, p. 6). He proposed the need to define what oppression means for the disabled. He argues that oppression for the disabled is not the same as oppression based on gender or sex. For Abberley (1987), assimilating all groups into the same category of oppression is not feasible. He argues that somebody “benefits” from racial and sexual oppression (Abberley, 1987, p. 16). Is Abberley suggesting that nobody benefits from oppressing of the disabled? For Abberley, there are substantial differences when it comes to defining oppression of the disabled and other kinds of oppression. Sexual and racial oppression are categorized under “biological” differences (Abberley, 1987, p. 8). Social disadvantages are explained in terms of biological superiority and inferiority. For the disabled, on the other hand, the argument of the social model of oppression is construed by the social concept of impairment. As Abberley points out, the question of inferiority for the disabled arises from the social notion of the “issue of impairment” (Abberley, 1987, p. 8). His argument is that a biological definition of impairment leaves us with the notion that something is wrong with disability, which is something that needs to be corrected in the disabled. Abberley proposes a different definition for the oppression of the disabled. He argues that impairment is part of an authentic “life form” (Abberley, 1987, p. 9). Disability cannot be erased or corrected, which is what the medical model proposes (Baglieri & Knopf, 2004). What Abberley proposes is that oppression for the disabled must be constructed within a social theory. His suggestion is to start understanding the economical, political, and cultural aspect of oppression for the disabled. This is crucial for the “political development” of the disabled (Abberley, 1987, p. 8). In this context, the impairment is not something to be corrected. Rather, people would learn to live with the disability. For example, deaf people would not use hearing devices to correct their hearing loss, but would learn other methods such as sign language that would allow them to accept their conditions of deafness. This picture can render the possibility of someone being disabled and be competent within its framework of life. Abberley argues that the notion of someone being oppressed is somebody who for the most part lives in poor housing, work in low paying jobs, and disadvantaged socially and economically (see Abberley, 1987, p. 13). This can be a point of utter disagreement for the disabled people, like myself, who are professionally successful and competent. Abberley’s proposition is significant. However, questions regarding the true concept of oppression for the disabled continue to puzzle me. As a disabled individual, it is obvious that I am very successful. After all, I am a professional working with a doctoral degree, and I learned to live with my disability, to a larger extent. How can we continue to explain the persistent oppression of women and minorities, when the concept of biology is no longer viable? Is the notion of disability as an inferiority to be corrected also biologically constructed? Is not the belief that a 138

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non-impaired person is superior to an impaired person also a biological construction? In the end, Abberley’s argument is an attractive rationale to understand the social barriers of the disabled. However, it raises many questions, and creates an obstacle for reaching a consciousness for the disabled. Nevertheless, the area of oppression is not the only arena where disability is debated. In recent years, the idea of what constitutes citizenship, justice, morality, and liberation for the disabled has been hotly contested. Pedagogy of Silence In light of all the complications and dilemmas confronting the field of SPED and disability studies, the one thing that I would hope we could agree on is in the urgent need of a moral and spiritual dialogue. But such is not the case. Over the last two decades, there has been actually a deafening silence when it comes to social, political, and cultural issues in disability studies. On the contrary, empirical research shows that only 3 percent of the SPED literature examines issues of race and ethnicity (Artiles, Trent, & Kuan, 1997). It has become obvious that a culture of silence has dominated the field. Even though I look with enthusiasm the new wave of social literature in SPED (Danforth & Gabel, 2006; Erevelles, 2005; Gabel & Peters, 2004; Reiser, 2006) fostering a consciousness for social justice for the disabled, I still puzzled as to what it is that we are striving for in the education of special need students. I find it very problematic that only recently disability scholars are starting to question the hegemonic power arrangements of standardization in SPED (Erevelles, 2006; Rice, 2006), when these are questions that have been proposed for quite some time in the rest of the educational field (Aoki, 1989/1990; Apple, 1993; Chomsky & Macedo, 2000; Counts, 1932; Dewey, 1916/1944; Freire, 1970; Kozol, 1992; McLaren, 1980). I do not deny that there are many academics, teachers, advocates, and facilitators out there wondering how to best educate the disabled. However, I do not see a moral debate of SPED at any great length. Like in the rest of public education, I have witnessed failed attempts to reform the program without success. At the heart of the problem, what I see happening is not a cultural and social redefinition of the profession (Purpel, 1989), nor I see that SPED has changed much from the days that I was receiving the services as a student. If anything, the latest waves of reforms in SPED only put more legal pressure and demands on teachers and the system. This leaves me with two thoughts: first, I still wonder why we have become silent about a moral debate in SPED. Second, I am still puzzled as to why we are accepting so low standards of education, which also includes SPED. At some point, it has become acceptable to implement a rigid bell-to-bell schedule, classrooms where discipline is enforced and where attention to the teacher is demanded, along with a plethora of rules, which ranges from permission to use the restrooms to assigned seats during lunch. For years, scholars have discussed the rigid implementation of the disciplinary state of education (McLaren, 2003; Shapiro, 1998; Urban & Wagoner, 2000; Zinn, 2003). Again, I find it troublesome 139

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that only now scholars in disability studies are daring to discuss the unbendable disciplinary nature of public schools in relation to SPED (Erevelles, 2006; Rice, 2006). At the core, this staggering silence from the disability field can be found in the confusion of what we really want the field achieve. An example of that can be found in our confusion to define what citizenship means for the disabled. Disability and Citizenship A clear and concise pedagogy of consciousness for the disabled must entail the need to have full citizenship. This means the creation of a society that develops the social goal of creating members of society working for a common good, while attaining their own individualism (Erevelles, 2002). Nevertheless, even within the disability studies community, people appear to be at odds about what constitutes citizenship for the disabled. What constitutes citizenship for the disabled? This is, at least, a very important question for me. I was hired to teach social studies. My first teaching assignment was to teach resource history and government. This meant that the students taking that class were “off-track”, which meant they were not going to take the state mandated test. Following the state curriculum was not a big issue. Instead, I was told that what really matters for these students was to become good citizens. As far as the administration was concerned, I was to teach them the fundamental mechanisms of the government, the need to vote, and the possibility of joining the military. One administrator told me, “These are students who are not going to colleg. They need another viable alternative after graduation.” In theory and practice, the offer sound exciting. However, I started to have questions. What was the school’s view of citizenship? Why was citizenship for these students reduced to voting, the government, and the military? Why was this the school’s vision of making them good citizens? Was the vision of participating citizenship (e.g. the ability of social, political, and economical consciousness) not part of these students’ lives? An answer to these questions can be found in the disability community’s inability to define citizenship. The neo-liberal practices of the last three decades have resurrected and fueled the debate of citizenship for the disabled. The discourse of citizenship focuses mainly on three areas. First, it involves the relationship between the “state and the individual” (Gilbert, Cochrane, & Greenwell, 2005, p. 287). Second, it evolves around the theme of “inclusion” and “exclusion,” and finally, the discourse centers around “social status” and the benefits that entitle it (see Gilbert, Cochrane, & Greenwell, 2005, p. 287). However, Gilbert and Associates find the concept of citizenship problematic for disability studies. They argue that citizenship can offer different connotations depending on the circumstances. For example, citizenship evolves around the binary of inclusion and exclusion, the concept of inequality, and the result of marginal status (see Gilbert, Cochrane, & Greenwell, 2005, p. 287). Furthermore, citizenship also encompasses welfare, material availability, and active participation. Adding to this confusion, one may began to wonder what all of this entails for disability studies. What is active 140

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citizenship for the disabled? What do we mean by welfare in civic terms? What is marginalization? Who is more marginalized? Is the exclusion of women or blacks different from that of disabled people? An interesting argument worth of examining is that of Erevelles (2002), who criticizes liberal theorists of social justice for not formulating a concise concept of citizenship for the disabled. She accuses the radical theorists of not including any “sustained discussion of cognitive/severe disability in their contemporary theoretical work on citizenship” (Erevelles, 2002, p. 8). She further argues that these theorists (e.g. Rawls, 1971) have actually deployed concepts of disability that regard it acceptable to perceive people with cognitive/severe disabilities as non-citizens. For Erevelles, the tenet of the social theory of citizenship stems from the notion that the individual must be a competent and rational self. As an example, she describes Rawls position, who defines a citizen as “a fully cooperating member of society…. [with] the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice” (quoted in Erevelles, 2002, p. 8). Therefore, it is permissible for liberal social theorists to consider the severely mentally disabled outside the concept of participating citizenship. For Erevelles (2005), this is the weakness of the liberal concept of citizenship. Erevelles (2002) offers a new paradigm in the concept of citizenship for disabled. In her context and definition, “binaries like male/female, non-disabled/ disabled, straight/queer are not boundary conditions but fluid concepts that tend to blur the defining limits of citizenship” (Erevelles, 2002, p. 8). Her desire is to move away from social contract theories, which use ethical principles to achieve the ‘common good’; rather, she borrows Mouffe’s (1996) concept of producing political identities. This concept avoids defining binaries of oppression amongst marginalized and privileged groups. Instead, Mouffe suggests “modifying their identity so as to bring about a new political identity” (quoted in Erevelles, 2002, p. 15; Mouuffe, 1996, p. 24). For Erevelles, the need is to move beyond the humanistic limitations of citizenship, which for her continues to linger within the binary of the normal/abnormal. She offers a “transgressive” form of citizens. She borrows from Butler (1993) and Haraway (1990) the removal of social constraints of citizenship, which continues to accept the norms of the ‘normal body.’ Instead, her proposal is to move beyond the skin and the physical limitations of autonomy and self. This would mean accepting the notion that through viable alternatives, such as technology, caregivers, and mechanical devices of communications, the disabled would gain the right to full citizenship and social participation (Erevelles, 2002). Within this argument, even people with severe cognitive disabilities would have a voice. I will not argue with Erevelles’s criticism of radical theories of social citizenry, nor I will embrace her notion of a new political identity. Neither, will I endorse or criticize her position. Despite agreeing with her view that Rawls’s (1971) theory of justice is problematic because it excludes those unable to display functional autonomy to act upon society, I contend that Erevelles is symptomatic of the field of disability studies and the social model. It has become a field unable to reach an agreement of what would encompass citizenship for the disabled. Social model 141

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proponents agree in the basic assumption that disabled people are victims of oppression and are keen to assert the notion that they are part of a different category from those suffering oppression in the basis of race, gender, or culture. For those trying to reach a level of conscientization for the disabled, this can be problematic. Can a successful disabled person experience discrimination? Does a disabled black or Latino confront discrimination in one area and not in another? How do we define participatory citizenship for an autistic or severely retarded person? These are questions that, despite Erevelles’ best intentions, continue to be unanswered. Going back to my social studies class, I decided that on Fridays we would have round tables where we would discuss issues. The students were reluctant at first, but they became engaged as time went on. They started to express their feelings about things such as the presidential race, sweatshops, and the military. Although I disagreed at times with them, I realized that these were people with something to say, and they have points of view to express. Even more importantly, these students showed me that they were capable of engaging in elaborate arguments and debates, which contradicted the view held by some teachers and administrators of the SPED department (Hehir, 2005). CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I attempted to foster the much-needed moral debate in SPED and disability studies. Through several lenses, I wanted to explore the human side of a pedagogy for the disabled. In my personal experience, the teachers that I remember and I cared were the teachers who knew me as a person beyond my physical impairments. First, I explored the state of the moral crisis of education today. Second, it was important for me to explore the obstacles and the people who are not advocating for a liberatory pedagogy. It was not my intention to criticize them; rather, I wanted to explain why we are still debating issues that impede us from reaching a liberating pedagogy for the disabled. I am convinced that we need to start moving beyond the argumentative obstacles that, in many instances, the disabled community itself is making. It is time to move towards an area of creativity and towards an argument of possibility. During the summer of 2006, I took a course in holistic education and urban issues. Rather than defining and analyzing the pejoratives of urban education, I took it as a dialectical process of contextualizing my practice as a teacher and researcher (Craig, 2000, 2006). The experience, for me, meant to start engaging myself into a deep inquiry regarding education. I cannot forget the argument made by one of our classmates, who asserted that the disenfranchised are always at the bottom, regardless of the reforms that are made in education. Ho (2004) reminds us that, despite the legislation in place, the discrimination and displacement of the disabled student continues to be a common practice. The social model of disabilities studies has provided us with the tool to conceptualize the social nature of impairment and disability. However, serious inquiry into the nature of SPED in terms of empowerment continues to be absent. Moreover, 142

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while some disability scholars have condemned critical theorists and the social model, we continue to lack an emancipatory pedagogy for the disabled. Instead, these scholars provide a limiting and restrictive vision for the future of the disabled. While criticizing critical pedagogues for not including the disabled in their discourse, Gabel (2002) justifies her decision to not provide a non-restrictive environment for her daughter. Rather than devising avenues for providing a voice to the disabled, scholars such as Gabel, continue to argue about the metaphoric construction of the term voice. My claim is that we need to move beyond that modality and proceed into the realm of what makes a liberating process for the disabled a reality. My other claim is that SPED might look different once we start constructing and providing the spaces where the disabled student can start having a voice. Perhaps, it is more important that such voices are taken into account within the contextual experience of the disabled. To put it bluntly, I do not believe that SPED and disability studies have reached that point. The disabled student continues to be a voiceless individual. My goal has been to put the context of SPED and the disabled within a liberatory process. I conclude that the current educational system is designed to place the disabled into the most restrictive environment. My own experience is a testimony of an education of possibility in my early years and a pedagogy of restriction in my secondary education. Although I agree with Gabel (2002) that any pedagogy must be concerned with the safety of the students, I have to conclude that such concern for safety must not hinder the pedagogical experience of the disabled. My argument is that SPED must be daring and bold enough to allow these students the freedom to explore their world. If we are to accept the notion that pedagogy is a human continuum, we must accept the radical proposition that education involves humans between the end-points of teachers and students. Proposing a liberatory pedagogy for the disabled causes me both excitement and fear. I am excited that there might be a way for us to intellectually forge the pedagogical possibilities for the disabled. I am excited that we can learn from countless examples where the disabled was allowed to fully experience their capacities, which allows us to envision a better future for millions of disabled. I would not be sitting in a café writing a chapter for a book if I did not have the teachers and the people in my life who told me I could, instead of I could not. In contrast, I am fearful that the possibilities of liberation for the disabled might not yield the desired vision. Rather, I am afraid that my argument would unleash a series of arguments from those who are skeptical about the possibilities of a liberatory pedagogy for the disabled, entrenching ourselves in an endless debate without allowing us to reach a viable consensus. In conclusion, I do believe that critical pedagogy has the best promise for the emancipation of the disabled. I am confident that scholars are wise and educated enough to realize that critical pedagogues talk about oppression in the broadest of context. The omission of certain groups does not translate into a deficiency of the theory (Erevelles, 2002). Rather, I have faith that the example of liberation for one group (e.g. Freire’s Brazilian peasants) can empower others to follow these 143

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examples. It must also be remembered that the disabled has not been oppressed exclusively due to his or her impairment, but also in his or her racial, economical, and social entity (Ferri & Connor, 2005). Pedagogical scholars, across the board, need to address the fact that, at times, disability is only one component of oppression and dehumanization in the life of an impaired person. The crucial questions here are whether a liberatory pedagogy for the disabled works, whether we can envision scenarios of liberation for the disabled, and whether a disability dictates to what extent that liberation is possible. This brings to me a personal challenge. Until I was six, I used braces and a cane to walk. A daring teacher of mine challenged me to climb a tree. This was the last time I used a cane or braces to walk. I wonder what would have happened if, instead of climbing the tree, I would have abstained from doing it. As in critical pedagogy, pedagogy of the disabled is about taking risks (Freire, 1970/2000). I took a risk that day. In the end, I want to believe that more than physical crutches or a cane, that day I left behind the metaphoric crutches that would have hindered my life. REFERENCES Abberley, P. (1987). The concept of oppression and the development of a social theory of disability. Disability, Handicap & Society, 2(1), 5–19. Aoki, T. (1989/1990). Beyond the half-life of curriculum and pedagogy. One World, 27(2), 3–10. Apple, M. W. (1993). Official knowledge. New York: Routledge. Artiles, A., Trent, S. C., & Kuan, L.-A. (1997). Learning disabilities empirical research on ethnic minority students: An analysis of 22 years of studies published in selected referred journals. Learning Disabilities Reasearch and Practice, 12, (82–91). Baglieri, S., & Knopf, J. (2004). Normalizing differences in inclusive teaching. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37(6), 525–529. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. New York: Routledge. Chomsky, N., & Macedo, D. (2000). Chomsky on miseducation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Counts, G. (1932). Dare the school build a new social order? New York: Day. Craig, C. J. (2000). Stories of school/teacher stories: A two-part invention on the walls theme. Curriculum Inquiry, 30(1), 11–41. Craig, C. J. (2006). Why is dissemination so difficult? The nature of teachers knowledge and the spread of curriculum reform. American Educational Research Journal, 43(2), 257–293. Danforth, S., & Gabel, S. L. (Eds.), (2006). Vital questions facing disability studies in education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Dewey, J. (1916/1944). Democracy and education: An introduction to philosophy of education. New York: Free Press (Original work published in 1916). Erevelles, N. (2002). (Im)material citizens: Cognitive disability, race and the politics of citizenship. Disability, Culture and Education, 1(1), 5–25. Erevelles, N. (2005). Understanding curriculum as a normalized text: Disability studies meet curriculum theory. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(4), 421–439. Erevelles, N. (2006). Deconstructing difference: Doing disability studies in multicultural educational context. In S. Danforth, & S. L. Gabel (Eds.), Vital questions facing disability studies in education (pp. 363–378). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Ferri, B., & Connor, D. (2005). Tools of exclusion: Race, disability and (re)segregated education. Teachers College Record, 107(3), 453–474. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Freire, P. (1970/2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum (original work published in 1970). 144

MORAL CRISIS IN SPECIAL EDUCATION Gabel, S., & Peters, S. (2004). Presage of paradigm shift? Beyond the social model of disability toward resistance theories of disability. Disability & Society, 19(6), 585–600. Gilbert, T., Cochrane, A., & Greenwell, S. (2005). Citizenship: Locating people with learning disabilities. International Journal of Social Welfare, 14(4), 287–296. Haraway, D. (1990). A manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, technology, and social feminism in the 1980’s. In L. Nicholson (Ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism (pp. 190–233). New York: Routledge. Hehir, T. (2005). New directions in special education: Eliminating ableism in policy and practice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press. Kozol, J. (1992). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New York: Harper Perennial. McLaren, P. (1980). Cries from the corridor. Toronto; New York: Methuen. McLaren, P. (2003). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Mouffe, C. (1996). Radical democracy or liberal democracy. In D. Trend (Ed.), Radical Democracy (pp. 19–26). New York: Routledge. Paul, J., French, P., & Cramston-Gingras, A. (2001). Ethics and Special Education. Focus on Special Education, 34(1), 1–16. Purpel, D. E. (1989). The moral & spiritual crisis in education: A curriculum for justice and compassion in education. Granby, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey Publishers. Purpel, D. E., & McLaurin, W. M. (2004). Reflections on the moral and spiritual crisis in education. New York: Peter Lang. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Reiser, R. (2006). Disability equality: Confronting the oppression of the past. In M. Cole (Ed.), Education, equality and human rights: Issues of gender, ‘race’, sexuality, disability, and social class (pp. 134–179). London/New York: Routledge. Rice, N. (2006). Teacher education as a site of resistance. In S. Danforth, & S. L. Gabel (Eds.), Vital questions facing disability studies in education (pp. 17–32). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Shapiro, H. S. (1998). Clinton and education: Policies without meaning. In H. S. Shapiro & D. E. Purpel (Eds.), Critical issues in American education: Transformation in a postmodern world (pp. 45–55). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Tregaskis, C. (2002). Social model theory: The story so far.... Disability & Society, 17(4), 457–470. Urban, W. J., & Wagoner, J. L. (2000). American education: A history (2nd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Valentine, J. (2007). How can we transgress in the field of disabilities in urban education? In S. R. Steinberg, & J. L. Kincheloe (Eds.), 19 urban questions: Teaching in the city (pp. 127–142). New York: Peter Lang. Zinn, H. (2003). A people’s history of the United States: 1492-present. New York: Harper-Collins.

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11. RECOGNIZING AND (RE)COGNIZING AGEISM IN EC–12 US SOCIAL EDUCATION

INTRODUCTION

This chapter examines the internal conflict between teaching US democracy and ageism within the sliding continuum of living, learning, and experiencing democracy. It also explores the limits of schooling in creating a responsive citizenry and possible examples of how social educators can overcome ageism within schooling models, to move more closely toward democratic classrooms. Sliding continuums, located at the start of each section, augment the traditional section headers to represent the journey toward having less ageism in schools. As social educators, many things may be outside of our control in relation to teaching in a democratic system, but we can choose on each continuum where students will experience democracy within our classrooms. To help establish some linguistic common ground, I located a few recognized definitions regarding ageism from the 2010 Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary1: Recognize: (transitive verb; date: circa 1532); 1: to acknowledge formally; a: to admit as being lord or sovereign; b: to admit as being of a particular status; c: to admit as being one entitled to be heard: give the floor to; d :to acknowledge the de facto existence or the independence of; 2: to acknowledge or take notice of in some definite way; a: to acknowledge with a show of appreciation; b: to acknowledge acquaintance with 3a: to perceive to be something or someone previously known b: to perceive clearly : realize. (Re)Cognize: (transitive verb; etymology/date: back-formation from cognizance circa 1837); to know, to understand; the recurring practice of cognizance. Cognizance: 1a: knowledge, awareness; b: notice, acknowledgment; 2: jurisdiction, responsibility. Ageism: (noun, date: 1969); prejudice or discrimination against a particular age-group and especially the elderly. Conceptually, social educators must recognize or “take notice of in some definite way” of ageism before we can (re)cognize or engaging in the “recurring practice of cognizance”—meaning we, as social educators, take “jurisdiction” and responsibility” for ageism. Unfortunately, the timeline underlying such conceptions developed in a different order than the logic I am suggesting. Ageism did not come into being as a recognized word until 1969. I crafted the word (re)cognize in order to use it in this C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 147–161. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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chapter. It had to be built now, in 2010, from two existing and interrelated words attached to the reflective tool and prefix “re”. Lyotard (1987) explains how the prefix works on the attached verb in two ways: ‘Re-’ implies a going back to the very be- ginning, a beginning supposedly free from prejudices, assuming that pre-judices are nothing but the results of the process of piling up and storing sets of already uttered judgments taken for granted without re- consideration…. A second connotation of the prefix ‘Re-’ can be made clear: if it is connected first and foremost with writing, it does not mean going back to the origin at all, but rather a “working through,” as Freud would say, a Durcharbeitung, a work of thinking the meanings or events that are hid- den not only in prejudices but also in projects, programs, prospects and the like, that are concealed even in the propositions or purposes (p. 4). On the other hand, the word “recognize” was first recorded and defined as a transitive verb circa 1532. But what good does recognizing do without the accompanied actions of re-thinking and re-calibrating if we recognize something to be other than it should be? Further, how can school–aged students even apply to the late 20th century word “ageism” when it includes ageism as inherent in its defining? This chapter steps into the word of (re)cognizing why the recognition of ageism so often excludes the younger end of the age spectrum. We suggest that it is part of the work of social educators to help recognize and (re)cognize why ageism—the “-ism” most pertinent to young people—masks their experience with exclusion. DEMOCRACY AND AGEISM

Democracy

Ageism

In a democracy, we all have a voice and therefore, we all own a small piece of an outcome, be it aligned to how we vote or not; regardless, we have an opportunity to have a say in it. When we look at democratic principles applied to schooling, we realize that students do not have a voice inherently attributed to the planning aspects of schooling. Students’ participation in schooling is often passive, reactive, and secondary. Perhaps, democracy in schools could be interpreted as representative, parallel to how we vote for people who represent us in the government. Students’ parents/guardians speak for them in their votes for school board members and the legislators who control schooling affairs, but the idea reminds me more of an ownership concept akin to husbands voting for the wives or other, worse forms of people as property. How from a social educator’s point of view, do we justify schools as being democratic? Does democracy mean including all learners or only those of voting age? Are schools’ traditional foundations undemocratic enough that we should question if US schools could ever be appropriate models for democracy? We cannot just preach democracy in our social education classrooms to make ourselves feel at ease when we, as educators, go along with a philosophy of appropriate ageism that permeates the remainder of our schooling system. We must ask more 148

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questions about how to teach students in the most democratic ways possible. If democracy cannot be lived in our schooling system, can it be learned, or must it be experienced? BRIDGING ABSENCES OF LIVED EXPERIENCE

Learned Lived Knowledge

Experienced Knowledge Knowledge

To ask students to change their age or to walk backward though the steps of history remains impossible. So instead, social education becomes an art of translation regarding the past and the relating of past, present, and future contexts that explain missing age gaps in lived history. Even as a teacher educator who specializes in social education, I can remember the feeling of being left behind when older colleagues discussed the Kennedy assassination. I would suddenly grow silent, which is a rarity for me, having realized that this was my only acceptable response. I could tell you the assignation’s hard facts and its historical contexts, but I knew nothing beyond a learned history of this event. Meanwhile, I felt as if everyone else around me had both lived and experienced historical connections to this significant event. Creating an Experimental Kennedy (H)iStory It was not a grasping of thin and burdensome recollection; this was different. This was something that he could keep. It was a memory of his own. The Giver (Lowry, 1993, p.178) While I could not travel backward in time and capture a lived history connection to this historical happening, such as where I was; perhaps, I could figure out how the images and ideas surrounding the event would interact with my own histories. From this train of thought, I came to realize that I could construct a personalized journey to experience this history first hand. To create my own historical experiences, I planned a self–constructed journey to Dealey Plaza—first virtually, and then in person. I wanted to test a hypothesis that (re)created memories and authentically experienced history could replace lived history to the extent to enable authentic participation in the dialogue of public history and within the contexts of public memory. If I could not construct an experiential history for myself, how could I ask this of students? I wondered if such experiences help to counterbalance ageism. On my first trip to Dallas, I walked slowly though the sixth floor museum. This helped, but still did not seem real. I knew that I needed something from my everyday existence to cement the experience and give it meaning in terms of my own life 149

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and my own cultural experiences. On my second trip to Dallas, I decided to do history my way. I brought my iPod. Throughout my historical adventure, I shuffled music from that time period along side my own musical preferences. I watched JFK movie clips on my iPod screen. Somehow, the use of this everyday technology item to add sights, sounds, and emotional/cultural connections from my world entwined with the past world transformed what had previously only seemed to be an old museum in my last journey into something familiar. I cannot explain it, but this time I felt that I was experiencing the past. Whereas, I still cannot say where I was when our former president was shot, I have experiential, contextual history to lend a framework to what were previously barren and hard facts limiting my connection. Now, I have a sense of sentiment and personal connections, even though my created experiences with the historic event happened more than four decades after the assassination. I remember wearing a time–period hat that I pretended belonged to Jackie, as I recited the words, “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights” softly with indignation. So, was this true history? What my historical journey lacked in objective truths was augmented by subjective and intrapersonal truths vis-à-vis a newfound normative connectivity to cultural history. My experiences are now real to me and the event that before seemed to be forever beyond me, limited only by the number of years I had spent on the Earth is now forever cemented and connected in my mind. I had given myself an opportunity to touch, smell, breathe, see, and experience the history I felt had eluded me for so long. Helping Students to Emotionally Invest in the Past The next challenge rested in taking an event of similar historic relevance and creating experiential histories for students. Since my interests centered on social education and ageism, I wanted to try to engage young students. I decided to take on the challenge of seeing if young students could feel connected to September 11 in an age–appropriate way. The date in recent US history is significant enough that even students not yet born before this infamous event know that the day holds meaning. This past September 11, I spent the morning in a pre–K class that I had been observing on a bi–monthly basis for the past two years. I knew the students well and they were comfortable with me, so that helped in achieving my goal. I visited two classes to talk about how we all—even children—have special roles as community helpers. I asked the students what they knew about today, since it was 9/11. One child told me, “It’s Wednesday” and I acknowledged this as correct, with a welcoming smile. Then, seeing my encouragement, other students began to respond. Many children indicated that today was a sad day. I asked how they knew this, since I wanted a good sense of their knowledge about 9/11. Many children said that their parents or other members of their family were “sad,” “mad,” “grouchy,” “did not want to help me,” and other appropriate descriptions. One student referenced 150

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that today was a day “to crash trucks into buildings” complete with a kinesthetic, full—body demonstration, which gained applause from his fellow classmates. Another child said it was a day “we clap for fire fighters,” as she smiled. I agreed and we all clapped. Connecting the events of September 11 to an early childhood, social education learning level was a challenge. After much deliberation, I settled on the book, I Love You Sun, I Love You Moon (Pandell & dePaola, 1994) and the central concept of community helpers. After reading the book, I summarized it by saying that children have special gifts of love to give on days when many people are “sad,” “mad,” “grouchy,” “not wanting to help” and other direct quotes from the students’ early responses. We sat in a circle and talked about (a) ways we show love and care by helping others and (b) ways we uniquely help our families and local communities. The examples of ways the children contributed were amazing. Responses ranged from “getting in the car in the morning” and “hugging my cat” to “leading my family in recycling” and “helping with the classroom rules”. We ended our circle interactions by singing the song Love Grows (Johnson, 1981) and talking about the fact that just like sadness seems to grow, that love also can grow. One of the pre–K teachers said the children sang Love Grows throughout the remainder of the day. The students’ pre-K teacher closed the lesson by leading the children in making a thank you book dedicated to local community helpers. One parent later told me how much her child’s “hugs instead of distance” meant to their family. Another parent commented about how her child’s words “of 9/11 holding love instead of hate” surprised her, “but in a good, reassuring kind of way.” I was not trying to (re)frame 9/11 as a day of love; instead, I intended to provide an age–appropriate emotional and educational context for young children to feel included in a historic event that happened before they were born. It just seemed that 9/11 was the most significant option, despite its challenges. Students can build on this context more as their historical understandings grow. This early childhood experience caused me to realize that some students in the Western Pennsylvania, New York City, and Washington DC areas have unique opportunities to provide other students with experiential connections to the occurrences of 9/11 via virtual links to actual places where history happened. I believe students have special roles to play in teaching other students because they are more likely to share age–specific cultures that help translate history into present day contexts. For me, this was the first event where I felt a monumental “I was there” type of lived history happening all around me, so I chose to address it within social education. I hope schooling systems with geographic access help capture this historically significant experience for all of us who want to learn, but are separated by space and/or time. AGEISM AND SOURCES OF HISTORICAL/CULTURAL INFORMATION

