Kuvunjwa kwa mfumo wa elimu wa shirika na kijeshi kunapaswa kuwa kipaumbele cha juu chini ya utawala wa Obama. Kwa bahati mbaya, Obama amemteua kama katibu wake wa elimu mtu ambaye anajumuisha aina hii ya elimu ya kuadhibu kabisa, isiyo ya kiakili, ya ushirika na inayoendeshwa na mtihani.

 

Tangu miaka ya 1980, lakini hasa chini ya utawala wa Bush, baadhi ya vipengele vya haki za kidini, utamaduni wa ushirika na mrengo wa kulia wa Republican wamedai kuwa elimu ya bure kwa umma inawakilisha ama ulaghai mkubwa au kushindwa kwa dharau. Mbali na wito wa kweli wa mageuzi, mashambulizi haya kwa kiasi kikubwa yanatokana na jaribio la kubadilisha shule kutoka kwa uwekezaji wa umma hadi kuwa wa kibinafsi, kujibu si kwa madai na maadili ya jamii ya kidemokrasia lakini kwa umuhimu wa soko. Kama mwanahistoria wa elimu David Labaree anavyosema, shule za umma zimekuwa zikishambuliwa katika muongo uliopita "sio tu kwa sababu zinachukuliwa kuwa hazifai bali kwa sababu ni za umma." [1] Juhudi za mrengo wa kulia za kutowekeza katika shule za umma kama maeneo muhimu ya shule ufundishaji na ujifunzaji na kuyatawala kulingana na masilahi ya shirika ni dhahiri katika msisitizo wa upimaji sanifu, utumiaji wa maagizo ya mitaala ya juu chini, utitiri wa matangazo shuleni, utumiaji wa nia ya faida ili "kuhimiza" ufaulu wa wanafunzi, shambulio la wanafunzi. vyama vya walimu na njia za ufundishaji zinazosisitiza ujifunzaji na kukariri.

 

Kwa utawala wa Bush, upimaji umekuwa kipimo cha mwisho cha uwajibikaji, ukizingatia taratibu changamano za ufundishaji na ujifunzaji. Mtaala uliofichwa ni kwamba upimaji utumike kama mbinu ya kuwapunguzia ujuzi walimu kwa kuwapunguza kuwa mafundi tu, wanafunzi wapunguzwe vivyo hivyo kwa wateja sokoni badala ya kuwa wanafunzi wanaojishughulisha, makini na kwamba shule za umma ambazo hazijafadhiliwa kila mara zinafeli ili wafeli. hatimaye inaweza kubinafsishwa. Lakini kuna upande mbaya zaidi wa mageuzi yaliyoanzishwa chini ya utawala wa Bush na sasa yanatumika katika idadi ya mifumo ya shule nchini kote. Kama vile mantiki ya soko na "changamoto ya uhalifu" [2] inavyoweka uga wa mahusiano ya kijamii shuleni, wanafunzi wanakabiliwa na sera tatu za kuudhi, zinazotetewa na wakuu wa shule na wanasiasa chini ya rubri ya usalama wa shule. Kwanza, wanafunzi wanazidi kukabiliwa na sera za kutovumilia ambazo hutumika hasa kuwaadhibu, kuwakandamiza na kuwatenga. Pili, wanazidi kuingizwa katika "uhalifu tata" ambapo wafanyikazi wa usalama, kwa kutumia mazoea makali ya kinidhamu, sasa wanaondoa kazi za kawaida ambazo walimu walitoa hapo awali ndani na nje ya darasa. [3] Tatu, shule zaidi na zaidi zinavunja nafasi kati ya elimu na uhalifu wa watoto, na kuchukua nafasi ya ufundishaji wa adhabu kwa ajili ya kujifunza kwa makini na kuchukua nafasi ya utamaduni wa shule ambao unakuza mjadala wa uwezekano na utamaduni wa hofu na udhibiti wa kijamii.

