Possible opening?

What do you think of the text below, or some revision of it, as a possible opener for the book? For sure I plan on using something like as opener for a keynote I am giving in the UK in July 2012.

"Imagine if it were different. Imagine if we started with equality and saw all people as valuable and worthy. Imagine if everybody counted and that by everybody, we mean everybody. Imagine if teachers and students were all learners in robust communities of learners where we all worked together to build knowledge and meaning. Imagine.

Imagine children and youth (and community members, teachers, administrators) drawing from a range of institutions (schools, museums, business, social service agencies) to solve local problems/issues all while produsing knowledge in the service of a public good that they themselves have constructed? Imagine a space where learners develop metaawareness and metadiscourse about their learning, the social problems at play, the potential solutions, and their consequences. Imagine that outdated autonomous school knowledges are transformed to be relevant in real communities and for the public good? Imagine"

Sense of urgency

Children and youth are already doing what we need to do in schools outside of school so the kind of change I am writing about won’t be unfamiliar to them. Getting teachers to buy in is tricky, but we know a ton about teacher education and development that we have not tried systematically. The same goes for reform and what we know about how to make it work. Sometimes I feel like I want to show pictures of kids in schools now that are like the ones for the ASPCA and have sappy music going on so that people will get the idea that there is real damage going on and we have to do something about it now.

Figured out the starting point

After much tribulation, I figured out where to "start" with the book. At the beginning. I know this seems pretty uninspired but it got me unstuck. By the beginning I mean ontologically. I've reread Ranciere's The Ignorant Schoolmaster and am in the middle of a reread of de Alba et al's. Curriculum in the Postmodern Condition. I'm still feeling intimidated, but I feel like I do actually have something to say.

I need to make a clear argument, building on Ranciere, that schooling is based on an ontological flaw - inequality. That is, schooling assumes inequality between humans - those who know and those who do not. Ranciere's argument is that we must begin with equality. What I have to do is talk about what follows from this assumption given the contemporary context of schooling.

Ranciere goes so far as to say that, given an assumption of equality, teachers do not have to know that which they are teaching. He claims that the myth of pedagogy is that knowledge needs to be explicated (explained) so that the learner can learn. I can see that, but I can also see that this could be read as devaluing teachers (in fact some teachers have said as much when I talked with them about these ideas). I do think that depth of content knowledge leads to maximum pedagogical freedom. Seems to me that Freire's problem posing education accounts for both expert knowledge and equality by focusing on the problem, a problem for which no one knows the "answer". This way, everyone's knowledge comes to bear on the issue (goes to Bruns's equipotentiality).

Now to say all this in the book!

Self-doubt

The more I read as part of the writing process for my book, the more I feel like I have no footing from which to write a thing. I feel like I know nothing and that I was totally full of myself when I proposed this darn thing. Yikes.

Book contract!

So I officially have a book contract with Routledge for the book on starting over in education! I'm pretty excited. One bummer though is that they don't like the "enough is enough" part of the title because it won't come up in during searches for education books. This in spite of the idea one reviewer had to call it "enough already!" They currently have a really bland title. I said okay but that I wanted to find something catchier. Any ideas?

Stuck at an airport

So I'm stuck at Pittsburgh airport after having been diverted from JFK because of a hurricane of all things! It's amazing how many people whip out their electronic devices and get busy with some thing or another. Literacy is everywhere! People are looking up the weather, calling hotels and rental car companies. One woman (a famous one I won't name) is posting to her blog. I posted to Tics and Tantrums. Now I'm writing here. I see books, laptops, cell phones, smart phones, ipads, newspapers, and tons of mindless fashion or celebrity news magazines. Lots of reading going on. Not sure why there is so much drama around the losses brought on by electronic texts. Sometimes they save the day.

Book description

So here's the description of the new book, Enough is enough: Starting over in American education, that I am submitting to a publisher who's interested (after I sleep on it). You have until tomorrow to offer suggestions:)

Abstract:
Tinkering with the current educational system from within for the past two hundred years has not provided a just and equitable education for all children. We need to start over. Moreover, if schools do not respond to profound sociocultural changes that have occurred in human interaction and meaning making in the 21^st century, they are in danger of becoming more irrelevant than they are already. This book will articulate theoretical, curricular, pedagogical and assessment principles to start over in American education from preschool to higher education in order to adequately respond to these changes.