Fixed Facts

Historical Social Context 151

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We went to the New York World’s Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, and saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. Slaughterhouse–Five (Vonnegut, 1969, p. 18). Personal ownership of history eludes most US students (hooks, 2000; McLaren & Lankshear, 1994; Willis, 1977). It is as if history remains a precious artifact protected behind heavily guarded museum showcase walls, from which students may learn, observe, and marvel, but never touch, question, or alter. Is our history so fragile that the hands–on experiences of a student could cause such harm and decay that the history would never be the same again? Is history so concrete that if each individual American could select from it some of their very own experiences to hold, to keep, to alter, and to cherish, that the actual body of history would be less? Or is history an ideal, a live and dynamic entity, awaiting interaction and growth? The majority of US school–aged children know the stories of Pinocchio (Collodi, 1960) and The Velveteen Rabbit (Bianco, 1975). Young students are taught that it is the love of a living, breathing person that enables inanimate things to become real. Yet somehow, this concept has not translated well into social education classes. Students have the power to breathe life into our history via their own age–specific cultures, if only we, as educators and teacher educators, would allow them to become stakeholders. The model of centering oneself (and students) within history gives power to social education. Yet, the experiences of many students entwine with their popular cultures, which often remain outside the realm of acceptability in many public schools. White (1999) emphasizes the need for students’ cultures to be included in our schools, acknowledging “that popular culture is part of our lives and is very significant to our society, our citizens, and especially our children” (p. 121). Many educators have heard the call for more inclusive and pluralistic educational settings (Apple, 1992; Counts, 1934; Dewey, 1902; Freire, 1998; Pinar, 1975), which in part demands inclusion of students’ cultures. Can schools continue to pass as democratic models while simultaneously practicing the exclusion of cultures specific to their primary inhabitants? The rise in multicultural articles and products aimed at the classroom demonstrates that the ideal of schooling for all is starting to take hold; yet, there has been little attempt to incorporate children’s everyday lives into schooling (Freire & Giroux, 1989) as a direct part of diversity education. Ageism is ignored as a product of intolerance and discrimination as the term applies to the younger portions of the age continuum. Individuals’ histories may differ from predetermined and externally identified cultural groups’ histories as defined by a text. Likewise, children’s cultural experiences may diverge from their parents’ cultures—especially within the areas of cultural histories. As history texts claim increased multicultural content, imposed groupings can serve to further marginalize an individual’s histories, if one’s histories do not correspond to assumed cultural norms or if one does not self–identify with a larger cultural with which a student may share only some attributes. Adding space for more 152

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personalized cultures unique to students within the domain of social education is one way to balance and restore individual histories in a historically situated democracy. Another issue at the heart of democratic principles in social education centers on discarding histories as inaccurate, limiting and invalid, when we can try transforming, (co)writing and (re)creating when such needs arise. We often lock our selves in dualistic debates such as “textbooks—yes” or “textbooks—no” forgetting that we do not have to respond to the pre–situated debates, when we can ground ourselves in the core discipline of history in economics that comprise social education. For example, instead of abandoning old textbooks as inadequate, we can create space for students to be co–authors of the texts, employing sticky notes of differing sizes to add, refute, question, and create dialogues within the state or school mandated history texts. Once students have made an addition to a text, they may also add their name to the cover. Such modified texts can be multi–authored by several sections of a course from semester to semester; this demonstrates the ever–changing and growing body of social education knowledge. In order to do this, we must (re)assess our professional practice of regarding predetermined social studies texts as sacred. As a trade off for giving up this entrenched belief, students will have direct ownership and authority in their histories. This process opens previously closed texts to a democratized voice, without discarding or labeling the textbooks, but instead by acknowledging them as incomplete in their ability to connect fully with students. By choosing such practices, social educators model inclusive economics, as well as diversity, by recycling, respecting, and valuing the worth of all peoples’ voices and choices, as emerging democracies should do. Understanding and Engaging in Public History “Historians are the professional remembrancers of what their fellow citizens wish to forget.” —Eric Hobsbarum, British historian Our students hold age–specific cultural knowledge that is being ignored in many social education classrooms. Per Hobsbarum’s definition, students are the historians of age—specific culture. How can education help to incorporate educators, teachers, parents, and students as audiences, authors, and stakeholders? We have ways of learning, ways of knowing, even ways of telling, reporting, and researching that reinforce the status quo, which in schools often reinforce ageism. Democratic schools must continually (re)center the participants in all practices and expected outcomes. When posing the question of who should be the historians, the profundity of The Giver strikes at the heart of the question by being written at a level that brings children as young as late elementary school into the debate of education, democracy, and power. The Giver invites students into the experiences of histories. “Simply stated…although it’s not really simple at all, my job is to transmit to you all the memories I have within me. Memories of the past” (Lowery, 1993, p. 77). As a young boy becomes responsible for holding the memory of his community, readers interact 153

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with a story enticing them to question their own communities’ notions of histories, with ownership of such histories being the central theme. Lowry’s book can inspire students of all ages, to examine control and power that is as highly taken for granted in US public school as it is in the story. Student histories help bring such fantasies of freedom to historical fruition. Implications involve identifying and highlighting misleading vocabulary such as Individual Education Plans and other acronymic meetings of “special” education students, which by name presumes a personalized program and a fluidity of movement. “Students—particularly those marginalized by the values of the dominant culture—can be disabused of the notion that the culture they inhabit is somehow not theirs or available to them only through proper initiation into the values enshrined in representative texts” (Giroux, Shumway, Smith, & Sosnoski, 2001). Envision expanding the concept of curriculum to allow for a multiplicity of student cultures, and the problems of navigating and mapping the social education terrain become clear. Social education landscape changes are akin to the process of desertification in the Sahel Region of Africa that has been reduced to a wasteland by practices of monocropping, parallel to imposed texts, and overproduction. In both cases, questions loom regarding how to (re)create fertile land to be (re)enriched and ready for (re)growth. Ecological and educational health follow the same mapping; a reduction of diversity leads to overall individual and collective weakening. A multiplicity of cultures are already being systematically attacked within social education curriculum and the outgrowth of new, specifically children and youth cultures, are greater in number and further from the central cannon; hence, students’ personal and family histories lie in greater danger of exclusion from education. Without educational conservation techniques, such as including student cultures and histories in the core of social education curriculum, the landscape of US public schools will increasingly retain less of the nutrients to grow individual histories, while simultaneously accelerating an educational climate that is hostile to nurturing such stories when they do manage to grow. Mass econo-cultural system integration, including the schooling system, coordinates action between people and places and imposes limitations on individuals’ abilities to negotiate with their coordination. So often, instead of a natural awaking set by the child’s body, an alarm is set to awaken the family for the child’s favorite television show. Instead of an open exchange of conversation, the show will passively direct the family’s morning activities in tandem with other families across our nation. Even the breaks from programming to advertising will simultaneously occur. As social educators we cannot ignore the effects of modernization on students within our schools. Educators hold unique roles in (re)empowering students to (re)connect with their coordination within educational and natural systems. Bells will still ring at regular intervals, lunch will be served at the system’s convenience, but social educators can prioritize individual and cultural connections that overcome the systems’ pressures on time. Provocative historical connections can span beyond our simple allotted teaching period or extended block time to encourage the journeys of students’ innate historical imaginations to coordinate their own connections. 154

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Ageism and Public Holders of History: (Re)Cognizing the Museum’s Role in Education The museum serves a unique role in the community in that it is a place where the events of history can be experienced by people who were not present when the events originally took place. Museums provide tangible experiences with history that help visitors to understand and reflect on historical events. At the museum, visitors can recreate the experiences of the past in the present, without actually having ever personally witnessed the historic event. This is the attraction of the museum and its raison d’etre. Exhibit planners, researchers, and educators work diligently to provide exhibits that are accurate, accessible, and meaningful to as many visitors as possible. Especially when the historic event occurred several generations in the past, museum professionals are able to relate the historic facts in ways which help the visitor to successfully place themselves within an unfamiliar cultural, temporal, and historical milieu. Yet problems can emerge when museum professionals mount exhibits about historical events that have occurred within the recent memory of living persons. Particularly if the person who is mounting the exhibit can personally recall the event, contextual problems can arise. Because the museum professional actually lived through the experience, he or she can be unaware of the need to contextualize the exhibit for younger visitors who did not experience the event. Yet cultural and historic changes have occurred during the museum professional’s lifetime that have changed both society and culture. The exhibit designer or museum educator may have internalized these changes and, unaware for the need for explication, design the exhibit or educational materials which impede younger visitors’ abilities to fully immerse themselves in the event and create a meaningful “memory” of it. This obstacle in forming meaningful memories results in unintended, yet real discrimination against youth who do not have the lived experience needed to form a framework around which to build new historic memories in the museum. A more subtle form of ageism occurs when young visitors, either with their families or with their classes, are compelled to visit museums without regard to their own personal preferences. Some may contend that this is an unavoidable challenge in school situations, but it highlights a problem that museum professionals have observed in regard to museums and choice. Adults view the museum as a free-choice institution; a place where they are able to chose what to learn, when to learn, and how much they want to learn. Griffin (1998) and Lebeau, Gyamfi, Wizevich, and Koster (2001) emphasize this kind of choice affects learning. Yet, youth, especially in the role of students, often have little choice when it comes to museum visits, and therefore, their re-creation of historic memory is adversely affected, not only by their dearth of lived experience, but by their lack of choice and consequent relative apathy to the museum and its historic memories. So, how do museums respond to the problems of ageism? There is a growing awareness in the museum field that much of the learning afforded by museums is in the area of consolidation and reinforcement of previous understandings and perspectives (Anderson, 1999; Ellenbogen, 2002; Falk & Dierking, 2000). “A person’s 155

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past experiences—be they cognitive, affective, behavioral, social or cultural—will help to structure new learning in personal ways” (Rennie & Johnston, 2007, p. 60). Museum professionals can use students’ own experiences to help them to connect to museum frameworks and in turn, to help empower the creation of new historical memories. This could mean incorporating more youth culture into exhibit planning and education or using social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to promote exhibits. Inviting younger visitors to become aware of museums and their exhibits is a start. Informal blogs, written by student interns could also effectively capture young visitors’ interests. Even if older museum professionals could begin writing the museum blogs, the medium through which the information is transmitted may be a more natural venue for young visitors to learn about and connect with museums and their exhibits. Furthermore, museum staff can create podcasts for younger audiences to download on their personal MP3 players and play back while in the museum. Providing an open web connection would let visitors dialogically respond to the blogs. Some museums have begun using podcasts to reach out to adult populations, but podcasts geared toward younger visitors could help to bridge the gap between lived in-experience and exhibits’ assumptions of knowledge. Podcasts including music and references from the various youth and children’s cultures could help to relate the life experiences of young directly to the exhibit that they are experiencing. Although museums do not cause the ageist lack of choice when it comes to museum visiting, they do have a hand in allowing free choice to younger visitors once they are in the museum. To a certain extent, museums allow people of all ages more choice by creating multimodal learning opportunities for visitors of different learning styles, even when they have not always allowed choice to younger audiences when they visit the museum on field trips. In these instances, docents often lead an in-tact class or group of classes around a museum in a premeditated pattern, while keeping to a set script, which varies only slightly from group to group. Griffin (2007), Bamberger, and Tal (2005) have ascertained that learning is hindered when docents do not give students more choice about how to experience the museum. While it is often preferred and practical for there to be order and calm in the museum for learning to occur, it is also necessary for students to know that their choices will be respected while on a field trip and that they can choose to direct their learning within reasonable boundaries. Student choice in how field trips engage with museums on sight can help to help mitigate any lack of choice experienced before they enter the museum; this helps, in part, to counterbalance the ageist problem of lack of choice. It is vital that museum professionals become more aware of the differences in lived experiences of younger visitors and make changes to help support more inclusive age-independent (and perhaps, dependant, young-aged specific) learning. Even though the museum is not responsible, per se, for the lack of choice younger visitors face when coming to the museum, museum staff can certainly allow young visitors more choice once they have arrived at the museum. Yet, I believe that museum professionals must incorporate broader changes than merely responding to 156

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these two perceived issues. The beginning of a solution to ageism, as well as to other problems in the museum, is to challenge the institutional culture of the museum that accepts its identity as a passive community resource. Instead, the museum must strive to become more active within the community, instead of passively serving as a source of intellectual rigor or entertainment. By offering classrooms within the museum as meeting places for community gatherings, public meetings, after school programs, and literacy and citizenship classes, the museum can actually participate in the community by acting as the locus around which community living takes place. Furthermore, when the museum becomes the location where school dances and graduations take place or where after school programs are held, the youth of the community encounter the museum and the exhibits within it on their own terms (in the case of the school dance) and during their own historic experiences (graduation, dances). Although these experiences may not sync up to the historic experiences on display in the museum’s exhibits, the young visitors relate their own lived experiences with the historic events and are able to make unexpected connections. Lastly, when after school programs find a place within the museum, children come in contact with the history of the museum on a daily basis and are better able to make connections between those historic events and the historic experiences they will live through as they grow up. Their daily historic moments will thereby more naturally mesh with the historic events presented in the museum and the children will have a natural connection to historic events and the necessary framework with which to interpret them. I would like to end my discussion about recognizing and preventing ageism in the museum by sharing from my own experience interning as a museum educator at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in the summer of 2009. One of my assignments as an intern was to develop lesson plans and activities for Pre-K through fourth grade. I quickly decided that one of the historic events that I would plan a lesson around was Mrs. Johnson’s Whistle-stop Tour of 1964. At the time, I was concerned with producing a lesson that allowed teachers to seamlessly incorporate discussion of the Whistle-stop Tour into their curriculum, and less concerned with making connections for students who have little familiarity with trains, much less the Civil Rights Act. The resulting lesson dealt with the cost of eating in the restaurant car of the train during the tour and having children compare the cost of food and the kind of food people ate in 1964 with the cost of food (using a price conversion table provided) and what people eat today. While I unwittingly provided a framework for children about eating on a train and food price differences, I failed to really hit the meat of the issue. A much better lesson would have helped early elementary students to place the Whistle-stop Tour in context of their own lives. Mrs. Johnson set out on the Tour in order to win back the votes of the South in the summer before the 1964 presidential election because many southerners had been alienated by President Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act. Using President Obama’s presidential campaign, of which all early elementary students at this time have lived experience, the lesson would compare the two presidential campaigns in light of the racism which affected both. In this way, students would have their own 157

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experience of a racially charged presidential campaign as a key to open the door to experience the racially charged campaign on 1964. While both lessons provide a framework for students to understand historical events, the campaign lesson plan would have been a much more profound method of integrating the young visitor’s limited experience and broadening it to include a new created memory of the presidential campaign of 1964. When the issues of ageism are not accounted for in the museum, teachers can do much to help mitigate their effects on the students they teach. Prior to visiting the museum, teachers can encourage students to choose certain topics within the larger scope of the history they are studying. Choosing ones own topics allows students to select events in history to which they naturally have an affinity and build upon that affinity to create connections between historic events and their own experiences. Teachers can also create lessons or modify the museum’s lessons to encourage the construction of complex experiential connections. Rather than simply aligning their lessons to meet arbitrary standards, teachers can expand the lessons to help frame the historical experiences about which the students will be learning. Knowing their students personally, their personalities, abilities and challenges, social histories, and family situations, teachers can use this information to facilitate the kind of learning that overcomes the ageism that interrupts authentic meaning making in the museum. CONCLUSIONS

“Who controls the past”, ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” 1984 (George Orwell, 1948, p. 37). There now exists a spreading of the family with modernity’s adept transportation systems, which makes the need for students to connect with history and communities even more important. With the expanse of communication systems, connecting both families and media, we often end up with a single and global version of many stories and histories—stories owned in a large part by corporate America (Giroux, 2001) instead of local family and community version of history. How is today’s society held together? Do we have a centering space for community? Are schools responsible for such cohesion? Some may argue that with technology we are (re)constructing new kinds of communities. Perhaps these media’s consumer–driven roots are leading students into an illusion of community and a reality of what may be akin to a collective alienation. Schools can capitalize on the momentum of students’ popular culture trends while at the same time modeling examples of and providing spaces for student–created popular cultures (un)coupled from the economic sphere. As educators, we do not have to remain neutral, but if democracy and unshackled space for all voices is a goal of social education, then the process by which we envision such ends is of the utmost importance. If ageism as it manifests through the issues in this chapter and beyond is of concern, then we, as social educators, must act with great forethought and caution. The journeys that will transform democratic ideals and counter ageism in our public schools and museums may not lead us on the easiest or the shortest paths, but they will help us to gain 158

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more inclusive and equitable histories. By engaging in a process of (de)constructing, (re)building, and (co)building new structures simultaneously within the old system, we set inclusive examples that all histories have value and worth. As social educators, we must realize that our discipline spans the gamut of lifelong learning. The backgrounded nature of social education often keeps students from recognizing that our discipline has permeated their lives through unique combinations of experiential culture alongside learned, lived, and experienced histories and that it will be with them as long as they breathe. If we, as professional social educators, do not recognize and (re)cognize social education within the contexts of ageism and schooling, then other disciplines and even our students may continue the trend toward relegating social education to an afterthought. Schooling needs personal and traditional sources of information to provide diverse historic contexts; furthermore, we cannot allow for the possibility that something as essential as social education could be deemed irrelevant due to testing and other external forces stemming from beyond local communities. This chapter aims for all histories to hold relevance because of their global and specific connections and because they serve as doors to building dialogic understandings, composed of past, present, and future interactions. QUESTIONS TO HELP (RE)COGNIZE AGEISM WITHIN SOCIAL EDUCATION

Regarding Democracy: – Do you teach in ways that all students are valued? – Is your system top down—teacher makes all the choices or is it closer to a democracy where all voices are heard. – Do you have hierarchies? – Are some students higher than others are? More valued? – Do some students have a greater chance of being heard? Regarding Economics: – Is your classroom an adequate model? – Do you use student–made and educator–made products or are the vast majority your classroom materials commercially made? – Can students reproduce what you do in the classroom at home or are there a multitude of supplies they would need to buy? – How do you treat mistakes? – Are errors made usable and corrected or must everything be perfect—thrown out and started again? Students can do the same things the teacher does, but not nearly as well. Is this okay or does the teacher have unreachable expectations of students? – Is problem solving used to recycle, teach, and learn lessons or are simple yes no answers given and error just wrong and done over? – How are favors exchanged? – Do some students always give and/or do some students always receive? 159

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– How are resources shared? – How is the workload split? – Do you have some reproducers (lower level—reproduction) and some creators (higher level—creation) or are expectations required of all students to meet their full potential? – Are all students expected to use all of Bloom’s Taxonomy or are some students left at lower levels to meet minimum expectations? – What are the resources and commodities in your classroom and where are their origins and destinations? Regarding Museums: – Do students preselect topics from within a museum they can relate to or must they connect to the museum once they are there? – Do students research topics from exhibits based on individual interests or do all students complete the same assignment? – Do you support discussions with students about controversial historical events or do you give assignments which deal with periphery subjects surrounding the controversial event? – Do students create their own museum exhibit(s) to work alongside the information and memories experienced in the museum? NOTES 1

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is based on the print version of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

REFERENCES Anderson, D. (1999). Understanding the impact of post-visit activities on students’ knowledge construction of electricity and magnetism as a result of a visit to an interactive science center. Brisbane, Australia: Queensland University of Technology. Apple, M. (1992). Education, culture, and class power: Basil Bernstein and the Neo–Marxist sociology of education. Educational Theory, 42(2). Bamberger, Y., & Tal, T. (2005). Learning in a personal-context: Levels of choice in a free-choice learning environment at science and natural history museums. Paper presented at the European Association for research on Learning and Instruction Conference, Nicosia, Cyprus. Bianco, M. W. (1975). The velveteen rabbit or, how toys become real. New York: Avon. Collodi, C. (1960). Pinocchio. New York: Crown. Counts, G. S. (1934). The social foundations of education. New York, Chicago etc.: C. Scribner’s sons. Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ellenbogen, K. M. (2002). Museums in family life: An ethnographic case study. In G. Leinhardt, K. Crowley, & K. Knutson (Eds.), Learning conversations: Explanation and identity in museums (pp. 81–101). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Falk, J. H. & Dierking, L. D. (2000). Learning from museums: Visitor experiences and the making of meaning. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Freire, Paulo. (1998). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum Press.

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AGEISM IN U.S. SOCIAL EDUCATION Freire, P., & Giroux, H. A. (1989). Pedagogy, popular culture, and public life. In H. A. Giroux & I. Roger (Ed.), Popular culture: Schooling and everyday life (Critical Studies in Education Series ed.). Toronto: OSI Press. Giroux, H. A. (2001). Stealing innocence: Corporate culture’s war on children. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Giroux, H., Shumway, D., Smith, P., & Sosnoski, J. (1984). The need for cultural studies: Resisting intellectuals and oppositional public spheres. Dalhousie Review, 64, 472–486. Griffin, J. (1998). School-museum integrated learning experiences in science: A learning journey. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Griffin, J. (2007). Students, teachers, and museums: Perspectives on a decade of research. In J. H. Falk, L. D. Dierking, & S. Foutz (Eds.), In principle, in practice: Museums as learning institutions (pp. 31–42). Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Habermas, J. (1981). The theory of communicative action. London: Beacon Press. hooks, B. (2000). Where we stand: Class matters. New York: Routledge. Johnson, C. (1981). Love grows one by one. On Might as well make it love [album]. Grand Rapids, MI: Carol Johnson, Noeldner Music. Lebeau, R., Gyamfi, P., Wisevich, K., & Koster, E. (2001). Supporting and documenting choice in freechoice science learning environments. In J. H. Falk (Ed.), Free-choice science education: How we learn science outside of school (pp. 133–148). New York: Teachers College Press. Lowry, L. (1993). The giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Lyotard, J.-F. (1987). Re-Writing modernity. SubStance, 16(3), 54, 3–9. Retrieved from http://www.jstor. org/stable/3685193 McLaren, P., & Lankshear, C. (1994). Politics of liberation: Paths from Freire. London; New York: Routledge. Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen eighty–four. London: Secker & Warburg. Pandell, K., & dePaola, T. (1994). I love you sun, I love you moon. Newnan, GA: Hippo. Pinar, W. (1975). Curriculum theorizin: The reconceptualists. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Pub. Corp. Rennie, L. J., & Johnston, D. J. (2007). Research on learning from museums. In J. H. Falk, L. D. Dierking, & S. Foutz (Eds.), In principle, in practice: Museums as learning institutions (pp. 57–76). Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Vonnegut, K. (1969). Slaughterhouse-five; or, the children’s crusade, a duty-dance with death. New York: Dell Pub. Co. White, C. (1999). It’s not just another new thing: Technology as a transformative innovation for social studies teacher education. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 7(1), 3–12. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.

Emily J. Summers, Assistant Professor Curriculum & Instruction, College of Education Texas State University—San Marcos Amy Esdorn, Graduate Student Public History Program, College of Liberal Arts Texas State University—San Marcos

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12. THE POP CONNECTION Engaging Popular Culture in Social Education

INTRODUCTION

What is the role of popular culture in society? Does popular culture have a role in the education process of our young? Is there a connection between popular culture and social education? Popular culture is at the center of societal controversy and debate at present. Many from one end of the spectrum criticize its very nature and suggest that it only serves to destroy American morals and values. These folks call for increased censorship and the like. Many on the other end of the spectrum also criticize the nature of popular culture and suggest that it only perpetuates the status quo and enhances corporate and American hegemony. These folks call for more openness and less corporate domination of our culture. We do need to acknowledge that popular culture is part of our lives and is very important to our society, our citizens, and especially our children, regardless of the debate or which spectrum one subscribes to. In a society increasingly fragmented by debate, misunderstandings, and lack of consensus, perhaps popular culture remains one of the few arenas that provide a forum for common understandings, dialog, and communication. If this is so, we need to better integrate popular culture in the education process; to enhance popular advocacy if for nothing else. It is precisely in the diverse spaces and spheres of popular culture that most of the education that matters today is taking place on a global scale (Giroux, 2006). The overt goal of our schools is to enhance knowledge, skills, and values development for our children. Unfortunately these goals are more often than not top down, authoritarian and promote passivity. These goals therefore seem to be driven by the ultimate goal of preparing our youth for the world of work. This is a realistic goal for schools, but should not be the driving force. Ultimately, we must prepare children for active participation as global citizens; and this means that we have a responsibility to teach for social education. Popular culture is a natural phenomenon that is unfortunately often driven and dictated by the dominant culture. The idea is to critically analyze these issues and also provide the critical education children need so as to facilitate this natural desire and wonder for learning about and coping with their world. This is vital if we are to employ popular culture and childhood desire to promote social education and social justice attitudes among our children. C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 163–173. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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TOWARDS A SOCIAL EDUCATION

What then is meant by teaching and learning for social education? Social education moves beyond traditional practice by suggesting the inclusion of student and issues centered approaches to teaching and learning. Advocates for social education in education suggest that our schools are often demeaning and disempowering places where children are either bored into submission or where the transmission and socialization techniques destroy any hope for critical thinking and problem solving development. The opportunity for teaching for social education that promotes popular culture in schools is great but we must discard the traditional transmission model of education and schooling in favor of a empowering model (White and Walker, 2008). Many see social education and empowerment as a major component of curriculum and instruction in our schools. The contention is that traditional social studies may very well be the bad guy in this debate; for the history of social studies traditionally has been to perpetuate the status quo and often only allows one viewpoint regarding history. With the focus on imposed knowledge and skills and the growing accountability movement, social studies education remains reactionary so as to placate critics. Debate within social studies rarely includes social education or issuesoriented curriculum. The debate has been on what content should be taught and how that content should be covered. A curriculum is needed that encourages participation, critical analysis, and action (Westheimer and Kahne, 1998). The standardization and accountability movements really are the culprits. The concepts of critical thinking, problem solving, and issues-centered education are antithetical to this movement. If we encourage children to question and investigate themes and issues in depth, then the status quo and hegemonic powers might very well be threatened. These methods now dominate the education process in this country. Ultimately, the goal seems to be to ensure that teaching and learning (at the very least) remain focused on transmission of essential knowledge, skills, and values. We seem to be attempting to standardize our children. Free market capitalism replacing democracy as the governmental ideal is perpetuated by these endeavors. The place for social education in a democratic society should be to provide fodder for dialog and critical analysis of this essential knowledge, skills and values curriculum and instruction. A social justice approach is critical of transmission, essential knowledge, and the ideal of free market capitalism, thus is antithetical to these standardization and accountability movements (Chomsky, 2000). Teaching for social education is a strategy for countering the threat enveloping our schools and society. We preach the joys of being a democratic society, yet democracy often cannot be found in our schools. We claim to be an open and just country, but school praxis has all but made our schools like prisons. Kids are prisoners subjected to the whims of the prison-like bureaucracy of the schools where teachers have become the guards. Kids are in schools to be molded into appropriately acting citizens. These citizens go along with the crowd, pleased as punch to be living in the greatest country in the world. Teaching for social education suggests that personal stories and controversy be returned to social studies education. It suggests that life and learning is full of controversy and that we owe it to our kids to allow for investigating of social issues, past, 164

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present, and future. The premise is that a society not open and comfortable enough to allow for critique cannot progress and is a society in decline. Where is the democracy is this? Lies My Teacher Told Me (Loewen, 1995) is an excellent chronicle of these issues, particularly regarding history education and history textbooks. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view, the truly meaningful and lifelong connections in social education have been provided outside of the classroom, especially outside of the social studies classroom. This is the real issue. Can there and really should there be a school and education connection between social education and popular culture? Many progressive educators bemoan popular culture in our society as demeaning, hegemonic, corporate dominated, and basically bad for our kids. Many state emphatically that popular culture runs counter to social education in education. An entire movement called popular literacy has arisen to counter this perception. Any incorporation of popular culture in teaching for social education must obviously bring critical analysis in as a primary tool. The fact remains however, that popular culture is an ideal theme for teaching and learning, both as a possibility for liberation and to discuss its use as a tool for empowerment. POPULAR CULTURE FOR SOCIAL EDUCATION

What is the connection we all seem to have with popular culture? If we are truly interested in providing meaning to kids’ lives as we engage in teaching and learning, why don’t we do a better job of integrating popular culture into education? As stated earlier, popular culture is rife with controversy and currently receives strong criticism from all areas of the political spectrum. Much of the criticism is warranted, yet despite political leanings there seems to be some general agreement regarding the underlying problems with popular culture and its impact on society and especially our children. What are not needed are simplistic generalizations calling for censorship or attempts at ignoring the influence of popular culture. Popular culture has never been so dominant in our lives, yet it is experiencing incredible criticism in our society today. Perhaps this is a primary reason for the criticism. Many are at a loss at how to deal with its influences. A strong argument can be made that popular culture has become the most influential education institution for our children in society, and many seem quite frustrated by this. Rather than fight to ensure one’s own agenda in popular culture, it might be better to use it as an educational opportunity. One must, in many instances, equate popular culture with childhood desire. Our children’s natural desire to make sense of their world can be enhanced through the appreciation and application of popular culture as a pedagogical tool. Popular culture can provide the common connections and voice for our often disconnected popular that many of us remember as wide-eyed joy and a sense of wonder of the world. Our children must be engaged in this endeavor however; we cannot allow for corporate dictate of this desire through Big Brother or Clockwork Orange style popular saturation and or brainwashing. Social education that integrates social education is aware and unafraid of childhood desire, often 165

