Highlights from Henry Giroux, "The War against Teachers as Public Intellectuals in Dark Times"

12/17/12: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13367-the-corporate-war-against-teachers-as-public-intellectuals-in-dark-times

"What these individuals and institutions all share is an utter disregard for public values, critical thinking and any notion of education as a moral and political practice.[8] The wealthy hedge fund managers, think tank operatives and increasingly corrupt corporate CEOs are panicked by the possibility that teachers and public schools might provide the conditions for the cultivation of an informed and critical citizenry capable of actively and critically participating in the governance of a democratic society.  In the name of educational reform, reason is gutted of its critical potential and reduced to a deadening pedagogy of memorization, teaching to the test and classroom practices that celebrate mindless repetition and conformity. Rather than embraced as central to what it means to be an engaged and thoughtful citizen, the capacity for critical thinking, imagining and reflection are derided as crucial pedagogical values necessary for "both the health of democracy and to the creation of a decent world culture and a robust type of global citizenship."[9]"

"A pedagogy of management and conformity does more than simply repress the analytical skills and knowledge necessary for students to learn the practice of freedom and assume the role of critical agents, it also reinforces deeply authoritarian lessons while reproducing deep inequities in the educational opportunities that different students acquire. As Sara Robinson  points out,

"'In the conservative model, critical thinking is horrifically dangerous, because it teaches kids to reject the assessment of external authorities in favor of their own judgment - a habit of mind that invites opposition and rebellion. This is why, for much of Western history, critical thinking skills have only been taught to the elite students - the ones headed for the professions, who will be entrusted with managing society on behalf of the aristocracy. (The aristocrats, of course, are sending their kids to private schools, where they will receive a classical education that teaches them everything they'll need to know to remain in charge.) Our public schools, unfortunately, have replicated a class stratification on this front that's been in place since the Renaissance.[15]'"


"While the political and ideological climate does not look favorable for the teachers at the moment, it does offer them the challenge to join a public debate with their critics, as well as the opportunity to engage in a much needed self-critique regarding the nature and purpose of  schooling, classroom teaching and the relationship between education and social change. Similarly, the debate provides teachers with the opportunity to organize collectively to improve the conditions under which they work and to demonstrate to the public the central role that teachers must play in any viable attempt to reform the public schools."


"A starting point for interrogating the social function of teachers as public intellectuals is to view schools as economic, cultural and social sites that are inextricably tied to the issues of politics, power and control. This means that schools do more than pass on in an objective fashion a common set of values and knowledge. On the contrary, schools are places that represent forms of knowledge, language practices, social relations and values that are particular selections and exclusions from the wider culture. As such, schools serve to introduce and legitimate particular forms of social life. Rather than being objective institutions removed from the dynamics of politics and power, schools actually are contested spheres that embody and express struggles over what forms of authority, types of knowledge, forms of moral regulation and versions of the past and future should be legitimated and transmitted to students."

Books to Acquire, Then Read

King Leopold's Ghost
The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair
News for All the People, Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres
Harvest of Empire, Juan Gonzalez
The Last Colonial Massacre, Greg Grandin
Fordlandia, Greg Grandin
Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America, Martin Gilens
Paulo Freire's Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis
Black Awakening in Capitalist America, Robert L. Allen
A Match on Dry Grass, Mark Warren
Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Black Jacobins, CLR James
Practice What You Teach, Bree Picower
Neoliberal Education, Pauline Lipman
Other People's Children/ Multiplication is for White People, Lisa Delpit
Race, Power, and Organizing in East Baltimore
Visions of Emancipation: Italian Workers' Movement Since 1945, Joanne Barkan
Italian Immigrant Radical Culture, Marcella Bencivenni
The Tailor of Ulm, Lucio Magri
The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture, Gerald Meyer
Are Italians White?: How Race is Made in America 
WOP!: A Documentary History of Anti-Italian Discrimination, Salvatore J LaGumina
The Invention of the White Race, Theodore W. Allen
Pedagogy of Hope, Paolo Freire
Open City, Teju Cole
In the Shadow of the Statue of Liberty
Biopolitics and Social Change in Italy: from Gramsci to Pasolini to Negri, Andrea Righi.
Towards Land, Work & POWER .

Essay thoughts:

-Homeland makes a clear anti-drone strike statement. Obama confesses to personally loving the show. Obama has authorized many, many drone strikes.

In "Do school closings knock students off course?" by Umut Özek and Michael Hansen, published in the Washington Post Opinion section on November 30th, 2012, the authors argue that their study of longitudinal data indicates that, when a public school is shuttered, student test scores drop for the year of uncertainty and transition before bouncing back to their previous level.

The data may bear this out, and I am still exploring their report in depth. What I take major exception to is Özek and Hansen's conclusion:

"Let’s worry instead about the learning setbacks that come from protracted contentious battles and be guided by what research indicates: Kids bounce back after school closings."

Sounds an awful lot like, "Shut up, take the medicine, and leave the decisions to the grown-ups."

I implore the authors to offer similar longitudinal analyses of the young men and women who sat in at Woolworth's in 1960, or the young members of Voice of Youth in Chicago Education (V.O.Y.C.E.) and the Urban Youth Collaborative (U.Y.C.) in New York who continue to organize to stop school closures. As Shawn Ginwright, a Professor at San Francisco State University, has said:

"Social science research must consider how economic, social and political realities intimately shape the civic and political engagement among black youth. A deeper understanding of these forces will yield greater insight into new forms of politics among African American youth..."

Regardless of the return on test scores, to argue that organizing a critical response to the Mayoral-Controlled, largely unaccountable D.C.P.S. leadership causes "learning setbacks" for students, ignores  flies in the face of years of research. Anyone who has organized or advocated for anything of personal significance can speak of the passion that real-world, practical problem solving engenders. It is far more engaging than the rote memorization and standardized-test-induced data we as a nation encouraging students to consume today, with the Obama administration's recommendation of the Federal Bank of California's Monthly Report as a high school text.

Özek and Hansen also fail to account for the multitude of data that suggests students who engage in activism, advocacy, and organizing are far likelier to graduate on time, go on to college, and develop successful careers.

No "long-term harm"? Tell that to the students at Taft High School in the Bronx, a school that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Department of Education closed in 2008. The dropout rate at Taft spiked from 25% the year closure was announced to 70% the year that the school closed. At Morris High School, also in the Bronx, the discharge rate rose from 33% the year closure was announced to 55% the year that the school closed.

I am not a data researcher but I am a student of history and an ally to students fighting for educational justice in D.C. and nationwide. The data researchers would be well-served to consider more than the numbers before making such sweeping claims that contradict hundreds of years of practical evidence: young people who organize become more committed to creating solutions within their communities.