Standards Based Education, Class Struggle and Academic Freedomby Greg Queen
Keynote Speech, Rouge Forum Conference
This year, my oldest daughter started first grade. At curriculum night her teacher said that she wishes that she could just teach reading and math, and skip over science and social studies. It was then, that I knew we were set up for another disappointing year. To me, math and reading are the means to understanding the world in which we live and our relation to it, not the end. Within the first month of the school year, my daughter, who already had a grasp of how to read simply from being read to regularly for years, started to engage in a behavior that we never really taught to her. When she was reading, she started to point at every word she was reading. When she came to a word that she was not familiar with, she would stop and try to sound out the word. This caused frustration for my daughter for the primary reason that at least half the words do not sound out correctly and it slowed/controlled the natural movement of her eyes across the page. We told Grace to not use her finger to point out words as she read because it interrupted the construction of meaning. Secondly, we told her that if she came to a word she did not know, she should continue reading to figure out the context of the word she does not know. The clues provided from the context of the sentence, Grace’s knowledge of the world, and the phonic and visual information contained in the lettering of the word, helped Grace glean the meaning of the unknown word. This, I think, provides a lesson. This lesson of how to read can be applied to why and how we learn to read the world. To understand the particular, the word, the child is not being encouraged to look at the totality, or context. This idea, applied to social relations, teaches the child to determine meaning by looking at the individual rather than the social context in which the individual exists. So rather than explain Grace’s teacher’s pedagogy in isolation from her social context, we need to ask what the social context of schools is.
Now, during the current historical period, particularly that past 30 years, inequality has intensified and define events. Capitalist exploitation of labor is the root of this inequality. The capitalist class controls the means, process and products of production and they desire to maintain and expand their control over these components of the production and reproduction of society. Labor power, AKA the working class, is in a position to resists this control and seek to creatively and collectively alter the social relations between capitalists and workers so the latter is empowered and freed from the control of the capitalist. However, to grasp this concept, to change these social relations, the individual must see the totality, or the context and not just their individual existence in isolation from the context to glean a full meaning of their particular life. In other words, like reading for meaning, we must glean an understanding of a particular situation (word) by using the context, by knowing what came before, a sense of where the present (story) is going, and by looking at the particulars (lettering) of the present. I believe this illustration is a great graphic to illustrate the social relations of today.
If we use the form and content of the social relations of capitalism and analyze today’s classroom, we can see strikingly similar relationships. According to Sarup, in schools, the three directly related participants (or factors of production) are teachers, students and knowledge. Students can be seen both as workers and commodities. Like the worker who exchanges her labor power for money which she uses to buy the objects necessary to live, the student exchanges her objectified labor (completed assignments) for the means (grades) to get a job (where she will subsequently exchange her labor power for the means to life). In the capitalist mode of education, students are “transformed into products, commodities to be sold on the market” (Sarup, 1978, p. 140). The teacher in this factory model of education is both a capitalist and a worker. As a capitalist, she determines the content and methods in the production of knowledge (except, though, the content and methods are increasingly being replaced by SBE). When the students produce and reproduce this knowledge, the teacher, like a capitalist, appropriates the objects of production from the students and returns to them a wage, or grade. The teacher is a worker whose product of production are students. As an employee, she works for people whose wish is to reproduce society as it is. This places the teacher in a contradictory role; it is contradictory because as a worker, she should be creating individuals who have a critical capacity to understand the capitalists system and the workers role within it, in other words the totality, but as a capitalist, she needs to transform the student into a commodity whose goal in life is to sell herself to a capitalist to (re)create capital and the capitalist and accept this as the natural state of affairs (Sarup, 1978). Shannon (1992, 2001) says that capitalists desire predictable, value-free factors of production (people, raw materials, and man-made objects) so as to more simply and rationally organize production. He says that “Capitalist logic promises that if all of society could be organized in a similar fashion, then society would run like a business, creating the best conditions for production, technological advance and accumulation. The allure of this promise drives the efforts to rationalize more and more aspects of public and private live” (Shannon, 2001, On line). This includes schooling. Since the uprising of the 1960’s, there has been a rightist resurgence in education polices. The right-wing is attempting to redefine whose methods and knowledge is considered legitimate. They have been promoting the needs of capitalists as the primary needs of society and purpose of education and they have been attacking teachers and curriculums as the forces resisting this ideology. Peter Mclaren explains that over the past two decades the scientific management style has been quite pervasive in schools and is producing a “mechanistic cognitive style within classrooms that appears at times to conform to Henry Ford’s rust proofed assembly lines” (1994, p. 219). Many district administrators have decided to make their teachers use teacher proofed curriculums. This move