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connecting it to children’s efforts to understand the world and themselves (Steinberg and Kincheloe, 2004). Our society has made popular culture a cornerstone of cultural identity and we simply cannot ignore that fact. Television, movies, music and other popular provide fodder for connections among our disconnected citizenry. Why not use this, rather than belittle it? We owe it to our kids to provide opportunities for critical analysis of popular culture. Rather than blindly accepting the Disneyfication or Simpsonizing of our kids and their lives, use these as teachable opportunities. Using Disney and other animated films, such as Shrek, Toy Story, or WALLE, to analyze gender and cultural stereotypes may provide for eye-opening experiences for students. Using The Simpsons to look at social issues rather than as a pure entertainment for example, can also turn on kids to the power and possibilities in popular culture and social justice. Film, television, music, and other forms of popular culture can provide rich opportunities for teaching and learning in the social studies. Unfortunately, children experience few opportunities to engage popular culture except outside of school. Even in the workplace, conversation often revolves around popular culture events. Why then do we avoid popular culture in the classroom? Many schools have evolved into places where inquiry and active engagement are not encouraged. A standardized curriculum, instruction, and procedures dictate little risk taking. Teachers and administrators have become afraid to drift from the norm. Teachers often even state that they don’t have time to integrate anything but the mandated curriculum. The accountability and achievement movement has severely limited what can occur in schools in the name or teaching and learning. A bland and boring social studies has thus emerged (Hursh and Ross, 2000; Kincheloe, 2005). Popular culture can counter this negative trend. If we are truly interested in kids being motivated to learn and apply this learning to the broader spectrum of social literacy, then we must make stronger efforts at integrating meaningful curriculum and instruction that includes real world connections. These connections allow kids to develop the scaffolding needed to construct knowledge. Popular culture can enhance a transformative rather than transmissive social education by providing these connections. A particular focus suggests that media and popular culture be used as alternative texts particularly for social education. These alternative texts provide an opportunity for the common understandings, dialog / communication, cultural identity, motivation and context / connections. Hopefully each of these will be addressed in future endeavors. In addition, issues that need addressing tied to integrating media and popular culture in teaching and learning include information transmission, media literacy, technology, globalization, coverage vs. depth, problem solving / inquiry, and moral panics. Again, the idea is to focus on critical inquiry in all areas of teaching and learning including curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Social education can truly come alive for our students if we allow for the integration of media and popular culture. If we are truly interested in facilitating powerful approaches in social education, then we must begin to integrate long ignored (and often demeaned) tools such as media and popular culture. 166

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MUSIC FOR SOCIAL EDUCATION – ONE POSSIBILITY

Music can be a powerful alternative Text for social education. Most people love music and music is not only a reflection of culture and the times, but it is also often an active force in societal change. Music is a vital component of popular culture and the knowledge and understanding of popular music can be a powerful tool for developing social education. Music really is our students’ preferred popular, even when compared to movies and television. It is essential for societal and cultural understanding. Yet, like other forms of popular culture, its role in schooling is minimal. Music has tremendous global economic and cultural significance. It is situated both within international economics and industry and within personal social and even national identity (Shukar, 1998). There is an increasing discourse regarding the influence and impact of popular music within academic circles and also in mainstream popular. Our students also deserve the opportunity to engage in this discourse and inquiry for music is one area where they seem eager to share their voice and express social education. Unfortunately, one seldom finds music used in the teaching and learning process outside of traditional arts instruction. Traditional schooling is so entrenched with covering essential knowledge to ensure high test scores, that excuses are often used for not applying popular culture such as music. Teachers do not have enough time, popular music is inappropriate, it is not relevant, or there is just a lack of knowledge; all these are excuses for the lack of music integration in education. However, if we are interested in critical social education for active participation and problem solving in society, then music offers many possibilities. And these excuses and issues must then be addressed. ISSUES

Shuker (1994) suggests several issues regarding music and popular culture. These include the following: – Economic, market, and consumer issues related to music – Cultural preferences and social factors – Ideology, dominance, and agendas related to music – Popular culture, music and mass appeal – Moral panic, popular culture and music These issues suggest a critical approach in using and analyzing music, much like that suggested in the popular education movement. They should definitely be addressed, particularly as part of the promotion of critical social education. A related issue is that these are often employed as reasons to belittle or demean popular music and popular culture as well – often leading to censorship and the like. Economic, market, and consumer issues definitely affect the state of popular music. The issues of mass market and what sells often dictate kind and quality of music. Many even suggest that the idea of mass produced music for profit limits creativity and choice regarding music for the public. A few corporations dominate the music industry perhaps suggesting that these have become culture industries, 167

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creating our culture for us, less for creativity and pleasure sake than for corporate profits. The globalization of market ideals has often also created a global music market, often at the expense of the music and art in particular cultures (Negus, 1992). Related to the influence of corporation in music is the idea of cultural imperialism. Popular music as popular culture (at least in global sales) is dominated by the U. S. and British. As a result, global cultural preferences in music are often dominated by the top seller from the U. S. for example. Societal factors also influence popular music, which is perhaps the reason for the success of rap and hip hop. Despite the power of the global music industry, class and ethnicity can often provide incredible influence on trends and even sales in popular music (Wallis and Malm, 1992). A particular critique of popular culture and music is the perceived ideology often inherent within in reinforcing dominant values and the agenda of those in power. Many suggest that that which is popular only becomes accepted so as to ensure the status quo. In other words, the hegemonic powers would not allow much popular music to question or challenge entrenched societal values. Despite the perceived success of this agenda, much popular music has successfully usurped the system and affected societal change. Popular culture and music as one vital component is perhaps one of the few remaining avenues for possible common dialog and understanding. If nothing else, it often provides a context for connections to the world and sense making in the world. Passion and intrinsic appeal is somehow inherent in popular music and popular culture. This dialog and common understanding in popular music can be used to enhance critical social education (White, 2003). Perhaps the more intriguing issue regarding popular culture and music is the idea of moral panic and the threat to society. As a result, new popular music is often subject to condemnation, censorship and regulation. From the early experiences in pop such as Elvis to punk to heavy metal to hip hop, music has been questioned regarding its legitimacy and impact on popular and society. Music is often viewed as promoting antisocial behavior and attitudes in popular, therefore many feel it must be controlled or at the very least ignored (Garofalo, 1992). Thus, application of popular music in schools is rarely found as it is perceived to do little in meeting traditional goals. What one often finds in schools is a negative reaction to kid culture in whatever form (music, Pokemon, etc.) through stereotypes, banning, and demeaning acts and comments. The Baby Boom of the post World War II years also contributed much to the mass audience for popular culture and therefore music; and pop music in all its categories reaped the benefits. One could provide an interesting social history of the latter half of the twentieth century by exploring the evolution of music. One initially finds the light-hearted bubble gum music of the fifties and early sixties that could represent the glory that was post-war America. In the sixties, music became harder edged and more serious with the exploration of social issues. The seventies can be expressed in the more self-indulgent music such as disco. In the late seventies and eighties punk, metal, and grunge explored more sobering issues once again. And in the nineties hip hop and alternative music continued to push the 168

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boundaries and explore harder issues as well as entertain. Popular culture and music as very vibrant examples not only serve as a reflection of the times, but as is evidenced from the social history of the late twentieth century, can also be very active social forces. Economics is also a huge issue that affects popular culture and music. The prosperity that emerged following the war enabled music to flourish as a dynamic force. Record, cassette, and now CD sales seemed to reach to new heights with every passing year. An essential component of popular culture is knowledge and awareness of music fads and trends. The economic climate of the times (which ever period one mentions) is again often reflected in the music (sound and lyrics) that is popular. Economic and social issues are particularly evident in the music of the late sixties, early seventies, early and late eighties, and much of the nineties. Economics within music can be investigated as an exciting social education theme in the teaching and learning process. Technology has also provided impetus for the development of music as popular culture and societal force. Incredible developments in the latter half of the twentieth century not only brought music to the masses, but it also enabled new and innovative sounds and techniques to be introduced. The electric guitar, synthesizers, and computers have had quite substantial impact of the evolution of music. Television, MTV, CD’s, and the internet can all be investigated regarding their influence on music, popular culture, and society. Technology has become a vital theme in society. Using technology as an agent in popular culture can really facilitate the idea of social education since technology and technology issues are so prevalent in today’s society. One of the most controversial issues related to the growth of music as popular culture is that of the influence of the music industry and the idea of corporate profits as the driving force for music. Central to the idea of popular culture is issue of business and popular music in the late twentieth century through today is nothing if not business driven. And this is the constant struggle. Artists often provide empowering social education messages, but are also subject to personal sales. This often contradictory issue can provide much fodder for debate in the teaching and learning process. Issues related to capitalism, globalization, music choices, hegemony as the driving force, marketing, and how each relates to social education could easily be integrated in schooling as we attempt to facilitate critical and active participation in society. MUSIC AND EDUCATION

Much can be said concerning the possibilities of music in promoting critical social education. And despite the lack of its use in schools, music has had a profound effect in popular culture as a force for social change. Instead of dismissing its potential, schools would be wise to work diligently on integrating popular music into the teaching and learning process if for no other reason than that there is a desperate need to improve the perceived relevance of schooling (at least in our kids’ eyes). 169

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There are a few instances of effective integration of music in schools. Obviously music programs really help to meet the needs of students into developing into more well-rounded human beings. An appreciation of music and art is vital for critical social education, yet often one finds that funding for the arts is the first to be cut in times of financial crisis. And now, with the emphasis increasingly placed on achievement of “essential” knowledge one often finds time for the arts being cut as well (Berliner and Biddle, 1995). There are also instances of teachers (acting in isolation mostly) who integrate music into their teaching environment. Some teachers play classical or jazz as background music as students work on assignments. Others allow students to bring in examples of their own to play during these assignment times, or even as free time sharing. Perhaps the most effective use is when a teacher actually integrates music into the teaching and learning process. Some social studies teachers, for example, have used music very effectively to demonstrate historical periods. Sample music integration examples include units on music and war, music and postwar America, the labor movement and music, social issues and music, and global cultures and music. Many of these examples, while at least using music, are teacher directed with the teachers usually choosing and demonstrating the music examples. This is definitely a first step in meaningful integration – that of modeling, but critical social education necessitates more student active involvement and choice (Brooks and Brooks, 1994). Critical social education requires that we engage in a more sincere effort at promoting the context and connections needed to ensure a more relevant learning experience. Allowing students to be involved in the social construction of meaning in their world is a vital step. Keeping with social studies examples, using current events and social issues to provide context and connections for today and for the study of the past enhances the links necessary for student education and empowerment. Popular music is a natural tool for achieving these goals. But it must be students’ popular music. We can demonstrate ours as examples and modeling, but again, allowing students to include theirs in the teaching and learning process takes it that needed step. Only then can we hope to facilitate critical social education. Most music genres or individual artists contain examples of songs that contain social commentary or historical references. Many people are under the assumption that social commentary in music reached its peak in the late sixties and early seventies. Punk, Hip Hop, and Grunge are genres from the eighties through today that provide considerable social commentary and historical references. And Pop still has much to say regarding social education. And these are often the genres that most interest our students. While we may just not understand the music of today, we can not become our parents and blindly dismiss its potential for critical social education. Remember the early folk and rock days. MTV AND POPULAR MUSIC

MTV is probably one the most important popular culture an influences of the times. MTV was a natural evolution of music and video as the world (and particularly 170

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the U. S.) had become a television society. Children in the U. S. and other nations had been brought up with television as an entertainment device, a time filler, and in many instances a baby sitter. The genius of MTV was to tap into television and connect music (the common language of the masses) with it through videos. MTV has survived incredible and often justified criticism including racism and sexism particularly. It is yet another example of generational conflict and misunderstanding regarding popular culture and popular music. Despite this, MTV has had a huge impact on popular culture, but also general society and culture. If nothing else, television along with MTV has perhaps finally made many realize the power and influence of popular culture. MTV has not only influenced popular music, it has also influenced other popular culture popular such as movies, general television, and even mass popular like magazines. Many even suggest that it has influenced high culture including museums, theater, and classical music. This truly is the MTV generation and we should allow for its use in teaching and learning for critical social education. Snippets of video can be used to great effect visually and auditorally in critically analyzing social issues, for example. Music and lyrics are one thing, but video can add yet another dimension for teaching and learning. Many forms of popular culture emerge as commentary or resistance toward more mainstream culture and society. Perhaps no better example of this exists than in pop music. From its earliest days pop has been viewed as cutting edge, crossing the boundaries, and a threat to the values and morals of society. Little Richard, Elvis, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Acid – Pop, Heavy Metal, Disco, Punk, MTV, Grunge and Thrash, Rave, and Hip Hop have all witnessed their detractors and have been viewed at one time or another as threats to the basic social fabric. Through its history, pop like all forms of popular culture has not only served as a reflection of the times, it has been a catalyst for critical social education and societal change. Several themes can be used to integrate pop music into teaching and learning for social education in schools. Pop music can be a very powerful theme as students investigate issues such as ethnicity and the struggle for equality, population growth, economics, technology, business and industry, education and empowerment within the context of social history (Szatmary, 2000). This focus in of itself would provide the necessary relevance students need to facilitate intrinsically a love of learning leading to effective social education. Music in the U. S. in the last part of the twentieth century at least, is often reflected through the struggle for equality by various ethnic groups, particularly African Americans. One must first come to an understanding of the absolute importance of African American culture in the history of U. S. popular music. Pop would not exist as it is without blues which originated from slave songs. Protest music of the sixties often had civil rights as the predominant theme. African American artists are often the trail blazers in social commentary and music innovation including blues, jazz, R and B, disco, rap, and hip hop. Each of these genres emerged as a proactive force with music doing more than perhaps any other societal force in promoting integration and appreciation of cultures. 171

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Perhaps the most relevant issue surrounding music (at least regarding schooling) is its role as societal force; as this relates most directly to the issue of social education. Regardless of the genre, popular music remains a vibrant cultural phenomena that reflects societal issues but can also have a proactive impact. Exploring the role of music in reflecting and impacting societal change can be a very motivating experience for kids in their endeavor to make sense of the world. The idea that music can not only be a device for entertainment, but one that provides social commentary and perhaps even a “call to arms” for change enables it to be a powerful tool for social education. WHERE TO NOW?

Popular culture and social education themes can really make a difference for our children in their learning experience. The real question for us is how can we remain complacent if we really do care about our children and their future? What is needed is the understanding that any society can only progress if it moves beyond transmission ideals and the status quo. We must recognize that the growing restrictions and accountability movements in the U. S. only serve to undermine participatory democracy. Harping on non-issues, prison and punishment mentality, the mythology of America as world savior, corporate and military welfare, and unbridled market globalization are antithetical to social justice. Creating a world of caring and compassion through social justice requires the cultivation of the human spirit, the nourishment of the imagination, and the impulse for self-expression (Purpel and Shapiro, 1995). We must not integrate popular culture for the sake of popular culture and to hopefully placate our troubled youth. We must provide opportunities for in-depth analysis of societal issues through popular culture, thus leading to social education. We cannot ignore the issues regarding the economic and political factors possibly driving the choices we are given. The ideas of culture, culture icons, objectification, and social justice should be explored through in-depth inquiry, problem solving and critical thinking. Using a Disney movie or a Simpsons episode just because the children like them is not enough. Teachers and others interested in social education and social justice approaches in schools must realize that neutrality is an impossibility. What is important is creating a classroom atmosphere where students and teachers are empowered to question and critically analyze social studies issues and themes. It is perfectly fine to disagree, but what is important is creating opportunities for students to act on their ideas (participate as citizens in our democracy). Popular culture embodies a language of both critique and possibility; a language that allows students to locate themselves in history, find their own voices, and establish convictions and compassion necessary for democratic civic courage (Freire and Giroux, 1989). The concept of social education is practically non-existent in our country today. This should be our goal - through the integration of popular culture in teaching for social education and social justice within the education process.

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It is time to allow the good times to roll in schools. Popular culture is a natural intrinsically motivating factor in our lives and should be integrated into the teaching and learning process in our schools. We are all very passionate about our likes and dislikes when it comes to popular culture. It can be a very powerful tool as we hope to develop social education within our students as it allows for transformative investigation. Allowing for the investigation of issues regarding popular culture as Shukar suggests (1994) or using it as social and historical references as Szatmary (2000) suggests can only enhance powerful teaching and learning that actual involves students in discourse and dialog. What better way to engage in critical inquiry and problem solving for social education than use popular culture within our schools? REFERENCES Berliner, D., & Biddle, B. (1995). The Manufactured Crisis. New York: Addison-Wesley. Brooks, J., & Brooks, M. (1994). The case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Chomsky, N. (2000). Chomsky on mis-education. Lanham, MD. Rowman and Littlefield. Freire, P., & Giroux, H. (1989). Pedagogy, popular culture, and public life. In H. Giroux, & R. Simon. Popular culture: Schooling and everyday life. Granby, MA: Bergin and Garvey Publishers. Garofalo, R. (Ed.), 1992. Popin’ the Boat: Mass music and mass movements. Boston: South End Press. Giroux, H. (2006). The abandoned generation. New York: Routledge. Hursh, D., & Ross, E. W. (2000). Democratic social education. New York: Falmer Press. Jennings, T. (1994). Social justice in the elementary classroom, Social Studies and the Young Learner, 7(1), 4–6. Kinchelow, J. (2005). Getting beyond the facts. New York: Peter Lang. Loewen, J. (2009). Lies my teacher told me. New York: Touchstone. Negus, K. (1992). Producing pop: Culture and conflict in the popular music industry. London: Edward Arnold. Purpel, D., & Shapiro, S. (1995). Beyond liberation and excellence. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Shuker, R. (1994). Understanding popular music. New York: Routledge. Shukar, R. (1998). Key concepts in popular music. New York: Routledge. Steinberg, S., & Kincheloe, J. (2004). Kinderculture: The corporate construction of childhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Szatmary, D. (2000). Popin’ in time: A social history of pop and roll. Toronto: Prentice Hall. Wallis, R., & Malm, K. (1992). Popular policy and music activity. New York: Routledge. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (1998). Education for action: Preparing popular for participatory democracy. In W. Ayers, J. Ann Hunt, & T. Quinn (Eds.), Teaching for social justice (pp. 1–20). New York: The New Press. White, C. (2003). True confessions. Kresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. White, C., & Walker, T. (2008). Tooning in… New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

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13. HETERONORMATIVE ASSUMPTIONS EMBEDDED IN THE CARTOONWORLD AND BEYOND Cartoonworld Constructs of the Nuclear Family

INTRODUCTION

This chapter explores the cartoonworld’s potential to expand understandings of heteronormativity. It uses well-known cartoons and other commonalities in U.S. children’s cultures as vehicles for reflection to achieve greater inclusivity of individuals who remain underreported and/or under-recognized as being marginalized and affected by heteronormativity. One aim of the chapter is to serve as a call for social education research to be more inclusive of underreported groups and individuals who may themselves be unaware of the marginalizing affects that heteronormativity imposes on their lives and their relationships with themselves and with others. Another purpose of the chapter is to encourage self-exploration through products of the cartoonworld as to how heteronormative assumptions have shaped our identities. The final goal of this chapter is to elevate children’s cultures as ideal social education research grounds that are intrinsically juxtaposed to and intertwined with other fields of critical study such as feminist and queer theories of knowing. This chapter includes subjective, objective, and normative frames of reference for recognizing and beginning to understand heteronormative assumptions embedded in the cartoonworld. It acknowledges the cartoonworld as a hybrid space produced by adults that simultaneously functions as multiple (re)imagined and (re)enacted spaces in the real and imagined world(s) of children. To honor the cartoonworld’s innate hybridity, this chapter places social education research within demographic, queer theory, and feminist theory frames alongside personal narratives and cartoonworld tales. While Judith Butler’s (1990) theory of performativity, provides a theoretical framework for the chapter, less formal language and experiences compose the search for personal and contextual definitions of heteronormativity. After defining heteronormativity, the chapter moves toward sharing in-depth cartoonworld findings concerning the heterosexual nuclear family and then toward exploring the intersecting aspects of heteronormativity and feminism, gender, privilege, and oppression in the cartoonworld. The chapter concludes with some real world pathways for (re)examining the contextual geographies of cartoonworld heteronormativity in classrooms and in life. C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 175–193. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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CONTEXTUAL FRAMING: HOW DO CHILDREN’S CULTURES FIT WITH HETERONORMATIVITY?

As a researcher, I believe marginalized areas of study should be both accessible and assessable to teachers and teacher educators to the greatest extent that is possible. Placing a chapter on heteronormative assumptions in the cartoonworld within the contents of a primer on social education assists the first half of this goal. I often write as if my Nana were sitting beside me questioning the legitimacy of each sentence I write. That image helps me to remember to write more inclusively. I am not sure that my Nana would understand why I want to write about the cartoonworlds of children within the context of feminism and heteronormativity. Without a doubt, she would consider these topics to address an all adult audience. At a minimum, she would argue that if an assumed blurring of homosexuality with sex existed that I may wish to address it before interjecting issues regarding children. In US culture, it is acceptable to ask about a child’s mother and father…thus implying a heterosexual norm, seemingly devoid of any hint of sexuality; yet, to speak of a parent’s partner or the wife of a child’s mother, brings a hushed sense of silence. So what we may need to ask ourselves (before interjecting any children’s issues into this chapter) is why are parental combinations other than a heteronormative mother and father viewed as having a sexual context? Nothing exists unto itself; instead, everything articulates within social contexts. Thus, I must focus this chapter within larger social culture(s). Children’s cultures are inherently part of American culture and social education. Reverberations of adult culture ricochet into children’s worlds. Economically, Americans aged 4 to 12 spent a collective three billion dollars in 2004 (Schor, 2004). Is it no wonder that producers of child-targeted products rationalized spending billions of dollars to market products to children? For-profit companies exist primarily for charging other businesses to keep track of children’s consuming trends so that they can develop marketing to target children’s economic resources. For example, KidScreen is “the leading international trade publication serving the informational needs and interests of kids entertainment professionals” providing “comprehensive analysis of the news, issues, trends, market shifts and opportunities having an impact on all sectors of the business, including TV production, distribution & programming, licensing & retail, marketing & promotions, gaming & digital media, feature films, home entertainment and publishing” (KidScreen, 2009). To echo this economic weight of the American child, we must also consider that a large percentage of children’s cultures are produced by adults, not children. Thus, adult culture contributes to children’s cultural worlds. Moreover, American families economically support child-targeted cultural productions. Children’s worlds matter. Surely those of us in critical studies and education should give children’s cultures as much attention as producers do. RATIONALE

In addition to writing as a teacher educator and an educational researcher, I write this chapter as a mother and as a wife. About three months ago, while my seven year old child and his friend rode in the back seat of my car, they began discussing 176

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another child as being “gay.” After dropping my son’s friend off at his home, I asked my child where he had heard the word gay. He started singing the Flintstone’s theme song where it goes, “we’ll have a gay old time.” I asked where else he heard the word. He said, “All the time…on the playground.” When I asked what “gay” meant, he replied gay means “a boy likes to kiss other boys.” He said boys also say someone is “queer”. He reported hearing the word “queer” in the game “smear the queer” and in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which his dad read to him last year1. He summarized that, “queer means strange…like it’s strange for a boy to want to kiss another boy.” At that point I knew that the heteronormativity of children’s cultures had entered my household. Further discussion revealed that my child was able to rectify knowing adults who were gay as being normal and ordinary right alongside his acceptance of peers who singled out fellow classmates by name–calling based in pejorative terms for sexual orientation. Based on our discussion, it appears as if in his worldview, adults are finished products of socialization, so he accepts them as they are; whereas, in contrast, he sees children as needing to be open to social commentary as a natural and acceptable part of discovering who and how everyone is. This adult summary of child theory makes sense with how adults structure my son’s everyday existence. He observes adults (and children) criticize and correct children as to the intentions of their actions and regarding what the “correct” action(s) should be; but in his world, adults and children generally refrain from direct and corrective public (viewable) conversations with other adults regarding their social behaviors. As to his reporting of playground action(s) where a child questions another child’s intentions or orientations through (homophobic) teasing, perhaps he does not understand a bystander role as participatory (in heteronormative socialization); although, academic literature supports bystander roles as essential to teasing, bullying, and violence (Bauman, 2008; Oh & Hazler, 2009; Renold, 2007; Twemlow, Fonagy, & Sacco, 2004). Another possibility may be that it is our family’s insistence on showing adults respect that brings about these differences in acceptance based on age, but I would like to think that we emphasize respect for others as a global, age-independent value. My son could reference conflicting influences from his own cultural knowledge about the Bible’s social justice messages of inclusion (in kid words, of course) alongside the normative expectation that “boys marry girls and have babies” also in part based on his certainty that “the Bible says so.” So even in a household—my household—where acceptance of diversity is modeled, discussed, and expected, a child can buy into and participate in the rhetoric of heteronormative performativity toward socialization. My interest in this topic comes from a critical studies perspective, which for me includes feminist studies, children’s cultures, and popular culture. I disclose this orientation because positionality matters in how one conceptualizes, grounds, and ultimately writes about a topic. Thus, differences may exist in how I position this chapter and how other authors approach their chapters within this text. As a reader, I ask you to recognize that what may at first glance seem like conflicting information and conclusions among the chapters may instead be the richness of differences in approach and understandings of where social education articulates in 177

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public and academic dialog. Many critical studies preclude a single truth or outcome, favoring many truths as to what is needed to reveal the authentic nature of human cultures and conditions. Not only would a homogeneous presentation of knowledge be incompatible with a text on social education, I wonder who would enjoy or even believe its chapters if they offered a uniform interpretation of a naturally diverse world? THEORETICAL FRAMING

Butler (1990) asserts that children’s performances of masculine and feminine structure the gendered subject2 to the inherent repetitive nature of play. Children play an active role in imitating, creating, and (re)creating their social realities through the fiction of practicing gendered performance(s). In other words, children’s play can become a performative, meaning that it has the potentiality to bring into being what it repeatedly names and pretends to do in its practice of play (Butler, 1993). Gendered performative play is especially meaningful in the constructs and hegemonic3 influences of heteronormativity, as the fictional enactments of how children imitate and play can in reality assist in structuring their masculine and feminine constructs of gendered identity. If the scope of play is limited or even targeted toward marginalization, what iterations of these play enactments could be born into being? Further, what would be the implications for gender as it relates to discipline, power, and knowledge? Watching and imitating the multimedia, adult-created child play of the cartoonworld serves as another layer of child-modeled performance as well as additional (re)iterative reinforcement. One of the perversions of cartoonworld play is that children read the animated actors as children when in reality they are adult-initiated imitations. Cartoon characters and landscapes in many ways become real within children’s real and imagined spaces, including the minds of children. The (re)enactments of cartoon themes and characters infringe into very real childhood spaces such as living rooms and playgrounds. Unlike the real child performativity, cartoonworld-simulated child performativity does not vary in its exact iterations. Any episode when re-viewed will exactly enact what it did the previous time(s). In the real world, child performances repeat themes and small verbatim portions of cultural scripts from one telling to the next and from child to child, but these natural adjustments betwixt iterations are not true of the cartoonworld. NEGOTIATING PERSONAL, INCLUSIVE, AND CONTEXTUAL MEANINGS OF HETERONORMATIVITY

I think transparency about one’s position and larger view of how and where knowledge articulates matters in writing. In my own working knowledge, I hold a feminist definition of heteronormativity. For me, heteronormativity holds serious consequences for feminism—perhaps as much as it does for queer theory. While I perceive the marginalizing impact of heteronormativity on sexual orientation to be greater than it is on gender, I favor looking at both of these affects together. 178

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In a study on children’s popular culture, I feel especially inclined to include sexual orientation and gender as dual and interrelated factors as they relate to heteronormativity since traditionally women’s issues are assumed to be fused with children’s issue while, by contrast, queer studies are assumed to be inherently unassociated with children’s cultures. In both cases, these locked directional associations in large part stem from positivist and biological assumptions. Further, such false absolute assumptions about sexual orientation and gender also serve to foster the power of heteronormativity. In actuality, no absolute association or inherent absence can be applied to either queer studies or women’s studies as each relates to children’s studies. Yet, in each of these three areas, heteronormativity works to lock, bind, and define the absolute concurrence or absence of the interrelationships between and among these important areas at the global/theoretical level and in the every day interpretations of meaning at the level of the individual. (Re)Examining the Contexts and Application of Personal Understanding Sometimes, we need to (re)examine what we know and how our ways of knowing posit within multiple realities shaped by differing social, political, cultural, economic, ethnic, racial, gender, orientation, and disability values than our own experiences hold. “Lives are not lived as stereotypes or as categories” thus we cannot “constitute the quintessential queer identity,” or a feminist one, for that matter (Sumara & Davis, 1999, 196). Therefore, we need to use caution when we choose to define terms and articulate our personal identifications as innately falling in line with or standing for how all of those who individually indentify within the broader queer, feminist, or other consolidated identities view or understand things. If we do not exercise such caution, we may unintentionally contribute to imposing our view on a more broadly associated identity term. Through such assumptions of homogeneity4, we can even fall into internal, albeit unintentional, forms of stereotyping. Personally, my orientation toward sex/gender distinctions is grounded in feminist theory, but this information may not offer much clarification due to the vast and diverse landscape of feminist thought about sex and gender. From a purely feminist perspective, I intentionally use the word “gender” instead of the word “sex” in how I personally define heteronormativity, grounding this choice of wording and thinking within a second wave feminist5 way of constructing knowledge. Therefore, from my worldview, this is how I initially defined heteronormativity prior to considering the linguistic constraints of my own understandings: Heteronormativity––A social assumption that one’s gender implies a sexual orientation toward a binary and opposite gender, unless overtly communicated otherwise. I understand that people may not realize the intentionality and purposefulness of my less-than-traditional wording and/or my underlying paradigm assumptions unless I make these more transparent. In my definition, I use “gender” to mean what most people would describe as “sex” or biological sex. For example, Gayle Rubin writes, “as a preliminary definition, a ‘sex/gender system’ is the set of arrangements by 179

