|  Articulating Reform and the Hegemony Game Loma Taylor "The basic tool for manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you tin can command the meaning of words,
you can control the people who must use the words."
--Philip K. Dick
i.1 Last summer I was one of v doctoral students in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who had nada better to do than spend the hot and humid canis familiaris days of summer reading social theory. Twice a week our grouping would see inside the well-air conditioned, newly refurbished, and entirely besides plush, Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence. We would endeavor to make sense of texts that we idea represented the dominant paradigms in social theory today. Our enthusiasm for this pursuit stemmed from a couple of frustrations with our beingness as educators and PhD students trying to make that proverbial difference. First, we were dissatisfied with what we perceived to be a general lack of depth and recklessness with which social theory seemed to be wielded in nigh educational circles. Secondly, we were frustrated with the apparent lack of influence Chiliad-xvi educators seemed to have in shaping policy, institutional curriculum, and about importantly, �reform� in their own environments. We thought that  by theorizing we might in some way be able to come up up with meaningful critique and a bias for action to address these concerns and �take the power dorsum.� Here�due south what I walked away with. Reform as a Concept two.one Within the field of pedagogy there has been much discussion focused on the definition and nature of progress. This discussion is always tied to articulation of objectives and goals that should be achieved when endeavoring to brainwash young people for success in club. Of course, all of these concepts are debated and interpreted eternally with lilliputian consensus reached on exact objectives and roles. Out of this discussion does come up activeness, admitting action met with resistance, compliance, or ambivalence; only activity does come. For the purpose of this paper and accompanying analysis, I volition refer to this action as reform. The aim of this inquiry is to theorize how contemporary notions of reform appear to be driven by discourses emanating from the corporate-media-state with the upshot existence a public endorsement of overt (but misleading) tenets stated in �fast-capitalist� texts. 2.two The notion of reform has been around in society since 1663. The Oxford English Dictionary provides a definition of reform as � The amendment, or altering for the ameliorate, of some faulty state of things, esp. of a corrupt or oppressive political institution or practice; the removal of some corruption or wrong� (Reform). With this definition and with the implications that information technology connotes the tendency is to associate reform with movement in an improved or better direction, maybe fifty-fifty synonymous with progress. Regardless, it seems that the bones meaning of reform should be a change for the improve, specifically a change more suited for the accomplishment of goals outlined past conclusion makers in a particular field of play. For this paper the field of play is education, but information technology is important to re-cognize education as something that happens outside the physical boundaries of school buildings besides as within. I stress this considering there appears to be a resistance by many academics to acknowledge this in any meaningful manner, in whatever style really other than a boutique analogousness for the occasional foray into cultural studies or by infusing innocuous pop culture touchstones into the curriculum. While this insistence on where the educational play space is situated manifests itself, forces outside education (i.due east., individual sector interests) exert influence in whatsoever realm where entry is possible (such as vocational or engineering science training/certification). In our current educational surround this point of influence ordinarily appears only about anywhere economic power can gain admission. Afterward I will outline a model of praxis for changing this increasingly unbalanced relationship, but now dorsum to the notion of reform. 2.3 The peril tied to assuming a universal pregnant for the concept of reform is that the word (or any word actually) is context and practice specific. The discussion has multiple identities and the footing for differentiating between them is not always articulate. The very identity of reform hinges on analysis of factors surrounding the awarding of the term. Looking back at the twentieth century and various movements in education, all of these movements with the moniker of reform incorporated into their mandate, one notices different atmospheric condition that precipitated these reform movements. Acknowledging the reality that these paradigmatic shifts were overdetermined, and not simplistically tied to one factor, there seems to be a common gene propelling alter although it did vary depending on move. Some reform movements were fueled past changes in social and philosophical sentiment (i.e., early twentieth century), while others were pushed forrard by demographic shifts (1950s). The Civil Rights Movement, driven by a confluence of factors, fostered an emphatic