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Rightist Multiculturalism: Core Lessons on Neoconservative School Reform

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For nearly two decades, E. D. Hirsch's book Cultural Literacy has provoked debate over whose knowledge should be taught in schools, embodying the culture wars in education. Initially developed to mediate against the multicultural "threat," his educational vision inspired the Core Knowledge curriculum, which has garnered wide support from an array of communities, including traditionally marginalized groups. In this groundbreaking book, Kristen Buras provides the first detailed, critical examination of the Core Knowledge movement and explores the history and cultural politics underlying neoconservative initiatives in education. Ultimately, Rightist Multiculturalism does more than assess the limitations and possibilities of Core Knowledge. It illuminates why troubling educational reforms initiated by neoconservatives have acquired grassroots allegiance despite criticism that their vision is culturally elitist. More importantly, Buras argues understanding that neoconservative school reform itself has become a multicultural affair is the first step toward fighting an alternative war of position-that is, reclaiming multiculturalism as a radically transformative project.

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... Neoconservatives tend to lament the decline of the "classics" in school knowledge and eschew multiculturalism, ethnic studies, and just about anything else that validates the history and perspectives of any non-Western, non-Christian knowledge deemed as being of low status and illegitimate. In this sense, there is both a colonial and Whitesupremacist impulse underlying neoconservatism, which, for instance, has been noted by critics of E. D. Hirsch, Jr.'s (1996) Core Knowledge curriculum (see, e.g., Buras, 1999Buras, , 2008. Similar to neoliberals, neoconservatives are also generally committed to capitalist market economics, although their focus tends to be on more conservative cultural models (Apple, 2005(Apple, , 2006; see also Buras, 2008). ...
... In this sense, there is both a colonial and Whitesupremacist impulse underlying neoconservatism, which, for instance, has been noted by critics of E. D. Hirsch, Jr.'s (1996) Core Knowledge curriculum (see, e.g., Buras, 1999Buras, , 2008. Similar to neoliberals, neoconservatives are also generally committed to capitalist market economics, although their focus tends to be on more conservative cultural models (Apple, 2005(Apple, , 2006; see also Buras, 2008). ...
... Further, the AYP testing benchmarks help frame NCLB around concepts of excellence, rigor, and achievement in education-all concepts that also appeal to the neoconservative project (Apple, 2005(Apple, , 2006. Finally, despite the impulse for deregulation refl ected in promulgation of charter schools, NCLB's promotion of charter schools also appeals to neoconservatives Au through the potential development of charters based around neoconservative concepts of "core knowledge" (Buras, 2008). ...
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The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and their associated high-stakes testing are key parts of the federal Race to the Top (RTTT) initiative. There has been considerable resistance to both CCSS and related testing, particularly from conservative actors. This resistance suggests that CCSS has caused substantial tension within the conservative alliance that originally coalesced around No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This article examines the fracturing of the NCLB alliance in response to RTTT and CCSS.
... 'Whose knowledge is of most worth' is a question that critical scholars of school knowledge and education policy have posed for some time (Apple 2000(Apple , 2006aApple and Christian-Smith 1991;Ball 1990;Buras 2008;Buras and Apple 2006;Cornbleth and Waugh 1995;Lipman 2004;McCarthy 1998;Whitty 1985). This line of analysis has shown how a particular kind of knowledge becomes legitimized ('officialized') in schools, the process both shaping and shaped by the larger unequal power relationships and history of social movements. ...
... Hegemony is won through partial incorporation of subordinate groups' experience and interests through which the dominant group generates their consent to its rule (Apple and Christian-Smith 1991, 9-10). In this process of incorporation, the experience and perspectives of subordinate groups are rearticulated into the broader conservative ideological tendency, often deprived of its original political edge (Buras 2008;McCarthy 1998, 114-115). School knowledge hence is the amalgamation of competing interests that are unequally located (Apple 2000, 9-10). ...
... embody the state-mandated curriculum, are a locus of the intense cultural and political struggles. In particular, history (or social studies) textbooks are one of the most contested areas because they directly reflect the wider struggles over the collective memory of the past and national identity (Buras 2008;Cornbleth and Waugh 1995;Hein and Selden 2000;Nozaki and Inokuchi 1998;Schneider 2008). ...
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This paper discusses the Japanese history textbook controversy over ‘comfort women’ to tease out insights that help globalize the existing theoretical discussion of politics of school knowledge. I begin by documenting how the domestic struggles over Japanese history textbooks are empowered and disempowered by the regional and international power relations. Using the Japanese case, I first problematize the use of hegemony in critical scholarship wherein struggles over school knowledge have been defined within the framework of a nation‐state. Second, I call for situating the discussion of counter‐hegemonic strategies in the increasingly internationalized politics of education witnessed around the world. In sum, this study calls for broadening the application of the notions of hegemony and counter‐hegemony in critical education scholarship to take full account of the complex political dynamics of globalizations.