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which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied” (1975, p. 159). Thus, “sex” becomes “gender” through social instruction. I understand that some professions, especially medical and counseling, may have professional boundaries that would pragmatically constrain such a blurred definition. Therefore, I need to be aware of the limits my feminist positionality could impose on this chapter. My writing and thinking are grounded in an emancipatory paradigm. Thus, my ontological6 and epistemological7 assumptions about the nature of (in this case biological) knowledge inherently question how such knowledge is socially and historically situated. While my paradigmatic assumptions about knowledge often stand in conflict to a positivistic8 truth, even a well accepted, biologically provable truth such as a dichotomous male/female construction of sex, they should not constrain me from my making a biological case for a more inclusive definition of sex. For example, I indentify as/am female. While this aspect of who I am easily fits within the traditionally accepted male/female reporting and recording of sex, I understand “female” as being one point on a continuum, co-existing among other articulations of biological sex. I accept that sex can be and should be defined by criterion aligned to the morphology of the body, but I do not accept that everyone’s biology is homogenously sexed. Therefore, while I am concerned about how the social assumptions of heteronormativity affect feminist theories, I acknowledge the primacy of heteronormativity’s impact on sexual orientation. Coalitional Positioning and the Difficulty of Defining Terms for Common Understandings I was unaware of how the second wave feminist framing limited my approach to writing about gender and sex. So, while I personally believe that society has mediated “sex” and transformed it to mean “gender”, clarity necessitates that both “sex” and “gender” be defined so as to facilitate communication with a more inclusive audience and to avoid the overlap of a single word representing multiple concepts. By overtly recognizing the collapsing of sex into “gender,” second wave feminist frameworks also enable recognition that the term gender has become overloaded with meanings. Condensed meaning of many concepts and words into a single word is one of the overburdening results of heteronormativity. By overburdening terms with multiple meanings, heteronormativity makes it cumbersome for those marginalized by its dominance to use vocabulary with precision. Therefore, while we must rely on one mode of thought for recognition, in this case second wave feminist’s identification of what has become a sex/gender system, we then move backwards to utilize vocabulary devoid of the authentic real world effects of marginalization in order to facilitate clearer communication. In order to preserve authenticity and understanding when writing about the effects of marginalization, we often cover twice the space that other writers must cover. First, by acknowledging how things have become, thus maintaining authenticity. Then, we often re-enter the hegemonic vocabulary that marginalizes meaning and redefine it on our own terms. 180

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The sex/gender framework limited my flexibility in defining heteronormativity by only allowing words that kept the definition parallel with everything else in the chapter. Instead of abandoning who I am and my voice for the sake of clarity, I am choosing to map another path. I acknowledge my own feminism views and definitions (above) and then I am substituting Judith Butler’s conceptualizations of gender performance as regulatory fiction for the less flexible second wave feminist constructions of a sex/gender system. This small shift in the undergirding feminist framing allows me to increase the chapter’s internal continuity and its external inclusiveness, while still staying within conceptual framings I believe to be authentic. For me, gender is fluid, so this reallocation of feminist framing between my personal and working definitions (below) of heteronormativity did not stretch my own axiological thinking. By choosing to be transparent about my journey to finding authentic and linguistically accurate framing for this chapter, I acknowledge the interference that heteronormativity can create between a writer’s language and her beliefs, as well as the hard work involved in overcoming heteronormative language barriers in effective and accurate communication. Taking into account both feminist and queer theory framings, I define heteronormativity for the purposes of this chapter’s contexts as follows: Heteronormativity––A social assumption that one’s assigned biological sex uniformly aligns to one’s sex organs, sex role, gender identification, gender role, and sexual orientation. This is a basic definition, absent of the overt consequences of heteronormativity, since the findings section of this paper communicates implications as they relate to this chapter’s topic. While I believe implications of social practices are contextual and thus belong outside of basic definitions, action-oriented definitions of heteronormativity are also helpful in building understanding. The following quote may provide a needed, up-front understanding of some of the generalized implications of heteronormativity. “Heteronormativity structures social life so that heterosexuality is always assumed, expected, ordinary, and privileged. Its pervasiveness makes it difficult for people to imagine other ways of life….Anything else is relegated to the nonnormative, unusual, and unexpected and is, thus, in need of explanation” (Martin & Kazyak, 2009, 316). METHOD

A richly burgeoning body of academic studies on children and heteronormativity share similar ethnographic methodologies to what I use (Renold, 2002; Thorne, 1993), but for the purposes of this chapter, I limit my study to the “cartoonworld” and other adult-imagined and/or produced media that intends children to be the majority consumptive audience. From my first readings of Kinderculture, aptly dedicated to “john, paul, george, and ringo” (Steinberg & Kincheloe, 1997, 1) through my current exploration of contemporary research examining how children’s cultures intersect with heteronormativity (Martin & Kazyak, 2009), I have been fascinated 181

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with analyzing and understanding children’s cultural worlds. I have found that popular culture, especially children’s popular culture, holds ways for us individually and for us as a society to mediate and voice our relationship(s) with oppression and the power of would be oppressors. Even when I lived in the developing world without a television, I found puppets or titeres analytically useful as ethnographic tools for uncovering normative rules of culture. The findings in this chapter draw upon the characters that populate the cartoonworld that children view on a regular basis. I care about the cartoonworld not only because of the frequency with which children visit its imagined space, often from the very real spaces of their own living rooms, but because it is an adult-created space for children, in which many of the cultural producers foreground profit to education. While entertainment purposes exist alongside financial and educative motivations for visiting the cartoonworld, it is an engaging advantage of knowing when to issue travel advisories that restrict my child’s visitation to places that are elsewhere listed as safe. After five years of immersing myself into the daily life of the animated actors of the cartoonworld, emic9 perspectives easily emerged. The data sources that contributed to this chapter were purposefully selected from over 265 coded cartoonworld series for having specific and extensive coding for heteronormativity within a larger in-depth ethnographic study of the cartoonworld. While many cartoons fit within the definition of heteronormative action, I formalized the ethnographic data to identify a multifaceted cartoon series that provides multiple cases based on specific heteronormative story elements. I used Proppian Analysis (Propp, 1968) from the ethnography to choose the elements of each case that fit best with this chapter based on the prominent heteronormative roles the characters played within each cartoon series to choose individual episodes. Since Vladimir Propp’s analyses centered on the cultural products and human-created stories of Russian folklore, they work more reliably than any of the other analytic tools I applied to the cartoonworld data. The analyses identified The Jetsons as a cartoon that would be easily recognizable to the most people that had all the desired heteronormative roles and elements I needed. FINDINGS: THE JETSONS AND HETERONORMATIVITY

The “Dominant Male as Father” Role, and the Implications for Women and More Remote Others The introductory theme song to the classic cartoon, The Jetsons, provides an excellent picture of the heterosexual model for the cartoonworld nuclear family. Perhaps you recall the words, “Meet George Jetson…his boy Elroy…daughter Judy…Jane, his wife.” The words of the theme song ring true to the accompanying visual ordering of how we meet the family with the dad, as the male head of the family driving the space ship, followed in recognition and seating by the younger male child member of the family, then the older female child, and finally, the female 182

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mother/wife. The males, “George Jetson” and “his boy, Elroy” stand on their own terms, while both Judy and Jane are defined by the familiar tagged relations “daughter” and “wife.” It is a nuanced difference, but highly significant, that Elroy receives the gendered, but familiar independent introductory term of “boy.” Also note that the show is entitle “The Jetsons” and not “George Jetson”, as his ownership of his family contributes to his status in terms of heteronormativity measures. This “model” cartoon patriarchy linguistically and visually foregrounds the female mother/ wife as the object of George, signified by her positioning to the male husband in her three word introduction, “Jane, his wife.” This confirmation, like all of the introductory theme song, is sung by the unidentified, perhaps omnipotent, narration of a third party, which could easily fit within the tradition of the chorus in classic Greek drama. Heteronormativity and the “Female as Wife” Role Jane, his wife, is positioned linguistically as being owned by George, linked by the third person singular possessive (male) pronoun10 “his”. The heteronormative implications of wife ownership within the heterosexual nuclear family of the cartoonworld as the dominant culture positions males who are unable, unwilling, or who do not desire to achieve the economic commodity of a wife at an economic and social disadvantage. My research catalogs The Jetsons cartoon from 1962 to 1988 and found that a unitary heterosexual construction holds true throughout this cartoon set in Earth’s future. Interestingly, the current owners of the show, Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. (2009), accidently impose a more modern ordering of the family in their website’s presentation of The Jetsons theme song lyrics advancing the wife and daughter lyrics ahead of the son’s introduction. While perhaps a normative slip imposing a more modern view of the heterosexual nuclear family, it does not change the legacy of the wife’s positioning (and the children’s positioning as well) as belonging to the husband. The Jetsons is one of many examples, by far not the first cartoon patriarchy, but one that may be highly recognizable by many readers. The Economic and Biological Reproductive Implications of the Heterosexual Nuclear Cartoonworld Family The economic and biological reproductive implications of the heterosexual nuclear cartoon family help us to understand the implications and dominance of heteronormativity beyond the primary implications of othering within sexual orientation. I identify as/am a female, heterosexual, married woman with a child and I am happy with all of these expressions of who I am. The fact that the majority of my biological and cultural identifications align to dominant US normative culture may assist my happiness; I recognize the privilege of this cohesion. Still, I often feel overwhelmed with the duties of professional work, domestic work, mothering, and “wife-ing,” and the economic implications of heteronormativity, as exemplified in The Jetsons. The cartoon helped me to realize that what I may need, in many ways, 183

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is “a wife11”. Confoundedly, it is my heterosexuality that denies me the economic privilege of having a wife; for me and for others marginalized outside the bounds of heteronormative culture, this privilege is economically unavailable. Perhaps I need to suspend the progression of this specific argumentation to explain further how I or how heterosexual woman for that matter could be both heterosexually privileged and simultaneously, in the same space/time, “marginalized outside the bounds of heteronormative culture.” It may be difficult to understand a person as being both heterosexual and as being marginalized by heteronormativity, without an exploration of how privilege and oppression can co-exist. Heteronormativity is one factor that mediates such split identities concerning privilege. Heteronormativity and the Co-existence of Privilege and Oppression Understanding privilege is a highly hermeneutical process. Plamer (1969) defines hermeneutics as the theory of interpretation, tracing the term’s origin to Hermes who carried messages between the gods, moved between states of the living and the dead, and who connected the seen to the unseen. Often, we have great difficulty in interpreting ourselves and our position(s) in the world. For me, it was a long journey to discovering what I knew about heteronormativity. Part of the difficulty was that its cultural contexts caused an irresolvable split in me between being privileged and oppressed. Only upon my realization that I could be simultaneously privileged and oppressed, could I move from acceptance of homosexuality to being an ally, to finally becoming comfortable with a voiced position of advocacy. Without understanding how heteronormativity affected my own positioning and life, I had no voice on the oppression. Even now, I feel vulnerable speaking about heteronormative oppression from my co-existence as oppressed and as an acknowledged would-be-oppressor, but I will share with you how my cartoon studies help me to find and to articulate this voice through the thick description and lightly embedded analysis of the first Jetsons episode. Jane Jetson, Heteronormativity, and how the Female Wife fulfills the “Oppressed Oppressor” Role “In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior” (Lorde, 2004, 553). In many ways, I solved my problem of feeling like I needed a “wife” and the conflict of that probability not only with heteronormativity, but with my own sexual orientation, after the model of Jane Jetson. Of course, it is not that I modeled my “solution” to the problem of feeling overwhelmed by the pressures that heteronormative gender role assumptions placed on me by imitating the virtual life of Jane Jetson, but after a year of analyzing cartoon data, I could hardly ignore the connective pattern. The Jetsons are part of my cultural cartoon heritage, so it makes 184

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sense that it is at least possible that I internalized the “role” modeling in the series and other animated series aimed at children as part of the connection. Probably more accurately, both Jane Jetson and I are products of our culture…of heteronormative culture. To be honest, I was devastated when I made the realization that Jane Jetson and I are both women of enough economic means to solve our conflicts with getting a “wife” as heterosexually successful men do, by getting something “like a wife” or finding someone who could fulfill a “wife-like” role for us. I returned to my episodes and transcripts of the Jetsons to discover at what point Jane Jetson solves/resolves at least one of her issues brought on by heteronormativity; it occurs in the very first Jetsons episode. The first episode of The Jetsons, Rosey the Robot, aired on September 30, 1962, when Jane pleaded for domestic help, but her bid for increased power was denied by her husband on the basis of not having enough economic resources. Only upon convincing George that hiring domestic help was in his best interest, did Rosey the Robot enter the Jetsons’ cartoonworld and alleviate some of Jane’s responsibility, thus increasing her free time, status, and power. Like Jane, I was able to convince my husband to hire a cleaning service to come to our home, but only once every three weeks. Often, domestic assistance takes the form of females12 assisting other females, thus serving to minimize one female’s burden while simultaneously increasing the domestic burden of another. Heteronormativity and Compounded Othering: The Intersectionality of Jane Jetson, Privilege, and Rosey the Robot The first episode of The Jetsons, entitled, Rosey the Robot, cuts directly from the theme song to an image of 33 year old Jane Jetson. Jane is perfectly-figured and styled, complete with her purple dress, matching tights, 4 bracelets—two on each arm—and a striking set of pearl earrings. I “read” Jane to be middle–to–upper– middle class, White–in part due to her red hair–female, and heterosexual. While the preceding demographic descriptors are inferred, the class and gender have low– inference due triangulating evidence at other places in the episode. Jane’s actions, contexts, and self-descriptors preclude her gender and sexual orientation from being high inference, but direct triangulating markers are silent or absent from the allowed view. Jane’s age is confirmable, as it is mentioned three times in the first episode. Jane looks exhausted as she does exercises while a voice on a video screen informs her, and perhaps other listeners, that the exercises are designed for “modern” mothers. She slumps as if gravity holds her attention more than the man leading exercises on the oversized screen. As I watch, I empathize with Jane’s exhaustion and think that we could be friends, if either of us had time for that, but I decide virtual and vicarious friends it is, as I continue to observe and analyze her life as it passes before me on my own electronic screen13. Judy enters quickly, asking for permission to go swimming, but Jane defers, replying, “Only if your father says yes.” Judy leaves and returns affirming the male paternal permission, to which Jane replies, “Well, okay then”, as she verbally recalls being younger and better proportioned, “32–22–32, again.” She sighs, while 185

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still looking fatigued. As Elroy enters, this somehow nonverbally signals Jane to begin to make his breakfast. As Jane begins to attend to other domestic duties, this prompts Elroy to ask, “Mom, what’s holding up my eggs?” Shortly after this interaction, Jane persuades her husband, George, to wake up, as she converses knowledgably with her son Elroy about what will happen in his school that day. As she prepares the computer to navigate Elroy to school, Elroy chimes in, “Make sure you press the right button, Mom!” Then, off Elroy goes. Jane returns to the kitchen to make George’s breakfast, but he complains about it and then proceeds to compare her poor cooking to the idealized food preparation skills of his mother. Again deferring, Jane blames the implied inadequacies on the domestic equipment. Even though this episode aired in 1962, ten years before I was born, I can relate to Jane’s world. I still like her and think that, if there were only time, that we could be friends. In contrast to the goals of 21st century cartoonworld programming, I wonder if mothers were designed as part of this Jetson episode’s target audience. George responds to Jane’s deflection and thinly veiled requests for new kitchen equipment by asking, “How can we get a new one? We haven’t even paid for the one that this one replaced…. Jane, we cannot afford it! Absolutely, positively no…. (this rhetoric continues as George’s voice rises)…no, ‘N’…’O’…NO!,” he screams at an amplified volume. After George leaves, Jane frets, saying, “Oh, I shouldn’t have upset George, but if he only knew how I hate washing, ironing, and vacuuming….” Jane continues, “There ought to be some higher authority a girl can appeal to.” Next, Jane talks to her mother who advises Jane to “get a maid.” Here enters the coalition of women. It is at this instance that Jane as the female wife fulfills the “Oppressed Oppressor” role. The narrative of the episode softly situates the oppression of a woman by another woman to be understandable—even necessary. What woman or person for that matter would relish assuming Jane’s duties and the accompany fixed expectations? Not to mention if one could endure the added absence of gratitude, and marked power of her family to assess, freely and negatively, her lack of performance to their expectations. As the viewer, we witness how every member of her nuclear family repeatedly rejects her bids for power and avoidance. Then, when Jane makes an attempt to utilize resistance rhetoric, her mother not only denies her request for remedy, but compounds it with an invitation to oppress. Jane accepts the invitation. The middle of the episode details Jane’s procurement journey. Since this segment happens outside of the domestic and gendered space of Jane’s home and since this part of the oppression journey has other implications for feminism, that relate to, but also exceed the scope of this chapter, we will move forward in the episode to Jane and Rosey’s return to Jane’s domestic sphere. One important thing to note is that Rosey’s services were free as part of a one day in-home trial. Rosey is portrayed as being thrilled to have the position. She works hard and overtly shows joy in the work, except in one version of the original episode when airing a dirty rug makes her cough repeatedly14. Rosey’s respectful “yes mam” responses to Jane and her entire attitudinal and verbal demeanor separate her from the Jetson “family.” Rosey plays ball with Elroy, helps Judy with her homework, and even massages George’s back, supposedly unbeknownst to him, while he converses 186

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lightly with Jane. Then Rosey makes a wonderful dinner for George’s boss from leftovers. From here, the episode breaks from our topic into a domestic comedy of errors, but the theme of, “never fear, while Rosey’s here” prevails. As the boss goes to leave, he finally notices Rosey, but in the role of an economic commodity, reminiscent of Rubin’s quote early in the chapter (p. 10). The boss does not address Rosey; instead, he questions George, “How can you afford a maid? I’m overpaying you.” It is Rosey who enacts a performance of resistance, attesting that the Jetsons are “nice people” saying, “They’ve given me this chance so that I don’t end up in the scrap pile,” as she dumps a pineapple upside-down cake on the boss’s head. Ironically, it is the often silent (silenced?) “daughter, Judy” who makes the most accurate comment of the episode in saying, “What a performance!” The boss fires George and leaves. Once again the meaningful narrative disintegrates, while all of the Jetsons are shown in what is submitted (unsuccessfully, in this case) to the viewer as authentic laughter affirmed by George’s comment about Rosey that, “She didn’t cost us anything, but my job.” Rosey leaves. The boss loves Rosey’s cake, so he calls the Jetsons, rehires George, and demands of George that he retain Rosey’s services. Both George and Rosey comply. The Jetsons assess Rosey, letting her know, “You’re worth your weight in leftovers” to which Rosey replies, “I love you people, too.” It seems as if the episode is wrapping up as Rosey assumes the added domestic/mothering duty of putting the children to bed. Rosey exits, telling Jane, “yes, mam…beep, beep…thank you, mam…beep, beep…goodnight, mam…beep, beep.” Jane’s family follows Rosey as George says, leaving first, “yes, mam…beep, beep…,” followed by Judy, saying, “thank you, mam…beep, beep…,” and finally Elroy exits, also trying to echo Rosey, as he says, “goodnight, mam, or mom…beep, beep.” The praise and appreciation that Jane’s family so freely gives to Rosey for fulfilling the same roles that Jane did as mother, caretaker, domestic work, and wife, highlights the absence of appreciation when the person who fulfilled these roles had dual internal family roles. It took the external, “real world” economically valued surrogate of Rosey for the family to appreciate the extra work that heteronormativity compresses into the mother/wife role. I am not sure if the voices of Jane’s family echoing Rosey’s yes mams and thank you mams, mean that such domestic role recognition and appreciation extends to Jane as it did to Rosey, if they are merely (re)iterating a performance, or if this echoed praise serves to mock Jane—showing her just how easily she can be replaced15. Jane has the last words of the episode. I will not reveal them in my voice because she has earned the right to have these final words be hers. Instead, I will observe that she has made some crucial decisions in this episode as to how she will accommodate for and remedy the pressures of heteronormativity as it affects her mixed oppressed and privileged role(s) and her identity as a White, heterosexual, married woman. And we, the viewers, are left with many questions in this alternative understanding of the Jetsons’ cartoonworld where the affects of heteronormativity have been partially unmasked. I have started to pull away the pretty veils. In honesty, the assisted telling makes my stomach hurt, but I think that may be both an acceptable and appropriate response. 187

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Implications of the Rosey the Robot Story and the Jane as the “Oppressed Oppressor” Co-Existing within the Larger Framing of the Heterosexual Nuclear Cartoonworld Family I leave it your interpretation as to how you will answer the big, the little, and the almost invisible questions of heteronormativity. Do you agree with Judy’s double entendre as if it were referring to the “performance” of power and oppression in the episode? It is the teacher in me, I suppose, that encourages me to raise the questions, but to provide few answers. Then again, in an chapter on heteronormativity embedded in the cartoonworld, it would hardly be “right” for me to share a retelling of a performance and to tell you what to make of it. Who is to say that my understandings of these issues and how they should be addressed and remedied in my life is how they should apply to your circumstances? I do believe that heteronormativity is a globally acting force, but I think its affects and implications are contextualized. How else could I empathize with Jane, the cartoonworld mother/ wife, unless I hermeneutically relate to the touches of the common humanity I see, recognize, and know in her story? It strikes me as curious that while I have viewed this episode multiple times, in addition to having transcribed it, that I still (secretly) hold out for Jane’s redemptive actions to appear in each retelling, even though I know the cartoonworld narrative is locked. Perhaps, it is my own and your own redemptive action(s) that I hope to see in such (re)enactments. Throughout this chapter, I have given you some clues as to where such action may need to fall in my life. I would not ask for your authentic reflection on these issues without the work of disclosing some of my own. My wonderings center on why Rosey chose to act as a proxy of resistance on behalf of the Jetsons. Was this resistance acting authentic, calculated, in her nature, did she have nothing to lose, or did she just want to see what would happen? I am unsure. I am drawn to Rosey’s femaleness alongside her nonhuman form, as well as to other embedded differences that influence viewers to “read” Rosey as something other than human. Additionally, it always sticks with me that I retain the absences of the cartoonworld version in my retellings and I wonder why I refrain from populating these spaces with more diverse voices. My guess is that deep down I may believe in the justice of letting the historic record stand as it is, even though I know others may retell and recreate cultural stores in ways that are even more marginalizing. More than anything else about the Rosey the Robot cartoonworld story, I wonder about the nature of Rosey’s “human” performance juxtaposed against her being a robot. I worry that in some way she represents a limit of the dehumanization of the “feminized domestic role” that women play, while her creators and oppressors have still overtly managed to retain her female gender. CONCLUSIONS

This chapter could not end with the Rosey the Robot story; although, in reality, that is where many stories stop and rejoin the automatic (re)iterations of heteronormative (re)production. While we want to select cartoonworld media as examples in books, 188

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chapters, chapters, articles, and classrooms that provide easy access to understandings even for readers who do not regularly watch and keep up with cartoons; we also want to become aware of how academic studies can bring about unintended consequences by sometimes increasing interest and thus the revenue of large media outlets. Like the majority of cartoonworld space marketed to children in elementary school or younger, the Jetsons’ queer space is marked by absence. Although, nonappearance does not always indicate nonexistence. As this chapter’s findings show, the markers of heteronormative influences on the Jetsons’ cartoonworld abound. I feature the Jetsons as the focus of this chapter because their cartoonworld matches my analytic research categories without any need to adjust the fit. Additionally, Jane Jetson’s daily cartoonworld existence has enough overlap to real world, present-day, gendered experiences to stand the test of time. For example, while I start my day with yoga, it does not differ drastically in form from the televised exercise show Jane uses to start her day; furthermore, in name and in marketing, both workout programs specifically target us as mothers. The Jetsons’ cartoonworld has one additional attribute that attracts me. It is one of the few cartoon series where I am able to procure and view all of the episodes without needing to purchase them and without taking extensive time to find them on public broadcasts. Due to my research interest, I have multiple DVRs recording cartoonworld episodes that I need to complete various series. I arrange to purchase episodes when I cannot find legal and free viewing access. Even free access requires planning to know when an episode will air, but I choose to write about cartoons that allow readers free and easy admission. Heteronormativity and Dominance within Cartoonworld Geographies Commentary on heteronormativity in the cartoonworld is overrepresented by studies tied to Disney16 to the point that the topic gives the for-profit company ample, albeit often negative, press exposure. For example, a Google search returns 13,900 responses in 0.35 seconds for “heteronormativity” + “Disney”. Constraining web content to academic options via Google Scholar, still returns 463 Disney responses in 0.11 seconds. While population density does not exclusively define meaning, as our central tenant of concerns with heteronormativity shows, prevailing views can limit meaning and the space for expressing meaning by individuals not included and/or negatively impacted by the dominance. Since Disney does not equal the entirety of the cartoonworld, I purposely choose to include alternatively produced cartoons in my analyses when such options fit my research questions and models. Even so, tangential overlap is difficult to escape. For example, the original broadcast company for The Jetsons, ABC, came to acquire ties to Disney. The cartoonworld expands the geographies of how and where and even why masculinities and femininities are performed specifically for children within adultcreated/imagined spaces. Unlike most of our historical times and places in real world geographies, when children view and (re)enact performances based in cartoonworld geographies, such actions unfold in imagined spaces infused with sex ratio imbalances. The sex ratio is a demographic indicator that reports the number of men 189

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per 100 women. The cartoonworld has an overabundance of males in the (a) writing and producing of adult-initiated imitations of children who take stage to the model performances and (b) in the actual cartoonworld populations. I wonder what happens to concepts of heteronormativity when there are too many men in the cartoonworld. According to Guttentag and Secord’s (1983) classic, Too Many Women? The Sex Ratio Question, when women are scarce, a protective morality prevails to protect them, which favors monogamy and navigates female sex roles toward tradition and increased domestication. Thus, if we base our answer on Guttentag and Secord’s historical sex ratio research, we can infer that the over abundance of males to females in the cartoonworld serves to strengthen heteronormative assumptions. I wonder what all the extra cartoonworld boys who cannot or choose not to get wives will do when their development comes to fruition. Toward Understanding Heteronormativity, Absences, and Silencing through Children’s Cultures Beyond the Cartoonworld Caputo (1987) says, “We understand as we do because we exist as we do.” While understanding comes from our experiences, it does not mean that we can always articulate what we know. Often, we can act on what we know easier than voicing the rules of our knowing. We can follow the normative social and cultural rules without being able to recite them. Since many of us without children do not watch cartoons and since too many examples of classic cartoons may marginalize younger readers, I want to provide an example of children’s culture that exists beyond the boundaries of the cartoonworld in the area of children’s literature. Many of my graduate students become excited when I offer video clips and examples from the cartoonworld to illustrate difficult academic concepts, but some do not. Hence, I occasionally use music videos, teen dramas, or other popular culture that falls within their working knowledge and their natural selection. Sometimes, my popular culture selections depend on if I am teaching a class for elementary or secondary teachers, so I can align meaning to the ages and understandings of the children they teach. Assuredly, as the age group of the audiences targeted by the popular culture climbs, so do the number of examples of characters and contexts that apply to more densely populated space(s) suitable for analysis of intersectionality and power. That said, the amount of space does not populate exponentially. However, since we still are talking about children’s cultural spaces within popular culture, I return to that age-level example. Most of us who grew up in English-speaking, US households are familiar with Humpty Dumpty. While the text of the children’s nursery rhyme never mentions Humpty Dumpty as being male, or even as being an egg, as he is typically drawn, we know these associations to be true. I recently asked a class of graduate-level elementary and secondary education majors to explain this and they could not. When asked about the contradictions between the actual text and their knowledge of the text, many students indicated that they associated “eggs” with being female. We hermeneutically (re)visited the poem and our childhood memories of it trying to understand what we knew…like Hermes connecting the seen and unseen. When 190

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asked what other silenced or absent information they could voice, most students agreed that Humpty Dumpty must be from a class more privileged than we all were, as “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” would not come for any of us if we were to fall off a high perch. With this uncovering of power, some students quickly understood how viewing Humpty Dumpty as White and male helped the story to make sense. Subsequent discussion of the influences of heteronormativity on power helped students explore more absences in the nursery rhyme story of Humpty Dumpty, as did realigning Humpty Dumpty with his other literary appearances, such as in the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass text mentioned earlier in this chapter. Analyzing cultural materials for absences and silences is a learned and transferrable skill. Diversity appreciation and discovery activities and dialogues need not always start with heteronormativity, feminist theory, or other critical analyses that may silence or disengage some intended audiences. I find that I maintain more open and inclusive student audiences when I use the familiar spaces of children’s cultures to help students begin to navigate their own path toward diversity examinations that they would otherwise resist. If the purpose of media is to serve as a tool to increase understandings, then an excerpt from children’s literature works as well as a classic cartoon or as a new cutting–edge cartoon clip, depending on which cultural product(s) speak most clearly to one’s intended audiences and messages. The seeming simplicity of cartoonworlds can assist students and ourselves in (re)discovering the commonalities that diverse spaces hold with their/our own experiences. Finally, offering familiar footholds within the accessible thought and language of the cartoonworld allows students (and ourselves) to suspend—albeit temporarily—some of the pressures that heteronormativity places on us within real world contexts that can make diverse spaces feel compressed and foreign to inhabit. Even outsiders who do not hold and/or recognize any membership(s) in these diverse and marginalized spaces, can utilize cartoonworld space(s) to increase their diversity understandings and awareness. We must search deeply within ourselves, sometimes even with seemingly simple pieces of cultural knowledge to (re)discover what and why we know and how heteronormativity may influence our knowing. NOTES 1

2

3

4

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland uses the word “queer” eight times, always in ways that imply a difference or strangeness. For example, “Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it carefully…. ‘You’re holding it upside down!’ Alice interrupted. ‘To be sure I was!’ Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for him. ‘I thought it looked a little queer.’” Butler uses the word “subject” so that her words parallel her beliefs and the foundations of her theory. When introducing Butler’s terminology, I retained this word to try to align to her intended meanings as much as is possible, but you can read the word “subject” to indicate an individual person if that is clearer for your understanding and ways of knowing. Hegemonic is a term initially defined by Antonio Gramsci to refer to the ways that a dominant group manufactures consent in ways that are absent of rules or coercions, but instead through cultural and social norms that are repeated and reproduced in institutions. In this example, the places where children play are often tied to the geographies of educational institutions. sameness 191

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6 7 8 9

10

11 12

13 14 15

16

Second wave feminism is generally associated with the strong US (and British) reemergence of feminist writing, non-hierarchical organization, and strong social action centered in everyday life. On a personal note, second wave feminists’ situating of social and political action within every day happenings was part of what inspired me to join the Peace Corps. The second wave of US feminism started in the late 1960s. The first wave of US feminism took place at the beginning of the 20th century. New feminism began to emerge in the last decade of the 20th century. understandings about the nature of knowledge the nature of knowing and the relationship between the “knower” and what is known knowledge is based on natural phenomena and is verified by empirical science Emic is the methodological term in ethnography and other qualitative analyses meaning “inside” or an insider’s view. In contrast, etic is an outsider’s view. English language requires possessive pronouns to meet two conditions: (a) to substitute for a noun and (b) to show ownership. See Judy Brady’s 1970 poem, “Why I Want a Wife”. The inter-relationships of how socioeconomics, language, and ethnicity/race intersect with heteronormativity and gender in this example also matter. We may need to ask ourselves what implications of Lucan’s gaze apply to our viewing of Jane. The rug-cleaning scene was removed from some preserved and sold versions of the original episode. The replacement interpretation echoes the implications of heteronormativity on the wife/mother role in the heterosexual nuclear family as it intersects with the reality of rising divorce rates. See Giroux (1999) for an excellent example of Disney’s influence on popular culture and children’s worlds.

