Schools as sites of change

Dear Donovans,

As you all know clearly by now, schooling is the premier and most pervasive site of social reproduction in the United States. This means that schooling sorts, classifies, and maintains strata, through the three messaging systems of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. However, learning and knowledge need not be resigned to these colonial purposes. Schools can also be sites of productive social change, where learning as transformation and self-determination is prioritized. Even in the midst of this era of corporate-backed venture capitalist education reform, there are bright spots everywhere of programs, teachers, and young people engaging with each other for goals of self-determination (individual and collective self).

But, as Lorde reminds us, power is never abdicated. It does not go down without a fight, or without conflict with prevailing ways of thinking. For this week's readings and texts, I ask you to revisit the article I wrote with Professor David Stovall on the codes and language addressing ethnic studies in Tucson Arizona, as well as NPR codeswitch update on the program. Additionally, listen to a recent podcast of This American Life (linked in the syllabus) which explores both how school discipline disproportionately criminalizes populations of color and how restorative justice programs take place within our larger society that abides discipline, punishment, and criminalization.

None of these are easy conversations or topics with obvious answers, but they are necessary. Read and listen hard. Think about the master's tools, the master's house, and what kinds of tools are necessary to meet the predictable resistance we'll experience when we try to dismantle logics of violence, incarceration, and ownership.

Instead of posting up preliminary questions this week, I'd appreciate it if several of you, it could be discussion group anchors, posted post-class collection of thoughts Thursday evening or Friday. I will miss being with you this coming Thursday but will be looking for your blog posts.

yours in the struggle,
lp.