... Conservative Christian groups and other critics (including Academics First) had excoriated (and defeated) Wilder's OBE plan, describing it as "vague," "affective" and "touchy-feely" (Duke & Reck, 2003;Schafly, 1993;Zlatos, 1993). For the revised social studies standards, Tuttle advocated a "cultural literacy" approach, first espoused by University of Virginia professor E.D. Hirsch, that embraced content-specific discipline-based standards at both the elementary and secondary levels (Buras, 2008;Hirsch, 1987). Hirsch (1987), who founded the Core Knowledge Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia, promoted an educationally conservative agenda that stressed the practice of transmitting a rigorous and academic common core of specific facts and knowledge to students-an agenda characterized by Buras (2008) as the "most powerful arm of the neoconservative educational project" designed to defend "an allegedly beleaguered Western tradition" (p. ...
... For the revised social studies standards, Tuttle advocated a "cultural literacy" approach, first espoused by University of Virginia professor E.D. Hirsch, that embraced content-specific discipline-based standards at both the elementary and secondary levels (Buras, 2008;Hirsch, 1987). Hirsch (1987), who founded the Core Knowledge Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia, promoted an educationally conservative agenda that stressed the practice of transmitting a rigorous and academic common core of specific facts and knowledge to students-an agenda characterized by Buras (2008) as the "most powerful arm of the neoconservative educational project" designed to defend "an allegedly beleaguered Western tradition" (p. 5). ...
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The authors trace the development and implementation of Virginia's History and Social Science standards-based accountability system from 1995 to 2009. They frame the study within an examination of the political ideologies that influence policy realization and unpack the relationship between ideological and epistemological beliefs about the nature of disciplinary knowledge and arguments regarding what knowledge is of most worth and whose voices should be included. While initial policy implementation created vociferous reactions, subsequent revisions have been met with silence. Such acquiescence, the authors suggest, reflects the ways in which high stakes testing as a vehicle for assessing learning has become normalized in Virginia. This shift in beliefs about education foreshadows the potential impact of the nationwide accountability movement and raises a concern that if Virginia ceased to test history and social science, its place within the school schedule would be lost to content areas that impact Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).
... U skladu sa svojom orijentacijom neokonzervativci od GERM-a najsnažnije prihvaćaju elemente naglašavanja važnosti 'temeljnih' nastavnih predmeta, osiguravanja odgovornosti na osnovu testnih rezultata te prava roditelja i učenika da biraju koju će odgojno-obrazovnu instituciju pohađati što je u skladu s poviješću neokonzervativnih utjecaja na reformiranje odgojno-obrazovnog sustava (Buras, 2008) . Neokonzervativna skupina aktera 'konzervativne modernizacije' je GERM-u važna zbog svoje političke snage i prihvaćenosti od strane utjecajnih društvenih te političkih grupacija koje imaju simboličku i djelatnu moć pretvaranja ideja u stvarnost . ...
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Kroz povijest pa do danas postoje različite koncepcije odgoja i obrazovanja, a jedna od najprisutnijih jest koncepcija odgoja i obrazovanja kao sredstva društvene kontrole i reprodukcije. Promatrano u povijesnoj perspektivi razli[1]čiti pokreti i odgojno-obrazovni akteri djelovali su na koncipiranje te ciljeve odgojno-obrazovnih sustava, a trenutno je najsnažniji pokret globalne reforme obrazovanja (GERM) koji djeluje putem aktera ‘konzervativne modernizacije’. Odgojno-obrazovni sustav, kao jedan od društvenih podsustava, predstavlja poligon na kojem se kroz nacionalnu i globalnu obrazovnu politiku odvijaju borbe moći između različitih društvenih skupina. Pripadnici različitih grupacija aktera koji čine pokret ‘konzervativne modernizacije’ imaju različite ciljeve i moć djelovanja, a neoliberali su u praktičnom i vrijednosnom pogledu najsnažnija grupacija. Svaka skupina aktera ‘konzervativne modernizacije’ nastoji ojačati one elemente unutar odgojno-obrazovnog sustava koji im omogućavaju zadržavanje te povećavanje društveno-političke moći, a oslabiti one elemente koji slabe njenu društveno-političku moć. Da bi ostvarili postavljeni cilj koriste odgoj i obrazovanje kao sredstvo društvene kontrole i reprodukcije.
... Βασικός της στόχος (της εκπαίδευσης) είναι η μετάδοση της πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς της κυρίαρχης ομάδας (Banks & Banks, 2007) και η εσωτερίκευση ενός συστήματος κοινών πεποιθήσεων, αξιών και νοημάτων κληρονομημένων από το παρελθόν, τα οποία, στην περίπτωση των δυτικών χωρών, θα πρέπει να στηρίζονται σε ένα αναλυτικό πρόγραμμα σπουδών που δίνει σαφή προτεραιότητα στον ευρωπαϊκό πολιτισμό . Η δουλεία, οι γενοκτονίες και η αποικιοκρατία δεν είναι κατάλληλο θέμα για μικρά παιδιά (Buras, 2008). ...