REFERENCES Antonio, A., Astin, H., & Cress, C. (2000). Community service in higher education: A look at the nation’s faculty. Review of Higher Education, 23(4), 373–398. Morison, S. E. (1936). Harvard College in the seventeenth century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Baldwin, R. G. (1996). Faculty career stages and implications for professional development. In D. Finnegan, D. Webster, & Z. F. Gamson (Eds.), Faculty and faculty issues in colleges and universities (2nd ed.). Boston: Pearson Custom Publishing. Bauman, S. (2008). The role of elementary school counselors in reducing school bullying. Elementary School Journal, 108(5), 362–375. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex”. New York: Routledge. Caputo, J. D. (1987). Radical hermeneutics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Carroll, L. (1998). Alice’s adventures in wonderland and through the looking glass. London: Penguin Books. Giroux, H. (1999). The mouse that roared: Disney and the end of innocence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Guttentag, M., & Secord, P. F. (1983). Too many women? The sex ratio question. Beverly Hills, CA; London: Sage Publications. KidScreen. (2009, October 15). KidScreen, about reaching children through entertainment. Retrieved from http://www.kidscreen.com/ Lorde, A. (2004). Age, race, class, and sex: Women redefining difference. In L. Heldke & P. O’Connor (Eds.), Oppression, privilege, & resistance: Theoretical perspectives on racism, sexism, and heterosexism. New York: McGraw–Hill. Markes, L. (Writer), Barbera, J., & Hanna, W. (Directors). (1962). Rosey the Robot [Television series episode]. In J. Barbera & W. Hanna (Producers), The Jetsons. New York: The American Broadcasting Company.

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HETERONORMATIVITY IN THE CARTOONWORLD Martin, K. A., & Kazyak, E. (2009). Hetero-romantic love and heterosexiness in children’s G-rated films. Gender & Society, 23(3), 315–336. doi:10.1177/0891243209335635 Oh, I., & Hazler, R. J. (2009). Contributions of personal and situational factors to bystanders’ reactions to school bullying. School Psychology International, 30(3), 291–310. Propp, V. (1968). Morphology of the folktale. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Renold, E. (2007). Primary school “studs”: (De)constructing young boys’ heterosexual masculinities. Men and Masculinities, 9(275), 275–297. doi:10.1177/1097184X05277711 Rubin, G. (1975). The traffic in women: Notes on the ‘political economy’ of sex.” In R. Rapp (Ed.), Toward an anthropology of women (pp. 157–210). New York: Monthly Review Press. Schor, J. B. (2004). Born to buy: The commercialized child and the new consumer culture. New York: Scribner. Steinberg, S. R., & Kincheloe, J. L. (1997). Kinderculture: The corporate construction of childhood. Boulder, CO: WestviePress. Sumara, D., & Davis, B. (1999). Interrupting heteronormativity: Toward a queer curriculum theory. Curriculum Inquiry, 29(2), 191–208. Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Twemlow, S. W., Fonagy, P., & Sacco, F. C. (2004). The role of the bystander in the social architecture of bullying and violence in schools and communities. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1036, 215–232. Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. (2009). The Jetsons. Classic Cartoons http://www2.warnerbros.com/ warnervideo/classiccartoons/jetsons.html

Emily J. Summers, Assistant Professor Curriculum & Instruction, College of Education Texas State University—San Marcos

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14. MICAHEL MOORE, BABY EINSTEIN, AND STUDENT COUNCIL ELECTIONS Social Education Brings Unusual Pieces of Life Together

In many ways a discussion of a social education should actually be a cautionary tale. It can lead you in directions you never considered and cause you to ask questions that have no answer, only more questions about which you ponder. As with many things revolving around social education this for instance begins with a pairing of strange bedfellows. It is because of Michael Moore and the Baby Einstein video series that I find myself examining issues of democracy and what students are learning in today’s schools. That this unlikely duo could lead to the contemplation of such rich and deep topics begins to illustrate the power of social education. As an eighth grade social studies teacher I was searching for a way to discuss the topics of voting and democracy with my students. It seemed obvious that I should use their experience with student council elections to frame this lesson. This idea comes out of my exposure to Dewey (1916) and his idea that true knowledge comes from self examination and reflection. However, a problem quickly became evident. The elections had taken place in May while the lesson was taking place in August. An entire summer vacation separated the students from their participation in the electoral process. Both the lesson and the discussion surrounding it fell into my personal category of lessons that needed major revision. THE BEGINNINGS OF AN IDEA

At approximately the same time that the students were not engaging in the lesson as I hoped they would, two other events were occurring in my life. First, my wife and I were blessed with our first child. So along with the new digital camera and camcorder purchased to capture every moment of his life, we were looking for ways to stimulate and entertain his young mind so we could have a few moments free during the day. One of our friends introduced us to the Baby Einstein video series, which has a very clever and marketable title. As I was observing one of the videos with my young son, I had the thought that the videos were so simple in so many ways that even I could produce one of my own with our new camcorder. The second event taking my place in this time period also revolves around the birth of this child. As first time parents, my wife and I quickly realized that one of favorite social activities, going to the movie theater, was going to have to be modified. We now had to rent videos and purchase pay-per-movies in order to view the films we wanted. One of the first films we saw in this manner was Bowling For Columbine, produced by Michael Moore. C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 195–209. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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Watching this film was profoundly moving for me. First as a classroom teacher, thoughts about the tragedy at Columbine always made me think about what I might do in a similar situation at my school. More significantly though it was the thought that here was one man who wanted to know more and look deeper at what happened and possibly why. He took his camera and started asking questions. Certainly there are all sorts of issues revolving around the idea of what questions he asked, who he asked, how he asked them, and his own interpretation about all the events, but nobody raising these issues were producing a counter film. I had to ask myself if there was a problem I could approach in such a manner, if I had the skills to create such a movie and put my questions into action. This interaction with the film already begins to connect my tale of caution and social education. One ideal of social education is that thought should lead to action (Kincheloe, 2001). Simply thinking about an idea or discovering something that needs to be reformed is not enough. If there is no action then one is simply participating in an intellectual and academic exercise. This leads to a perceived divide between those in academic studies and those consider themselves to be part of a practical world. In this example Michael Moore did not simply look for causes and effects stemming from the horrific events that took place in Columbine, he also created a film in an attempt to effect change. The combination of watching both a production for the Baby Einstein Corporation and Michael Moore sparked an idea in my mind. If students had so much trouble discussing their student council elections because of the time gap between the voting and the lesson, why not create my own movie focusing on their elections. This “home movie” of the students experience could lead to powerful discussion and follow up lessons which previously had little to no impact on the students. So after discussing my idea with the administration and student council sponsor I began preparations for the creation of my own documentary film. With grandiose visions of a great production running through my head, I did not suspect what I would eventually be capturing on film. As the election process began, I put my plan into action. I ran here, there, and everywhere with my camcorder in an attempt to capture as much of the process as possible. I interviewed candidates about why they were running for office. I asked students basic information about the election and candidates as they tried to decide for which candidate they would vote. I filmed the speeches given by the candidates on Election Day. I even conducted a modified exit poll and asked the voters how they made their final choice for which candidate they would cast their ballot. As I attempted to remain a detached and impartial observer of the students participating in their own little piece of democracy, some strange and disturbing patterns began to emerge. TALKING WITH THE CANDIDATES

The filming process began when I interviewed those students who choose to take an application to become a candidate. When asking them why they wanted to run for student council most could not come up with a clear answer. In fact a few of them 196

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answered my question with a question. “So I can make a difference?” was the thought of one young lady. She must be given credit though for trying to come up with an answer, most of the students simply stared at the camera looking off into the distance, finally shaking their heads and explaining as one young man did, “I don’t really know, I just want to win.” There were other candidates who were clearly able to explain why they were running and what they hoped to accomplish. “Our dances have really sucked and I want to make them better,” explained a candidate for social director. “The council does all these fund raisers and stuff and I never know where the money goes. I want on the council so we can tell people what we’re doing and it won’t seem so secretive,” explained a candidate for the office of president. Another student explained that she was seeking the office of vice-president because, “We need a voice. The kids I mean. The teachers don’t listen to us enough and I think student council needs to do something about that.” CAMPAIGN OF POSTERS AND STICKERS

After these candidates turned in their applications and attended an informational meeting, the campaign portion of the process began. Students were each allowed to create up to four campaign posters, as well as slogan stickers for other students to wear. These posters or stickers were not allowed to mention another candidate by name and they could not be professionally made. Walking the hallways armed with a digital camera during this time was very entertaining. Many of the posters and stickers contained very clever campaign slogans and were quite imaginative! Two posters in particular really stuck out. One simply said that we should vote for this candidate because he, “Called It Last Year.” It also featured a place for students to sign their name saying that they supported the candidate in his run for president of the council. The other memorable poster featured a bike horn which asked students to honk in their support of this candidates run for social director. Hardly a passing time took place without the sounds of four bike horns being heard somewhere in the halls of the school. In reference to the stickers produced by the candidates, it seemed that a competition broke out within the student body. It was a contest to see who could cover their binder with the most stickers. One of the candidates quickly picked up on this and began producing a new sticker for everyday of the week long campaigning period. His stickers asked us to vote for him because he had “Ashton Kutcher on his stickers.” They also said we should vote for him because it meant “a Chicken in every Pot and a New Sticker every Week.” So it became the norm to see this candidate surrounded by students every morning as they all clamored to be one of the first to proudly display his sticker on their binder. Returning to the two posters for a moment is also very illuminating. I would make an effort to stand beside these posters during passing time and ask students why they were signing the poster or honking the horn. The horn, of course, was most often honked because, “It’s a cool sound” and, “When else do I get to make noise in school like this?” It’s humorous the number of eighth grade students honking the 197

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horn too, because they would not be eligible to vote. When it came to the signature poster, I found most often that students would say they were signing it because, “well everyone else is, so why shouldn’t I too?” TALKING WITH THE VOTERS

As popular as these posters and stickers became it seemed to have no real effect on the students. During the moments I had before school and during lunch I would take my video camera and interview students throughout the week. I always asked them the same questions: who was running for office, when elections were taking place, and how would they pick who to vote for. With fifteen different students running for five officer positions on the council, I found it disappointing that most students were only able to list two or three candidates, and those listed were their friends. It was even more disturbing that only two or three students were able to correctly name the coming Friday as election day. To cast an even more discouraging light on this subject, four candidates interviewed did not realize when elections would take place. With all of this in mind, however, the most intriguing answers came when asking the students how they would pick for which candidate to vote. Many times students would say, “I’ll listen to the speeches and then pick.” A more common answer was, “I’ll just choose my friends.” The most common answer, though, was given more often than these two answers combined. This answer can best be summarized by the young man who explained, “Well when you get the ballot there are some people you know and some you don’t. Really though you know who everybody is and you don’t want the weird ones on the council. You have to vote for the popular kids cause they’re popular for a reason. So pick them and they’ll do I good job I think.” ELECTION DAY

Election day had finally arrived. With about sixty minutes left in school on that day the sixth and seventh grade students reported to the school auditorium for the candidate speeches. Each candidate was given up to three minutes to speak to their classmates and convince them to cast their vote in their favor. As each of the candidates rose and spoke they gave generic qualifications as to why they would be a good choice. Things such as, “I’m a good student,” and, “I’ll work really hard for you,” were mentioned again and again by the candidates. It was interesting to watch the outgoing officer board as the speeches were taking place because many of the candidates stepped up and said, “I’ll do a way better job than student council did this year.” Those officers who had done the best they could during the current school year surely did not appreciate these comments. One candidate grabbed the attention of his audience by stepping up, introducing himself, ripping up his note cards, and then giving his speech from memory. Generally though, as each candidate stepped forward to give their speech the audience grew less and less interested. Following the speeches, the students reported back to their classrooms to cast their votes. During this time period I enlisted the help of several other teachers to use school camcorders in order to interview a large portion of the student population. 198

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The students were asked two questions after they had completed their ballot: how did you pick who to vote for and what did you learn from the process. The overwhelming majority of the students said that they based their decision on the speeches given by the candidates. However, reviewing the tape of how the students watched the speeches it seems obvious that this answer was given because it is what the students believed we wanted to hear. This conclusion became very apparent during the speech giving process. Watching the students “listen” to their classmates speeches was in a word entertaining. You could quickly pick up on which guys were interested in which girls because the young men were constantly trying to distract the young ladies and get their attention. When it comes to note passing during the speeches, I stopped counting at fifteen notes passed during a single speech. By the end of the speeches I was able to count thirty different students sleeping in the auditorium, and that does not count those who had already woken from earlier naps. Reviewing all the footage captured during the speech process made it very obvious that there were more students tuned out than paying attention to what the candidates had to say. When the students were asked to explain what they learned through the whole election process, with one voice they said nothing. A few of them tried to explain an answer, but after three or four “um’s” they would finally give up and say nothing. Some of them did not even respond verbally, but would simply shrug their shoulders and then walk off camera. A few students even greeted this question with another, “you mean we were supposed to learn something from all this?” After gathering all of this raw footage over the course of seven school days, I endeavored to compile it into a cohesive narrative with which the students could interact. Over the next two years it provided an entertaining and interesting text on which future discussions were based. The students enjoyed laughing at themselves on camera, especially those who had been in sixth grade at the time of the filming. As “much more mature” eighth graders, they found it humorous to watch how they acted two years previous. If I ended the story here, it might be considered entertaining, antidotal, and interesting. However, due to my immersion in social education the story cannot end here. Rather it is only the first step in a larger process. A SECOND ELECTION OBSERVED

It turned out that the year I brought a camcorder to school was also the last year that the student council sponsor worked at this particular school. At the end of the school year she decided to seek employment elsewhere. So as the new school year dawned the student council had a new sponsor, who also happened to be a new employee at the school. As the sixth grade students from my home movie became eight grade students, I decided it would be interesting to take another look at student council elections. I wanted to know if this new leadership of the group would have a noticeable impact on the student’s attitudes towards voting in the elections. So two years after creating my original film I decided to begin a second experiment. This time I did not endeavor to create another film but used a digital voice recorder instead. I found my first time endeavor to be time consuming and without the 199

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proper sound equipment, I was unable to make a truly effective text with which my future students could interact. Rather I simply wanted to listen to the voices of the students and compare their thoughts with those from my first endeavor. The elections were handled in a different manner than when I first began my investigation. Students still had to fill out an application before the election, but in contrast to my first look at the elections there was no campaign period. Voting was still to be held following a speech given by each of the candidates at the end of school on a Friday. However, student votes were not the only determining factor in who would be elected to the officer board. Each candidate’s name was given to their teachers for a teacher vote as well. Teachers were to comment on each candidates conduct and achievement in the classroom. The teacher vote would be combined with the student vote to determine the final outcome. SPEAKING TO THE STUDENTS AGAIN

Pleasantly this time I did not have to spend all of my lunch periods leading up to the elections running down candidates and students to interview, I was able to conduct all of the interviews in a single day. I began at lunch by roaming the cafeteria interviewing students and asking them three questions: when were student council elections, who was running for office, and how would you choose who to vote for. Although I was hoping for a different response to these questions, I walked away very disappointed, similar to my fists experience. “I didn’t know we got to vote for student council,” was the comment of one young man. Again and again I found that students had absolutely no idea that their student council elections would be taking place in a few hours. Even students who had friends running for office did not know when the elections would take place. Unfortunately there was even one candidate who had forgotten to write his speech for that day’s elections. After talking to the student, he scurried away to finish his speech. When talking about who was running and how they would choose whom they would vote, I found an astounding lack of knowledge among the students. “Well I know my sister is running for something, but I’m not sure what,” was the response of an older brother when he was asked who was running for election. “If it weren’t for [those two] running around the cafeteria shouting that we need to vote for them right now I wouldn’t know anybody who was running,” commented another student. Students did not seem to have a way in mind for choosing whom they would vote for either. “I don’t know maybe flip a coin,” was what one young man was planning to do. Another student said that she planned to, “play ene mene mine mo or something like that,” when trying to choose who would represent her. Again, as I had found previously, the students were planning on either voting for their friends or deciding who they felt was the more popular of the two candidates when voting. ANOTHER CONVERSATION WITH THE CANDIDATES

As discouraging as talking with the students in the cafeteria proved to be, it was even more discouraging when I talked with the actual candidates running for office. I was able to speak to each of the candidates individually as they sat waiting in the 200

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auditorium for their speeches to being. I asked the students seeking election two questions: why are you running for office and what do you consider to be the purpose of student council. There was a variety of answers as to why they were running, but it was a jumbled mess of a variety. “I think I could do a good job or something like that,” was the answer given by one of the two candidates for council president. The other candidate said, “cause it would be fun and stuff.” The major theme that could be pulled out from all of the student’s answers would be, “I’m not really sure, but it’s just something I want to do.” When talking with them about the purpose of student council, the answers were again varied but muddled. “I think we are supposed to make the school better, but I don’t know how,” replied a young lady running for council treasurer. “Don’t we just run dances and stuff I think,” replied another candidate for council treasurer. One of the students seeking election to the position of vice president had a clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish, “The students need a voice. We have to be heard, the teachers need to know what we think, and it’ll be my job to do that if I’m elected.” This young man was not elected. Instead the candidate who thought student council should, “do a better job with dances and parties and stuff,” was elected to the council. THE CANDIDATE SPEECHES AND CASTING OF VOTES

What followed next was the candidate speeches. While setting up my voice recorder to capture the candidate’s thoughts I sat facing the audience making notes about how the students in the audience were behaving. I again witnessed a great deal of middle school flirting, note passing, sleeping, and gum chewing. What I did not have the opportunity to make note of was students focused on what the candidates had to say. I was unable to make note of this because it was not occurring during the speeches. I knew this observation would be important to keep this in mind as I would later be talking to students about how they chose for whom they voted. Reviewing the speeches given by the candidates, I have to wonder if they some how obtained a copy of my movie from two years ago. This thought crossed my mind because listening to the speeches it was almost an exact replay from the speeches of two years ago. The candidates explained how that year’s council had not done a good job of running things and how they would be able to do a better job. There was the usual discussion of how they were a good student and thought they could do a good job because they were a good person. Each speech seemed to be a carbon copy of the other, only spoken in a different voice. It is easy to understand why students quickly began to tune out what these candidates had to say. After the speeches had concluded the students proceeded back to their classrooms in order to vote. After the voting I traveled from classroom to classroom interviewing students willing to talk to me and asked them two questions: how do you choose who you would vote for and what did you learn from this process. At this point the easiest thing to do would be to simply copy and paste my earlier discussion about these questions here. Again and again students claimed to use the candidate speeches as their determining factor for whom they would vote. From my own personal observations during the speeches I knew this could not be true for the 201

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majority of students I talked to. Several were honest in saying, “I don’t know I just closed my eyes and marked somebody. Does it really matter who I vote for?” Another student simply smiled and said, “the old coin flip never lets me down when making a decision like this.” As for what the students learned. They again answered with one voice and said nothing. A few tried to put together an answer for this question and said, “Well I guess I learned what its going to be like when I get to vote for real, maybe.” Others simply asked, “You mean I was supposed to learn something from all this?” A BIGGER MEANING?

Due to the influence of social education on my perspective, I could not help but begin to consider what I observed during these elections in a much larger context. With it being the year 2008, and therefore a Presidential election year, the news stories and coverage concerning voter turn out are sure to re-emerge as they do during all election cycles. According to electorate information, since 1960 the highest voter turnout during a Presidential election occurred in 1960 when 63.1% of the voting age population cast their ballot (Infoplease, 2006). In that same time period the percentage of the population old enough to vote casting a vote has dipped as low as 49.1%, which was during the 1996 election (Infoplease, 2006). Looking at midterm election statistics illustrates just how few people vote when they are not choosing a President. In 1966 the highest percentage of the voting age population helped decide the members of Congress when 48.4% voted (Infoplease, 2006). That number has dipped as low as 36.4% during two midterm elections since 1960. This occurred in the election years of 1986 and 1998 (Infoplease, 2006). However, Michael McDonald (2006) argues that these statistics are incorrect and need to be examined further. According to McDonald (2006) the way to calculate voter turnout rate has been to divide the number of votes by the number of people in the United States old enough to vote. So this voting age population consists of everyone age 18 and older residing in the United States. This number, McDonald (2006) argues, is inaccurate because is includes people who are actually ineligible to vote, for example people who are considered non-citizens and felons. When McDonald (2006) recalculates voter turnout statistics he only uses the population that is eligible to vote, calling this population the “voting-eligible population” or VEP. Using this statistical analysis, McDonald (2006) found that 60% of the VEP voted in the 2004 Presidential election. This number is in contrast to most statisticians who found that 55% of the population voted in the same election (McDonald, 2006). While encouraging, it must still be pointed out that four out of every ten adults who could have voted in this election did not. Additionally using McDonald’s statistical analysis of the 2002 midterm election only raises that voter turnout rate to 40% (McDonald, 2006). Again showing that six out of every ten adults who could have voted did not. These numbers, which ever way you choose to look at them, represent a problem with the American electorate. The citizens of this country have the power to choose their leaders, but they are staying home and letting someone else choose for them. 202

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WHY ARE WE DISENGAGED?

There are different ideas about why the American public has been withdrawing from political participation. Some, such as Putnam (2000), look at the public’s distrust of the government as a possible reason for this lack of interest. Others, such as Zinn (2005), say that it is more than the public holding a lack of trust for the government. In fact, the public knows that the political system of two parties simply does not work. Still others, such as Rochester (2003), look for reasons within the educational system to explain the public’s lack of political engagement today. Each of these ideas need to be exploreded further. During the mid-1960s, Americans were confident in their political institutions and counted on them to do what was in the public’s best interest. Approximately one in four would agree with ideas such as the government does not care what the public thinks and people do not have much say in the government. Additionally, three out of four people would say that you could trust the government (Putnam, 2000). Conversely, in the 1990s, three out of four people did not trust the government to do what is in the public’s best interest (Putnam, 2000). Looking at the turmoil within the country since the mid-1960s may begin to paint a picture as to why the statistics have shown such a dramatic reversal. In that time period occurred the latter years of the Vietnam War, several race riots in cities such as Cleveland, Chicago, and Atlanta, the Watergate cover-up, President Nixon’s resignation, President Ford’s pardon of former President Nixon, the Iran hostage incident, the Iran-Contra scandal, the impeachment of President Clinton, and now the accusations swirling around Washington following America’s entrance into an armed conflict with Iraq. However, this may paint a far too straightforward and simplistic picture of why the public has become disengaged from the political arena. Zinn (2005) believes that it is much more than a lack of trust in the government. He explains that the general public knows that the system of government simply no longer works and that is “why fifty percent of the electorate does not go to the polls” (Zinn, 2005, pg. 134). The public understands that with only two parties dominating the political scene in the country there is no allowance for a different voice to emerge, different opinions to be discussed, or political alternatives to be seen as anything but illegitimate (Zinn, 2005). With these two parties being so entrenched today the public has grown discouraged. They may want to see change within the country, they may want to have their voice heard, but they know that unless they are represented by either the Democrats or Republicans than their opinions will simply be dismissed out of hand. Zinn (2005) believes that the public rather give up and disengage from politics than continually be dismissed as unimportant. Rochester (2003) disagrees with Zinn and believes that the system of government within the country still works. Rather than blame the government for the public’s lack of political withdrawal, he turns his eyes on today’s educational system to search for answers. When looking at today’s high school graduates, Rochester (2003) argues that they are both unlikely to be engaged in the political process and unlikely to seek becoming informed about politics. The two are most likely related like the age old questions of which came first the chicken or the egg. A student 203

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who has disengaged from the political process is unlikely to seek out information about it, and a student who is uninformed about politics is unlikely to engage in any political activities. Rochester (2003) explains that today’s schools are the major vehicle for what we learn about politics and so he further speculates about how the schools are failing today’s children which leads to their disengagement from the voting booth. Rochester (2003) believes that today’s schools are focusing too much on a critical scrutiny of today’s American system and not showing enough of its positive aspects. Rather than focus on controversy and strife, students need more exposure to the basic day to day workings of the governmental system. Additionally, it is argued that schools are not putting enough emphasis on facts and information. Facts are being ridiculed and it is argued that they belong on a trivia game show, not the classroom. Rochester (2003) feels that this type of schooling ignores the important concept that “factual competence is essential to civic competence” (Rochester, 2003 pg. 20). If schools are painting a far too negative picture of the American political system, as Rochester (2003) argues, than it can hardly be surprising that today’s youngest voters are staying away from the voting booth. Then as these same eighteen to twenty year olds grow older it is also no surprise that they choose to stay away from anything to do with the political process. Unfortunately all three of these arguments for lower voter turn out and the public’s withdrawal from politics seem either too simplistic or are obviously an advancement of an agenda. The arguments put forward by Putnam (2000) do seem reasonable. They are far too simplistic as well. There may or may not be a direct correlation between recent government scandals and lower voter turnout, but there have been scandals throughout our nations history. If it is simply tied to recent governmental activities, further investigation is needed to determine why these most recent missteps have had a greater impact on the public’s political participation than more historic ones. Zinn (2005) puts forward an argument that clearly supports his world political tendencies. Zinn (2005, pg. 134) asserts that the public is “fare more progressive than either of the major parties,” and that they “want the government to intervene in the economy on behalf of the people who are in need.” However, Zinn (2005) does not provide any evidence to back up his claims that so neatly line up with his worldview. In much the same way, Rochester (2003) is putting forward an agenda too. He is trying to point to our educational system as the reason that voter turnout has been on the decline. Rochester (2003) is interested in reforming the social studies classroom so they put forward a curriculum based on the ideals of core knowledge (Hirsch, 1998). However, after observing two separate student council elections I have to wonder if there is another factor all of these pundits have been overlooking. What Did the Students Learn? It seems clear that both elections took place in much the same way. They may have been two different elections, conducted in different manners, by different sponsors, but the student reaction was the same. The student population did not know 204

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when the elections would take place. They also did not know who was running to represent them on their council outside of their friends. Additionally, they did not believe they learned anything from the process. Talking to the candidates also revealed that they did not have a clear vision of why they wanted to run or what purpose they would be fulfilling by being elected to the council. At this point it is obvious that the students are not finding their student council elections to be a significant learning experience, in fact most of them admitted as much. There seems to be a large combination of factors leading to this outcome. First, most of the students did not know when the elections were to take place. In fact talking with them on the day of elections during both observations many students did not even realize that they would be choosing the members of their officer board later that day. The best example of students not knowing when elections were to take place was the one candidate who did not know he would be giving a speech later that day and had to scramble and write one during his lunch period. With the students and even the candidates not knowing when elections were to take place, it is impossible for any of them to have a significant learning experience during student council elections. Another factor contributing for this lack of learning is the confusion over the purpose of student council. Talking with the candidates during both observations I found that none of them had a clear picture of what student council was to accomplish. They knew about the social aspect of what student council did for the student body, but beyond that they had no idea what they would accomplish by being a member of the student council. The students were unsure of why they were running for office or what qualified them to hold the office for which they were running. This became obvious when the candidates would give their prepared speeches and present arguments as to why they should be a member of the council. It is hard to blame the audience for tuning out what their candidates are saying when they aren’t really saying anything at all. With this confusion over the purpose of student council government permeating the entire procedure, it is not surprising how little students learn by engaging in this activity. Another side to the confusion over the purpose of student council is the voters. The people who are supposed to vote for members of their student council do not know how to pick for whom they should vote. The can see the clever stickers, honk the horn on posters, listen half-heartedly to the speeches, but there is nothing in any of that which helps them know how to pick a candidate. Some students admitted they would simply choose friends, flip a coin, pick the candidate the deemed to be the most popular, and other such methods, but none of them had a clear idea of who they should pick to represent them. If the students of the school had a better idea of what their student council was supposed to do for them, or why it existed, then they may have a better idea of how to choose its members. Speaking with the candidates following elections was also very revealing. Of course those who won were very willing to discuss their experience as a candidate while those who had not been elected were a little more downcast. No matter what their status following the election both groups had the same outlook. They felt that you had to dress right, have the right friends, and other such factors in order to 205

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be elected. Those candidates who had been chosen by their classmates found the experience to be draining, discouraging, and possibly something they would avoid in the future. The candidates who had not been elected found the experience to be frustrating, discouraging, and something they would want to avoid in the future. Seemingly the only significant thing learned by the students going through the experience of being a candidate was that it is an experience they would not want to repeat, win or lose. Another interesting trend presented itself despite the fact that both elections observed were conducted in different manners. The first observation was of an election in which the students had complete control over who would be elected. The second observation was of an election in which teacher opinion would have an impact on the election results. However, in both elections candidates had something they wanted to express about teacher influence over the election. In the first election one young man was elected, but the student council advisor had some concerns about his academic achievement in class. So she decided to declare a tie between the two vice presidential candidates and have them both serve on the officer board just in case the true winner’s grades were to dip too far. The young man who had actually won the election expressed feelings of hurt and betrayal. He was not fooled by the declaration of a tie and said, “why would I want to be part of the stupid thing now. Obviously teachers pick who they want and decide what we do, so what’s the point.” Talking with candidates after all the voting had ended at the second observation yielded similar commentary. The students were unsure of how much influence the teachers would have in choosing who got to be part of student council. They did not know if it would matter whether or not they had won the student vote, they were concerned that the teachers would simply pick the officer board and then tell them what they would be doing for the following school year. The students were expressing their opinion that they were unsure if they had any voice in their student council. Not only were the candidates unsure about their voice on the council, but the students casting their votes were unsure as well. During the second observation many students expressed the opinion that it did not really matter who they voted for because they felt the teachers would pick the council in the end. They were unwilling to engage in the campaign of candidates, candidate speeches, or the voting process because they did not believe their voice would be heard. These student attitudes illustrate how important a factor the perception that your vote matters can be when determining if someone will engage in the student council voting process or not. ANOTHER PIECE OF THE PUZZLE?