legal context for reform. In the 1960s, 1980s, and 2000s society witnessed the moral panic that the Right created by stating that America had been left behind due to an ill-focused and less than rigorous curriculum; �reform� has been invoked here equally well. Reform and Fast-capitalist Texts iii.ane Specifically this blazon of �reform� is epitomized and evidenced by the proliferation of fast-backer texts which are a �mix of history and description, prophecy, alert, proscriptions and recommendations, parables (stories of success and failure), and big doses of utopianism� (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996, p.25). Examples includes books such as Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy, X-Engineering the Corporation also by Hammer and Champy, and The Road Ahead by Bill Gates. (In fact, I would consider the �No Child Left Behind� initiative more of a fast-capitalist text than legislation informed by actual needs and best practices in education.) iii.2 There are many more than but examples can serve every bit touchstones for anyone trying to get an idea of what texts seem to speak to the American psyche when talking near progress and how to reach information technology. In big means these texts have impacted how people think most relationships in business, educational activity, and government by directly lauding and advocating sensation �of the forces of competition in the new global commercialism and of the need for �quality�� (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, p.144). three.three The reference to existence left behind was at its core a reference to economic strength (or weakness) and naught more. The right was effective in establishing a link betwixt economic productivity and the focus of education. The logic was, and is, that as a nation nosotros must tighten upwards in schoolhouse as we might tighten upward in business. Supposedly, when American business was down and out in the early on 1980s and early 1990s, business came back strong only considering of mandates for accountability and rigor in prescribed areas and zero tolerance for anything non aimed at achieving the objectives (i.e., turn a profit) of direction. The rhetorical moves made past concern leaders and management gurus (i.e., Direction By Objectives, Total Quality Management) insinuated autonomy and creative �outside the box� thinking in an effort to proceeds a competitive edge, but the real mandate was clear: �Do every bit you are told. Achieve my objectives or be left behind.� The packaging (i.e., flexible product, worker as decision maker, radical change, processes not tasks, technology�s empowering potential) alluded to autonomy and empowerment, but the reality was that this new way of being for workers and soonhoped-for workers in this new capitalism was just ��an acceleration and heightening of the effects of the old capitalism� (p. 145). With American business having supposedly weathered the storm and emerged stronger than always the logic of business concern leaders ultimately became the logic of policy makers eager to gain back up from these business organisation sages and this eagerness ultimately has brought the states to the electric current determination that since business concern had buckled down and washed these things, it was now fourth dimension for school to do the aforementioned. 3.4 All of these measures of reform were driven by the guise or belief that said measures would transport education to a better and more appropriate identify. In one case this bike of reform movements started it becomes clear, maybe intuitive, that since each reform was in issue responding to conditions and results created by a previous reform that a difference in conceptualization and effect exists. Some reform movements were meant to create better societies and communities with opportunity for all and others were geared toward closing a perceived gap between nations. Some movements stressed the humanities and social sciences. In the 1960s and with most contempo reforms there has been an articulation and insistence on mastery of a cadre trunk of knowledge that gives credence to quantitative and mathematical/scientific/technological areas of expertise. What are the distinguishing marks hither, if whatever? How tin can we divide the types of reform? 3.5 To accurately define what I would consider (and abet equally) desired universal marks of reform one should probably look to the goal of teaching situated in a specific broader context. In fact, this broader context determines the goal of pedagogy and consequently of reform in any setting. If ane takes democracy to mean certain things, just equally communism or socialism means distinct things, then the goals for and of the citizenry are context specific. A marker of autonomous educational activity is that it creates in its future citizenry a penchant and sense of responsibility for openness, informed public scrutiny, and equal participation at all levels (Scheffler, 1997, pp.436-437). Later on, a mark of reform aimed at achieving this goal is that expected outcomes will create this sort of citizenry. If one can come to have Scheffler�south concept of teaching in a republic then one could accept a notion of reform predicated on the expectation of certain outcomes. By this logic, reforms like