parallels the bosses of factories who have attempted to devalue and de-skill workers and place decisions making power into a planning department. This scientific management of capitalist production as applied to schools creates a context where the justification for standardized lessons and high-stakes testing become necessary. When science is invoked (such as the pseudo science of teacher proof curriculums and testing), it creates the appearance of objectivity. The promoters of scientifically managed schools claim that the standardized programs are produced objectively without regard for the emotional and social context of any particular classroom, “far from the daily practices of teachers and students” and this is considered fair and equal. This total rationalization of the education process causes it to appear as though these methods of knowing the world are natural and inevitable, hence unchangeable (Shannon, 2001, On line). Standards Based Education is the scientific management of schools today. . . but why? Standardized programs become necessary to the overall system of production because they “provide the division of function with teachers becoming factors in the implementation of the curricular designs of others; they fix the actions of teachers across classroom, schools, and districts; and they synchronize the actions of teachers and students toward the abstracted exchange value of student test scores” (Shannon, 2001, On line). The test scores are used to determine the efficiency of teachers, to measure the degree of cultural capital attained by the student, and to legitimizing the entire social system. SBE operates under the assumption that the inequalities in our society have been determined by the level of formal education rather than the social relations resulting from the unequal distribution of socially produced resources. In other words, one’s value is determined not by the social relations of capital in the sphere of production but its reification in the form of test scores in the sphere of education. Standards Based Education treats education as an object that is alien to most students and the value of a student is determined by how much of this alien knowledge she accumulates. To measure this value, the students and schools must complete standardized tests and their scores are ranked against other students and schools. The promoters of this scientifically managed Standards Based regimen want us to gaze at particular schools and their test scores and not the social context of schools (in addition to them being able to surveillance the implementation of the regimen). The scientific managers of SBE see schooling as a thing that is separate and sits outside of a social context. Therefore, its promoters can say that the unequal results arise from the particular schools, teachers and students who metaphorically are unable to sound out words correctly and the capitalist class is not to blame for the material results of unequal distribution of social resources which they control but the school, teacher and/or students are to blame. You will get to heaven when you pass the test. This type of teaching, in the end, tends to emphasize practical and technical knowledge in contrast to transformative knowledge. Secondly, because the dominant ideas of society tend to be controlled by the dominant social class, capitalism is treated as given, the last, best social system known to human history. The knowledge available in capitalist schools is not useful for developing a sense of the world nor an understanding of the essence of capitalist society but rather divides knowledge into particulars and forces students to learn one particular subject outside of its context (if substantive content is even being offered). Thus, the current form of education which mirrors the capitalist mode of production and the lack of content critical of the capitalist dominated society, the social relations of capital remain unexamined and oppression and exploitation continue. Public schools are centripetally located in society to significantly impact whether the social relations between capitalists and workers are altered. Therefore, they are very important to capitalist in terms of maintaining the existing social relations of society that benefit them at the expense of other members of society. This starts very early. Like learning to read in my daughter’s classroom, future workers have few experience in their formal education to analyze the social/historic context of current events, but are told to look at what is immediately in front of them without context but like reading, we can not always depend upon what we see (lettering of a word) and need to look at the context to determine the correct meaning. However, kids very early on are not taught this primary method for constructing knowledge. I think the educator should realize their location in this struggle between the social classes and recognize that their actions are partisan. Collectively, teachers can contribute significantly to the transformation of society towards more freedom, equality and democracy; Or, they can take the side of the dominators (capitalists) who are fighting for increased inequality and authoritarianism and justification of the existing social relations. Teachers can choose the path of SBE which will entrench capitalist control and do little to alter the current social relation, or they can redirect students to the idea that the source of inequality is the unequal control over the process and products of society. To do the latter, it becomes imperative to create individuals who can become agents of change toward the expansion of equality and democracy and effective resisters against inequality and authoritarianism and to do this learning to read must involve learning the social context in which one lives. Although I think this is the correct course it obviously has risks and they vary depending upon the socio-economic characteristics of the school and the level of class struggle. I think that we need to begin developing curriculum within our communities and classrooms that work towards unveiling capitalist ideology by illustrating its material basis. If students are given an opportunity to see how the processes of capitalism work in the historical and contemporary struggle for control over the processes and products of labor, they will be begin to develop an understanding of what make history move and their role in creating that history. This understanding will