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Το βιβλίο αυτό αφορά εκείνη την περιοχή της παιδαγωγικής η οποία έχει ως στόχο της να συμβάλλει στην αντιμετώπιση των ζητημάτων που προκύπτουν από τις κοινωνικές διαφοροποιήσεις. Η περιοχή της παιδαγωγικής που επιχειρεί να δώσει μια επίκαιρη και συστηματικά επεξεργασμένη απάντηση στα σύγχρονα κοινωνικά προβλήματα είναι γνωστή ως πολυπολιτισμική, αντιρατσιστική και διαπολιτισμική εκπαίδευση. Οι τρεις αυτές επιστημονικές παραδόσεις σημαίνουν και σηματοδοτούν διαφορετικά πράγματα για διαφορετικούς ανθρώπους. Γενικά όμως (και αφαιρετικά), θέτουν στο επίκεντρο του ενδιαφέροντός τους τις κοινωνικές διαφοροποιήσεις και θέλουν να βοηθήσουν ώστε να αντιμετωπιστούν οι οικονομικές και κοινωνικές ανισότητες, να εφαρμοστούν παντού τα ανθρώπινα και ατομικά δικαιώματα και να αναγνωριστούν οι πολιτισμικές και ταυτοτικές διαφορές. Αντικείμενο του παρόντος βιβλίου είναι η διαπολιτισμική εκπαίδευση για την κοινωνική δικαιοσύνη. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, αφού παρουσιάζεται και αναλύεται κριτικά η προβληματική γύρω από τις διαφορετικές προσεγγίσεις και απόψεις που σχετίζονται με την πολυπολιτισμική/αντιρατσιστική και διαπολιτισμική εκπαίδευση και με τα προβλήματα με τα οποία συνδέονται, στη συνέχεια το βάρος πέφτει στα διακριτικά στοιχεία της συγκεκριμένης κατεύθυνσης. Ιδιαίτερη έμφαση δίνεται στο να καταστήσουμε σαφές ότι η διαπολιτισμική εκπαίδευση που στοχεύει στην κοινωνική δικαιοσύνη δεν αφορά μόνο τα σχολεία όπου φοιτούν μαθητές και μαθήτριες με διαφορετικά εθνικά, εθνοτικά, πολιτισμικά, γλωσσικά και θρησκευτικά χαρακτηριστικά αλλά το σύνολο των μαθητριών και των μαθητών μιας κοινωνίας. Ως μια συνολική πρόταση που στέκεται απέναντι στις διακρίσεις, στον ρατσισμό, στον σεξισμό, στον ταξισμό και στις οικονομικές ανισότητες, στην καταπίεση, στις άνισες σχέσεις εξουσίας και σε κάθε είδους αυταρχισμό, η διαπολιτισμική εκπαίδευση για την κοινωνική δικαιοσύνη αφορά το σύνολο των μαθητών και των μαθητριών, όπως και το σύνολο των ανθρώπων.
... The global privatization movement, combined with the idea of American exceptionalism, continues to shrink public spaces and public institutions by coupling all facets of life to goal-oriented, instrumental market relationships. The individualistic free-market ideology of neoliberalism and the nationalist exceptionalism associated with neoconservatism seek to replace public schooling with entrepreneurial goals that have little interest in developing critical democratic thinking (Apple, 2006a(Apple, , 2006b(Apple, , 2013Ball, 2007Ball, , 2012Buras, 2008;Buras & Apple, 2005;Molnar, 1996Molnar, , 2005Saltman, 2000Saltman, , 2012Saltman, , 2014. Boyles argued that "public education has broken down under the weight of economic and political forces of privatization" (Boyles, 2011a, p. 358, see also Baez, 2004). ...
Article
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Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are two ideologies that currently plague education. The individualistic free-market ideology of neoliberalism and the unbridled nationalistic exceptionalism associated with neo-conservatism often breed a narrowed, overstandardized curriculum and a hyper-testing environment that discourage critical intellectual practice and democratic ideas. Dewey's philosophy of education indicates that he understood that education is political and can be undemocratic. Dewey's holistic pragmatism, combined with aspects of social reconstructionism, called for a philosophical movement that favors democratic schooling. This paper defines neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies and makes a case for including more critique within teacher preparation programs, what Dewey and other educationists referred to as developing a significant social intelligence in teachers. Critical studies embedded within teacher education programs are best positioned to counter the undemocratic forces prevalent in the ideologies of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. My conclusions rely on Dewey's philosophy from his work Democracy and Education.
... Numerous scholars have problematized this dominant patriarchal foundational narrative regarding women's representation within history textbooks, which overlooks women's contribution to history (Apple 2006;Buras 2008;Schmidt 2012). This scholarship, which echoes our position on women's representation in history textbooks, argues that the specific kind of knowledge that "becomes legitimized ('officialized') in schools, both shapes and is shaped by the larger unequal power relationships and history of social movements" (Takayama 2009, 577). ...
... For instance, the UK think-tank Civitas has sponsored a Core Knowledge sequence for English schools, and, most recently, Hirsch's ideas have been popularised by Daisy Christodoulou (2014b) in her book Seven myths of education, which features a foreword written by Hirsch. Buras (2008) has produced a book-length analyses of the rise of the neo-conservative core knowledge movement in the United States. Buras recognises that the conservatives have been able to "tap into the real concerns of many people", rechannelling them into ways that support more conservative agendas. ...