 

Kwa hivyo, vijana wengi wa rangi katika mifumo ya shule za mijini, kwa sababu ya sera kali za kutovumilia, sio tu kwamba wanasimamishwa au kufukuzwa shule. Wanaingizwa katika maeneo yenye giza ya mahabusu ya watoto, mahakama za watu wazima na magereza. Hakika, kuvunjwa kwa mtindo huu wa shule uliojumuishwa na wa kijeshi unapaswa kuwa kipaumbele cha juu chini ya utawala wa Obama. Kwa bahati mbaya, Obama amemteua kama katibu wake wa elimu mtu ambaye kwa hakika anajumuisha aina hii ya elimu ya kuadhibu kabisa, isiyo ya kiakili, ya ushirika na inayoendeshwa na mtihani.

 

Uteuzi wa Barack Obama wa Arne Duncan kuwa katibu wa elimu hauonyeshi vyema mwelekeo wa kisiasa wa utawala wake wala kwa mustakabali wa elimu ya umma. Wito wa Obama wa mabadiliko haukufaulu na uteuzi huu, sio tu kwa sababu Duncan anafafanua kwa kiasi kikubwa shule ndani ya mfumo wa ufundishaji unaotegemea soko na adhabu, lakini pia kwa sababu hana ufahamu hata kidogo wa shule kama kitu kingine isipokuwa viunga vya shirika. au jela ni mbaya zaidi. Ajali ya kwanza katika hali hii ni lugha ya uwajibikaji wa kijamii na kisiasa inayoweza kutetea taasisi hizo muhimu zinazopanua haki, bidhaa za umma na huduma muhimu kwa demokrasia yenye maana. Hii ni kweli hasa kuhusiana na suala la shule za umma na mjadala unaofuata kuhusu madhumuni ya elimu, jukumu la walimu kama wasomi wachambuzi, siasa za mtaala na umuhimu wa ualimu kama mazoezi ya maadili na kisiasa.

 

Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, presided over the implementation and expansion of an agenda that militarized and corporatized the third largest school system in the nation, one that is about 90 percent poor and nonwhite. Under Duncan, Chicago took the lead in creating public schools run as military academies, vastly expanded draconian student expulsions, instituted sweeping surveillance practices, advocated a growing police presence in the schools, arbitrarily shut down entire schools and fired entire school staffs. A recent report, "Education on Lockdown," claimed that partly under Duncan‘s leadership "Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has become infamous for its harsh zero tolerance policies. Although there is no verified positive impact on safety, these policies have resulted in tens of thousands of student suspensions and an exorbitant number of expulsions."[4]

 

Duncan‘s neoliberal ideology is on full display in the various connections he has established with the ruling political and business elite in Chicago.[5] He led the Renaissance 2010 plan, which was created for Mayor Daley by the Commercial Club of Chicago – an organization representing the largest businesses in the city. The purpose of Renaissance 2010 was to increase the number of high quality schools that would be subject to new standards of accountability – a code word for legitimating more charter schools and high stakes testing in the guise of hard-nosed empiricism. Chicago‘s 2010 plan targets 15 percent of the city district’s alleged underachieving schools in order to dismantle them and open 100 new experimental schools in areas slated for gentrification.

 

Most of the new experimental schools have eliminated the teacher union. The Commercial Club hired corporate consulting firm A.T. Kearney to write Ren2010, which called for the closing of 100 public schools and the reopening of privatized charter schools, contract schools (more charters to circumvent state limits) and "performance" schools. Kearney‘s web site is unapologetic about its business-oriented notion of leadership, one that John Dewey thought should be avoided at all costs. It states, "Drawing on our program-management skills and our knowledge of best practices used across industries, we provided a private-sector perspective on how to address many of the complex issues that challenge other large urban education transformations."[6]

 