tend to develop citizens who see themselves as participants or actors and potential agents of historical change. Philosophically, Freire has influenced my thinking regarding how we free ourselves of oppression and much of what I am about to say comes from his explanations. We need to facilitate experiences and organize curriculum so that students come to realize that the objective social world is not one which is reified into a concrete, unchangeable thing but is the result of relations between humans and that since the objective social world is the result of relations between humans, these relations are under the control of humans and can be changed. Secondly, students must develop an understanding that the oppressed must struggle towards changing the existing social relations that control them for the enrichment of the oppressing class (Freire, 1993). However, overcoming oppression is more than recognizing the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Although a good starting point is to recognize the source and the methods of domination, it is equally as important to recognize the source and methods for liberation both in the past and the present (Freire, 1993). The oppressed must struggle to free themselves. The roots of the struggle for liberation exist in understanding dialectical thought, where the world and action are intimately interdependent (Freire, 1993). Freiere argues that we should not just be in the world but should be with the world. We engage with the world through organizing ourselves, acting, testing ourselves, choosing the best responses, and changing in the very act of responding. By engaging with the world through a critical and reflective eye, we discover our temporality and recognize the dimensionality of time. Through this process, we realize we are not imprisoned within a permanent today but can emerge and become temporalalized, as Freire says. (Freire, 1973). It is the normal role of human beings to be creative and want to participate and intervene in reality with the intent of changing it. Freire says that humans want to engage in activity to integrate oneself within one’s context in contrast to other animals that just adapt to the context. Being able to integrate oneself implies not only the ability to adapt to the existing context but the ability to use one’s critical capacity to intervene in that context with the intent to change it. An individual who loses this ability to make choices in life and follows pre-scripted choices is no longer integrated in life but has simply adapted to the context of life. The person who is integrated becomes the subject in life rather than the adapted individual who is an object, a thing, in life. As teachers, we can choose the path of SBE and adapt to the designs of others, the capitalists and their supporters, or we can facilitate the creation of individuals who can successfully integrate themselves rather than adapt to reality (Freire, 1973). To do the latter, it is necessary to know the totality, or how the capitalist system manages itself and how we can intervene to change it to create social relations based upon freedom, equality and democracy. Marx argues that in the capitalist system, we are not the subject of our own lives creating objects that affirm our humanity but are used by capital and its personification, the capitalists to create and affirm the subject, capital. Marx says that capital is not a thing but is a social relation between people. Lukacs says that the form of this relationship, capital over labor, becomes the dominant form of social relations within society. The parallel made earlier regarding the social relations within schools between teachers and students is an example. To be the personification of Capital, the capitalist “must” think that they are living according to natural objective laws and not to the laws of a social system created by people. To affirm their existences as personifications of capital, capitalists exploit labor power to “create” the objectification of capital, the commodity, that when sold is transformed into money to enrich and empower the capitalists. Therefore, workers simply are a part of the means of production, a commodity. However, as a commodity, Lukacs says, they play a special role in creating historical change and can only become the agent of change when the worker realizes their existence as a commodity in the capitalist system. Therefore, it is necessary that students recognize that as workers they create the material basis that empowers the capitalists and that this is done through the commodification of their labor. In other words, the workers needs to realize that their value is determined by a social relation dominated by the capitalists and not objective, natural laws; Recognizing that the form of social relations in capitalism is capital and labor and the content of that form is exploitation helps the worker penetrate it and become active in its transformation into a relation based upon equality (Lukacs, 1971). Marx demanded “a historical critique of economics which resolves the totality of the reified objectives of social and economic life into relations between men” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 49). Lukacs quotes Marx as saying that capital is “not a thing but a social relation between people mediated through things” (1971, p. 49). “The superiority of the proletariat must lie exclusively in its ability to see society from the center, as a coherent whole. This means that it is able to act in such a way as to change reality; in the class consciousness of the proletariat, theory and practice coincide and so it can consciously throw the weight of its actions on the scales of history—and this is the deciding factor” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 69). I think that the degree of freedom we have to do this in the classroom is connected to the organizational power of the working class. Although in a capitalist dominated society, one is completely free to teach the ideology of the capitalist class, just look at the semester length courses called “economics,” the degree of freedom to engage in critical pedagogy is connected to the organizational power of the working class. Hence, one of the goals of the Rouge Forum is to not only organize educators but to bring fourth the understanding and connections between education and class and that our freedom is dialectically connected to the freedom of the working class. I believe that it is, in