... The global privatization movement, combined with the idea of American exceptionalism, continues to shrink public spaces and public institutions by coupling all facets of life to goal-oriented, instrumental market relationships. The individualistic free-market ideology of neoliberalism and the nationalist exceptionalism associated with neoconservatism seek to replace public schooling with entrepreneurial goals that have little interest in developing critical democratic thinking (Apple, 2006a(Apple, , 2006b(Apple, , 2013Ball, 2007Ball, , 2012Buras, 2008;Buras & Apple, 2005;Molnar, 1996Molnar, , 2005Saltman, 2000Saltman, , 2012Saltman, , 2014. Boyles argued that "public education has broken down under the weight of economic and political forces of privatization" (Boyles, 2011a, p. 358, see also Baez, 2004). ...
... The global privatization movement, combined with the idea of American exceptionalism, continues to shrink public spaces and public institutions by coupling all facets of life to goal-oriented, instrumental market relationships. The individualistic free-market ideology of neoliberalism and the nationalist exceptionalism associated with neoconservatism seek to replace public schooling with entrepreneurial goals that have little interest in developing critical democratic thinking (Apple, 2006a(Apple, , 2006b(Apple, , 2013Ball, 2007Ball, , 2012Buras, 2008;Buras & Apple, 2005;Molnar, 1996Molnar, , 2005Saltman, 2000Saltman, , 2012Saltman, , 2014. Boyles argued that "public education has broken down under the weight of economic and political forces of privatization" (Boyles, 2011a, p. 358, see also Baez, 2004). ...
Article
Full-text available
Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are two ideologies that currently plague education. The individualistic free-market ideology of neoliberalism and the unbridled nationalistic exceptionalism associated with neoconservatism often breed a narrowed, over-standardized curriculum and a hyper-testing environment that discourage critical intellectual practice and democratic ideas. Dewey’s philosophy of education indicates that he understood that education is political and can be undemocratic. Dewey’s holistic pragmatism, combined with aspects of social reconstructionism, called for a philosophical movement that favors democratic schooling. This paper defines neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies and makes a case for including more critique within teacher preparation programs, what Dewey and other educationists referred to as developing a significant social intelligence in teachers. Critical studies embedded within teacher education programs are best positioned to counter the undemocratic forces prevalent in the ideologies of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. My conclusions rely on Dewey’s philosophy from his work Democracy and Education.
... Also, like the ability and opportunity to dialogue from what both Darling-Hammond and Greene referred to as "diverse perspectives," learning for democracy also requires accurate knowledge about and the ability to analyze and act on obstacles to racial and social justice made more possible through truthful renderings of our history. Such knowledge continues to be distorted in textbooks and omitted in education at all levels, including teacher preparation (Buras, 2008;Epstein, 2008;King & Swartz, 2014;Leonardo, 2009). ...
Article
Research on education and society is the focus in discussing four essays of AERA past presidents, Newton Edwards, Maxine Greene, Linda Darling-Hammond, and William F. Tate, IV. The title, “We May Well Become Accomplices . . . ,” is taken from Greene’s speech to foreground inherent moral obligations of scholars when racial and social justice is a goal of education research on education and society. The essay begins with a prologue situating the author’s personal and professional biography within the span of time in which these essays were published. Progress and challenges with respect to race and racism in relation to learning for freedom and democracy and research on education and society are displayed in thematic timetables organized to contextualize the intellectual issues and the social times surrounding the presidential publications. The conclusion discusses a role for AERA in supporting new possibilities for collaborative learning relative to morally engaged research as democratic educational practice.
... Most prominent is their push to focus on issues other than the existence of political, cultural, and ideological relationships between schools, the curriculum, and society-a position that seems questionable considering the sheer amount of empirical research that points to the centrality of such relationships to all aspects of the curriculum (see, e.g., Apple, 2004Apple, , 2006Au, 2009). The boundaries of our knowledge, including what comes to "count" as legitimate curricular knowledge, are intimately intertwined with social and political relations (Apple, 2000;Bernstein, 1999;Buras, 2008;Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995). Further, it seems equally impossible to deny the ideological nature of all scholarship and research (Canagarajah, 2002;Harding, 2004a;Sandoval, 2000), particularly when researchers themselves lay claim to ideological neutrality and, by extension, methodological objectivity, associated with the positivistic sciences (Benton & Craib, 2001). ...
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Background/Context There historically exists significant epistemological and political tension within the field of curriculum studies. Further, although there is some application of standpoint theory in educational research generally, and little used within curriculum studies specifically, much of it is undertheorized at best and, in many cases, misapplied or misunderstood. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of this article is to offer a potential resolution to the epistemological and political tension within the field of curriculum studies through the development of a conception of curricular standpoint that recognizes the dialectical relationship between the subjectivity of experience and the materiality of social and economic relations. Another purpose of this article is both to illustrate curricular standpoint as both a methodological tool for analysis and to justify a politics of social justice in classroom practice. Research Design This study is designed as an analytic essay that addresses critical issues within curriculum studies, develops a conceptual framework to address those issues, and analyzes concrete examples that illustrate the conceptual framework. Conclusions/Recommendations This study concludes that the framework for curricular standpoint can serve as a viable methodological tool for curriculum studies to overcome its ongoing epistemological and political tensions, and as an epistemologically strong orientation for the curriculum taught by classroom teachers.