In all the speculation about low voter turnout and possible reasons for the public’s disengagement from the political arena, it appears that there might be one factor that needs to be investigated further. The students in today’s schools are learning lessons about voting both in and out of the classroom. Teachers are planning and 206

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engaging students in lessons about the importance of voting and participation in the election process. Each year students are also participating in student council elections. Based on their lessons in the classroom and participating in student council elections students are being given a contradictory message. It seems that every example cited by Putnam (2000) of the public withdrawing from the political arena can be explained by looking at what the students had to say about their student council election experience. First Putnam (2000) points out how few people run for an elective office. Based on the candidates experience and their statement that they would be unlikely to go through the experience again it is understandable that we have fewer candidates to choose from later in life. Putnam (2000) also shows evidence that today’s public is unlikely to stay up to date on political information. The students saw no reason to stay up to date on the day to day operations of their student council, so it is likely that they would not stay up to date on the day to day operations of their government when growing older. Again and again there are parallels between the student council experience and political disengagement in adults. ANALYSIS: INCOMPLETE

It cannot be argued that student council elections are the only factor in the low political engagement of today’s public. Rather this is being presented as a possible piece to the puzzle. The school in which these observations took place is a small urban middle school located in Houston, Texas. Its student population is on average 360 students. Thanks to the high concentration of low socio-economic students, over the past few years the school has qualified as a Title I school. Racially, the student population is made up of 47% Caucasian, 44% Hispanic, 4.5% AfricanAmerican, 4% Asian, and .5% Indian. A school of such small proportions is certainly not typical for a public school in the city of Houston. In fact most everything about the school could be considered unusual. So it is impossible to say that anything observed at this school could truly be generalized to the public at large. Another factor to consider is that all these observations made during the student council elections were not part of a formal study. These observations started with a desire to construct a powerful lesson with which my students could interact. However, as I edited the film which I wanted my students to watch it became obvious that there were much deeper issues going on than I first anticipated. If I want to look further at whether or not student experience with student council elections are contributing to later political apathy a more formal study must be conducted. WHAT IS SOCIAL EDUCATION?

Social education has its foundations in the work of Joe Kincheloe (2001). Since my exposure to this work was as a social studies teacher, social education had its beginnings as a curricular definition. Therefore, social education is a re-working of the social studies curriculum into one that would help students understand and 207

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participate in both their current and future social world. Further, a social education approach would asks students to go another step and question why they were being taught one set of facts over another (Kincheloe, 2001). Over time, however, I have come to see this definition as too limiting. While literature that mentions social education by name is difficult to find, it has very close ties to critical pedagogy. In the vein of critical pedagogy, Bell, Washington, Weinstein, and Love (1997) argue that teachers must be a model of life long learning. That education does not end upon graduation but continues through out a person’s lifetime. Social education also views education as something constantly continuing and developing. In fact one of the tenants of social education is that a person’s education tales place mostly outside of the classroom walls. Within critical pedagogy, hooks (1994) advocates that all voices should be validated within the classroom. Social education also seeks to acknowledge and value all voices, not just the voice of the majority. Within the context of the classroom, this would allow for multiple perspectives and ideas to be brought forth and analyzed, not just that ideals of the western world. Those who have not grown up in this context would be allowed to speak up and talk of the rich history and culture of their ancestors and how it contributes to society. Additionally it keeps those students who do not speak with the dominate western voice from disengaging and learning nothing in the classroom. Another important aspect of critical pedagogy is its attempt to bring about social justice. Friere (1994) argues that the history of education is a history of oppression. It has been used by those in power to remain in power and keep control of those who may seek share power. He also believes that a transformation of the educational system can bring about a societal transformation and make it a more just society. As part of social education, Kincheloe (2001) believes that the classroom is an arena from which social justice can be both a goal and an achievement. Finally, social education attempts to bring together the two halves of the curriculum, as explained by Aoki (1990). The curriculum as planned is the curriculum which is set out, written and planned in the curriculum guide. The curriculum as lived comes from the teachers who have to implement the curriculum as lived in their classrooms. When a teacher receives the curriculum as planned they interpret it and make sense of it in the context of their classroom. When this occurs the curriculum comes alive within the classroom and is no longer an inert lifeless mechanism of teaching (Aoki, 1990). In the same manner social education calls on individuals to take any knowledge they gain and put it into action. Knowledge is not some lifeless lump gained in the classrooms of today, rather it is alive and demands to be put to use. HOW IS THIS A TALE OF SOCIAL EDUCATION?

So, this all began because of a teacher’s desire to create a meaningful lesson for his students. It has grown, developed, and blossomed far beyond any thing conceived at its inception. A strange mixture of wanting to play with a new camcorder, being inspired by the work of Michael Moore and the simplicity of the Baby Einstein 208

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video series was a first step into a series of much larger questions. First, is there a correlation between students experience during student council elections and future voting habits. Second, in what ways can student council be reformed to become a more authentic experience for students. Third, would this reformation lead to a more engaged and informed student body when it comes to their own elections. Finally, what does all of this illustrate to our society about schools, democracy, and how we are teaching our students about democracy. As this illustrates, social education is a powerful idea that can lead you in many directions never considered when first starting to implement something new. However, this is also why it must be a cautionary tale. To embrace social education means to always search for the next question. It means to never be satisfied with any single answer. It means to attempt to discover the larger patterns and meanings in any given event. Therefore, by embracing social education you never allow yourself to be satisfied with society as it currently stands. You are always looking for ways in which it needs to reform itself to more fully embrace social justice. While it is something that I first approached as a philosophy for my classroom, it has grown to become a way in which I approach life itself. REFERENCES Aoki, T. (1990). Beyond the half-life of curriculum and pedagogy. One world. 27(2). Bell, L. A., Washington, S., Weinstein, G., & Love, B. (1997). Knowing ourselves as instructors. In A. Darder, M. Baltodano, & R. D. Torres (Ed.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 464–478). New York: RoutledgeFlamer. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: The Free Press. Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th Anniversary edition. New York: Continuum. Hirsch, E. D. (1998). Reality’s revenge: Research and ideology. Arts Education Policy Review. 99(4). hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/.html. Infoplease. © 2000–2006 Pearson Education, publishing as Infoplease. 28 Sep. 2006 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html Kincheloe, J. (2001). Getting beyond the facts: Teaching social studies/social sciences in the twentyfirst century. New York: Peter Lang. McDonald, M. (2006). United States election project. Retrieved September 18, 2006, from George Mason University. Website: http://elections.gmu.edu/ Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Rochester, J. M. (2003). The training of idiots: Civics education in America’s schools. In J. Leming, L. Ellington, & K. Porter (Ed.), Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong? (pp. 6–39) Dayton: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Zinn, H., & Macedo, D. (2005). Howard Zinn on democratic education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Christopher Witschonke, Ed.D. Department of Urban Education University of Houston-Downtown

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15. CRITICAL OR NEGATIVE? The Search for Social Education in Unique Spaces

INTRODUCTION

Our current state of schools has caused much dissention in the academic world. Everyone has a stake in the fight and of course the social education field is no different. We have an extensive laundry list of issues and concerns that are destroying public education. Teachers are deskilled, students are indoctrinated with isolated facts that allow for no actual analysis and schools are continually under attack by policies counterintuitive educational goals (Friere, 1993; Giroux, 2003). Unfortunately this negative perception of the academic world has since become the singular lens distorting my own personal view of what’s going on in the classrooms. I wind up expending a great deal of energy looking for what is missing. Although critical to the process of transformational education, this negativity has affected how I teach my courses. As a visiting assistant professor in social studies and social education I am constantly reexamining the urban classroom and the role of the urban educator. Semester after semester I preach the value of social education to young undergraduates who will be soon become student teachers. I discuss the many issues that exist in schools as any social educator should. But recently I began to reflect on my practice. I became conscious of how I had begun to create an attitude of helplessness and hopelessness. This is in direct opposition to my original intent. I want to empower my students not break them down. I notice them looking at me with scared eyes wondering how they could possibly be the answer to the overwhelming number of systemic problems. They read the social education theorists works and find the language used overwhelming and hard to translate to practical purposes. Then to add insult to injury, they are given an opposing message in their classroom experiences. My pre-service educators are being told time after time that their job is not to create empowered young people capable of changing their circumstances and the circumstances of others. They are expected to tow the line, pass out the proper preparatory worksheets designed in conjunction with high stakes test and maintain decorum. New educators are quickly indoctrinated into a confusing relationship between administrators and teachers, teachers and students, and parents with them all. They soon learn that they are at the bottom of the decision making totem pole ultimately losing respect for the very profession they once loved. What is happening with my pre service educators is not the exception. All across the country in classroom after classroom a narrow view of learning persists; learning C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 211–226. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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for economic sufficiency and propagating political dogma (Apple, 2000). Theorists scream and researchers debunk the need for the current culture of schooling but it has fallen on deaf ears. Many schools continue to be run as prisons on lock-down. Teachers uphold, either in consort or under duress, hegemony without fully understanding their role in the process. Again these conversations are important. We need to recognize what is missing in our schools. We need to scream and fight for our youth and global future. But as any good social educator would ask I wonder what about the other side of the coin? Is all of this focus on what is missing from our classrooms really helping? Will it give us what we really want? I don’t believe that it will because I sense we are missing the point. Focusing on the missing pieces of social education cannot be the only way to understand how social education can and does work. We as critical educators need to analyze and look for ways of improving schools within the frameworks of social education and through the hope that is already present (Ayers, 2004). We need to look for ways to improve the nature of education as it functions within the current schooling culture. Celebrating the little ways educators bring in social education in even the most limiting situations will make it real, practical and tangible. It will encourage others to take up the cause while demystifying the social education process. In my social education course with undergraduate students there can be few alternative ways to approach the social education philosophy. As K-6 pre service educators with no social studies or social education background they make very clear their ideas about the role of education. They want what they had. As a result they become very wary of radical ideas or approaches that cannot be integrated within the existing system. They want a job and they want to keep it. Therefore I have had to approach social education as a theory into practice. The negativity and doomsday approach of most of my field would scare away those educators who truly care for their students and are passionate about education. I decided that my social education lens must then be willing to see those aspects of the current education system that allow for a sense of community, practice justice, give and receive respect, and search for equality. ISSUES WITH SOCIAL EDUCATION

Social Education has a PR problem. It’s a problem not based on fear but a lack of any knowledge of it. It has stayed in the ivory towers of theorists while over time becoming more and more disconnected from practitioners. We even have a difficult time explaining to others what exactly it is that we do. A tangible definition simply eludes us while is increasingly more difficult for the neophytes of education to grasp it. Social educators rely instead on knowing when there is an absence of it of social education ideals. We know it when we don’t see it. I am no exception to this problem. I have over the years found some resistance to its lack of tangible definition. So to counter this problem with my undergraduates, I have tried to lay out social education as a set of principles guided by perspective and personal story. I explain that it is the overarching themes and concepts that make up social education that help define it for each individual educator (Kincheloe, 2001). It can 212

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be the voice when the voice may not always be welcome. It is believing that educational institutions are the catalysts for developing what humanity has to offer. Social education within the context of the classroom creates an educational picture of collaboration, care, and compassion. When put into a social education context, learning content has purpose. Students are asked to apply skills and knowledge to real life. They practice concepts like democracy through relationships in the classroom and by getting involved in the community. Social education demands that policies act as aids not oppress. Education is liberating the mind and soul in order to create a better environment for self and others. Schooling has always included small bite size portions of social education but few have ever fully embraced its critical nature. It could be described as a tenuous connection at best. For example schools may believe that they are constructing empathetic learning environments and socially conscious individuals by holding annual food drives. In reality most are externally inducing compliance to ‘help’ others by bribing them to cooperate. Administrators and teachers have classrooms compete for a prize like a pizza party for the most cans. The irony is lost on them while the students never learn what the root causes are for needing the food drive in the first place. This is a lost opportunity. Schools participate in a shallow form of social action disconnecting the act from the learning process and from humanity. Instead our society needs young people to develop a concern for fellow human beings and then act on injustices (Wade, 2007). This is built on the even broader goal of instilling a sense of hope among students who will then use it as an integral part of knowing, and then complete the circle by making it a tool for humanity to progress and improve (Giroux, 2003). None of the can be accomplished without first establishing a democracy inside and outside the school. All parties involved in education are not to feel dominated by another. Collaboration between parents, educators and students make a more honest and deeper representation of students need. In democratic classrooms parents not viewed as visitors but fellow partners. Students also take part in instructional decisions through a focus on student interests. In the end the goal of education becomes to include everyone in the process levelling the established hierarchy between student and teacher while developing an understanding of what people of all ages and backgrounds can accomplish inside and outside of the classroom (hooks, 2003). Although often lofty and utopian in scope, the social education framework can redefine education. CRITICAL VERSUS NEGATIVE

We spend much of our time in academia discussing what is wrong with our current system. Theorists lament, correctly I might add, about the horrific conditions set up for today’s youth because everything is bad and getting worse. This is not limited to the stressing of pure content over skill. Students of all genders and colors are feeling the vice placed on their culture. Our current educational system has never been more diverse yet it demands quiet conformity obliterating what 213

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makes individual students unique (Shapiro, 1998). This process begins with a sense of nationalism that has made us a country quite literally frightened of the past. School boards often made up of business and, in Texas’s case religious leaders, debate curricular decision and narrow the content to be taught while whitewashing the reasons for learning it in the first place. Unfortunately most of those crucial decisions that directly affect children and educators come from the top with little or no input from those that put those policies into practice. We are letting it happen to us and it is not within our control. This has set up a very combative atmosphere. It is no wonder that the writers of educational discourse want to reiterate over and over again what is wrong with the education system. However this discourse comes with a price. Now educators directly involved in implementing social education and thereby educational reform, mistakenly believe that this negativity is an integral part of being a critical educator. In their minds you simply cannot engage in social education without first analysing and discussing all that is wrong with the current system. I believe that tunnel vision is a mistake. Although recognizing systemic problems is a component of being a critical social educator, it need not be the only perspective. There is a part of social education that defines learning as freedom (Friere, 1994). Paulo Friere is known for arguing for the role of hope in the educational process and making it the conduit for happiness (hooks, 2003). Although he is often quoted by others when discussing the critique of our educational system it is often done with a negative tone. His overall belief in the positive nature of what could be and what is already done is often missing. We should not silence the critique. We simply need to make a concerted effort to discuss the love educators have for their students and for learning as well as take an oppositional stance for what is going wrong. Examining educators from both sides allow us to make choices every day that are at the heart of social education principles. We as critical educators should embrace positive actions while understanding the difference between being critical and being negative. This paradigm shift for me was a revelation slow in coming. I have always been a relatively positive person in my personal, political and professional life but this somehow did not translate when trying to teach the concepts of social education. I was assigning readings that discussed what teachers were doing wrong, highlighting points of history that were untrue and illuminating the bias and lies contained in textbooks. These are of course all key components but by mid-semester my young undergraduates began to groan at my constant redirection of ideas. They would chuckle when I would begin a new topic since they knew it was headed down the negative path. My conversations were never about what was going right. I had bought into the negative energy and focused on teaching and schooling in its harmful sense. I decided to move forward and find social education where it is least obvious. Not at the progressive school filled with educators practiced in the field of social education or even the perfect model schools with the ideal student make up. I want to place attention on the small school that sits quietly, working social education in subtle ways that are unique to them. It is a lesson to be learned by me and the urban schools I serve. 214

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THE SEARCH IN SCHOOLS

I rely on three parts of my life to understand the pragmatic nature of social education. As a visiting assistant professor of a field based social studies methods and social education course in a large, urban university I see the spectrum of what’s going on in inner city schools. This part of my professional life allows me to be the outsider looking in while advocating for social education at the grass roots level. Historically, I rely on my past as a rurally raised Oklahoma girl. I regularly utilize my past experiences in my small hometown to make connections to social education concepts. I also try to maintain a current professional relationship with a tiny rural school very close to where I grew up. This educational experience allows me to see another side of the coin after experiencing so much in the urban schools. Finally, I use my role as a parent of a soon to be 6th grader to remain proactive in understanding suburban schools. My involvement in my son’s school has given me different opportunities to bridge the gap between parent and educator. These parts of me converge and then break away from each other often. I use them as a frame of reference explaining what I observe. I consider it my foundation. This shifting foundation has led me to an inconvenient truth. We all face significant challenges in getting out the social education message. Resistance comes from all sides. Pre service and experienced educators find our ideas hard to swallow without practical application. Administrators struggle to understand why the system needs to be shaken up and parents want easy answers not challenging open ended possibilities. Our consistent nay saying can be perceived as evidence of our inability to see the forest for the trees. Social educators and theorists get caught up in the why it’s so important that we don’t truly engage with what is happening. It is a discussion focused on what is not. We also spend the rest of our time beating down the very institutions and educators we wish to work with. We are the enemy while trying to be friends. All of the criticism comes from a positive place. The ones that yell the loudest are the biggest advocates for educational reform. The do it all with the hope that maybe this time people will listen. I have now taken the stance that I want to stop yelling and do more advocating. Refocusing my own personal energy on working with educators has helped me be more positive in my own teaching. It has helped rejuvenate my otherwise lack lustre perspective. My positive perspective has always had an outlet. I am fortunate to have so many unique opportunities to view social education in varying forms. But for a unique angle I have chosen to focus on social education as practice in a school rather unconventional school. From the surface it may look like the complete opposite of the urban and suburban schools I normally work with. To begin with it an all inclusive rural Kindergarten through 8th grade school in a tiny town in northeast Oklahoma. The differences do not stop there. The total population of the school is under 100 serving mostly white, English speaking students placed in mixed grade classrooms. Students in first and second grade share a class and an educator as does third and fourth grade and so on. It is a challenging system that takes a lot of planning and compromise. Very different from the well defined grade and age structure of the urban schools. Yet as I dig deeper we will see that this school is many of the same concerns as my urban middle schools. The student 215

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body is socio economically diverse much like urban settings. Students come from farming backgrounds and hourly wage earners. The small community at the foothills of the Ozarks and steps from the Cherokee Nation capital is a community neglected by time and finances. It was built off of the dreams of a now virtually defunct railroad system. The highway that passes it by sees very little of what’s left. The school itself, a result of a WPA project and in need of attention itself sits down the road from a still working feed store and a few small houses. For the most part students attending the school live out in the pasture land that surrounds the town. There are many reasons why the school is unique but the primary one is the level of cultural perspective it must have in order to function. Although racially homogenous the majority of the students practice a restrictive religious doctrine, belonging to the Amish Order. The school is public yet Amish children sit side by side with non- Amish students or what they call English, and are taught by nonAmish or English educators. There is also a bilingual component since the Amish students learn one language at home and English later for school. The urban middle schools I work with as a teacher educator and social education advocate have given me a specific insight into the professional workings of several different types of educators. They have different backgrounds, styles and goals for their students. The experiences working and learning from them have helped shape who I am as a social educator. They also give me some context for examining the education process at the Amish and English school. I can view social education here through what I experienced as an educator in an urban school and through my experiences with teacher education. I may see lost opportunity initially but then I am pleasantly surprised when I allow myself to see something I have never seen before. My choice of the Amish and English school is a personal one. It is virtually unknown to those outside the county in which it resides. I am aware of it since I had spent most of my life nearly 8 miles away growing up in a larger school in a larger town. It was not unusual to see young teenage girls in bonnets and Little House on the Prairie style dresses, driving tractors on the highway going through town. Nor was it unusual to be mercilessly beaten by the girl’s middle school basketball team made up of mostly Amish students. Their traditional dresses, bonnets and tennis shoes did not dampen their competitive spirit. They were a fascination to me as I attempted to reconcile their rejection of modern life while at the same time accepting the public institutions that indoctrinate their youth. When I moved to a metropolitan city full of diverse religious and racial groups I studied more about social education and saw parallels to the Amish traditions. It was then that I began to fully understand the unique nature of my experiences. My observations and discussions with teachers within the context of social education began to help explain what it all means. The Amish and English school is not immune to the problems of schools in the current educational environment. They too often participate in hegemonic practices. However as stated earlier the purpose here is to search for the unique opportunities taken by educators and students that create pockets of social education. These are 216

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small advances that have a big impact. Examining education through critical yet positive evidence that social education exists grants hope to a gloomy educational future. THE AMISH AND ENGLISH SCHOOL

Schools mimic the outside world. All of its prejudices, sufferings, fairness and unfairness, kindness and unkindness are played out in the relationships established between the multitude of races, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Quite often these students’ only real common bond is being forced together for eight hours a day, made to conform to seemingly arbitrary rules, play a subjugated role to an authority figure, while remaining compliant. Theorists and policy makers see these students as products who in the end will become willing workers and propagators of the capitalist system (Kincheloe, 2001; Mclaren, 1998). I have to believe that this is not the fate of everyone. In order for it all to work the system must rely on educators to buy into this nefarious objective. Administrators must also believe in hegemony in order for it to be successful since they can create the culture within the school that propagates it. Either by micromanaging each individual classroom and dealing only with the problem children, or by supporting individualized instruction and viewing all students with potential, principals are the tone setters for any school large or small. As with life everything in education begins and ends with parents. I have seen them set a negative or positive educational track for their children with a simple word. In my school experiences, the relationships built between parents and school play an integral role in a student’s attitudes about learning. In the small rural Amish and English school this is especially evident. As expected the Amish parents are mostly hardworking farmers. They subsidize their living by working in the community running fairly successful business doing contract labor and selling baked goods. Most of the parents have a very strong, no nonsense work ethic which is then passed down to their children. It is a no excuses, high standard placed on everything their children do. As a result Amish parental involvement is high. They are active members of the PTA and are regularly physically at the school communicating with educators. This physical presence makes up for the lack of technology in the home. It also means that educators and parents communicate more about daily activities and needs than about negative behaviours and problems. It is more of a conversation than a meeting. Parental involvement in any school is always desired. In the case of the Amish and English school the Amish parents are somewhat of an ideal. They have invested more than their children in the school. They are very present in the daily routine and make efforts to understand what is needed for their children’s education. They are well known by each educator and are welcomed as a component of the school. This then follows the research that suggests that small schools such as the Amish and English school, offering personalized care and team work leads to a certain protectiveness of the school (Hampel, 2002). An excellent example of this protectiveness occurred in the 1980’s when the school was targeted by the state for shut down. 217

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The students would be reassigned to the larger school in the next town without parental consent. As expected this did not go over well in the community. Many of the Amish families banded together in an uncharacteristic defiance. The level of protest drew such attention that the state, national and even international media descended on the tiny community. In the end the school was saved but the idea of instability was forever planted in the back of their minds. For those that were there, which includes the current principal, there is an understanding that it could happen again at any time. As a result they have developed a kind of independence. When funds are lacking, which is a normal occurrence, they hold community events to raise money. Heavily attended pie auctions and dinners in the school gym raise thousands of dollars that go directly to the students and educators. There may be record freezing temperatures outside but the buggies and tractors would still be lined up row after row until the last pie is sold and the last chicken is eaten. Most recently the Amish and English parents worked together to raise money for brand new technology. Three elementary educators received a Smartboard®. After training, the new technology is now an integral part of their instruction. These examples can be best understood by looking at the community’s principles outlined by religious doctrine. A responsibility for the common good, a tenet of social education, is a driving principle of the Amish religion (Dewalt, 2006). Children brought up in the Amish home are to speak in terms of “we” instead of “me” (2006). When attending the public school this is continued as a daily responsibility. The English students although not a part of the Amish doctrine sees the principles played out as practice. They too understand the role of the community in creating a successful learning environment and the importance of collaboration. In the community made up of Amish and English the distance between what is professional and what is personal is often blurred. Social educators welcome this blurriness. bell hooks finds the normal disconnect from humanity seen in schools as inhibitive of our truer purpose as educators (hooks, 2003). When we connect, we benefit from each other’s compassion. A tragic example of this was when an educator at the Amish and English school suddenly lost a child. In other Amish communities they hold fast to the belief that they should limit intermingling with the general public. Their spiritual selves are believed to be better off without the trappings of materialism and technology or the influence of others (Igou, 1999). Although the educator who lost the child is English, the Amish ‘adopted’ her, spending over a week taking turns bringing her food and doing work around the house. They shared with her and her family their own stories and spent time comforting her even inviting her to dinner. This is a personal and compassionate relationship and the beginnings of social education. It models for children a care for others even when they are unlike you. Administration can create a positive culture that is needed for relationships to flourish and collaboration to occur. At the Amish and English school the principal is about as personal with the Amish as you can get. He comes from a family of former Amish still living in the area. They left the Order to live life as Mennonites but still have relatives within the Amish culture. He understands their needs and 218

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they understand and respect him. This relationship is so strong that he has found himself year after year discussing retirement, then year after year returning to the school he has lived with for so many years. This dedication and building of personal relationships is key in opening doors for parents to feel comfortable in being a part of the school culture. I consider the principal a hands-off administrator. He trusts educators to be professional and does not attempt to exert authority over their choices. This practice is an important aspect of social education. Education should be cooperative and collaborative. As a result, the principal is more than a behaviour management leader and teacher manager. He is a representative of the school and a part of the bigger picture. Whereas most administrators I have come in contact with in urban settings maintain an office vigil and take on problems with students and parents, the Amish and English school principal thinks nothing of performing various tasks within the school beyond the scope of his official job description. It would not be unusual to find him talking with students in the hallways or making contact with parents as they eat lunch with their children. He lends a hand by helping with clean up in the cafeteria after lunch or takes on maintenance issues in the classrooms after the school day is over. He often teaches lessons for educators leaving for doctor’s appointments, and even drives the school bus. This principal knows every student and teacher, their families and, for the most part, their history within the community. He is one piece of the puzzle that together, maintains a sense of community that is working together in the same school and on the same page. It is hard to capture in writing the stark contrasts and similarities between the schools I have come to work in and the rural Amish and English school. I guess the most glaring of these differences is in the establishment of routine and respect. In my experience, students in urban middle schools follow a pretty strict set of rules. These rules dictate even the most personal of tasks and seem to demonstrate a need to control every aspect of student life. In the end this may make the adults feel better and maybe even seem normal after a while but its purpose is antithetical to the goals of social education. Students should be allowed to do simple things that are considered necessary everyday activities like go to the bathroom or be able to get water when thirsty. These simple things were what stood out for me as the most indicative of social education’s presence. I was so used to the repressive nature of the urban schools that when I saw students leaving to go to the bathroom without need for passes or timers or getting water during individual work time on their own, I was taken aback. When lunch time came it was even more evident. Teachers are not dismissing classes to walk to the lunch room in silent lines but are released by educators in quiet mass. A simple announcement that it is time to go to lunch moves the students to push in chairs and begin walking to the cafeteria. They are expected to understand that others are working and do not need the distractions. This is a principle of social education. Students can respect others if they are respected. They are by no means perfect and sometimes need to be reminded that they are speaking loudly but as a general rule they understand their place in the school. 219

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CULTURE OF LEARNING

The learning community has many what I will call boroughs. In my view we all live in a larger all inclusive community that wants students to learn but connected to this community are boroughs that each has their own viewpoint of what that learning looks like. Each educator and administrator belongs to these very different boroughs. Membership in each then colors what they do and how they perceive the world. This unique individualized borough, through the common goal of learning, creates its own learning culture. Social education has a problem with some of these individual boroughs however. Especially those that place emphasis on one group over another. Some educational practices encourage differentiated instruction that includes creative and fun learning activities for those in the higher socio economic class. This is at the expense of those students from diverse backgrounds or lower class systems who are relegated to mundane tasks and tedious rote memorization. Social education works to eliminate the option of choosing these types of boroughs. A culture of learning that extends beyond the classroom and uses activity based instruction with meaning should be available to all. In our Amish and English school students are living in two different worlds yet have stood together in order to create a unique culture of learning. To understand that culture one needs to understand the unique nature of the Amish in Oklahoma. They are actually very different from the typical Hollywood creation. There are parts that are true in that the majority of Amish in places like Pennsylvania and Iowa do not attend public institutions or have much interaction with the general public. They educate by way of their own privately run Amish schools. Surprisingly they do not focus on teaching religion as much as practicing and enforcing basic Amish principles. One of which is the elimination of competition which is considered unhealthy to the mind and soul. Technology is of course the most obvious rejection. This is done in order to maintain the simpler life. In the schools they continue the simplicity by teaching basic information which means that there are no hard sciences (Hostetler, 1992). These private schools rely heavily on a moral code to reinforce the community’s beliefs (1992). This code includes humbleness, selflessness, being thoughtful of others and a focus on the collective needs of the community (Dewalt, 2006). The content, skill and character development in Amish run schools are designed to prepare Amish children for their future life of farming and families (2006). It is for that reason that the Amish do not allow for any formal education after the 8th grade. The Oklahoma Amish tend to be different. They attend a public school with non-Amish educators and non-Amish students. The state curriculum is not modified for them. The sciences are taught and, as discussed earlier, they revel in the games of a secular world. As I stated earlier, they run business within the community and work with non-Amish individuals. They are friendly and involved in the goings on of the small community. They do however abide by the same strict code as the more conservative communities. Responsibility and the needs of others are a priority. As they grow into the Amish community they must continue this practice by taking care of others. This means their education will not continue beyond the 8th grade. Their destiny is 220