 

Description:
This book argues that schools are in what Bruns (2008) calls casual collapse because they have not responded to the profound changes in knowing and being that have occurred globally in the 21^st century. If we do not respond with profound change in schools, they are in danger of becoming even more irrelevant to our children and youth than they are already. Working within the system as it is will not work to prevent this collapse. We need to start over with different ontological and epistemological foundations. We need to assume equality rather than inequality (Ranciere, 1991). We need to understand what it means when everybody comes (Shirky, 2010) and when everybody counts.

Drawing from several theoretical frameworks, I will argue that the purpose of schooling should be to facilitate human learning, meaning making, and knowledge production for the common good as determined by local communities. The book will describe principles of curriculum, instruction, and assessment that will frame a plan of action to start over.

What is the purpose of schooling?

Part of what I will have to articulate in the Enough is Enough book is a radical new purpose of schooling that is not just a balance of the old binary of workers/citizens. And not just something that integrates constructionist ideas into that binary. So what needs to be there?

• Power
• Agency
• Shared purposes with social justice ends
• Fluid identities and learning trajectories
• Heterarchy
• Equipotentiality
• Sustainability
• Cosmopolitanism – everyday (local) and intercultural (global) identities
• Spaces for ideological becoming
• Spatialized practice
• Innovation
• Knowledge produsage

And, again following Shirky, if we celebrate what we value, what do we celebrate in schools? With the deficit model running rampant, especially in urban schools, and with high-stakes testing, it seems we don't celebrate much. On the ground in classrooms there are everyday celebrations of the creation and sharing of human generosity, but that celebration stops at the classroom door and has to be done subversively. We have allowed external forces - non-educators - to break the culture in the name of accountability (neoliberal agenda). Accountable to who? Why?  Whose purposes are being served by this reductionist focus? Is the social contract of school irrevocably broken?

 

Making a difference

Sometimes I make a difference.

Some days I wonder what difference I make but other days a student will come to me with something they did in their classroom or life that they say they did as a result of being in my class. Then I feel like I make a difference and that that difference matters to real people and matters in a way that engenders a change for the better. On those days I feel awesome and I feel like that is why I teach. On those days I can’t believe I get paid for this work.

But on some days the mountain feels so big that the small changes that happen from the work I do will never make a difference. Yet I’ve come to realize that difference is relative and that the differences I do make actually have a meaningful effect in that someone, even one person, has changed the way they see the world, see other people, and see literacy because they took a class with me. There can’t be anything better than that.

Writing

I write because I have to.

I need to get the words in my head out and onto paper. My job is to write but it is more than that. I didn’t know that writing would be my work or my need. It has come to me as I write. I write so that others will listen. I write about inequity and marginalization so that it will stop. I suppose it’s naïve to think anyone will listen or that my writing will make anyone stop anything but I write nonetheless.

Writing in the writing project helps me to focus my thoughts and to remember that writerly part of myself that gets lost in the hubbub of everyday life and work. Even though I write for work, writing during the ISI is healing for me, even if it’s also for “work”. I know that probably doesn’t make sense but I know what I mean.

It amazes me that, even in a digital, multimodal world, the word has such import. I love reading the word (and the world) but, as vain as it is, I love reading the words as I write them. They appear on the screen at the tap of a finger and can vanish with just as much ease. Yet some words can be dangerous, even deadly. Amazed.

A lot of people are saying similar things

A lot of people for a long time have been saying schools are in dire need of re-forming. So what will make my call to start over any different than another shout in the wind? The wind is so strong that whatever voices have come before mine have been drowned out. I am one that thinks this is on purpose; that, as my friend Carlos says, there really are men in the back room. And those men don't want a dynamic, thinking, action-oriented, collaborative, and articulate public so they've make good and darn sure we don't have it.

The latest of the books I'm reading in preparation for Enough is Enough is Linda Darling-Hammond's book  The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. She nails it. The more I read of the book, the more I wish Obama had selected her to be Secretary of Education. I'm grateful she's still in the conversation though.

I'm still thinking I have something to offer the movement to transform schools. Emphasis remains on achievement and I think that's the wrong direction. I know policy types need the numbers though, so I'll have to do more thinking on this part. George Moses's idea about community-based evidence seems like a really productive direction.

