Reforming Schools: Working within a Progressive Tradition during Conservative Times

1 The Times in Which We Work: The Conservative Restoration

During the last twenty-five to thirty years a resurgence of conservative ideology has swept across our schools and society. This latest “conservative restoration ” began within the political realm of society with such events as the signing of civil rights and voting rights laws in 1964, implementation of Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” that successfully incorporated the Dixiecrats into the Republican Party, the subsequent election of Ronald Reagan, which in turn set the stage for the “dixification” of the U.S. economy and culture (Cummings, 1998), and the election of a fundamentalist Christian president. As leftist, school reformers, we are acutely aware of the impact this conservative resurgence has had (and is having) on the education of our children. As Apple (2001) and others (e.g., Miller, 1995) have discussed, the ramifications of this restoration include (among other things): public-supported vouchers for children going to private schools, high-stakes testing, legislation of curriculum content (i.e., standards), emphasis on drilling and memorization, internal racial segregation through tracking, the deskilling of teachers, and a deepening of “savage inequalities” related to the inequitable resources provided to children of wealthy versus those to impoverished children (Kozol, 1992). During the last dozen years, we have studied and worked with administrators, teachers, parents , and students to minimize the negative consequences of this ideological shift in our society and to promote an alternative orientation to school reform rooted in a tradition of leftist reformism. For the purposes of this book, the reformist left refers to a purposefully broad ideological range of both sociopolitical and educational ideas that are rooted in American pragmatism1 within intellectual discourses (e.g., Barber, 1998; Dewey, 1920; Fraser, 1997; Galston, 2002; Menand, 2001; Rawls, 2001; Rorty, 1989, 1998) and progressivism within the British (e.g., Giddens, 2003; Lawson and Sherlock, 2001) and U.S. (e.g., Kloppenberg, 1986; Sklar, 1988; Wiebe, 1967) political discourses. Unlike radical leftists scholars and educators (e.g., Brosio, 2004; McLaren, 2000; Rikowski, 1996; Wood and Foster, 1997) who seek to destroy capitalism, otherize the bourgeoisie, discount the importance of representative democracy, 1 CHAPTER 1 The Times in Which We Work: The Conservative Restoration *Thanks to Linda Holloway for her assistance with this chapter. and have an unfortunate tendency to blame the United States for nearly every problem in the world today, reform leftists seek to authentically alter the institutions and ideology that we have inherited from our ancestors, to substantively address the numerous “problems of (wo)men” (Dewey, 1946 [1929]) found within the various realms or spheres of our society (e.g., economic, political, media, religious, educational, military), and promote reciprocal and equitable international relationships with other societies that currently exist upon this planet we share. Aronson (1992, p. 38) noted that despite its ideological nuances, reform leftists have been drawn together around four rubrics: (a) we have sought greater equality and human dignity; (b) we have struggled for expanding and deepening the meanings of democracy ; (c) we have been a force for social responsibility and solidarity; and (d) we have sought the expansion of and realization of human rights. Reform leftists in the United States have been associated with attempts to make our democracy more inclusive, advocate for those who are economically marginalized, foster greater awareness of and respect for all citizens and their diverse ancestral heritages, promote policies of equitable access to traditionally powerful realms of our society (e.g., government, business, media services, religion, education), advocate for the secularization of public life, support the development of a prosperous and ecologically sustainable economy, defend individual rights and privacy, and speak out against colonialism and imperialism . Rorty (1989, p. xv), borrowing from the thinking of Judith Shklar, puts it succinctly where he states that reform leftists “are the people who think that cruelty is the worst thing we [humans] do.” He goes on to suggest that humiliation is the ultimate cruelty, and notes the importance reform leftists have given to the ideals of universal, human dignity. In particular, reform leftists have been at the forefront of calling attention to and resisting all forms of “otherization” that occur within a given polity.2 Just prior to the conservative restoration, several progressive educational critiques, practices, and policies gained momentum in the United States. During the 1960s and 1970s, books such as Compulsory Mis-education (Goodman, 1964), 36 Children (Kohl, 1967), Death at an Early Age (Kozol, 1967), Crisis in the Classroom (Silberman, 1970), How Children Learn (Holt, 1967), and Teaching as a Subversive Activity (Postman and Weingartner...