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predetermined by their culture. If they are to remain in the Order, they must renounce the rest of their academic career. This fact is very frustrating for many of the educators at the school. Although they respect the rights of the Amish community to make that choice, they speak of creative and brilliant students ending their academic careers too soon. Watching potential being stifled and the world robbed of a mind that could make significant changes is a daily struggle. It would seem that with all of the restrictions on technology the Amish students would be isolated from global events and lack context. However educators claim that they are even more knowledgeable about current events than the average English student. This is in large part due to their culture of reading. From a young age students read different kinds of daily newspapers becoming more and more skilled at understanding issues. This is key in engaging in higher level thinking and seeing real life examples of social consciousness (Wade, 2007). It also spills into the schools when educators hold informal discussions during and after instruction and promote casual conversations between students about current events. The Amish students often express their own opinions on topics and ask for clarification in searching for deeper understanding. A good example of this was when students learned of the devastation in New Orleans after Katrina. They had read about it in the paper and by lunch time one 3rd and 4th grade combined class had put a plan in place to mail boxes of shoes and clothing for the survivors living in the Astrodome. These are the social education moments that empowers students to do more than observe. They learn what they are capable of and see application in knowledge. Another example of the culture of learning within the school can be seen by the choices of the educators. One middle school educator teaching a mixed age class uses the book Where the Red Fern Grows. It was her way of teaching about current and past social issues. The book is set in Oklahoma just a few miles from the school. It was used to discuss and connect, recognizing places and descriptions in the story. She then used it as a tool for learning about the past and contrasting with what was known in their own lives. A unique discussion to have since some of whom still live the life of the1930’s Ozark hills resident. As a result of connecting to the student’s own lives the literature analysis was made more rich and meaningful. THE SOCIO-CULTURAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DYNAMIC

Social education recognizes race, gender and culture as a tool in school settings to create personal and community changes (Kincheloe, 2001). Class has been especially relevant in this discussion since it has played a major role in most issues relating to the role of social education in our schools. It is also relevant when discussing the hot button issues of our day such as health care and ‘government entitlements’. Watching a few minutes of a Tea Party protest that has targeted issues such as immigration and taxes, it is obvious that socio-economic divisiveness has marched to the forefront of the American consciousness. It has been transformed to an almost public acceptance of poverty and inequity. A true capitalist system deems it all necessary to maintain the American way of life. Collateral damage is not humanity 221

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but statistics and a dehumanizing lumping of class groups. Rural schools like the one discussed here must deal with this head on. Although rural schools serve a mixed socio-economic student body, a large proportion of those students come from families with a limited education and a level of poverty (Martin, 2007). These experiential deficits and a lack of resources can leave educators struggling. Although the Amish families living in the small Oklahoma community want for nothing, they do live only within their means. On the surface this could be perceived as lower income. The difference is that for the most part they are dependent on each other not government. When there is a bad crop, catastrophic illness or damage to a home they really do raise the barn together as a community. The Oklahoma Amish function as a unit acting as their own unemployment benefits and social security. An important lesson to learn in everyone’s community. As for the English, opportunities for employment are few in such a small and rural community. Most residents live in small farm style houses or trailer homes paid for by hourly wages at the local industrial plants. The economy has made their situation tenuous at best. Educators worry out loud about the students within the English population wearing less than ample clothing in the winter or unable to afford lunch certain days of the month. This lack of resources in the community is then reflected back on the schools. Rural schools like the Amish and English school are given fewer resources, provided limited experiences to engage students and have access to few new technologies (Gorski, 2008). These limitations can be coupled with educator misconceptions about the students’ inability to do challenging work and a paralysing focus on providing only the basic skills to get them through life (2008). Students from lower income families and diverse backgrounds are simply seen as incapable of doing what their more advantaged counterparts do (Rothstein, 2008). This develops and preserves a class system based upon culture and attitudes (hooks, 1994). As discussed earlier this does not seem to be the case with the Amish and English school. Educators seem to be going against the norm finding opportunities to bring in experiences and develop relationships. As the class system is maintained, a kind of learned helplessness develops. One study found that parents from low income schools gave up their power in making decisions about their child’s education in order to instil in their child a sense of unfairness about world, and thereby the powerlessness they must accept as adults (San Antonio, 2008). Educators at the Amish and English school have seen this happen to some degree. Lack of involvement from English parents comes in stark contrast to the attentiveness of the Amish parents. They try to understand why there is such a difference but can find little to explain the behaviour. Unfortunately that leads to plenty of assumptions. Some educators suggest that they can tell which English parents have had a complete education based upon the interactions with the school. Those that do not participate in events or ever come to conferences are judged to have a lack of educational background. I notice that they do not necessarily make these assumptions about the Amish parents. Although it is known that every Amish parent has only received an 8th grade education, this does not seem to color educator judgment of them. This may be because of the high level of interest and expectations placed on their children. 222

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CONSTRUCTING REALITIES

There is almost a sense of disbelief that a school like the Amish and English school could still exist. It is so intimate and community based that it truly sticks out. This is not to say that the Amish and English school is the shining example of every aspect of social education. There are many flaws and they could always be more progressive and instructionally innovative. They do their fair share of traditional teaching. At times they focus on fact based transmission that runs counter to social education ideals. However I want to look past that for a moment. The Amish and English school must constantly find ways to balance the need for factual and skill based knowledge mandated by the state with the desire to provide students with something more. They are reconstructing the realities of the community. The educators in the Amish and English school are aware that the Amish boys and girls will not continue on to high school and will live the life of a farmer or farmer’s wife. They will not have a prom or participate in the many rites of passage known to teenagers in the small community. They will not move on to higher education and become engaged citizens outside of the immediate community. You would expect to have a divergence in academic nurturing. There might be one form of education for the English students who would benefit long term from a rich and meaningful instructional choices. After all they are the ones that could possibly have a future in high school and beyond. Educators here could buy into the idea that knowledge is only valued if it leads to a university (hooks, 2003). At the Amish and English school that does not appear to be the case. Although the community is fairly isolated and resources are limited the educators do attempt to bring in the world through experiences with technology and getting out of the classroom. Although very normal for most large city, urban schools, for the Amish and English it is a big event to take their yearly trip to the zoo. Limited resources keep it to once a year but time is well utilized and integrated through classroom experiences. Another example of this need to connect to the real world is by looking at one specific educator that tries to make learning fun and meaningful by getting them moving and using concepts and skills already familiar to them. Specifically she uses a run-away leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day using literature and a scavenger hunt. The 1st and 2nd graders connect to the lesson through known information and play. One aspect of the Amish rarely discussed is that they are bilingual. They hold fast to their culture, teaching their Amish children a hybrid of German and Dutch called High German. This is their primary language at home until they reach school age. English is taught before entering kindergarten which is what they will also speak in public. Unlike some of the urban schools I have observed, educators at the Amish and English school do not see this as a deficit. Most encourage the sharing of their language by demonstrating an interest in learning the words themselves. A set of unique words like middok meaning lunch, medli meaning girl and boo meaning boy have educators tongue tied and students thrilled to share. They love the idea of teaching others. This entire process of validating native language has been found to promote a classroom culture of acceptance and diversity 223

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(Agirdag, 2009). The educator set a tone of respect that is o.k to be different while highlighting the desire to be together as a group. These social education principles make children feel safe while maintaining a sense of identity. Education often discusses children and culture in terms of how special each one is without highlighting how that specialness fits into the larger community. We need specialness but we also need a collective. The school and the classroom is the collective that watches their back as they watch the backs of others. LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIENCE

There are many wonderful schools with excellent teachers. It is obvious social education can be everywhere if looked for. Although it is a unique learning environment there is much to be learned from schools like the Amish and English school. Schools in urban settings could follow their lead in searching for ways to allow students to celebrate differences while merging into the collective. Thinking beyond the classroom walls and developing compassion for humanity should become the overarching goal in any school. I understand that a few of the practices discussed here are simply not translatable to an inner city school. The Amish are a unique group that value education and see the benefits in learning outside of their own comfort zone. This is not always the case in every culture. However the lessons learned here can possibly lead to small and meaningful ways in other unique situations. Individualized community and student need can translate to any school. I focused on a small rural school for discussion but as stated earlier the majority of my adult work is done in the urban schools. Usually in lower socio economic neighbourhoods and usually made up of mostly Hispanic and African American students. Educators in these schools are also varied. Although mostly female and Caucasian they too have their own educational philosophies which influence their instructional choices. These are large schools that create a community within a community. Although very different in structure and emphasis, there are comparisons to be made between the life in a rural school and the routine of the urban school. In each environment educators are concerned about the destiny of their students. While the Amish finish their formal education at the 8th grade, the urban students quite often have no future in academia as well. Educators in urban schools also see bright and creative minds stifled by an oppressive system which then leads to a high dropout rate. They each have their own reasons but many do so in order to support families living near poverty or they may do it to pursue a life on the edge of the law. Educators watch helplessly as their students begin their destiny and end the chapter of their life that could have taken them somewhere beyond what they already know. Language is another common concern at both schools. Urban education may not always show an appreciation for a second language acquisition as demonstrated by the Amish and English schools but it is always present in the classroom often finding its way in the learning process. They could and should take an interest in the many different kinds of languages that exist in the school. It is not safe to assume that a student speaks a generic kind of Spanish. There are many cultural 224

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dialects unique to a region. Learning about these dialects and regions could open the door to learning standards tied to geography and history. Student engagement and higher level thinking would less of a challenge if educators attempt to find the bridge that connects the student to the classroom. Maxine Greene (1978) has stated that all reality is interpreted by our personal experiences. My exposure to the negativity associated with social education as lead to an interpretation that education is buried to deep to be dug out. There was never a plan for transformational education but a depressing set of unattainable ideals. Removing the negatively focused lens that hides social education and reinterpreting my experiences has allowed me to find social education principles in unexpected places. In examining the Amish and English school I have retraced my steps back to the root of social education. I look at my urban schools with refreshed eyes. Students with strikes against them do have educators that allow them to practice higher level thinking through simulation and role play, and use of alternative materials. Traditional constructs can be torn away and replaced by opportunities to feel connected. All students can have a sense that they too are important in a world that generally does not value them or their culture. In the Amish and English school social education exists in ways that creates a symbiotic relationship between a community bound by religious doctrine and a town that has its own economic and cultural struggles. Educators have found ways to engage students with conversations about real issues and have developed a respect for who they are and what they are to become. The Amish and English school and the urban schools in which I work do not utilize all of the social education opportunities. However if we only complain about what is not happening instead of discussing what educators are doing we will never be able to identify the starting to point from where to move. And as discussed throughout this chapter there are many starting points. These are the gensis for something bigger and better. When looking at it that way there are many goals for social educators. They are “…our goals for ourselves and our students;….to learn to see students fully and fairly…; to see ourselves as active agents of social change in our schools and in our worlds; and to find a practical application in public school classrooms for our commitment to social justice and human freedom” (Ayres, p. 123, 2004). We need to spread the word and celebrate what we are all doing right. REFERENCES Agirdag, O. (2009). All languages welcome here. Educational Leadership, 66(7), 20–25. Apple, M. W. (2000). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. New York: Routledge. Ayers, W., Michie, G., & Rome, A. (2004). Embers of hope: In search of a meaningful critical pedagogy. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(1), 123–130. Dewalt, M. W. (2006). Amish education in the United States and Canada. Toronto: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Fisher, S. E., & Stahl, R. K. (1986). The Amish school. Intercourse, PA: Good Books. Friere, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Giroux, H. A. (2003). The abandoned generation: Democracy and the culture of fear. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 225

JENSEN Gorski, P. (2008). The myth of the culture of poverty. Educational Leadership, 65(7), 32–36. Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Hampel, R. L. (2002). Historical perspectives on small schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(5), 357–363. hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. New York: Routledge. Hostetler, J. A. (1992). Amish children: Education in the family, school, and community. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers. Igou, B. (1999). The Amish in their own words. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press. Kincheloe, J. L. (2004). Critical pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang. Kincheloe, J. L. (2001). Getting beyond the facts. New York: Peter Lang. McLaren, P. (1998). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. New York: Longman. Martin, L. A., & Chiodo, J. J. (2007). Good citizenship: What students in rural school have to say about it. Theory and Research in Social Education, 35(1), 112–134. Rothstein, R. (2008). Whose problem is poverty? Educational Leadership, 65(7), 8–13. San Antonio, D. M. (2008). Understanding students’ strengths and weaknesses. Educational Leadership, 65(7), 74–79. Shapiro, H. S. (1998). Clinton and education: Policies without meaning. In H. S. Shapiro, & D. E. Purpel (Ed.), Critical social issues in American education (pp. 45–55). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wade, R. C. (2007). Social studies for social justice: Teaching strategies for the elementary classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Traci Jensen College of Education, Curriculum & Instruction University Of Houston

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16. SOCIAL EDUCATION TEACHER AS ACTIVIST Bridging Theory and Practice in Democratic Activism

ABSTRACT

The modern public school presents a unique challenge to social education teachers as they are charged with instructing students with tools, skills, and knowledge necessary to master challenges of tomorrow. Today’s social education teacher must simultaneously carry out the increasingly diverse responsibilities of a citizen and activist, while still maintaining their obligations as an educator. These ambiguous issues are further complicated as education itself becomes increasingly scrutinized. In striving to build up effective citizens social education teachers are placed in the precarious position of combating new forces both in and out of the classroom. In facing these modern trials, social educators must it is imperative that social education teachers embrace their unavoidable role as part of the community as body politic. Social education teachers must understand how the different layers of their private and professional life intertwine that. Only after there is an understanding of multifaceted nature of the social education teacher can she or he make the necessary conscious choice to accept or reject their role in exercising their professional duty as an educator, their civic responsibilities as both citizen, and the conjoined obligations that their unique position innately carries. In this chapter we will discuss how a social education teacher chooses to embrace or reject their role as an activist. As the various challenges are presented in social education classrooms self-examination by the teacher is an imperative. In the role of an activist the teacher must ask him or herself three questions: (1) What does she or he believe about the role of the social education teacher in professional and civic activism? (2) Why does he or she believe as they do concerning the role of the social education teacher in professional and civic activism? (3) How does she or he articulate and/or demonstrate what they believe about the role of the social education teacher in professional and civic activism? Prior to engaging their students, the thoughtful social education teacher takes the time to self-reflect upon these questions. He or she is then prepared to either embrace or reject the premise of teacher activism within an empirical and value based cognitive framework. Armed with this insight, the teacher is able to formulate a philosophy of professional and civic participation that best serves the school, the community, and, most importantly, the students.

C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 227–239. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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CHOOSING ACTIVISM OVER APATHY

In the modern world, with a complex social and political structure, the role of the social education teacher becomes more ambivalent. While all educators attempt to confront the trials of today’s public school classroom, social education teachers are specifically forced to face a unique set of questions. Social education teachers are forced to determine if they are expected to provide civic guidance as a community volunteer, if they are called upon by their professional responsibilities to act as vocal and strategic political and social activist on behalf of children’s rights and democratic standards of equality of educational opportunity, and if they are able to draw a line of demarcation between the role of social education teacher and citizen. Social education teachers cannot afford to ignore these questions if they are to effectively perform their role within the community. As the modern community is a constantly evolving entity, an activist teacher faces complex challenges in any attempt to quell the conflict between their life as a member and constructor of the community. In order to balance the role of educator and citizen it is incumbent upon the professional social education teacher to embrace the reality that they are an integral part of the polis, the community as body politic1. As the social education teacher analyzes the intertwining nature of the professional and personal life, he or she will understand that there is an imperative choice to be made. The teacher must decide to accept or reject their role in exercising their professional and civic obligations as both citizen and educator. THE SOCIAL EDUCATION TEACHER AS DEMOCRATIC ACTIVIST

In his noting that, there is no right way to teach democracy unless we also practice it, Eric Hoffer helps exemplify the foundational premise as we address the many complex issues of the role of the social education teacher as professional and civic activist. Social education teachers must develop the conviction as to whether they, and the public schools in which they serve, should be proactive in molding of the community. Upon achieving this understanding, teachers must focus on the entire community and develop lasting benefits for society as a whole. That is to state, “when we help to build something, we experience it as ours. We gain authority and confidence to act. We have motivation to learn what we need to learn”2. Social education cannot avoid the contentious topics which currently thrive in our society. Mary Soley argues that, “social education teachers must hold tight to the belief that controversial issues are the cornerstone of our professional responsibility”3. Peter Goldmark, President of the Rockefeller Foundation is another voice that concurs with Soley’s perspective. Goldmark contends, “If we adults care about what children learn then we’d better pay more attention to how we handle our differences. What effects are children most is what we do, not what we say”4. This highlights the importance that professional and civic activism plays in the professional and personal ethic of any social education teacher. 228

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In understanding that social education teachers are charged with instilling the principles of democracy and civic ideals and practices to students, we assert that these same social education teachers are expected to be active participants in the institutions in which these ideals and practices are debated and legislated. Social education teachers who desire to instill the basic tenets of responsible democracy and civic activism in their students must serve as a model for their students. Civic ideals and practices cannot be relegated to the academic realm, but must be a visible facet of the social education teacher’s life. Goldmarks says, “To learn democracy, students must do democracy”5. I say to teach democracy, social education teachers must do democracy. Researchers have emphasized the importance of young students seeing themselves as active, caring participants in diverse communities6. Consideration to public discussion and active participation in professional and civic discourse must also be given as they are at the core of effective democracy. The modern citizen is engrossed by a number of diverse issues with varying perspectives. In order to best equip their students with the tools necessary to decipher all aspects of the issues involved, many social education teachers are incorporating classroom lessons that encourage students to confront current issues that threaten to divide the country7. Yet, too often the professional social education teacher voluntarily or involuntarily recuses herself or himself from active participation in professional and civic discourse, failing to model the very principles of civic ideals and practices that are contained in the social studies curriculum. Diversity of opinion is unavoidable, especially as community populations continue to grow and access to mass media increases. Social education teachers are charged with instructing young citizen in effective ways to embrace those differences and look to find viable solutions. When teachers avoid modeling and practicing these skills, the null curriculum imparts students with an attitude of abstention concerning some of the basic tenets of democracy. While some teachers believe that they should shelter students these culturally divisive topics, this in fact cripples the development of these young citizens. Though a challenging task, social education teachers must embrace their roles as generators and cultivators of the democratic process. THREE ACTIVIST TEACHING INITIATIVES TO MODEL DEMOCRACY

The success of democracy is intrinsically dependent on a citizenry that is educated, informed, and active with concern to civic issues. This idea best championed by Thomas Jefferson as he is quoted: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe8. 229

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While such active civic participation includes becoming informed about issues and voting in elections, it can take many other diverse forms relating to the United States government, its history, its people, and its neighbors around the world9. When the National Council for the Social Studies stated that “when students are provided active role-models and transformative learning experiences, they are empowered and take ownership of their learning and actively seek opportunities for active participation in democratic practices and service projects” they were verifying what many social education teachers already assumed; that student participation in civic issues was integral to a social education classroom10. Student participation in transformative learning experiences through democratic activist scenarios is, however, not the singular trait in an effective social education classroom. There is also the need for social education teachers to actively participate in democratic practices through professional and civic activist initiatives. Thus, allowing the social education teacher to embrace their full potential as teacher and citizen. In the following discussion, three specific areas of professional and civic activist participation by the social education teacher and student will be explored. (1) Participation in professional and civic organizations and governance; (2) Researching, analyzing, organizing an engaging in professional and civic issues and discourse; and, (3) Knowledge of professional and civic issues and active participation in influence initiatives. Attached to these participatory opportunities, will be direct classroom strategies to assist the activist social education teacher in bridging the gap between theory and practice in democratic education for the student. PARTICIPATION IN PROFESSIONAL AND CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS

Participation in professional and civic governance can be achieved by the social education teacher through a variety of activist participatory initiatives. Membership and official service in a professional organization is the most accessible means for the activist social education teacher to influence governance within their own professional realm. In addition, participation as a member of a campus based improvement and curriculum committee or district site-based decision making committee can also provide the proactive social education teacher with valuable experience in the civic ideal and practice of better understanding how a variety of influences impact professional governance policies and procedures. Civic and professional governance activism can also be accomplished through regular attendance at city council, city planning committee, town hall meetings, and even school board meetings. One of the best examples for civic activism in governance lies in candidate debates. In encouraging the students to attend these forums for civil discourse he or she is being encouraged to develop their own unabated perception, rather than simply relying on a second hand description from a media source that may or may not offer a tainted account of the event. Experiences like these provide the activist social education teacher with insight into the practices and roles of governance policy makers. In turn, the social education teacher’s application of this knowledge into transformative experiences 230

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in the classroom will provide their students with valuable opportunities to engage in the civic ideals and practices that shape their lives. These developing citizens will then be given the opportunity to gain experience in community governance, while they are still students. In examining the impact of the teacher as a role model of professional and civic activism for students, Alan Lockwood states that, “teachers must consciously choose to enact a clear role or roles....”11. Through the social education teacher’s active participation in professional and civic activist initiatives, the social education teacher is provided the unique opportunity to serve as a model as well as a resource to her or his students when providing experience in appropriate models of governance. The social education teacher, through proper modeling techniques, can then channel that experience to the students so that they might further cultivate that experience. In considering the words of Michael Simpson when states, “Educational research has shown that such teaching has the very positive effect on increasing students’ self-confidence and interest in civic participation”; the benefits of such teacher involvement and modeling become clear12. Students who feel confidence in their abilities as an active member of the community are more likely to maintain their involvement beyond the classroom. Furthermore, once a students’ interest in civic involvement has been peaked in one area of community governance, reason would argue that they would seek out involvement in other areas of civic participation. The activist teacher should focus on cultivating two central strategies with the student. First the student should develop an ability to formulate a perspective. In formulating a perspective, students are allowed to determine what he or she feels are the biggest problems within the community and upon this discovery they can cognitively determine solutions to those problems. Only after the teacher’s experiences are channeled to the student can these rationales and modes of application be developed, allowing the students to amplify “the amount of information disclosed, the level of comprehension and retention of others’ ideas and the quality of problems solving13. The second strategy that an activist teacher should incorporate is modeling. Simpson states that modeling, or role playing, allows the student to “step into someone else’s shoes as a means to experience firsthand something that they might otherwise only read or be told”14. Modeling allows the student to participate in civic governance in a relaxed and nurturing environment, without the worry of repercussions. While in the safety of the classroom, students can practice and hone the various governance scenarios, until they are developed to the point that a student might feel comfortable to exhibit those same scenarios in the real-world. Once the student is able to formulate perspectives and model them effectively, students are then able to develop the concept of the “common good” as described in the foundational principles of all democratic civic ideals and practices. The common good is supported when all citizens become aware that the meaning and purpose of education in a democratic republic is that the individual’s self-interest is dependent upon the well-being of others in the community. Attention to the common good means putting first things first15. 231

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In providing real-world examples from their own professional and civic activist experiences to their students, social education teachers are better able to provide that student with opportunities to understand the importance of respecting and supporting the dignity of the individual, the health of the community, and the common good of all. This awareness is best facilitated through teacher and student activist involvement in and out of the classroom. Most importantly, this involvement will provide both the social education teacher and student with a clearer understanding of the diversity of perspectives and individuals who influence our professional and civic lives through governance initiatives. RESEARCHING, ANALYZING, ORGANIZING, AND ENGAGING IN PROFESSIONAL AND CIVIC ISSUES AND DISCOURSE

As discussed in the previous section, diversity of decision-making perspectives and individuals in the governance process can be better understood through active participation by the social education teacher and student. Students must also be made aware of the specific problems their community is facing, her or his role in finding a solution, and the scope their role in the community. In Teaching to Change the World, Jeannie Oaks and Martin Lipton state that, “an activist approach to improving school opportunities draws from the collective power of residents to solve public problems; this power to solve comes from critically examining community issues and taking action to solve them16. Social education teachers should serve as a bridge which connects the students to the civic issues engaging the community at large. To accomplish this task, the social education teacher must have experience in researching, analyzing, organizing and/or engaging in professional and civic issues and discourse. The social education teacher should not only read professional journals, periodicals, newspapers, legislation, and general political commentaries, but ideally he or she would be involved in the research and writing process. In the modern era, where information is readily available, social education teacher should look to engage as many mediums, topics, and perspectives as possible. After involving herself or himself in this broadly inclusive manner, the social education teacher gains a better understanding of the role information gathering and application has in the democratic process. When the social education teachers applies the principles of inquiry in his or her own professional and civic activism initiatives, they better understand the importance of offering these same inquiry skills to his or her students. Through reflective inquiry, the social education teacher and student “generate enduring questions, positive confusion, reflective thought, and an understanding of differences in values, priorities, and definitions or morality”17. Substantive knowledge and understanding of the multiple perspectives of any issue is an essential ingredient of the learning process. After all, it is useless, if not impossible; to engage in effective inquiry unless there is a base of understanding on what is being questioned and analyzed. Once the activist teacher understands how to utilize and disseminate multiple avenues of information, the instillation of 232

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this trait to the students becomes imperative if those developing citizens are to one day transform into effective citizens. The social education teachers, through active researching, analyzing, organizing and/or engaging in professional and civic issues and discourse, are able to develop a broader knowledge and experience base to provide students with the knowledge, intellectual skills, and attitudes necessary to confront, discuss, and consider actions on the many issues within local, state, national and international arenas. Two ways in which the creative social education teacher can bring his or her own professional and civic experiences into the classroom is through (1) the research and discussion of current events, and (2) debates over current issues, specifically those of a divisive nature. The first method requires to the students to exhibit both initiative and researching skills by examining different news sources and selecting a topic they deem important to both themselves and their community. The goal of this technique is to allow students the opportunity to systematically determine the importance of issues with concern to their communities and to make others aware of these problems in a beneficial manner. The second method that the activist teacher should utilize also calls for students to show ability to research topics, but where current event discussions focus on bringing problems to the attention of the community, current issue debates look to focus on finding resolutions. During this time students will understand how to express their opinions, appreciate the differing opinions, and discuss the issues in a manner that is constructive for the entire community. When the social education teacher provides guidance to students from his or her own experience in professional and civic small group discussions and debates (via committee and forum participation) the student is better able to understand the essentials of any effective issue analysis and course of action. When students are exposed to issues through small group discussion and debates, as each position is studied and discussed to determine the strongest points in favor of it, the strongest points in opposition to it, and the consequences that would follow from selecting it, students become better able to improve the ways in which they deal with persistent issues and dilemmas and participate with others in making decisions about them. Currently many members of the modern society look to achieve dominance for their faction or those that share their opinions, rather than seeking to find solutions to best improve the entire community. By contrast, those “who possess knowledge, skills, and values are prepared to take appropriate civic action as individuals or as members of groups devoted to civic improvement18. KNOWLEDGE OF PROFESSIONAL AND CIVIC ISSUES AND ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN INFLUENCE INITIATIVES

Similar to the professional and civic activist initiatives found in researching, analyzing, organizing and/or engaging in professional and civic issues and discourse, is the importance of obtaining knowledge of professional and civic issues and active participation in influence initiatives. While the ability to obtain, discuss, and discern knowledge is an essential skill for a citizen in a democracy, when that 233

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knowledge is not accompanied by application it holds little value. In order to become truly effective citizens these students must leave the schools having learned how to apply their knowledge in such a way that it would positively impact the community. Too often, the social education teacher fails to convey to students the true breadth of their influence as citizens. The activist teacher can educate students on the power of marches, demonstrations, petitions, and other civic initiatives. Students should understand that they hold power in their government, whether it is at the local, state, or national level. The social education teacher should help students understand that government is not a separate entity designed to rule the people, but rather a shared governing body in which the citizens hold the power. Students must understand that policies and legislation can directly influence their lives and that without civic activism those decisions are made without any voice from the people. As discussed earlier in this article, three spheres of influence an activist social education teacher can actively effect are (1) establishing curriculum and instruction standards that are influenced and governed by social education teachers; (2) integration of effective and innovative teaching methodologies that harness the power of technology to meet the diverse learning needs of all students; and (3) developing collaborative partnerships with business and community leaders. The goal of the activist teacher should include the ability to better understand the civic ideals and practices of locating, accessing, organizing, and applying information. When the social education teacher engages in such professional and civic activism initiatives about an issue of public concern, she or he is placing themselves in the best possible position to find the best solutions to problems within the community. In reviewing the NCSS Civic Ideals and Practices curriculum indicators, one realizes that “some values are so central to our way of life and view of the common good that we need to develop student commitment to them through systematic social studies experiences. These include such fundamental rights as the right to life, liberty, individual dignity, equality of opportunity, justice, privacy, security, and ownership of private property. They include as well the basic freedoms of worship, thought, conscience, expression, inquiry, assembly, and participation in the political process”19. We do no dispute that these values are integral in the democratic society. However, in a modern multicultural society where diversity can include race, ethnicity, gender, or even physical appearance, the application of those values can present a challenge20. In order to effectively combat this challenge students must be sympathetic to the different perspectives of these values and how active participation in the democratic community can influence the decision making process. If the activist social education teacher has experience in building an issues oriented knowledge base to allow for active lobbying and petition initiatives to influence the governance process, then this experience can provide the social education teacher valuable insight in offering the social studies student transformative scenarios to address pertinent controversial issues within their lives. 234