Same old argument

I thought one way to get some inspiration for my new book would be to go back through some of my writing to find the main claims I have been making over the years. Turns out I've been making this argument about needing to start over in schools for a long time. Not sure this gave me inspiration though. Now I wonder whether it's worth trying to say it again.

Enough is enough

I have the title for the book I am writing: Enough is enough: Starting over in American Education. I can no longer take the "tinkering" line of action. We've been trying this for several hundred years and we are in worse shape than ever. Been doing some reading and there are some books out there about how to change education now that we have new stuff (technical and ethos - Lankshear and Knobel) but they all seem to be arguing that we just have to tweak the current system and it will be okay. Demonstrating individual achievement still seems to be the end game. Argh.

It's so much deeper than that. We have to start over. Start over with fundamentally different ontologies and epistemologies: (from a place of equality rather than inequality - Ranciere); where everybody counts - Shirky, Bruns); and, where sociospatial relations are taken into account (Soja). I don't want to write a "how to" book. Rather, I want to lay out the argument and suggest some future pathways. I have some examples of single cases at the classroom and community levels, but not at the systemic level. The book will be about thinking that through. Lucky for me two publishers are interested in publishing it!

I'm excited, but scared. Will probably use this blog space to work through ideas and would love feedback. 

Exhaling

Well...I'm finally exhaling after AERA. I am really proud of how well the conference went. Kris and I have had a ton of positive comments, some people even saying it was the best AERA ever. Sonia Nieto told me her students said they were leaving the conference with hope. Cool. Videos of key Presidential sessions will be available on the AERA website soon. Good thing because a lot of people missed sessions because they were full. And Kris wants to put together an edited volume based on all the Presidentials.

I am inspired to continue the work I have been doing, especially with George Moses and the NEAD Freedom School corner store project. I have two books working their way through; one that will argue we have to start over with schools - no more tinkering, and one on the community ethnography Nancy, Kevin and I did. Our first articles from the ethnography will be coming out in a special issue of Anthropology and Education Quarterly very shortly. We still have so much data to analyze and write about! Plus we owe the community a book. Good news is that I have two publishers wanting a prospectus on both books. Problems of abundance.

Simple check in today. On to writing...what a joy.

Meeting with George

Had another good meeting with George Moses today. George and I have been getting to know each other for a couple of years now and we are finally at the place where we can plan curriculum. I've known for a while that knowledge, learning, literacy, etc. is socially constructed in interaction and that social relationships are what matter in this process, but now I "get" it. George's emphasis on people and knowing them has shown me what this means in the heart.

So we've begun the conversation about how to combine the Freedom School curriculum with what "we" (educational researchers of a certain kind) know about content and pedagogy to move toward Bigum's idea of knowledge producing schools. George has talked for a while about what he calls "community defined evidence" so that's in the mix as well.

One of our first projects will be to have students address a community problem, in this case the food desert problem in Beechwood. They will do the work to design, build, and manage a transformed "corner" store. Community defined evidence will be gathered using participatory action research. George is pretty keen on the economic independence argument that I'm still trying to get my head around, but the corner store project gets to enough social justice issues I do understand that I'm totally in. 

This sort of work makes all the other crap I deal with fade away.

Intertextuality

Short today to simply state that I find it interesting that posts to this blog end up on my facebook profile where people read them and respond, but very few people actually read/follow the blog. To me it's a fascinating index of the complex intertextualities of digital communication.

Audience and purpose

I have to send AERA a piece on the upcoming annual meeting that will appear in Educational Researcher. The journal goes to every AERA member. I am totally intimidated. The purpose of the piece is to overview the conference as Program Chair. Chances are no one will read it even though they will all get it. It's that they will all get it that is scaring me. Man. What if I sound like an idiot? What if I make some stupid grammar mistake and everyone from now on thinks I'm a fraud?

Okay, worrying about this in this way is insane, I know. Welcome to my head. Just needed to get it out.

