Education Feminism: Classic and Contemporary Readings

Epilogue

Epilogue Lynda Stone University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA Twenty years ago, with the wonderful assistance of Gail Masuchika Boldt, we organized The Education Feminism Reader. Out of print for a while now, it nonetheless has had a long presence as the only collection of feminist papers in and for professional education —it is a classic many say. This brief epilogue returns to some of the elements of the Introduction to that volume; it serves as a supplement to Thayer-Bacon’s Introduction to Education Feminism: Classic and Contemporary Readings. I am honored to be associated with the efforts of Thayer-Bacon and Sprecher, especially to keep a history and tradition alive and to remind all of us that feminist work in education remains to be done. I return to this last purpose at the close. Introduction ‘Education feminism’ was coined to demarcate a body of work by women scholars concerned with education. While used on occasion, it has not become a household word. It is not a feminism like others: political theories, scholarly traditions, identities politics, or activism movements. Examples of these are liberal feminism, psychoanalytic feminism, lesbian feminism, and eco-feminism that are extant today. Education feminism is rather a domain concept. No one is an education feminist but anyone can contribute to the domain who focuses on issues of education. ‘Academic feminism’ is a term of recognition; think what might be accomplished if welfare feminism, medical feminism, or military feminism were also bodies of recognized scholarship. Given this introduction, in the rest of the epilogue, I turn first to a comparison of contexts within which Education Feminism: Classic and Contemporary Readings is now situated and conclude with special attention to what it means to do feminist theorizing—and activism—today. Contexts The original Introduction was organized first within a context of discrimination and then a set of historical and other theoretical structures. In the early nineties, perhaps I confess 469 470 / Lynda Stone because of my own status as a former teacher and a new education professor, discrimination against educators and education seemed prevalent. Education feminism was to combat beliefs about inferiority in the quality and efficacy of institutions, practices and persons and writings about them. It has always been ironic that critics internal to the domain are themselves objects of severe and sometimes condescending external criticism. There remains ‘trouble with ed schools.’ One element is evident and exemplified in the contemporary contributions to this present collection. Scholarship is of the highest caliber and stands on its own relative to other feminist writings. There is confidence in just ‘doing the work’ especially by a generation or two who follow the initial domain mothers. These include Maxine Greene, Jane Roland Martin and Nel Noddings. Another clear element is that contemporary writers are comfortable working with influences from peers as well as predecessors, from female and male authors, majority and minorities. Three historical structures, forming a particular context, were and are educational, political, and intellectual. First, while the education of western girls and women is a universal right, today some receive the best education and others still do not. One important change is in perspective, in which all educational access and opportunity, if not realization, is globalized. Discrimination especially does remain against minorities and the poor. Second, fueled at least by economic changes and the emphasis of a globalized, neo-liberal, capitalist-controlled world, conservative politics reins. In the United States at least, the center has moved right and there is almost no left left. Politics often is virtually unworkable. Third, while left scholars continue to toil in the fields, they have little or no influence. One important difference is important contributions from minority scholars who write from a position in the academy in which their numbers remain relatively small. Feminisms Much has been written about the history of feminist theory; by the nineties it was widely understood that feminism is feminisms. In the original Introduction, a set of concepts was invoked to describe feminsims scholarship. The point in a historicist simultaneity was that all scholarship is both derivative and originative. Such a conception undermines more traditional dualisms that are generative or replicative, of pure and applied research, of academic and professional knowledge. Each and every piece of feminist scholarship can be evaluated and used on its own merit. Thus, contributions to this volume are both for teaching and for further theorizing. It is hoped that joining present generations stand ones ready to do the work, but...