part, because of my connection to the Rouge Forum and other like minded educators that has been developed over the past decade, that I am able to teach content that is critical of the capitalist system. Therefore, I would like to explain how I try to teach using the above understandings, how these have been challenged, and how I have manage to still teach and keep my ideals, to some degree. Currently I teach high school history. When I think through the scope and sequence of any history class, the primary focus is a history of class relations. For example, in a modern American history class that I teach, I open the trimester length course with students engaging in an activity where they can see and experience the unequal distribution of wealth in the United States and how it has changed since the 1970’s (Ten Chairs of Inequality, Kellogg). Through this activity, students explore their initial ideas as to why this inequality in wealth exists. I begin to introduce the idea of class society. I label the wealthiest ten percent of the US, the capitalist class, and the other ninety percent as the working class and I explain that the working class labor for the capitalist class producing goods and services whose full value is not returned to the working class, but is accumulated in the hands of the capitalist class. I suggest this is a key idea to understand current and historical events because the core cause of many of the most significant events are rooted in the struggle over the value created during the process of production. To provide a link to the lesson about wealth inequality and to evaluate the current historical period, students analyze the social relations of masters/slaves, kings/serfs and capitalists/workers identifying their similarities and differences. This leads into the second theme, a primary theme indeed, capitalism. Students learn that capitalists own the means of production which empowers them to exploit workers to expand the value going to their own class and that because of competition, the expansion of value is necessary and drives capitalists to develop new means or methods of production and/or force workers to accept lower wages, benefits, etc. The capitalists’ need for the constant expansion of surplus value is primarily satisfied through intensified exploitation of the working class. The working class may recognize common cause and unite as result of this exploitation posing a potential problem for the capitalist class. As a result, capitalists create/reinforce divisions within the working class. One division that has weakened the working class in their struggle against capitalists is racism, the third theme of the unit. Students, through current and historical examples, learn that capitalist benefit when, using race, workers rather than blame the boss, they blame each other for their living and working conditions. The essential idea is that the ruling class benefits significantly through the divide and conquer strategy of racism. Globalization, the fourth theme in the unit, is taught as one process to satisfy the capitalists’ need for cheap raw materials, cheap labor, places for investment, and markets. In addition, the lessons show kids ways corporations use governments to create and enforce a global structure that enriches owners of corporations at the expense of local communities. The last theme in this unit is imperialism using the war in Iraq as an example. Admittedly, the context of the five themes is how social relations are based upon the need of the capitalists to exploit labor rather than being based upon freedom, equality, and democracy. There are risks to “being political” in the classroom. I would advise teachers to earn the trust and support of the community before being too outspoken. I have been teaching for over fifteen years within the district where I currently teach. Students have come to appreciate my “voice” in the classroom. They communicate this to their parents and sometimes, though, parents have raised questions and objections to the content of the classroom. I have never taken their concerns lightly. From my experience, parents are often afraid their children are being indoctrinated because they are being taught a “one-sided” curriculum. (Interestingly, though, these parents do not complain about other teachers who teach only the textbook point of view.) I tell parents that I struggle very hard to create space in the classroom for discussion and a variety of perspectives, and they are usually satisfied. However, there have been times when parents take their complaints to higher authorities (Dueweke, 2004; Wowk, 2004). For example, during the 2004 election, when I used a satirical dialogue titled Daddy Why Did We Have To Invade Iraq (Bunker, 2003), a parent disagreed with the content of this dialogue and broadened his complaint to the entire first unit summarized earlier. His initial claim was that the author of the dialogue had a website that if kids went to it, they might see or read things which were inappropriate for their age. I did not know the website existed because the piece was popular enough to have appeared on at least thirty different websites and was sent to me at as an attachment via a list serve. In addition, the parent was upset with a set of questions that had students analyze the social relations of masters and slaves. His complaint was that I was doing this in the context of teaching about capitalism and that I was trying to get students to compare the social relations of capitalism with slavery. He was correct. Although, I immediately scheduled a conference between the parent, my immediate supervisor, and myself, the parent was not immediately satisfied and appealed to the district Board of Education. Prior to the Board of Education meeting, someone informed the local media of the situation. The event appeared on local news broadcast, and in both a metro-wide newspaper and a local tabloid. Despite having a discipline letter in my personnel file for one year for allegedly “not being balanced in my teaching,” the administration was “supportive.” The building principal advised staff members to support me and the Board of Education president said that although at times I may be outspoken, I was still a good teacher. Obviously, exercising academic freedom has its risks. It has been asked of me in the past, how did you get the power to teach these ideas in the classroom and still keep your job. Here is my response to that question. First, I think it