Critical geography

I'm getting more excited about the session I am organizing for AERA. Of course I'm organizing a ton of sessions as Program Chair, but I'm really looking forward to "my" session. Here's the description I sent to panel members:

Schools have largely ignored the profound shift in everyday communication (literacy) practices (multimodal, multi-authored, digital communication practices, participatory culture) that are happening in society (Ito, et al, 2010; Jenkins, 2006, 2010; Kress, 2010, Lankshear & Knobel, 2010); this ignoring has made schools dangerously irrelevant to children and youth who are participating in these practices in unprecedented ways (Gee, 2004, 2010). Researchers outside of education have begun to discuss the ways in which traditional institutions, such as schools, are experiencing a casual collapse (Bruns, 2008) as formerly passive audiences shift toward a participatory convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006). Critical geographers have challenged social scientists to move beyond the social/historical binary to include the spatial in our research and scholarship (Soja, 2010). Rarely do these diverse intellectual and scholarly communities[1] share what they know about learning, participation, and profound social and cultural changes with each other to deepen our shared knowledge – to take up the ideas of what we might call geographic participatory culture in our own practice. The purpose of this session is to bring together some of these diverse scholarly areas to discuss the meaning of these profound social and cultural changes on education research. Specifically, if we as researchers see a role for schooling in contributing to social justice and the public good, then we need to rethink what is happening in schools. Following Shirky (2010), we need to ask: do we want to be a part of the conversation our children and youth are already having?

Researchers, scholars, educators, policy makers, teachers, administrators need to fundamentally rethink, redefine, reshape the purposes of schooling, their understanding of knowledge production/use (produsage) and learning, and pedagogical practices in order to authentically participate in the conversation/learning/literacy that our children and youth are already having (Shirky, 2010). As Mimi Ito suggests, what youth are doing is not “playing” at something that they will grow out of; these are the language, literacy and communication practices now, and we must recognize this or risk continued irrelevance and casual collapse.

I'm liking the "geographic participatory culture" idea but want to do some more thinking about what to call it; this still sounds kind of awkward. Any ideas?

---

[1] c.f. Leander, Phillips, & Taylor (2010) for one recent exception.

Pondering the everyday

I wish I was better at staying in the moment. I am always in my head sometime in the future or the past - thinking, thinking, thinking. I know from my research and scholarly work that everyday life is where it's at and that meaning is constructed moment by moment. My amazing time with my brother Rob a year and a half ago while he was sick (the cancer is still gone!), or many years ago now when my brother John was paralyzed, taught me so much about what is important in life - the little things, the everyday. Yet, I always slip back into worrying about the future (when will we see any kind of human justice) or revisiting some past nightmare experience (high school, argh).

And then last week I stumbled on a vlog that focuses on just such everyday events. This man vlogs about his family everyday; and I mean everyday. He has over 700,000 followers who wait impatiently - and, ironically, post their impatience - so I'm late in the game (he's already famous on YouTube). I'm transfixed by this guy. How does he maintain such focus on the little moments of everyday life? His kids are totally adorable, especially the baby, Rocktard (there is also Mommytard, Sontard, Princesstard, and Babytard) but then again, I LOVE babies. I remember moments like this when my kids were young but I was so busy worrying or making sure someone didn't trip or get in a fight that I missed the moment. How does he do it?

So the vlog is called the Shaytards. Yes, I wondered about the "tards" thing too, but he explains it has to do with leotards his little girls wear. Don't expect big, fancy narrative arcs or complex story lines; we're talking about fixing dinner, taking the girls to gymnastics, going fishing, walking in the woods on a snowy day - it's completely fascinating. See what you think and let me know.

Beginning the year

Another new year is beginning. I am grateful to be saying that to be honest. 2010 was a fairly good year given the dramas of other years. A reasonable range of highs and lows. I have a positive outlook going into 2011.

With my colleagues and doctoral students, we have a special issue coming out in Anthropology and Education Quarterly that will be the first set of articles published about our long term ethnography of a community change initiative. It takes such a long time to write about ethnographic work, I'm amazed. We still have so much data to analyze and think about! I think the next thing should be a book about the whole thing that is written for and with community members. Our commitment at the beginning was to write their story and we really need to do that.

AERA work has been intense but completely interesting. I was thrilled that Edward Soja and Jim Gee agreed to be on an invited Presidential panel that Kris let me organize. I'm hoping to start a meaningful conversation that will blast down some intellectual silos and move us to more authentic contributions to human well-being, particularly in urban schools and communities. I'm so tired of talking about what needs to be done and of academics writing to themselves. Lots of individuals do amazing work, but we don't read across each others' fields and end up reinventing the wheel and, in the end, doing nothing of value for kids in schools. Certainly, one conference panel won't change this, but I'm hoping to accomplish some kind of forward movement.

Who knows what the year ahead holds, but here's to diving in head first!