... Despite the extensive research into the curricular representations of Native 1 and other historically marginalized peoples within student textbooks (e.g., Buras, 2008;Fixico, 1997;Loewen, 1995Loewen, , 2010Sanchez, 2007;Stenhouse, 2009), limited attention has been given to the pedagogical features within teachers' editions of textbooks (Lavere, 2008;Levstik, 2008). This research gap is troubling, given that teachers continue to rely on these resources to guide their pedagogical moves in the classroom (Brenner & Hiebert, 2010;Whitney, Golez, Nagel, & Nieto, 2012). ...
Article
Although previous research has described analysis of history textbooks in terms of multicultural education, limited attention has been given to teacher only resources, such as the “wraparound features” of teachers' editions. The study highlighted in this article applies critical discourse analysis to explore the potential for teachers' editions to support multicultural education. Teachers' editions of five U.S. history textbooks demonstrate the tendency for textbook authors to position Native peoples as invisible, as the savage Other, and as actors of the past. Additionally, teachers' editions privilege White settler and economically-motivated narratives, which suggests that conflict between Native peoples and settlers was a matter of destiny. Less frequently, wraparound features encourage critical thinking about dominant culture narratives and actors. The results demonstrate that today's teachers' editions frequently marginalize Indigenous peoples, experiences, and histories both spatially and literally through uncritical acceptance of the dominant culture narrative (i.e., “business as usual”) or assimilationist orientations (i.e., “teaching the culturally different” or “human relations”). The article concludes with implications for scholarly practice and classroom pedagogy. Copyright © 2015 by the National Association for Multicultural Education.
... In an effort to develop one potentially viable counter-position, we turn to the autonomist Marxist intellectual and political tradition. Autonomist Marxism is particularly well-suited to this inquiry, not only because it provides a rich conceptualization of the common (Hardt and Negri 2009) that runs counter to the term's hegemonic meaning in neo-conservative and neoliberal educational thought (see Apple 2001;Buras 2008), but it is also founded on a conceptualization of the dynamics of power and social antagonism that is inverted from many other critical theories of domination. In this framing, the oppositional power of the dispossessed and laboring-classes is the catalytic force in social struggle. ...
... In accounting for why contemporary textbooks fail to address issues of race in ways that position it as a fully structural and institutional factor in the history of the United States, we recognize that a confluence of factors plays a role. The first is a point that numerous scholars of curriculum have noted: School knowledge is political (Apple, 1993;Banks 1993;Buras, 2008;Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995). This body of work has illustrated that school curriculum debates become entrenched within the interests of several political entities and ideological perspectives that disagree on how school texts should render U.S. history. ...
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Background/Context Recent racial incidents on college and high school campuses throughout the United States have catalyzed a growing conversation around issues of race and racism. These conversations exist alongside ongoing concerns about the lack of attention given to race and racism in the official school curriculum. Given that the field of education is generally located as a space to interrogate why these difficult issues of race in schools and society still persist, this study illustrates how contemporary official school knowledge addresses historical and contemporary issues of race and racism. To do this, we examine how historic acts of racial violence directed toward African Americans are rendered in K–12 school textbooks. Using the theoretical lenses of critical race theory and cultural memory, we explicate how historic acts of racial violence toward African Americans receives minimal and/or distorted attention in most K–12 texts. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study We examined the knowledge constructed about racial violence and African Americans in the United States. Using the theoretical lenses of critical race theory and cultural memory, we show how the topic of historic acts of racial violence toward African Americans receives minimal and/or distorted attention in most K–12 texts. The purpose of this study is to illustrate that although accounts of racial violence that historically have been excluded from textbooks are now being included, this inclusion matters little if it is presented in a manner that disavows material implications of racial violence on sustained White privilege and entrenched African American inequities. Research Design The findings from this study come from a textbook analysis of 19 recent U.S. history social studies textbooks adopted by the state of Texas. Drawing from the tradition of recent critical textbook studies, this study used a literary analysis methodology. Findings/Results In this study, we found that although narratives of racial violence were present throughout the texts, they often rendered acts of violence as the immorality of single actors or “bad men doing bad things.” Additionally, these presentations portray violence as disconnected from the institutional and structural ties that supported and benefited from such acts. Conclusions/Recommendations The findings from this study illustrate the limited historical and sociocultural knowledge about race and racism provided to teachers and students through K–12 social studies textbooks. These findings have direct implications for how teachers and students conceptualize and grapple with real issues of race and racism in schools and society. We suggest that the knowledge contained in school texts must go beyond simply representing acts of racism, situating such acts of racism within the discursive and material realities that have shaped the lives of African Americans in the United States.
... How do what are usually seen as "reforms" actually work? What can we do as critical educators, researchers, and activists to change existing educational and social inequalities and to create curricula and teaching that are more socially just (Apple, 2000;Apple & Beane, 2007;Au, 2009;Buras, 2008;Gutstein, 2006;Lipman, 2004;Valenzuela, 2005)? ...
Article
This study examines the collective labor of imagining one educational world among myself and six middle income, racially- and gender-diverse six- and seven year-olds via a two-year critical participatory ethnography of a six-family (including my own) pandemic cooperative—Fake School, as the kids playfully named it. Fake School was initially a semester-long temporary stopgap to arrange shared childcare amid remote learning that became a two-year collective project through the uncertainties and surges of the pandemic. Drawing on Stallybrass and White, I use carnival as an analytic to explore the verticalist imaginary of the education-based mode of study. I seek to narrate our Fake School situated within the broader context of the predominating notions of normalcy that delimit possible futures for public education. I suggest that the emergent educational world we briefly created offers important insights for authorizing young children’s perspectives on the future of education.
