Thompson: EdReform's White Collar Assault on Blue Collar Schools

The Center for Reinventing Education's Steven Hodas, in Clash of Cultures: Blue Collar, White Collar, and Reform, explains that we who oppose school reform are "correct to have sniffed a corporatist agenda ... but they [we] have fundamentally misconstrued the motive. It’s less about extracting profits than it is about advancing a cultural hegemony."

 

I agree, and I also agree that educators value "personal relationships gained through immersion and tenure in the workplace." We who oppose corporate reformers are acutely aware of chain of command and workplace rules, and we value "the knowing of the 'how', the 'who,' and the limits of getting things done." And, of course, we highly value the principle of "getting along."

 

Yes, we are rooted in blue collar cultures. That's one of the best things about a teaching profession which serves all types of people in our diverse democracy.

 

I won't speak for the NYCDOE where Hodas worked, but I agree with him that corporate reformers "saw themselves as missionary and insurgent," and they treated educators - who have the knowledge about the way that schools actually function - as "aboriginal cultures of practice" to be dismantled. Worse, they set out to salt the ground to prevent us from reestablishing ourselves.

 

Yes! Hodas is correct that the corporate reformers' "white-collar notions about work and value" are "expressed in endless wonky tweaking of measurements, incentives, and management structures that feel increasingly disconnected from the lived experience of students, parents, and teachers."

 I would add that, yes, the "McKinsey mentality that [Joel] Klein embodied is anathema" to practitioners who have seen the damage done by those non-educators. Despite lacking real world knowledge about actual schools, too many reformers have shown no interest in learning about classroom realities. Instead, they focused on incentives and disincentives, "not experience and relationships."

I would add that, yes, the "McKinsey mentality that [Joel] Klein embodied is anathema" to practitioners who have seen the damage done by those non-educators. Despite lacking real world knowledge about actual schools, too many reformers have shown no interest in learning about classroom realities. Instead, they focused on incentives and disincentives, "not experience and relationships."

 

To fully appreciate Hodas's observation, I'd suggest a thought experiment. What if we replaced his use of the words "education" and "schools" with the names of institutions - the military, medicine, or even the law - that can't be disrespected the way that teachers are? Would we trust novices to take over our armed services, ignoring the judgment of soldiers? Would we want doctors to ignore the principle of "First Do No Harm" and encourage such reckless experimentation on patients as we have on schools and children?

 

And, the problem is not merely the recklessness of corporate reformers. We should also mourn the loss of beneficial policies that teachers and unions have long supported. If there is a 21st century profession that could gain the most from scaling up apprenticeship-style approaches to improving practice, surely it is teaching.

 

Being a former blue collar worker, I mostly want to praise educators' traditions of relationship-building and working collaboratively with each other within the constraints of the collective bargaining contract and our shared political challenges. Power corrupts and we all work better with each other when we have checks and balances on each others' power.

 

Fundamentally, schooling should be celebrated as a political process. Teaching is leadership, and leadership is politics. The rate at which student performance can be raised is determined by the success of a nine-month political campaign to motivate students and restore their confidence after setbacks. Test-making is a political process, as is grading. School leadership should be limited to people who enjoy the give and take of the art of the possible. The only question is whether we embrace a Big Tent, a politics of inclusion in order to help children, or whether we assume that the scorched earth politics of school reform can somehow produce more good than harm.

 

Finally, I don't want to sound anti-intellectual. I revere my academic training and love social science. Nothing is more rewarding than intense intellectual and emotional exchanges in the inner city classroom. I can't imagine any book learning, however, that would have benefited my teaching more than my experiences "wrestling iron" in the oil fields or digging ditches. Nothing is more valuable to teachers than real world experiences (especially defeats) that bind us with others, that teach empathy and communication skills, nurture resilience, and keep us from getting too big for our britches. - JT (drjohnthompson) 

 

Comments

[EB]

So true. And the cluelessness of some of the reformers even makes it close to impossible for teachers to see the value in a few of their ideas that have merit.