Duncanutetezi wa mpango wa Renaissance 2010 pekee ulipaswa kumfanya aondolewe mara moja kwa uteuzi wa Obama. Msingi wa mpango huu ni mpango wa ubinafsishaji wa kuunda "soko" katika elimu ya umma kwa kuzitaka shule za umma kushindana dhidi ya rasilimali chache na kwa kuanzisha mipango ya "chaguo" ili wazazi na wanafunzi wajifikirie kama watumiaji binafsi. ya huduma za elimu.[7] Kama matokeo ya kuunga mkono mpango huo, Duncan alishambuliwa na mashirika ya jamii, wazazi, wasomi wa elimu na wanafunzi. Wakosoaji hawa mbalimbali wameushutumu kama mpango ulioundwa chini ya kuboresha ubora wa shule kuliko kama mpango wa ubinafsishaji, kuvunja muungano na kuvunjwa kwa mabaraza ya shule za mitaa yaliyochaguliwa kidemokrasia.

 

They also describe it as part of neighborhood gentrification schemes involving the privatization of public housing projects through mixed finance developments.[8] (Tony Rezko, an Obama and Blagojevich campaign supporter, made a fortune from these developments along with many corporate investors.) Some of the dimensions of public school privatization involve Renaissance schools being run by subcontracted for-profit companies – a shift in school governance from teachers and elected community councils to appointed administrators coming disproportionately from the ranks of business. It also establishes corporate control over the selection and model of new schools, giving the business elite and their foundations increasing influence over educational policy. No wonder that Duncan had the support of David Brooks, the conservative op-ed writer for The New York Times.

 

One particularly egregious example of Duncan‘s vision of education can be seen in the conference he organized with the Renaissance Schools Fund. In May 2008, the Renaissance Schools Fund, the financial wing of the Renaissance 2010 plan operating under the auspices of the Commercial Club, held a symposium, "Free to Choose, Free to Succeed: The New Market in Public Education," at the exclusive private club atop the Aon Center. The event was held largely by and for the business sector, school privatization advocates, and others already involved in Renaissance 2010, such as corporate foundations and conservative think tanks. Significantly, no education scholars were invited to participate in the proceedings, although it was heavily attended by fellows from the pro-privatization Fordham Foundation and featured speakers from various school choice organizations and the leadership of corporations. Speakers clearly assumed the audience shared their views.

 

Without irony, Arne Duncan characterized the goal of Renaissance 2010 creating the new market in public education as a "movement for social justice." He invoked corporate investment terms to describe reforms explaining that the 100 new schools would leverage influence on the other 500 schools in Chicago. Redefining schools as stock investments he said, "I am not a manager of 600 schools. I’m a portfolio manager of 600 schools and I’m trying to improve the portfolio." He claimed that education can end poverty. He explained that having a sense of altruism is important, but that creating good workers is a prime goal of educational reform and that the business sector has to embrace public education. "We’re trying to blur the lines between the public and the private," he said. He argued that a primary goal of educational reform is to get the private sector to play a huge role in school change in terms of both money and intellectual capital. He also attacked the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), positioning it as an obstacle to business-led reform. He also insisted that the CTU opposes charter schools (and, hence, change itself), despite the fact that the CTU runs ten such schools under Renaissance 2010. Despite the representation in the popular press of Duncan as conciliatory to the unions, his statements and those of others at the symposium belied a deep hostility to teachers unions and a desire to end them (all of the charters created under Ren2010 are deunionized).

 

Thus, in Duncan‘s attempts to close and transform low-performing schools, he not only reinvents them as entrepreneurial schools, but, in many cases, frees "them from union contracts and some state regulations."[9] Duncan effusively praised one speaker, Michael Milkie, the founder of the

Mtaa wa Nobel

shule za kukodisha, ambao walitaka waziwazi kufungwa na kufunguliwa kwa kila shule katika wilaya kwa usahihi ili kuondokana na vyama vya wafanyakazi. Kilichodhihirika ni kwamba Duncan anautazama Renaissance 2010 kama mwongozo wa kitaifa wa mageuzi ya elimu, lakini kilicho hatarini katika dira hii ni mwisho wa masomo kama manufaa ya umma na kurudi kwa mtindo wa uliberali mamboleo uliopuuzwa na uliochoka wa mageuzi ambao wahafidhina wanapenda kukumbatia.