Chapter
Dr. Michael Apple is one of the most influential and important thinkers in critical educational studies around the world. This chapter begins by tracing his biography and educational history, outlining how his commitment to a politics of social and educational justice has been a core part of his identity for his life and the entirety of his academic career. It then moves on to describe Apple’s role as one of the founding voices of critical education theory and practice, including some descriptions of his more influential work in curriculum studies, democratic education, and critical analyses of Rightist educational movements. This chapter concludes by discussing Apple’s legacy as a critical educational scholar, which includes his important and powerful “tasks of the critical scholar/activist in education.”
Chapter
Many of today’s curriculum programs and materials claim enhanced proficiency and productivity for school districts and all of their students, regardless of the cultural or socioeconomic backgrounds of those students. On the surface, the promises are appealing; who would not want increased opportunities for all students? When we delve more deeply, however, we learn that these goals (to boost test scores and jumpstart graduation rates) are often closely tied to power hierarchies and colonization.
Chapter
Multiculturalism as a concept is both topical and relevant (Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2011) as well as being perceived positively and negatively (Lott, 2010; May & Sleeter, 2010; Vertovec & Wessendorf, 2010). The ongoing debates and continuing need to address multicultural education as policy and within classrooms and lecture theatres remains crucial when considering domestic and international practice as well as the changing nature of cultural diversity (Banks, 2009; Modood, 2010; Race, 2011). The essays in this collection address the viability of multicultural education. We are hoping they will challenge the reader through differently focused snapshots of the status quo, the problematizing of aspects of multiculturalism, discussion of the processes and discourses that are contributing to its supposed imminent demise and indication of examples of alternatives to multiculturalism and multicultural education that are emerging. This introduction provides something of a contextualization of multiculturalism and multicultural education today, proceeding through a generalized overview of the context of multiculturalism and multicultural education and the specific examples of conservative European leaders’ contribution to the “death of multiculturalism” trope and cosmopolitan education as a specific example of a discourse in complex coexistence with multicultural education.
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It is not uncommon to reference dire conditions in the South to make the nation appear more racially equitable and economically advanced by comparison. In this essay, I argue that the meanings and complexities surrounding commonplace disparagement of the South are not only troubling, but serve to advance the forms of race and class power ostensibly under critique. I do not contend that depictions of the South as racially oppressive are inaccurate or wrong. Rather, my purpose is to reveal that southern exceptionalism is a farce; the North has played a pivotal role in perpetuating White supremacy, which is a national problem, not a regional one. Second, disparagement of the South, seemingly premised on critiques of White supremacy, is likewise premised (with contradiction) on the marginalization of historic traditions of Black education and resistance. Third, when combined, these tendencies enable the most destructive forms of educational reconstruction to be advanced as solutions to what historically has been called the “Negro Question.” To develop my argument, I draw on critical theories of place and race; historical scholarship on the Jim Crow North and South, Black education, and resistance; analyses of popular culture, with a focus on historical and symbolic representations of the South; and a decade of research on school reform in New Orleans, where privately managed charter schools and alternative teacher recruitment—reforms bankrolled by White northern philanthropists—have been advocated as the means for refining southern space, uplifting the race, and modernizing public education to align with business. In the final analysis, I show how conceptions of place and region influence, often in unacknowledged ways, the racial dynamics of urban educational reform in the South and ultimately the nation, much to the detriment of African Americans.
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This article traces part of the history of neoconservatism in the United States and analyses its impact on contemporary schooling. It examines the political evolution of a fraction of old leftists whose disenchantment with the possibilities of radical transformation led them to become new rightists. Whether attacking the countercultural left or the welfare state in the 1960s, or critical multiculturalism more recently, neoconservatives have embraced anti‐utopianism as the only corrective for the assumed naïveté of leftist cultural and economic desires. Concerns for the ‘restoration’ of cultural and national order are evident in reforms endorsed by this segment, including educational standards and a core curriculum that mediate against the progressive monopoly presumed to exist in schools. Rather than allowing more radical desires to be disciplined by such reforms, it is imperative to reclaim the freedom dreams embedded in past democratic movements and to learn from the grassroots efforts of communities working to create real utopias in education.