the ones seen in the by decades ushered in by the American Right exercise not really seem to create these outcomes. In fact, these reforms have equated pursuit of economic gain, private success, and privatization with the definition of democratic practice. It seems that somewhere along the way educational reform for republic has been transformed into reform for commercialism. The upshot creates a relation of citizen as consumer which should, in theory, exist distinctly dissimilar. When writing about the current project of the Right (and even the neoliberal Left) Michael Apple tree (2001) states, Thus commonwealth is turned into consumption practices. In these plans, the ideal of the citizen is that of the purchaser. Rather than democracy beingness a political concept, information technology is transformed into a wholly economic concept. The message of such policies is what might best exist called �arithmetical particularism,� in which the unattached individual-as-consumer is deraced, declassed, and degendered. (p. 39) This has momentous implications for progressive education in that it changes the goal from educating for social justice to educating for stable and efficient production and constant consumption. iii.half-dozen The reason it becomes and then difficult to grasp this gap or deviation is because in an effort to continue benefiting from historical hegemonic structures, the Right, working primarily through the apparatus of the media and government via corporate economic influence, has made the rhetorical move of issuing and propagating certain social and futuristic vision discourses (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, p. 32). These discourses piece of work to unite and socialize individuals into a commonage or �community of practice� where the unifying espoused goals and values are really in no way tied to actual practices logically connected to points established in said vision discourse. The public is saturated at home, piece of work, and school by texts proclaiming these visions; there is no opportunity to pace outside these related social practices or Discourses (uppercase �D� to differentiate information technology from �soapbox� which means �a stretch of spoken or written language� or �language in utilize�). Consequently, information technology becomes hard to construct whatever sort of oppositional consciousness, much less one that is bi-Discoursal (much less multi-Discoursal) and empowered with the potential to effect liberatory alter by being aware of other (maybe more just) social possibilities and practices. 3.7 Office of the project in this creation of a New Work Gild is the generation of new social identities, which revolve effectually distinct conceptualizations of language, learning, and literacy (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996, pp. iii-half-dozen). This plays directly into reform movements in education that stress a civilisation of individualized performance and success. Additionally, the emphasis on certain achievement levels on end of twelvemonth tests (i.e., �loftier stakes testing�) fundamentally shifts, even co-opts the purpose of teaching in our times. The rhetoric of high-stakes testing demands concentration on the individual and propagates a learning environment devoid of any notion of publicness or mutual good. It mirrors the logic of commercialism in that ultimately one must make a determination that benefits the individual over the group; whatever fashion of knowing or conceptualizing must also follow this logic. This way of knowing is familiar--nosotros see it daily as we engage in the performative practices that are our lives in a backer society. 3.8 For gimmicky educators concerned with this articulation of citizenship a sort of relational mapping might exist in order. For example, it might be fruitful to hold on a broad definition of a term like democracy (separate from capitalism) then plant a relation to educational practice that fosters autonomous ideals and inclinations (the practice and ethics existence the second and third points in the triangulation). One could fifty-fifty juxtapose this theoretical human relationship with commercialism (broadly defined) and link it to educational do that aims to accomplish goals associated with terms like capitalism, competition, and individualism. The comparison makes it possible to schematize relations and country rather lucidly that one does not necessarily equate to the other, thereby yielding a usable and identifiable concept of reform practices likely of generating positive move toward a stated end. The Hegemony Game 4.1 The word upwards to this indicate is my impression of our summer reading group�s dialogue on reform movements and where it took u.s.a. as far as conclusions virtually broad sentiment in policy making circles. As the grouping struggled through the hot summertime days our reading was framed by this context of subordination equally educators, subordination to a group that we thought had little pity for truly autonomous aims of didactics. While working through Gayatri Spivak�s A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present we came beyond a passage that, in m reductionist fashion, we came to refer to lightheartedly as advocacy for playing the hegemony game. Leading to construction of this