And with that - our final readings for this course - things seem to have come full circle for me. I don't actually mean that we came full circle back to the start of the class (though I think we've managed to cycle back on a weekly basis anyway). I mean that this week's article provided a beautiful, missing link between this course and a bunch of what I studied as an undergrad.
Janet Johnson and Brittany Richer made for a scrappy duo, sending out a Google Form over social media to hundreds of educators to put together an elegant and simple white paper aptly titled, "Rhode Island Teachers Respond to PARCC." As they discuss the results of their survey, they hone in on a problem: we have "made a social and political problem into a technical one" (p 3). I agree - and this is the same problem we see again and again with international development projects. My undergrad thesis went deep into some reading that I can highly recommend as relevant to US education policy. Jim Scott started the genre with his book on how states turn citizens into "subjects" and wind up controlling the lives they seek to improve. James Ferguson brought the argument home, showing ways in which social issues became technical "problems" for "experts" to "solve." And Tania Li has provided the most recent update of this theory, discussing the process of "rendering technical" topics that don't actually have easy technical solutions. These are the books that helped me wake up and realize that I didn't have much of a future finding technical solutions to other country's problems; I needed to come home and teach.
I came into a system where, as Johnson and Richer describe, "educational reform efforts have focused on what happens inside of school, ignoring the impact of the economic and social inequities that occur outside of school" (p 3). We render it technical: post this standard-aligned objective, use this new software, and let's please not talk about the underlying issues of gender and race and reproducing class (thank you, Johnson; I see you, Finn). The apocalyptic world Johnson and Richer describe (and I suspect, many of us have seen in our schools) where "we must now spend weeks helping students feel in control of their learning again" flies in the face of the insightful authors we've encountered this term, like Oredola of Youth In Action: "I deeply believe that young people are every community's best problem solvers" (p 48). But when were they even given a chance?
Janet Johnson and Brittany Richer made for a scrappy duo, sending out a Google Form over social media to hundreds of educators to put together an elegant and simple white paper aptly titled, "Rhode Island Teachers Respond to PARCC." As they discuss the results of their survey, they hone in on a problem: we have "made a social and political problem into a technical one" (p 3). I agree - and this is the same problem we see again and again with international development projects. My undergrad thesis went deep into some reading that I can highly recommend as relevant to US education policy. Jim Scott started the genre with his book on how states turn citizens into "subjects" and wind up controlling the lives they seek to improve. James Ferguson brought the argument home, showing ways in which social issues became technical "problems" for "experts" to "solve." And Tania Li has provided the most recent update of this theory, discussing the process of "rendering technical" topics that don't actually have easy technical solutions. These are the books that helped me wake up and realize that I didn't have much of a future finding technical solutions to other country's problems; I needed to come home and teach.
I came into a system where, as Johnson and Richer describe, "educational reform efforts have focused on what happens inside of school, ignoring the impact of the economic and social inequities that occur outside of school" (p 3). We render it technical: post this standard-aligned objective, use this new software, and let's please not talk about the underlying issues of gender and race and reproducing class (thank you, Johnson; I see you, Finn). The apocalyptic world Johnson and Richer describe (and I suspect, many of us have seen in our schools) where "we must now spend weeks helping students feel in control of their learning again" flies in the face of the insightful authors we've encountered this term, like Oredola of Youth In Action: "I deeply believe that young people are every community's best problem solvers" (p 48). But when were they even given a chance?
In hopes of turning this full circle into a virtuous one, and not a vicious downward spiral, I offer two suggestions (I found Johnson and Richer's recommendations disappointingly general; while I agree we should "alleviate oppressive political and economic structures" (p 17), that's not exactly a roadmap forward). First, I think we should seriously consider how to capture other kinds of data. Policymakers will always want snazzy PowerPoint graphs; how can we use them to demonstrate "the absolute calm, peace, joy, rigor, and engagement" that one teacher invited us to see (p 16)? Second, RI Education Commissioner Ken Wagner hosts quarterly meetings with educators. I've been once before, and I think anybody is welcome (though there were less than a dozen of us there last time). You can email Chanthy.DelRosario@ride.ri.gov to see about going, and making sure more educators' voices are heard in decisions down the line.
Seth, I liked how you ended your post with suggestions on what we can do to help improve the system and make our voice heard. I agree with having different types of data to show results, because I believe data is incredibly important to have. However, I think we need to shift our data a little from the students and look at the teacher evaluation system in schools. I know a lot of teachers in my school who should not be teachers but somehow manage to stay due to union benefits and the "evaluation" process that anybody can easily pass. If our teachers are not effective or passionate, how can we expect our students to be effective and passionate?
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