Dumbing Down Teachers: Attacking Colleges of Education in the Name of Reform (Part I)
To be sure, the empirical emphasis of conservative school policy has been in place for decades. In keeping with this trend, the Obama administration's educational policy under the leadership of Arne Duncan lacks a democratic vision and sense of moral direction. Consequently, it reproduces rather than diminishes many of these problems. In addition, these policies bear the trace of the ideological remnants of a second Gilded Age that repudiated civic education and schooling as a public good. Rather than arguing for educational reforms and a value shift away from the ethically deadening demands of an egocentric, consumerist society that can only respond to the lure of goods, profits and "rational investments," Obama and Duncan are pushing the same pernicious set of values that redefine citizens as stockholders, customers and clients. Similarly, they have pushed for modes of teaching and learning that promote a formative culture that in effect produces and legitimates a culture of illiteracy and moral indifference that too closely correlates with what journalist Matt Taibbi rightly calls a "world of greed without limits."[2] Instead of promoting or extending "education's democratizing influence on the nation"[3] as part of one needed response to the corruption that led to the global recession, Duncan has fervently placed American society under the sway of an educational reform movement that is at odds with a vision of schooling dedicated to the cultivation of an informed, critical citizenry capable of actively participating and governing in a democratic society. In fact, Duncan's understanding of school reform is contrary to forms of knowledge and pedagogy that enable rather than subvert the potential of a socially just and sustainable society.
Almost all of Duncan's polices are indebted to the codes of a market-driven business culture, legitimated through discourses of measurement, efficiency and utility. This is a discourse that values hedge fund managers over teachers, privatization over the public good, management over leadership and training over education. Duncan's fervent support of neoliberal values are well-known and are evident in his support for high-stakes testing, charter schools, school-business alliances, merit pay, linking teacher pay to higher test scores, offering students monetary rewards for higher grades, CEO-type management, abolishing tenure, defining the purpose of schooling as largely job training, the weakening of teacher unions and blaming teachers exclusively for the failure of public schooling.[4]
His support of the firing of the entire faculty of a Central Falls High School in Rhode Island is indicative of his disdain for public school teachers and teacher unions. Although teachers and administrators have to accept responsibility for the academic performance of their students, there are often many other factors that have to be taken into consideration such as a parent's involvement, the socio-economic status of the students, the existence of support services for students and the challenges that emerge when students do not speak English as a first language. Many of the Central Falls students did not speak English well, came from families that were poor, worked after school and had few support services and specialists at their disposal.[5] Obama and Duncan ignored all of these factors because they have little sense of the larger socio-economic forces that bear down on schools, putting many students at a decided disadvantage when compared to their well-resourced, middle-class counterparts.
Duncan has expanded the reach of his educational reform policies and is now attempting to rewrite curricular mandates. Emphasizing the practical and experiential, he seeks to gut the critical nature of theory, pedagogy and knowledge taught in colleges of education. This is an important issue to more than just teachers who are denied a voice in curricular development; it also affects whole generations of youth. Such a bold initiative reveals in very clear terms the political project that drives his reforms and what he fears about both public schooling and the teachers who labor in classrooms every day.
Link:
http://www.truthout.org/dumbing-down-teachers-attacking-colleges-education-name-reform59820
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