imagine

Yes, it has been a while. I am making sense of a new educational context and continue to bump up against old barriers that are mostly constructed in the minds of educators.

Like, making excuses for not working with teachers or administrators or parents because "they are not willing to change" or "they are under so much pressure and won't try anything different." Seems to me, this is a reproduction of the deficit perspective we attribute to them in explaining low expectations and poor student achievement.

Seems to me, if we are educators with an interest in making schools better, we need to walk the walk.

Reform Happens

What needs to comes first - the desire to advance educationally or the mechanisms (pathways) by which one can do so?

Those who subscribe to the "desire" perspective seem to rely heavily on the argument that success is dependent on how hard you try -- that agency is a function of how badly you want to reach your goal.

Those who subscribe to the pathways perspective - the structure side of things - tend to argue that the barriers are in part what constrain action (and desire).

I find the either/or nature of this issue problematic -- especially in getting students to broaden their understanding of educational attainment issues. I admit, I tend to focus on the structural side of things, but with an important exception -- I (like others) insist that people (we) create structures...we give them meaning and we derive meaning from their properties and histories. As such, as we exercise agency we draw from cultural resources and tools (many of which include the structures in and through which we lead our everyday lives - language, organizations, policies, etc.) in order to act in ways that reinforce, resist or transform our situation and/or surroundings.

It seems that cultural resources and individual "desire" are inextricably interrelated. Thus, the notion that one has to want something for which a sensible pathway toward its achievement (beginning with a vocabulary!) does not exist begs the question, what is leadership for anyway?

the costs of edu"business"

There is a great deal of discussion about marketing in education programs (teacher ed., ed amin. etc). The concern stems from the threat of the "competition" -- those new programs popping up all over the landscape, many of them in cyberspace, selling "convenient" ways for prospective students to receive certifications that will allow them to work in schools. The environment - the market - is driving the efforts of traditional programs to modify admissions requirements and/or provide instruction online so as to appear more convenient as well. The culture of schooling -- convenience, client-driven, cost/benefit considerations, and "standards" - are transforming the institution, P-20, in important ways, and we need to pay attention.

What I am thinking about, I know, is part of the larger privatization movement that has come to characterize the institutional environment of schools -- institutions that provide the frameworks and vocabularies that script "innovation" and change.

I am troubled by culture of consumerism in education -- the student as "client"; the emphasis on marketing a product and competition and the impact this has on how we define the "product." This is troubling because of what it is doing to teachers, administrators and educators at all levels. What is the market communicating about what students, teachers and adminstrators need in terms of preparation and how does this discourse silence broader community-driven purposes? Why is the notion that schools should fuel democratic ends (ends that encompass economic concerns) seem so revolutionary (and marginalized) right now, in this moment? Why are parents, if considered at all, considered stakeholders (shareholders?) rather than participants - and what is the difference? We need to pay attention.

Aren't programs, like schools, shaped as much by the people in them than by their policies and programs? In fact, it is the people that bring the policies and programs to life and given them meaning. Shouldn't we be more concerned with ways to recruit students whose voices and faces are missing in many traditional programs, than with competing in the "market." The distinction may be a bit artificial, and the competition is real -- but we need to pay attention to what competition does to people, programs and institutions in the absence of leadership-- when we start to think of our students as clients, and reacting to market conditions, instead of being strategic about shaping the rules of the game. To borrow from the corporate world (with considerable reluctance), recruitment is a vital part of building and maintaining corporate culture. Seems to me, leaders in schools (pre k through graduate school) that are trying to return to the original mission of schooling -- the democratic mission -- are: deliberate about recruiting its adult members and partners who breathe life into the organizational culture, confident that this mission is worthwhile, and steadfast in defending it.

Inaugural Post

This is the inaugural post for Educulture, a blog devoted to commentary and questions about the culture of schooling in America. I am particularly interested in the institutional rules that shape the "game of school" these days. I hope this will be a place to both work out some ideas and engage discussion about the politics of education, the rules of the "game" (what they are, what they mean) and the inevitable* winners and losers on the many levels and terrains of the educational (edu-cultural) playing fields.

*There are inevitable winners and losers because that is how we do schooling in America...See Varenne and McDermott's Successful Failure: The School America Builds for more on this.