coinage is the commentary from Spivak (1999), When a line of communication is established betwixt a fellow member of subaltern groups and the circuits of citizenship or institutionality, the subaltern has been inserted into the long road to hegemony. Unless nosotros desire to exist romantic purists or primitivists about �preserving subalternity�--a contradiction in terms--this is admittedly to be desired. (p. 310). In many ways, the power to provide a dominant articulation of reform has been ceded to interests tied closely to the interests of the corporate-media-state. In broad strokes, the Left has become content to critique and claim non-participation in activities that encourage practices and reading counter to their desired ways of knowing; I am concerned here with either large-scale or strategic proactive and sustainable measures, not just reactionary periodic performances. By refusing to act and articulate, one is not exterior of the hegemony; in actuality it is worse in that one is complicit to the ascendant articulation in the hegemonic structure. The spirit of this call seems in line with Raymond Williams� (1985) claim that by creating a recognition or disquisitional oppositional consciousness of hegemony, it thus affects thinking about Revolution in that it stresses not but the transfer of political or economic power, but the overthrow of a specific hegemony: that is to say an integral course of class dominion which exists not simply in political or economic ability, but the overthrow of a specific hegemony...This tin can exist done, it is argued, by creating an culling hegemony--a new predominant practice and consciousness" (p. 145). Despite the overt rhetoric of competition and progress, fast-capitalist texts, past their very nature, discourage revolution and rearticulation not in line with the historical backer project. This makes the task much more formidable, but incommunicable to ignore, for any teacher vested in the projection of democratic and liberatory instruction. 4.2 While progressive educators may non possess directly access to the tools of mass articulation endemic by the corporate-media-state, the opportunity for decontextualization and �deterritorialization� does exist. About educators are familiar with decontextualization every bit a pedagogical exercise merely ultimately deterritorialization is essential for the project at hand. Jameson (1998) forwards that deterritorialization decodes terms of previous capitalist coding systems and liberates these coding systems for new and more functional combinations. Deterritorialization is more permanent than decontextualization in that information technology does not but aim to nowadays something outside of its original context, just that it is more absolute in reconfiguring information technology into a arrangement more concerned with class than content. This system ultimately becomes a marketing pretext convenient for accelerated capitalism�s need to constantly create new consumer identities, fresh untapped target markets, and uninterrupted consumption. Jameson thinks about this in an inquiry into the evolution of finance capital in an increasingly globalized globe and his statement identifies the primary forces driving this deterritorialization to exist the same globalizing forces that facilitate the abstraction of coin, which seems to be more than aptly represented equally the owners of production versus the consumers. Looking back at our statement apropos the joint and reading of reform, it is easy to see how the Right has deterritorialized previous codings of reform in order to cement new ones beneficial to their cause; this has impacted education as the influence of majuscule has shaped policy in teaching. Playing the hegemony game means that the Left must showtime to participate in deterritorialization as well. Interstices v.one There are four item atmospheric condition, or fronts, of engagement that I envision every bit examples of playing the hegemony game. The first three will probably be recognized as practices associated with some form of decontextualization, leaving the 4th as what I view to be the nigh radical and challenging option for progressive educators on the Left. 5.ii Start, at the very least K-12 educators can utilize the classroom to decontextualize electric current meanings/readings of articulated terms and practices such as patriotism, noesis, and ability. For instance, in the high schoolhouse classroom the motion to decontextualization might be one of critical literacy curricular practices closely tied to the teaching for that e'er-absurd beast, the high-stakes test. Working equally a dialectic, the noesis for accomplishment on the exam is imparted only also critiqued at the same time; consider Howard Zinn�s piece of work as an selection for a text to aid in this pedagogy. This approach is familiar to educators aiming to �subvert,� just we have also witnessed the telephone call for this sort of pedagogy previously and have been privy to declarations of its failure besides. Oftentimes this approach gets caught up in the rearticulation machine of the public school bureaucracy ending up similar the innocuous initiatives of mainstream multicultural pedagogy or cultural studies (I exercise not dispute that these are important trajectories, but it is difficult to