 

In spite of the corporate rhetoric of accountability, efficiency and excellence, there is to date no evidence that the radical reforms under Duncan‘s tenure as the "CEO" of Chicago Public Schools have created any significant improvement. In part, this is because the Chicago Public Schools and the Renaissance Schools Fund report data in obscurantist ways to make traditional comparisons difficult if not impossible.[10] And, in part, examples of educational claims to school improvement are being made about schools embedded in communities that suffered dislocation and removal through coordinated housing privatization and gentrification policies.

 

For example, the city has decimated public housing in coveted real estate enclaves, dispossessing thousands of residents of their communities. Once the poor are removed, the urban cleansing provides an opportunity for Duncan to open a number of Renaissance Schools, catering to those socio-economically empowered families whose children would surely improve the city’s overall test scores. What are alleged to be school improvements under Ren2010, rest on an increase in the city’s overall test scores and other performance measures that parodies the financial shell game corporations used to inflate profit margins – and prospects for future catastrophes are as inevitable. In the end, all Duncan leaves us with is a Renaissance 2010 model of education that is celebrated as a business designed "to save kids" from a failed public system. In fact, it condemns public schooling, administrators, teachers and students to a now outmoded and discredited economic model of reform that can only imagine education as a business, teachers as entrepreneurs and students as customers.[11]

 

It is difficult to understand how Barack Obama can reconcile his vision of change with Duncan’s history of supporting a corporate vision for school reform and a penchant for extreme zero-tolerance polices – both of which are much closer to the retrograde policies hatched in conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institution, Fordham Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, than to the values of the many millions who voted for the democratic change he promised. As is well known, these think tanks share an agenda not for strengthening public schooling, but for dismantling it and replacing it with a private market in consumable educational services. At the heart of Duncan‘s vision of school reform is a corporatized model of education that cancels out the democratic impulses and practices of civil society by either devaluing or absorbing them within the logic of the market or the prison. No longer a space for relating schools to the obligations of public life, social responsibility to the demands of critical and engaged citizenship, schools in this dystopian vision legitimate an all-encompassing horizon for producing market identities, values and those privatizing and penal pedagogies that both inflate the importance of individualized competition and punish those who do not fit into its logic of pedagogical Darwinism.[12]

 

In spite of what Duncan argues, the greatest threat to our children does not come from lowered standards, the absence of privatized choice schemes or the lack of rigid testing measures that offer the aura of accountability. On the contrary, it comes from a society that refuses to view children as a social investment, consigns 13 million children to live in poverty, reduces critical learning to massive testing programs, promotes policies that eliminate most crucial health and public services and defines rugged individualism through the degrading celebration of a gun culture, extreme sports and the spectacles of violence that permeate corporate controlled media industries. Students are not at risk because of the absence of market incentives in the schools. Young people are under siege in American schools because, in the absence of funding, equal opportunity and real accountability, far too many of them have increasingly become institutional breeding grounds for racism, right-wing paramilitary cultures, social intolerance and sexism.[13] We live in a society in which a culture of testing, punishment and intolerance has replaced a culture of social responsibility and compassion.

 

Within such a climate of harsh discipline and disdain for critical teaching and learning, it is easier to subject young people to a culture of faux accountability or put them in jail rather than to provide the education, services and care they need to face problems of a complex and demanding society.[14] What Duncan and other neoliberal economic advocates refuse to address is what it would mean for a viable educational policy to provide reasonable support services for all students and viable alternatives for the troubled ones. The notion that children should be viewed as a crucial social resource – one that represents, for any healthy society, important ethical and political considerations about the quality of public life, the allocation of social provisions and the role of the state as a guardian of public interests – appears to be lost in a society that refuses to invest in its youth as part of a broader commitment to a fully realized democracy. As the social order becomes more privatized and militarized, we increasingly face the problem of losing a generation of young people to a system of increasing intolerance, repression and moral indifference. It is difficult to understand why Obama would appoint as secretary of education someone who believes in a market-driven model that has not only failed young people, but given the current financial crisis has been thoroughly discredited. Unless Duncan is willing to reinvent himself, the national agenda he will develop for education embodies and exacerbates these problems and, as such, it will leave a lot more kids behind than it helps.