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From What Remains, Weston Teruya In my experience, when confronted with difference, students often adopt one of two approaches to make that difference seem less threatening. Either they try to reduce difference to sameness by immediately focusing on possible points of commonality to their own experience or they treat difference as fundamentally disconnected from their own experience. My goal in this article is to build on Priya Kandaswamy's discussion of students' response to difference in Radical Teacher #80 by unfolding the pitfalls of teaching and responding to "non-Western" literature in the United States as embodied in my own experience teaching non-Western literature to a group of racially and ethnically diverse, mainly working-class students at a large urban comprehensive public university. Given that my students are themselves by and large future secondary school English teachers, the dilemma Kandaswamy articulates takes on particular urgency, since they will soon be passing on their knowledge and learning strategies to their own students. Although Kandaswamy is not specifically addressing the teaching and studying of literature, she does point to the difficulties that teachers and students face when confronted with difference in the context of neo-liberal educational institutions in the United States. These educational institutions are bound to the history of U.S. imperialism by cherished ideological imperatives that include binary constructions of politics, morality, and culture; humanism; and individualism. Humanist values embody liberal platitudes about how everyone is really the same, a flattening out of difference that evacuates history and power in order to assure the humanist that his subjectivity is universal. (As feminism has demonstrated, humanism is invariably gendered as male, despite its pretensions to universality.) U.S. mythology about individualism includes an implicit belief in the effectiveness and unlimited potential of individual agency and an understanding of conflict as struggle between individuals, rather than as a product of history and material power relations. Frequently, it is the most well-meaning of teachers and students who collude in the imperialist enterprise through their unconscious adherence to these values. And often the personal is heavily invested in the political, so the kinds of responses to difference identified by Kandaswamy arise where multiple axes of subjectivity intersect, including not only ideological conditioning and ignorance, but also simple developmental immaturity, and anxiety around one's own sense of self. As Masood Ashraf Raja points out, the "mere act of entering a postcolonial literature class can be quite a challenging event, especially because of the international, anti-foundational, and anti-imperial nature of the postcolonial texts. Under such circumstances, where students are likely to perceive the class as a threat to their own personal identity, learning can be seriously hampered" (33). The two dichotomous responses to difference chronicled by Kandaswamy are equally troubling because, although different from one another, they carry with them the same racist/colonialist undertones. In the elision of difference, the Western subject becomes the universal subject and Otherness is contained through assimilation to that supposedly universal Western subject. When difference is treated as absolute, the fetishized Other becomes exotic and unknowable, and could never be like "us"—a logic that, however inadvertently, reinscribes colonialist stereotypes and paternalistically masks critical, political, and moral relativism as respect for difference. These responses were enacted in complex and telling forms in the particular class I am discussing here, an undergraduate senior seminar designed for English majors and future secondary school English teachers as a capstone college experience. The course requires the study of "world short fiction," and the texts I chose to fulfill this component of the requirements included Taiwanese-born author Chen Jo-Hsi's short story "Chairman Mao is a Rotten Egg," set in China during the Cultural Revolution, Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo's postcolonial narrative "No Sweetness Here," and an excerpt from Tirdad Zolghadr's contemporary Iranian memoir/novel, A Little Less Conversation. My observations are based on students' informal and formal written analyses (in some cases, first drafts, in other cases, revised essays) of these texts following our class discussion of them during my first experience teaching this particular configuration of the course. I framed the oral discussions in the contexts of...
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This article reports on the first systematic national study of Core Knowledge Sequence implementation and effects. The Core Knowledge Sequence is a list of curricular topics to teach in the elementary grades. This study employed a mixed-method design involving longitudinal case studies of Core Knowledge schools combined with a quasi-experimental, untreated control group design. Findings showed that the Core Knowledge Sequence was implemented successfully in 3 of 4 schools and that consistent relationships existed between improved implementation and improved test scores. Core Knowledge students' basic skills standardized tests scores were about the same as, or slightly better than, demographically matched control students' scores. Students in Core Knowledge schools, however, scored significantly higher than control students on tests of Core Knowledge content. Core Knowledge implementation also led to increased curricular coordination and the use of project-based instruction and contributed positively to teachers' professional lives. However, the reform was work intensive and was accompanied by negative political attributes. Implications for curricular reform are discussed.
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The purpose of this study was to analyze the content on women in three secondary school world history textbooks used in the USA from one feminist perspective. The analyses involved recursively reading, coding, and interpreting all of the content pertaining to women across the three texts. The macroanalysis yielded a 16-category coding scheme that reflected the areas most emphasized in the presentation of women's contributions to world history, at least as described in each of the textbooks. The microanalysis was conducted to examine the language used for the content coded 'women's rights' and similarly for that coded 'power', 'fighters', or 'mediators'. The results of this feminist content analysis of world history textbooks signal the importance of teachers and students engaging in reading subtextually and resistantly.
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The verdict in the case of GI Forum et al. v. Texas Education Agency et al. is examined for the ways in which it undermines the concept of equitable access to education by the acceptance of “sameness” as a standard for equity. The implied comparability in a state testing system masks the educational inequities behind the test scores. The verdict also undermines equity as a legal standard by excluding from admissible testimony empirical evidence of those bureaucratic processes that create new inequities: the test prep and the artificial manipulation of students’ grade level designations that produce school-level test scores to the detriment of the quality of education provided to Latino and African American students.
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A content analysis of 22 secondary economics textbooks revealed the textbooks to be less sex-biased than the books examined in earlier studies. However, women are still underrepresented in most of the textbooks, and little attention is given to economic realities which women face. (Author/RM)
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In a wide-ranging analysis of elementary textbook series the author asks (a) to what degree do current textbooks address multicultural education and global citizenship; and (b) to what degree are elementary students encouraged and enabled to care about others and to view people from inclusive, nonstereotypical, and unprejudiced perspectives? Curriculum that addresses these concerns could prepare students to build authentic, democratic communities. In previous studies findings show that texts typically do not reflect diverse perspectives and multicultural or global realities, utilize methodologies adequate to address multicultural education, present controversial issues, or provide consistent opportunities for higher level thinking. This grounded theory study of current elementary social studies teacher guides illustrates the possibility of a new curricular organizer—the concept of a diverse, caring community. This new and much needed change of perspective could provide the first step toward a transformed social studies.