do them effectively and remain employed by the state). five.3 The second arroyo is probably the one nigh prevalent in schools of teaching operating around the notion that they are instruments built for the achievement of social justice. It is the practise of conducting teacher instruction with subversive intent and it is a worthwhile arroyo (and is the exact sort and nature of interaction that progressive educators must found and propagate with fast-backer texts, which do nigh certainly include high-stakes testing, the standard course of study, finish-of-year test, etc). When continuing to engage in this practice teachers should aim for a decontextualizing experience with the texts of fast-capitalism that strives to elucidate exactly what is wrong with the Right�s joint. Directly, it is the creation of a myopia that focuses only on the micro-setting and not ��the bigger picture--the larger frame--of global and nation-state politics, historical exploitation, access to information and education, the complex workings of applied science, and the winner-have all nature of contemporary capitalism� (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996, p. 145). This radical contextuality could also utilize the relational mapping practise discussed earlier and could be applied for any number of concepts or ideals, not just democracy. The hope here is that at the local level, the classroom, teachers tin start downwards the �road to hegemony� with a re-presenting of the content mandated by our public schools. I like the notion of advocacy for this approach but it fails often (and is ineffective globally), especially when we encounter a bulk of these newly minted subversives exit the teaching profession subsequently only two or 3 years of service. 5.four Point three of these four-points advocates the embracing of adult education. In fact, this might fifty-fifty exist a call to revisit the initial focus, even culling intellectual do, of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. In lieu of focusing (and funding) and then heavily on traditional undergraduates, a shifting should accept place. The new focus, Stuart Hall might label it as �pop educational activity,� ought to be centered on non-traditional students in open up college or university settings (definitely customs and junior colleges also). This practise of decentering (or at not focusing so intently) on the stereotypical and often elite higher student is beneficial for several reasons. Starting time, and nearly appealing, is that practices of critical literacy tend to resonate more strongly with individuals who have had the benefit of life experiences, specifically experiences not associated with the elite class and privilege, ultimately creating a foil or signal of negation from which critical awareness can sally. While the previous ii points tin can manifest in the teacher striving to �convert� members of an elite course to a different way of thinking and different mental attitude toward form privilege, this signal is less likely to end in such a mode equally the bulk of developed didactics students are not members of upper socioeconomic strata. If teachers aim to resuscitate the notion of liberatory didactics that starts with working with students who are aware of life�southward gritty materialities (Apple, 2001, p. 64), it seems to make sense for progressive educators to leave research one universities (hopefully with their grant money) and meaningfully advocate the mandate for adult teaching. five.v The fourth, and most controversial, attribute associated with playing the hegemony game endorses overt and deliberate participation in the capitalistic enterprise. This does not sit down well with nearly on the Left because it seems alike to joining the night side; in fact, I have wrestled with this signal myself. But, potential critics should be reminded of two things here: (1) just considering one criticizes the oppression, domination, exploitation, articulation, etc. does non mean that you are situated (or fifty-fifty able to exist situated) outside of the hegemony (i.e., hegemony is a process and not a stock-still placement). (2) Business has ventured into teaching and rearticulated concepts like reform so critical educators should exist willing to journeying into concern to accept the power back.  5.six Ethics and logics are inscribed by corporate entities ascendant in hegemonic relations, the aforementioned entities whose discourses and values manifest themselves in fast-capitalist texts are touchstones for reform movements in schools. Again, from an educator�s vantage it seems more than probable that Bill Gates� books influence school board members and legislators than John Dewey�s works on didactics. Because the rhetoric and logic of the corporate model is and so pervasive, schools offer no solace from the pressure to assimilate to and appropriate the ethos of the market mentality. The real and felt presence of corporate influence (i.eastward., funding) on schools, public and specially private, inscribes the mindset of private achievement, consumption and exploitation on the captive audience of schoolchildren. Additionally, with the prevalence of teacher and student accountability, private performance, and high-stakes testing, didactics is being used as a tool to ensure that regression