is necessary to take the time to get to know your kids, school, community, its history and how it fits within the larger context, paying attention to everything, and being involved. Secondly, I think that to have the courage and power to take these risks, it is important that we have friends who will show up to support us in time of need, and we need to support others when their academic freedom is challenged, too. For me, it has been The Rouge Forum. The sense of community decreased the amount of fear associated with challenging power. Thirdly, the premise of curriculum choices I make have the goal of creating a more egalitarian society. Students see this. They may not agree with it, but they see it. However, a curriculum organized around the idea of creating a more egalitarian society is meaningless if the social relations in the classroom are authoritarian. Therefore, I think it imperative to create and encourage student voices in the classroom. In my classroom, students are strongly encouraged to think for themselves, to question the ideas being presented, to realize that all teachers choose the materials they teach, even in the case when teachers are teaching what they are told to teach. In addition, if you allow students to have a voice in your classroom, they are more likely to defend your voice in the classroom when it is being seriously challenged. In the situation I described above, I had current students come to my support at the Board of Education meetings. When past students, even some who had graduated, heard or read about the situation, they came to visit me or actually looked me up and called my home asking if they could do anything to help. It was not just the students who agreed with the goals of the curriculum that came to me to provide me support, but those who regularly questioned the interpretations of history being offered to them in my class. I think that support is result of the non-hierarchical social relations I create in the classroom. Fourthly, I think that dialogue with concerned parents plays a critical role. The particular incident described above is the most dramatic action taken by parents against the content and ideas being taught and discussed in my classroom. Each year one or two concerned parents contact the principal and/or the Board of Education regarding my pedagogy. I respect the rights of parents to be involved in their child’s education and I am more than willing to listen to their concerns. In addition to listening to their concerns, I explain the pedagogical process in my classroom. Typically, after a conference with a parent, the parent leaves satisfied that their child is not being indoctrinated but rather is being exposed to multiple interpretations of historical and current events. Most concerned parents recognize the potential benefits that such experiences bring to their child. Fifthly, the fact that I teach in a historically working class community, one that is increasingly impoverished, makes what I teach more acceptable. Frequently, it helps them to understand their own current and historical roots. Lastly, I have decided that the cause is right. This helps to overcome the fear of challenging the powerful and the drive to protect and extend my freedom in the classroom. Now, back to my daughter’s classroom. Because my wife and I were not satisfied with the methods and content of my daughter’s teacher, we requested a meeting with the building principal to find out if we can pick next years teacher so that we have a teacher that more closely matches our philosophy. She gave us a form to complete that would have allowed us to write a few sentences for three different questions about our daughter’s social, academic and emotional needs. Of course, people have written volumes on this topic, we managed to create a bulleted list. We think that Grace’s social, academic and emotional needs would be best met in: · A classroom where the child does not just get to choose between a, b or c but has some say over what a, b and c will be. · A classroom where content (social studies, science) is taught by integrating it with skill (reading, writing and math) instruction. In other words, skills are not more important than subject matter but are used in teaching subject matter. In addition, the subject matter is organized thematically and asks critical questions. · In deciding what, why and how something is going to be learned, the teacher considers the student(s) first, and cares less about state standards. · A classroom that avoids homework because the teacher assumes the child is engaging in other life enriching activities. In addition, the curriculum is relevant to understanding the world and the child naturally uses outside of school what she/he learns in school · A classroom that develops an understanding of concepts through inductive reasoning more than deductive reasoning. · A classroom that promotes creative, open-ended activities and avoids closed, fill-in-the-blank activities. · A classroom where behaviorism is not the discipline model but mutual respect
If Grace has a teacher who did the above bulleted items, that would be better than one who did not. However, this form of education without the necessary problematizing of the social context of our times is a serious weakness. I think that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to exercise academic freedom especially teaching the ideas I explained earlier and those I expect from my daughter’s teacher and school. I realize that the above goals can not be achieved without collective action against the pyramid of the capitalist system: A class struggle of dramatic proportions. We are a part of the class struggle and the time has come to push back the forces limiting our control over the process and products of our labor. To do this, we need to develop within ourselves the necessary knowledge to understanding the origins of exploitation and develop amongst ourselves the power to bring about the conditions where all people can develop their own powers, not just those that benefit the capitalist class. So, we have a lot to do and I encourage us to understand ourselves, our classrooms, our communities by understanding the context of the social relations of capitalism and integrate ourselves individually and collectively to push back those forces of domination and exploitation and exercise and defend our rights to create a more just, equal and democratic society.
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