 

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[1] Imetajwa katika Alfie Kohn, "Tishio Halisi kwa Shule za Marekani," Tikkun (Machi-Aprili 2001), uk. 25. Kwa ufafanuzi wa kuvutia kuhusu Obama na uwezekano wake wa kuchaguliwa kuongoza idara ya elimu na mapambano juu ya mageuzi ya shule, tazama Alfie Kohn, "Beware School 'Reformers'," The Nation (Desemba 29, 2008). Mtandaoni: www.thenation.com/doc/20081229/kohn/print.

 

[2] This term comes form: David Garland, "The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society" (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

 

[3] For a brilliant analysis of the "governing through crime" complex, see Jonathan Simon, "Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear," (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007).

 

[4] Advancement Project in partnership with Padres and Jovenes Unidos, Southwest Youth Collaborative, "Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track," (New York: Children & Family Justice Center of Northwestern University School of Law, March 24, 2005), p.31. On the broader issue of the effect of racialized zero tolerance policies on public education, see Christopher G. Robbins, "Expelling Hope: The Assault on Youth and the Militarization of Schooling" (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008). See also, Henry A. Giroux, "The Abandoned Generation" (New York: Palgrave, 2004).

 

[5] David Hursh and Pauline Lipman, "Chapter 8: Renaissance 2010: The Reassertion of Ruling-Class Power through Neoliberal Policies in Chicago" in David Hursh, "High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning" (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).

 

[6] Tazama: www.atkearney.com

 

[7] "Kuunda Soko Jipya la Elimu ya Umma: Ripoti ya Maendeleo ya Shule ya Renaissance 2008," Mfuko wa Shule za Renaissance. www.rsfchicago.org

 

[8] Kenneth J. Saltman, "Chapter 3: Renaissance 2010 and No Child Left Behind Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools" (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2007).

 

[9] Sarah Karp and Joyn Myers, "Duncan‘s Track Record," Catalyst Chicago (December 15, 2008). Online: www.catalyst-chicago.org/news/index.php?item=2514&cat=5&tr=y&auid=4336549

 

[10] (See Chicago Public Schools Office of New Schools 2006/2007 Charter School Performance Report Executive Summary)

 

[11] See Dorothy Shipps, "School Reform, Corporate Style: Chicago 1880-2000," (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2006).

 

[12] See, for example, Summary Report, "America‘s Cradle to Prison Pipeline," Children’s Defense Fund. Online at: www.childrensdefense.org/site/DocServer/CPP_report_2007_summary.pdf?docID=6001; also see, Elora Mukherjee, "Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools," (New York: American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties, March 2008), pp. 1-36.

 

[13] Donna Gaines, "Jinsi Shule Zinavyofundisha Watoto Wetu Kuchukia," Newsday (Jumapili, Aprili 25, 1999), uk. B5.

 

[14] As has been widely, reported, the prison industry has become big business with many states spending more on prison construction than on university construction. Jennifer Warren, "One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008," (Washington, DC: The PEW Center on the States, 2007). Online at: www.pewcenterthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=35912

 

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Henry A. Giroux holds the Global TV Network chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. His most recent books include: "Take Back Higher Education" (co-authored with Susan Searls Giroux, 2006), "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex," (2007), and "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed," (2008). His newest book, "Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability?," will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2009.

 

Kenneth Saltman is associate professor in the department of Educational Policy Studies and Research at DePaul University in Chicago. He is the author, most recently, of "Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools," (Paradigm Publishers 2007), and editor of Schooling and the Politics of Disaster (Routledge 2007). 

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