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"Research in Social Studies Education , James P. Shaver, Editor-- Social Education's Research Supplement, Number One, December 1969. (AP)
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Many researchers have criticized social studies textbooks for being biased, superficial, or poorly written, yet little attention has been paid to the quality of the textbook studies. This article presents the findings of a review of social studies content analysis research over the last 10 years. Studies reported in Theory and Research in Social Education, The Social Studies, and Social Education (N = 25) were evaluated on the basis of their sampling, methodology, findings, and recommendations. The results of this review reveal that many of the problems noted in other types of social studies research are evident in content analysis research as well. The discussion focuses on recommendations for researchers to improve the quality of content analysis studies and to collaborate with other educators and organizations in promoting textbook reform and creative social studies teaching.
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Describes the nature and form of knowledge that should be in social studies textbooks. Argues that substantial knowledge can be used by academic reviewers and teachers as a framework for analysis of social studies texts and to encourage dialogue about the purpose and structure of social studies lessons. (BSR)
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Keith Jenkins' desire to abolish any concern with history arises from a mistaken identification with Nietzsche's approach to any concern to understand a 'real world'. Our concern with understanding the past, however, should rely on an epistemological base which takes seriously both that which we seek to understand and the conditions under which that concern is pursued. Both Popper and Gadamer provide models for us both in how we understand the problem we are faced with, and how we should preserve our desire to understand the past. This article argues that this desire to understand the past needs to be pursued seriously to do justice both to that which we seek to understand and to ourselves as serious pursuers of knowledge. The individualism that Jenkins adopts in following Nietzsche needs to be countered by an acceptance, following MacIntyre, that we should always attempt to formulate criteria by which we seek to discriminate between the work of different practitioners.
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This article reflects a faculty member's perspective of how Trinity University and Hawthome Elementary School planned and worked together to evolve into a successful partnership. Trinity's teacher education reform agenda focused on two goals: preparing future teachers for a full academic year in the real world of the elementary school and pursuing a teacher-selected school reform project. Both the Hawthorne culture and the inner-city professor's role as a teacher changed when we organized a shared vision and shared responsibility for teacher preparation and school reform.
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It seems rather obvious to say that perhaps the main reason why historians study the past is because they consider that what this work may produce ‐ a historical consciousness ‐ is a good thing. But today, beyond this minimalist intention, common endeavour and agreement collapse. For given that it is the idea of the good which defines the desired type of consciousness; that is, if a good historical consciousness is anything the definer so stipulates (which it is) then because ‘we’ live amongst so many competing (democratic) notions of the good with no neutral (foundational) criteria for adjudication between them, so not only does the ultimate closure of the good become endlessly deferred, but the very idea of a good historical consciousness is similarly affected: we now have no clear sense of what a good history/historical consciousness looks like. There are various reactions to this ‘relativist’ conclusion, but perhaps the most popular is not to try (and keep on trying) to find a ‘real history/historical consciousness’ beyond constitutive interests, but to admit one's position (one's interests) so to be as reflexive, ironic (après Rorty) and as ‘open about one's closures’ as one can be. But perhaps this ‘postist’ explicitness is still ‘too historical’. Maybe we are at a moment (a postmodern moment) when we can forget history altogether and live our lives without reference to a past tense articulated in ways which are ‘historically familiar’. Maybe we can forget the past and ‐ because we do still have to live together ‐ just talk about how to do that: ethics talk. And yet, this alternative may also be, in turn, ‘too ethical’. Perhaps ethical systems also have to go, to be replaced by, at best, the ‘morality (madness) of the decision’ (Derrida, Levinas, Lyotard, Laclau, et al.) or, at worst (or best ‐ how do we decide?) something like a Baudrillardian nihilism. In The Perfect Crime, Baudrillard argues that whereas the great philosophical question used to be ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ today the ‘real’ question is, ‘why is there nothing rather than something?’ To constitute performatively our lives on the basis of nothing (what's new?), to embrace the ineffable and the abysmal, may be energizing both morally (Lyotard, Rorty, et al.) and ‐ if we still want creative temporalities ‐ historically (White's sublime). Such imaginaries won't give us definitive answers to what the good or the historical are, but they may help us relax if and when we still bother to run them contingently and pragmatically together in ways which will always, to put it in the future‐anterior tense, ‘not have been good enough’. As to the question, ‘good enough for what?’, doubtless our answers to that will also ‘not have been good enough’. Postmodernism thus arguably suggests, at most, a radically othering, relativist ‘historiography’ without guarantees or, at least (at most?) a productive silence.
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This paper reports the findings of a qualitative case study that explored the role methods courses played in the education of preservice teachers at a large southeastern state university in the U.S.A. The paper portrays three distinct roles: the relevant role, the liberalizing role, and the critical role. The final section of the paper explores the implications of the study's findings for research and program development.