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One strategy that an activist teacher might employ in their classroom is a letter writing and petition campaign. In this strategy, the teacher allows students to select a civic issue which is currently in debate within the community. Under the guidance of the activist teacher, the students would look for support and dissent within the members of the local community. Upon finding adequate support the students would then petition their representatives through a letter writing campaign. In this activity the teacher should reduce her or his role to that of a moderator, allowing the students to practice their abilities to gather information, discern knowledge, and apply that knowledge in a way that they have, as a group, determined to best meet the needs of the community. In organizing petitions, letter writing campaigns, and other similar acts of civic activism, social education teachers provide the students with democratic experience. The students are in charge of identifying the problem, determining the will of the people, and acting as a voice for those people. Through this activity, and others like it, the social education teacher is able to provide the students with a deeper understanding of the realities that democratic societies are characterized by hard choices. Sometimes the choices confronting citizens are extremely difficult, and decisions may lead to actions that require personal sacrifice-even at the risk of personal wellbeing or life. In the end, however, this process should allow the student to set aside their own self for the good of the community as a whole. When utilizing this activity within the context of a classroom sequence of transformative strategies, the social education teacher is able to assist the student in building insight into how we generally value law-abiding behavior. However, the teacher must also convey to the students that there are times when laws represent a direct threat to the citizenry and the laws must be changed. Through activities such as these, the students will understand that this change is not only their right but an imperative responsibility as a member of the community. As previously stated knowledge without application holds no value. This is true not only in the community, but also the classroom. Students who have experiences with civic activism have a better understanding of and appreciation for their role within the community. The social activist teacher must challenge the students to strive for an ideal society. To meet this goal the students must identify the problems in their society, research to discover possible solution, and then understand that they are responsible for enacting change. As discussed throughout this chapter, professional and civic activism is an important component of any social education teacher’s professional development. The social education teacher is able obtain knowledge and skills necessary for effective citizenry if he or she is actively engaged in participation in professional and civic governance; researching, analyzing, organizing and/or engaging in professional and civic issues and discourse; and participating and/or promoting professional and civic activism. Once the social education teacher has this necessary knowledge she or he can effectively model and convey that knowledge and skills to the students as they develop into citizens. As students gain insight into citizenry they will better understand their role in the community. That understanding includes both knowledge and application with 235

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regard to how their life affects the entire community. In conveying this understanding, activist teachers can employ a wide range of methods and techniques, but the principle, however, behind teaching democracy can remain constant: “modeling in the school community the way democracy works. Tolerance, respect, a willingness to learn from one another-these are the values on which democratic nations thrive. They are the values that schools must teach” and the values that social education teachers must practice21. CLOSING: KEEPING THE REPUBLIC – DEFINING THE PURPOSE

In his now famous Mode of Education Proper Benjamin Rush stated, “There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education”22. As legislators, administrators, teachers, and parents debate over both the purpose and the process of education Americans must be cognizant of the direct connection between education and effective democracy. If citizens, and not removed, ruling elites, are to remain in control of their community then civic activism is an imperative. Developing citizens can only learn effective citizenship if social education teachers are willing to engage that same activism in their own lives and convey that activism to their students. Social education teachers must be activist models for their profession, community and students. In turn, social education teachers must provide students with opportunities to engage in transformative civic ideals and practices experiences if we are to achieve the real purpose of American public education. “A generation of students will learn these skills only if educators enable them to encounter situation that require using them”23. With corporate, legislative and religious institutions actively criticizing and influencing public education, it is necessary that we create a new vision for our work as social education teachers. Oscar Wilde once said that Americans know the price of everything and the value of nothing. “Today, it seems that we may not even know the price of that which is most precious”24. The only way by which America can ensure a country with a fully effective citizenry is through an education system that stresses civic activism. Civic activism is a societal imperative for these social education teachers who truly wish to students develop into responsible citizens. “The central focus of this goal is the design and implementation of social studies education as a liberating force in the life of every citizen”25. The purpose of education is still intensely debated modern American society, with legislators, administrators, teachers, parents, and others each arguing for a different purpose. While some would argue it is to manufacture capitalist humans others would argue that it is to produce an effective working class. We would assert that the purpose of education is to inspire human capital. H. Michael Hartoonian, argued to this point when he stated that “The ultimate work of education is to learn to be a human being” and that this humanity is achieved through communication 236

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and relation to other humans26. Attaining this humanity requires a broader understanding of the diversity of the humanity when we live, work and play with on a daily basis. If cultivating humanity is the purpose of education, then the social education teacher must lead the way in providing students with the opportunities to “become human” in order to ensure the promise of a democratic humanity. To comprehend the concept of a democratic humanity, social education teachers and their students must fully embrace the reality that our “we the people” republic is built upon the principle that the people occupy an important position in government - the office of citizen. And if democratic citizenship is to be fully realized in the activist model framework as demonstrated by the activist lives of Franklin, Jefferson, Anthony, Parks and King, it will be essential that attention be paid to the transformative education of those who assume this office of citizen. Only then will we fully understand the concept of “learning to be human” through democratic education. The 21st century will bring us face to face with the information-electronicbiotechnological age. New issues, together with old problems, will confront us and tax our intellectual and moral fiber, making it increasingly difficult to implement the goals that define us as a nation. Demographic and statistical data force us to look closely at the changing nature of our families, the reconceptualization of work, the distribution of justice and poverty, the conditions of illiteracy, and the age, class, gender, and ethnic makeup of our people. The world is diverse, ethically challenged, yet globally interdependent, and the task of “bringing the blessing of the American dream to all” calls for citizens with a new sense of purpose. As there are currently no national standards regarding civic activism, this responsibility falls directly to the individual social education teachers. Each social education teacher must decide to be an activist for the cause of maintaining and preserving democracy. The choice to be an activist teacher is not a singular lesson or activity, but rather a dutifully obtained and carefully modeled lifestyle. While this may strike many teachers as a daunting task, there is no question that if we hope to perpetuate American democracy social education teachers cannot deny their charge to cultivate future generations of citizens who will exhibit the skills once modeled by the social activist teacher. NOTES 1 2

3 4 5 6

7 8

Allen, R.E. (2006). The Republic. London: Yale University Press. Boyte, H.C., & Skelton, N. (1997). “Educating for Citizenship.” Educational Leadership 54 (5): 12–17. Soley, M. (1996). “If It’s Controversial, Why Teach It?.” Social Education, 60 (1): 9–14. Gerzon, M. (1997). “Teaching Democracy by Doing It.” Educational Leadership 54 (5): 6–11. Ibid Yeager, E.A., & Patterson, M.J. (1996). “Teacher-Directed Social Action in a Middle School Classroom.” Social Studies & the young learner 9(4): 29–31. Gerzon, M. (1997). Ford, P.L. (1899). The writings of Thomas Jefferson: Volume 10 1816 – 1826. New York City: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Publishing.

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12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

24 25 26

National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Curriculum Standard for Social Studies. Washington, DC. Wade, R.C. (1995). “Encouraging Student Initiative in a Fourth-Grade Classroom.” Elementary School Journal 95(4): 339–354. Lockwood, A.L. (1996). “Controversial Issues: The Teacher’s Crucial Role.” Social Education 60 (1): 28–31. Simpson, M. (1996). “Teaching Controversial Issues.” Social Education 60 (1): 5. Ibid. Ibid. National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Oaks, J. & Lipton, M. (2007). Teaching: To change the world. New York City: McGraw-Hill. Soley, M. (1996). National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Ibid. Nemetz, P. L. & Christensen, S. L. (1996) The challenge of cultural diversity: Harnessing a diversity of views to understand multiculturalism. The Academy of Management Review, 21 (2), 434–462. Gerzon, M. (1997). Runes, D. D. (1947). The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush. New York City: Philosophical Library. Hartoonian, M.H. (1996). “The Price of Civilization: Competence and Constant Vigil.” Social Education 60 (1): 6–8. Ibid. National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Hartoonian, M.H. (1996).

REFERENCES Allen, R.E. (2006). The Republic. London: Yale University Press. Boyte, H.C., & Skelton, N. (1997). “Educating for Citizenship.” Educational Leadership 54 (5): 12–17. Ford, P.L. (1899). The writings of Thomas Jefferson: Volume 10 1816 – 1826. New York City: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Publishing. Gerzon, M. (1997). “Teaching Democracy by Doing It.” Educational Leadership 54 (5): 6–11. Hartoonian, M.H. (1996). “The Price of Civilization: Competence and Constant Vigil.” Social Education 60 (1): 6–8. Lockwood, A.L. (1996). “Controversial Issues: The Teacher’s Crucial Role.” Social Education 60 (1): 28–31. National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Curriculum Standard for Social Studies. Washington, DC. Nemetz, P. L. & Christensen, S. L. (1996). The challenge of cultural diversity: Harnessing a diversity of views to understand multiculturalism. The Academy of Management Review, 21 (2), 434–462. Oaks, J. & Lipton, M. (2007). Teaching: To change the world. New York City: McGraw-Hill. Runes, D. D. (1947). The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush. New York City: Philosophical Library. Shannon, P., ed. (1992) . Becoming political: Reading and writings in the politics of literacy education. Penn State University Press. Simpson, M. (1996). “Teaching Controversial Issues.” Social Education 60 (1): 5. Soley, M. (1996). “If It’s Controversial, Why Teach It?.” Social Education, 60 (1): 9–14. Simpson, M. (1996). “Teaching Controversial Issues.” Social Education 60 (1): 5. Soley, M. (1996). “If It’s Controversial, Why Teach It?.” Social Education, 60 (1): 9–14. Tyack, D. (1997). “Civic Education - What Roles for Citizens?” Educational Leadership 54 (5): 22–24. 238

SOCIAL EDUCATION TEACHER AS ACTIVIST Wade, R.C. (1995). “Encouraging Student Initiative in a Fourth-Grade Classroom.” Elementary School Journal 95(4): 339–354. Yeager, E.A., & Patterson, M.J. (1996). “Teacher-Directed Social Action in a Middle School Classroom.” Social Studies & the young learner 9(4): 29–31.

Dr. Tony L. Talbert and Mr. James B. Rodgers Baylor University

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CHRIS WITSCHONKE, SUSAN MCCORMACK, TRACI JENSEN, BDEBBY SCHULSKY, SABRINA MARSH AND CAMERON WHITE

17. SOCIAL EDUCATION AND TRANSFORMATIVE TEACHER EDUCATION

“The principle of continuity of experience means that every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those that come after” John Dewey, 1938. “I need help! I’ve been teaching 8th grade for ten years, and now I’M STRUGGLING with teaching others to become teachers.” Chris was beginning a teaching position at the University of Houston – Downtown and was lamenting his plight to former classmates and colleagues who were struggling with similar challenges. “Chris, that is how I feel every year and every semester, and I’ve been doing this for two years.” Debby was a doctoral candidate teaching elementary social studies methods at the University of Houston. “Debby and I have been trying to figure this out for the past three years. We’ve been sharing ideas and reinventing curriculum because of our ongoing conversations. Maybe we should create a space to talk this through. We are all doing the same thing, and we can help each other.” Susan was teaching social studies methods at the University of Houston Clear Lake. “Let’s stop playing with the idea, start talking and DO IT!” Traci had been teaching social studies methods at the University of Houston in several capacities for ten years. “This is what social education should be about…. Spreading the wealth, creating and supporting community and rethinking how we do things… teacher education, community connections, social justice…So much of what we do is in isolation – collaboration is the key to process and progress. Making time to live social education in our context would be enhanced by doing this.” Cam had literally spent years trying to establish social education in a larger context. The impetuous for the EMPIRE was born. Our initial discussions and meetings were structured to lend support to colleagues with similar goals. Humorously, we hailed our group the “EMPIRE” because we had saturated most of the University System with our graduate program’s code of beliefs within a relatively short period of time. However, we shuddered at the power-evoking image of the word “empire” C. White (ed.), Journeys in Social Education: A Primer, 241–249. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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and what it entailed; but we endeavored to transcend the traditional meaning to represent our concerted efforts to also transcend the powerful forces of traditional teacher education. We believe EMPIRE to be a positive movement in: Evolving Methods and Praxis to Initiate Reform in Education. Moving forward, our group is expanding to include other teacher educators who participate in different levels of teacher education (undergraduate/graduate, pre-service/in-service). All are at different stages of their academic and professional careers. Our continued goal is to engage in critical, collaborative conversation in order to bridge theory and practice in teacher education. Greene (2003) describes the goals set before our cohort. We have “come freely together in speech and action to take care of something that needs caring for, to repair some evident deficiency in [our] common world” (p. 105). The dialogues undertaken by the cohort have come at a troubling time in education. We are charged with extraordinary tasks that seem to tear the seams of our souls. We recognize the problems facing schooling and struggle against the status quo to engage in ideas for reform. This reform requires careful analysis and critical thought on behalf of educators and students alike. The tools in this bricolage are our own personal stories, the stories of the others with whom we come in contact. The stitches that bind this patchwork are the stories of the social education and critical pedagogues who have molded and shaped our discussions and philosophical tenets. Our group consciously examines the struggles of transformative education practices as they relate to our individual courses. Much tension emerges as students resist the philosophies of critical pedagogy and social education. “With colleagues, self-study teachers collectively question and explore the complexity and possibilities in their teaching and the interplay of their teaching actions within that exploration” (Samaras & Freese, 2006, p. 13). Self-study, then, becomes the perfect research paradigm for our ongoing conversations. Our dialogue parallels with self-study in that “The purposes are layered and multi-faceted with overlapping objectives, and with the key purpose of refining, reframing and renewing education” (Samaras & Freese, 2006, p. 14). This paper provides an illustration of the kinds of communication in which the EMPIRE frequently engages. The dialogue presented here shows how we unravel the threads of Social Education and how it relates to our individual praxis. Similarly, our stories begin. Ask each of us what is Social Education and our responses will contain a grain of familiar rhetoric interlaced with a large dose of our personalities and experiences. The cohort constantly searches the basic. Chris It is a difficult concept to define and explain. Trying to accomplish tasks such as these can be likened to the proverbial nailing Jell-o to the wall. Debby When I am asked to define Social Education, I find myself at a loss for a neatly packaged answer. I still feel as if defining Social Education is much like 242

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wrestling with a wet cat; you think you have it in your grasp and then it just slips through your fingers. Sabrina In critical pedagogy and Social Education, I found the answer to the universe. Or at least, some of the possible viewpoints. Because the first thing I learned pretty much shook my world foundations: there are no answers, only more questions. Susan How do you know that Social Education even exists? I compare this journey to a religious pilgrimage. I think I’m a better person for pursuing it, but don’t have enough faith that it can ever really exist. It is impossible to define – people made of sterner stuff have failed in that pursuit. Like all spiritual endeavors, you know it when you see or hear it. Traci “Are we there yet?” “How much longer til’ we get there?” It’s a familiar scene. If you have kids or once were a kid it’s a rite of passage. But within the context of Social Education I have found it to be the unanswerable question that plagues my very reason for being here. Cam Social Education is an attempt to challenge the mainstream, the traditional regarding schooling, education, and teacher education, in a broader societal context. It moves us beyond social studies education to include critical pedagogy, cultural studies, media studies, and social justice. Is it never about answers, but the next questions as we challenge power in order to empower. It is clear that we do not really expect to find the answers to this inquiry. With all self-study, it is not about finding answers, rather it is a hermeneutic journey toward the unknown (Sasmaras & Freese, 2006). We resist defining Social Education, as it refuses to be labeled, unlike the branding that permeates many concepts in traditional education settings and one that our students expect. Our conversations allow us to reframe our notions of Social Education through our lived experiences in the context of our practice as teacher educators. Our ongoing conversation regarding our understanding of Social Education in our classroom experiences allow the continuous evolution of our courses. Our shared experiences are deeply respected and become part of the collective narrative. Yet, at the same time, we recognize the risk of flying too close to the sun. We risk exposure to “the knowing” and the dissatisfaction of the consequences (Greene, 1978). If we cannot name the knowing, how can we expect our students to pick up the threads of Social Education and weave them into their own practice? 243

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THE TIES THAT BIND: FOUNDATIONS IN CRITICAL PEDAGOGY

Debby At the very basic level, I began alongside my students to construct my understanding of Social Education. This very rudimentary insight offered the concepts of critical questioning, social justice and social action as foundational elements within Social Education. In retrospect, the simplistic articulation of these pillars provided me an elementary foundation to what I would discover to be critical pedagogy. Our own practice is threaded by many scholars who illuminate and illustrate our conversations of what Social Education could be. Through our shared dialogues, the same voices echo in each of our stories and continue to play a crucial role in how we perceive ourselves and our place in transformative teaching and learning. Our conversations afford us the distinction of a collective theoretical framework. We sift through the notion of Social Education in the context of critical pedagogy. Four scholars continuously resonate during the discussions central to this paper. They are: Joe Kincheloe, John Dewey, Paulo Freire and bell hooks. JOE L. KINCHELOE

The works of Joe Kincheloe are deeply etched in our Social Education framework. For many in the collaborative, he was our first text. He challenges us to reflect on the status-quo and to conceive a more rigorous response to educational practice. Kincheloe (2001) asks teachers to “cultivate a profound intellectual ability to acquire, analyze, and produce both self-knowledge and social knowledge” (p. 164). It is our goal to take the ideas of transformative education and make them reality. Chris Since I was thinking as a social studies teacher while reading Kincheloe’s work, I came away with a definition of social education in terms of curriculum. As I understood it at the time, social education was a reworking of the social studies curriculum into one that would help students understand and participate in both their current and future social world. Further, a social education approach would asks students to go another step and question why they were being taught one set of facts over another (Kincheloe, 2001). Debby [W]ithin the pages of Kincheloe’s Critical Pedagogy I have found a language that offers me a firmer grip on the way in which I can begin to express the essence of social education. In short, I have come to interchange both critical pedagogy and social education. 244

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Susan Worried about the status of my teaching and its persistent reliance on standardization and the reluctance to enlist critical learning objectives, I have explored and introduced alternative teaching objectives through Kincheloe (2001). Connected to Social Education; critical pedagogy embraces grand ideas related to reform. In this context, Social Education is grounded in justice and equality. It rejects the notion of standardization and leans toward emancipatory education. Most importantly, we seek to cultivate a critical knowledge and move to transformative action. Kincheloe (2005) claims critical intellect is meaningless if social change is not an end result. He warns that, “we cannot simply attempt to cultivate the intellect without changing the unjust social context in which such minds operate. Thus, we introduce the notion of teacher as change agent in our own classrooms. JOHN DEWEY

Dewey teaches us that education is alive, that it is more than a mere collection of facts, disparate and irrelevant to our lives and the lives of our students. “I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living” (Dewey, 1897). One of Dewey’s main concepts, that our past experiences should be incorporated into our present and future ones, speaks deeply to our concept of Social Education as a philosophy of teaching that celebrates the individual. Sabrina I use Dewey and his concept of experience, real lived experience, as the foundation for my course in Community Education. Once my pre-service teachers see different communities up close and personal we can begin a dialogue on social justice and activism that resonates much more strongly because of those personal encounters. Dewey isn’t a dead philosopher; his ideas come alive and inform everything I do in this course. Susan But, his ideas move well beyond thinking about the lived experience. Dewey’s work helps me remember that we work effectively when we see to participate in educative endeavors through community. His ideas strongly resonate with the EMPIRE, because we actually function as a group rather than through the agency of any one individual. Cam Dewey is at the foundation of any progressive education endeavor. He provides many of the critical questions for challenging our ideas of schooling and education. It is about involving all stakeholders meaningfully in the teaching and learning process and to ensure significant context and connections. There is no Social Education without John Dewey. 245

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In Dewey we see all the promise of education and a near-perfect echo of our Social Education beliefs. Through Dewey’s (1938/1997) concept of quality of experience situated in events, we begin to explore alternative educational tenets among ourselves and with out students. It is in this space that we find ourselves attempting to launch our students beyond knowing and into the importance of being. PAULO FREIRE

Paulo Freire’s educational philosophy deepens our understanding of the forces at work that serve to oppress. In doing so, Freire lays the foundation of our studies in critical pedagogy. Freire (1970/2002) writes of “fear of freedom” as a system that binds the oppressed to the oppressor through a method of prescription that dictates and transforms our consciousness. Using his concepts we reconfigure and expand not only our role as educators but our role as humanists. Sabrina In one of my first doctoral classes I … learned the most beautiful word, hegemony, and I marveled at how one word could say so much. From Gramsci I found Freire and suddenly, everything started to come together. Traci How do I express to them [my students] that we must look outside our comfort zone? That the profession of teaching includes examining and reexamining what is going on in the world? How do I explain to them that a good educator is constantly trying to rise above their own educational inadequacies by taking charge of personal, life-long learning as a model to those they are trying to educate? How do I demonstrate the need to question and be questioned? How do I teach them to see education beyond schooling and to make real changes within the community and themselves? Chris How do I demonstrate to my students that knowing the right answer can actually be oppressive? That depositing answers in students actually puts teachers in a place of power, which does more harm than good. When it is so easy to step on someone else’s knowing, we make it easier for others to do likewise with ourselves. Through Freire’s (1970/2002) concept of critical consciousness, we realize the value in questioning what we continue to see in the world and of using those questions to inform our concepts of a moral, democratic society. His emphasis on a dialogical approach to examining the inequalities we experienced around us liberated us to scrutinize our own roles with each other and within the educational system. We struggle with the question brought on by critical consciousness: how can we as Social Educators rise above a system of oppression, given our complicit 246

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role? Freire (1970/2002) speaks of the act of love and its existentiality in praxis. One consistent challenge is to weave the idea of love and compassion in the context of our educational settings, where competition and measurement reign. BELL HOOKS

Critical educators are transformative agents. By nature, transformation occurs organically and messily (hooks, 1994). Courses that are steeped in critical pedagogy offer experiences for both students and instructors that are often uncomfortable. For them, their world view is being challenged for many of us, our world view is challenged. Often this causes tension and dramatic resistance; an expected outcome of critical interrogation (hooks, 1994). Through critical pedagogy we learn to interact with the world based upon a critique that is focused on issues of power especially related to race, culture, class and gender. Debby I have my students a mere twelve weeks. With this short time frame, I have recently felt an unbearable sense of urgency to provide an experience that constructively confronts my students’ view of the world. Traci It was slowly and over a period of years working in a public school and university that my traditional educational trappings were chipped away and replaced with the critical point of view. It is a revelation that made sense. Why wouldn’t every educator get it too? I became impatient. Those twelve weeks make it a sprint to the finish line where I gather my students under my wing and show them the true way to educational enlightenment. The reality is, I may never see the true affect of what I do. As bell hooks (1994) said, I need to submit to the idea that I will not have confirmation of my successes. Cam We must ask hard questions, enable trangressions and ensure that we all become uncomfortable for a transformative education. Challenge, controversy, and change are inherent components to a pedagogy that celebrates the critical. Corporatization, standardization, and hegemony must not be allowed to entrench in education – the constant why and what if? It has become more difficult to practice freedom because our schools are wrought with hegemonic “biases” (hooks, 1994, p. 29). Critical educators would like to welcome the opportunity to alter our classroom practices creatively so that the democratic ideal of education for everyone can be realized. A transformative, critical educator asks teachers to “transgress [the] boundaries” that limit students’ freedoms. We want to guide them in questioning such themes that are related to oppression and power and how it affects individuals and communities (hooks, 1994). 247

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As critical thinkers who want to change our teaching practices, it is vital that we talk to one another, collaborate in discussions that cross boundaries and create a space for intervention (hooks, 1994). THE TIES THAT BIND

Ours is a journey that is bound through the Three C’s – critical, collaborative conversation. This journey is not merely about the destination as we continue to live out our praxis. What are the possibilities for Social Education? How do we enable those possibilities for our students and ourselves? A “purpose” of this inquiry is the ongoing engagement of social educators each with diverse interests and multiple perspectives, struggling with making sense of transformative teacher education. Social Education itself refuses roadmaps, or ignores them, since any formal parchment of definition limits its scope, freezing it into one conception that becomes merely another discourse of knowledge to be learned and imposed. Where we go, where each person’s passion takes them in following how their lives express their definition of Social Education, gets channeled back into the setting frame of this dialogical cohort. It is this critical ontological process that makes Social Education come alive in the process and enables a praxis of possibility. “Communication is vital to the process of Social Education. A critical, collaborative conversation can only enhance our growth as teacher educators. Where are we now with the EMPIRE?” Cam posits this at one of our most recent meetings. “This collaborative process has allowed me to grow professionally as I grapple with so many issues in my daily practice. My earliest intent for becoming a member of this collaborative was to help a colleague as he began a career in something that I had been doing for several years. In the process, I became a more reflective educator and have been challenged to think more critically about teacher education.” Susan responds. “Being in this collaborative is key to my development as a teacher educator in that I have a place to bring my wonderings about my work and gain new perspectives in how I can approach my ‘being’ as a Social Educator.” Debby reflects on the conversation. “We personally take on the status quo. That is overwhelming. Where do I begin when I am merely one individual working within the confines of the ‘ivory tower’? How does a Social Educator create an environment for social education to happen when educational goals have been replaced by business models? EMIRE makes me reconsider how I respond.” Traci explains. “This first thing I came to understand as this collaborative was being formed is how much more I have to learn about being an educator. I always believed that it was the right time to leave the eighth grade classroom because I had reached the end of my evolution there; it was not going to continue if I remained. The funny thing is I did not know how to continue my process 248

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once I stepped into a university setting. Now I understand our group as one that will force me to continually confront ideas and issues which help pushes me farther along my own educational development.” Chris reflects on his own part of the conversation. “That is all well and good; I think each of us have developed tremendously as Social Educators as a result of our experiences together. But, the reality of the world is the increased corporatization and standardization of education. If we are truly interested in transformation, where do we go from here? What is next for us? Where do we go from here?” Cam throws the group a new challenge. “What does the EMPIRE really mean? This one needs to expand that conversation and engaging in community activism.” Debby eagerly steps into the conversation and begins thinking forward. The gauntlet has been thrown. We now face a new challenge for our collaborative. REFERENCES Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. The School Journal, LIV(3), 77–80. Retrieved October 27, 2007, from http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/dewey-john_my-pedagogic-creed.html Dewey, J. (1938/1997). Experience and education. New York: Simon & Schuster. Freire, P. (2005). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. (Original work published in 1974) Freire, P. (2002). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. (Original work published 1970) Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of learning. New York: Teacher College Press. Greene, M. (2003). In search of a critical pedagogy. In A. Darder, M. Baltodano, & R. D. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 97–112). New York: Routledge Falmer. Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress. New York: Routledge. Hug, B., & Moller, K. J. (2005). Collaboration and connectedness in two teacher educator’s shared selfstudy. Studying Teacher Education: A Journal of Self-study of Teacher Education Practices, 1(2), 123–140. Kincheloe, J. L. (2001). Getting beyond the facts: Teaching Social Studies/social sciences in the twentyfirst Century (2nd ed). New York: Peter Lang. Kincheloe, J. (2005). Critical pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang. Samaras, A., & Freese, A. (2006). Self-study of teaching practices. New York: Peter Lang.

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Douglas Stewart Edwards is an educational researcher completing his doctorate in Social Education at the University of Houston. An experienced high school educator, Edwards is now an instructional specialist in one of the nation’s largest public school districts. His research focuses on the storied lives of closeted queer educators. Amy Esdorn is a graduate student in the History Department at Texas State University. She is the Museum Educator for The Williamson Museum in Georgetown, TX. Her passion is strengthening connections among museums, local communities, and EC-16 schools. Traci Jensen is Visiting Assistant Professor of Social Education at University of Houston. Before working in higher education, she taught 6 years in an urban school district in the Houston area. Traci is currently teaching pre-service teachers where her focus is critical pedagogy and its practical application in the schools. Sabrina Marsh is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Social Education at the University of Houston Main Campus, Houston. She also teaches pre-service teachers within the College of Education and works with in-service history teachers within the local districts as part of several Department of Education Teaching American History grants. Dr. Marsh’s interests are in experiential learning, democratic education and community building. Susan McCormack is an Assistant Professor of Social Education at University of Houston Clear Lake. She came to social education through geography, which she taught for four years in a Houston suburban community. Susan currently leads the Social Studies education program at Clear Lake where she introduces future teachers to critical issues related to social justice and peace education. Amy Mulholland is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Houston. Her teaching, researching and writing focus on the reflective practices of pre-service teachers and creating socially just classroom environments. Jacob Neumann is Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Pan American. His interests include philosophy of education, spirituality in education, and social justice issues. Bernardo Pohl recently earned a doctorate in social education from University of Houston. He currently is a special education teacher at Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District in Northwest Houston and serves as an adjunct professor of education at University of Houston-Downtown. His research interests are critical pedagogy, special education and disability studies, social justice, and moral issues in education. 251

AUTHOR BIOS

John Reyes is a student of Activist Anthropology at the University of Texas, focusing on participant driven research. His current project investigates the impact of immigration policies in Travis County, Texas. James B. Rodgers is a graduate student at Baylor University’s School of Education where he completing a doctorate in Curriculum and Teaching. He is focusing his research and studies on social studies education and qualitative research with an emphasis in social foundations of education. Mr. Rodgers is currently working in the south Bronx in New York City as a social studies teacher with KIPP NYC College Preparatory School. Debby Shulsky is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Houston where she teaches Elementary Social Studies Methods. Beyond her work as a teacher educator, Ms. Shulsky taught Social Studies at an urban high school for 15 years and was a teacher leader in the small schools movement in the Houston Independent School district. Her passion for education is driven by her belief that educational experiences can provide avenues for transformative actions beyond the classroom door. Emily Summers is an Assistant Professor at Texas State University–San Marcos in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her primary research interests are in the ethnographic examination of the contexts of education. Her scholarship emphasizes issues of equity in education including studying children and youth cultures as well as the intersections of formal and informal cultures in constructing educative experiences. Dr. Tony L. Talbert, Associate Professor of Social Studies Education and Qualitative Research in the School of Education at Baylor University. He is a qualitative and ethnographic researcher whose teaching and research areas of expertise include: qualitative and ethnographic research design and analysis; democracy education and social justice education. Cameron White is Professor of Social Education at the University of Houston. His professional interests include international education, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy. He taught secondary social studies for 15 years before moving to higher education and teacher education. Outside interests include travel, activism, and popular culture. Christopher Witschonke is an Assistant Professor of Urban Education at the University of Houston-Downtown. His research interests include bringing multiple perspectives to the social studies content and how democratic principles are taught throughout the school day. Without the support of his wife, Shawna, he would be unable to pursue any of these passions.

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