to the mean is institutionalized, with the mean being a white middle to upper class capitalist male. Information technology is difficult to find rhetorics or texts in the pop soapbox that theorize the aim of pedagogy in whatsoever way other than that provided by the purveyors of fast-capitalist discourses. five.7 If the worldviews created by these ethics and logics are to change, disquisitional educators must become participants, if not leaders, in the institutions that propagate these ethics (it is debatable as to whether or not schoolhouse is currently one of these institutions or simply an apparatus of corporate interests). As intellectuals, exist information technology urban or "traditional" in Gramscian terms, contemporary educators are charged with the task of "articulating the relationship between the entrepreneur and the instrumental mass and to acquit out the immediate execution of the production plan" (Gramsci, 2000, p.308). This relation provides opportunity for intervention. Educators could use the classroom to interrupt corporate hegemonic discourses (i.e., my outset 3 points), merely I believe educators should too be willing to consider straight participation in the private sector in an effort to more directly influence the creation and joint of discourses emanating from this realm. This, of course, requires that one resist the inclination to privilege classroom education and its discourses over education in the workday world. And so, if one is willing to problem the notion of educational activity, pushing it to hateful many things happening within and outside the halls of academia, it becomes possible to place corporate entities working to rearticulate ethics and logics. I do not want to think of agency as reduced solely to practices of consumption, just I exercise think that for an instance of how corporate values tin work to shape social practices and perspectives nosotros tin beginning �pedagogy� and interaction at points of consumption. 5.8 For instance, the world�s number one natural foods chain Whole Foods Market (i.e.,Wellspring Grocery Store) has had near twenty% five year sales growth rate and 52 calendar week stock price loftier that is impressive in any market place, but especially an extended carry market. The national soapbox, for better or for worse, is obsessed with investment and wealth accumulation and preservation. When institutions are successful financially they garner attention of investors, big and small. Even if our agency has been reduced to what we consume, by shopping at Whole Foods Market and supporting their practices of sound environmental stewardship and employee equality nosotros are engaging and experiencing unlike possibilities driven past unlike ethics and logics. The responsibility of the progressive in  organizations of whatever kind is to direct the soapbox to areas of importance, especially ones not predicated on the benefit of the minority at the expense and exploitation of the few. If this sort of economic participation is not palatable, one should entertain the possibility of supporting multiple economies on a community or local level (i.e., co-ops or alternative currencies). Regardless, it would be a mistake not to consider all possibilities (fifty-fifty ones with the �enemy� or �oppressor�) when i is precariously positioned in undesirable hegemonic relations. 5.9 In determination, I encourage other educators concerned with issues of reform and teacher agency in reform to view my argument as a potential footstep toward serious considerations of practices in critical literacy and pedagogy; terms that without radical afterthought are expressionless and useless. Having been inserted down that �long route to hegemony� there really is no choice simply to focus intently on social practices and their connections across various social and cultural sites and institutions including sites outside of the classroom. New conceptualizations of pedagogies and texts must emerge independent of present-day corporate agendas if we are to succeed in edifice viable communities and identities based on dialogic civility, and not predicated on exploitation and individual profit. References Apple, M. (2001). Educating the �right� way: Markets, standards, god, and inequality. New York: Routledge Falmer. Gee, J. P., Hull, M., & Lankshear, C. (1996). The new work society: Backside the language of the new commercialism. Boulder, CO: Westview. Gramsci, A. (2000). Intellectuals and education. In D. Forgacs (Ed.), The Antonio Gramsci reader (pp. 300-322). New York: New York Academy Press. Jameson, F. (1998). The cultural turn: Selected writings on the postmodern. New York: Verso. Reform. Oxford english dictionary. Retrieved February half-dozen, 2003, from University of North Carolina at Chapel Loma, Davis Library Web site: http://eresources.lib.unc.edu/eid/discipline.php?subjectName=Reference. Scheffler, I. (1997). Moral education and the democratic ideal. due north S.M. Cahn (Ed.), Classic and contemporary readings in the philosophy of education (pp. 345-442). New York: McGraw-Loma. Spivak, Yard. C. (1999). A critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP Williams, Raymond. (1985). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. New York: Oxford UP. |
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