EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS
2007
Billie Gastic*
Temple University
The pursuit of educational justice is fundamental to the mission of the Educational Problems Division. Through our research, teaching and practice, we critically examine how educational and learning practices are shaped and shaped by social contexts and conditions. We are a diverse community whose members are engaged in the creation of new knowledge and are committed to vitalizing linkages across and between theories and practices.
Our vision of a just world reflects our belief that the value of education transcends its economic function. While critical basic skills, such as numeracy and literacy, remain systematically denied to large segments of our population, they represent only one – albeit significant – type of learning that merits our attention and care. An educated populace is not only one that can compete in the global economy; it is also one in which learning is valued as the means by which culture is lived and shared and by which communities are nurtured and strengthened.
Education has many purposes – many of which cannot and should not be met by formal institutions, such as schools. Conversely, schools are sites of kinds of learning that cannot be adequately replicated elsewhere. Our Division is committed to bringing attention to the myriad purposes that are pursued and intended by the teaching and learning that is (and is not) going on in our communities. These varied educational goals and purposes deserve careful consideration to determine which societal principles, needs and constituencies are being represented and which are excluded. We must also assess how and the extent to which these aims are being achieved across communities and sites of experience.
The current political climate of educational accountability – most prominently articulated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Spelling Report – reinforces a devastatingly narrow idea of what education is and how we assess learning. Legislation and other efforts to improve current and future outcomes for youth and our communities will continue to fail to reach their full potential as long as they are based in a shallow and compartmentalized views of education.
Many existing programs and initiatives are helping to create the conditions for positive change in the educational lives of children, adolescents and adults. These local, regional, national and international efforts promote self-efficacy while also building integrated networks of stakeholders whose successes are magnified through collaboration. These programs also recognize the intrinsic connections between health, education and well-being and treat individuals and communities holistically. Examples include UNESCO’s Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE), the National School Lunch Program, the Federal Work-Study Program and Head Start. We also applaud the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Health and Human Services and Justice, for supporting school districts as they work to build partnerships and collaborations within their communities to better serve the needs of students, families and neighborhoods.
We are doing this important in a time of great turbulence and despair in many parts of our world. We must be resilient and overcome our own fears, prejudices and distrust to work together – across difference – to bring about a better world.
Recommended Reading
Apple, M.W. (1982). Education and power. Boston: Ark Paperbacks.
Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: The New Press.
Ferguson, A.A. (2000). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of Black masculinity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Fullinwider, R.K., & Lichtenberg, J. (2004). Leveling the playing field: Justice, politics, and college admissions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Kumashiro, K. (2002). Troubling education: Queer activism and antioppressive pedagogy. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lugg, C.A. (2003). Sissies, faggots, lezzies and dykes: Gender, sexual orientation and the new politics of education. Educational Administration Quarterly, 39(1), 95-134.
Orfield, G., & Eaton, S.E. (1996). Dismantling desegregation: The quiet reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: The New Press.
Trifonas, P.P. (Ed.) (2000). Revolutionary pedagogies: Cultural politics, instituting education, and the discourse of theory. New York: Routledge Falmer.
Tyack, D., & Cuban, D. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
* Chair, Educational Problems Division, 2005-07