Rachael Shapiro

Citation:  Apple, Michael. Global Crises, Social Justice, and Education. New York: Routledge, 2010. Kindle Edition.

Summary:

Chapter One: Michael Apple, “Introduction”

In the introduction to this edited collection, Apple writes that the impetus for this work is to set the example for education theory to shift its focus beyond just the student/teacher/classroom/curriculum in order to contextualize and problematize those issues within their contemporary political/social/economic glocal contexts. He advocates for a methodology that spcifically focuses in on and describer the gritty material realities of stakeholders, rather than making broad generalizations based upon stereotypes and idealizations. We need “non-reformist reformers” who work closely with the community. In this way, Apple believes that we will be better able to “see” the result of our advantaged position and know where we’re working from and what we’re up against.

Apple offers a “framework for critical analysis in education” (loc. 420-431):

1. 1. Bear witness to negativity-the relationship between education and domination
   2. Locate spaces of contratiction, which make action possible (see loc 700 for politics of interruption)
   3. change what “research” means- non-reformist reforms, thick descriptions
   4. defend knowledges with socially just aims, “mutually pedagogic dialogues”
   5. be both critical and supportive
   6. Rhetoric! context, message, etc
   7. Act in accordance with politics of recognition and redistribution
   8. mentor/role model of critical community member
   9. Use privileged position/voice/access

Chapter Two: “New Literacies and New Rebellions in the Global Age”

In this chapter, Ross Collin and Michael Apple contend that what literacies fast capitalism and the global economy expect, cultivate, and make ubiquitous, are part of both the process through which those systems demand heart, mind, and body devotion of workers, AND make the very spreading of surface area that makes interruption possible. (Heirarchical flattening.) They offer a four-part methodology for analysis of the problem that connects globalization/work, education, and literacy:

1. 1. studies of globalization have been too general, we need to focus in
   2. literacy and education are ways in which workers add value
   3. we can put in relief the differences and complexities of varied effects of globalization in various places
   4. politics of interruption which combine macro and micro level efforts (694-705)

They set up the chapter with the problem of neoliberalism, in that part of its ideological functioning is that it positions itself natural as inevitable. They explain how the information economy is manipulative of schools where literacy education is/can be co-opted to serve corporate interests. In other words, literacy sponsors compete for gain with value-added determined by exploitability. In a shifting fast capitalist, neoliberal context the literacies gaining value are not those that foster justice and democracy. People need to intervene so that we can shape that reality too and widen opportunity (759-68).

One of the biggest problems in this neoliberal economic work climate is that public schools get coopted and end up supporting exploitive labor practices by providing access to the literacies necessary for access to that labor. The perpetuates white, middle-class advantage and the dominant groups’ establishment of official knowledges (810-839). New literacies, however, also incorporate/encourage/value non-standard knowledges, flexibility, learning for the sake of learning, teamwork, etc, which leaves us struggling to provide global-informational work literacies with old-model schools teaching to tests.

Capitalism drew upon social movements’ demands and spread technology to develop laborers with the right literacies, but did not subvert the racial/gendered/classed inequities when doing so. While we upped the access to advanced digital literacies, we flooded Mexico’s markets and put people out of business…we look for low-skilled laborers and racially persecute them when they come for the jobs we need them for. (See NAFTA and Arjun)

At this point immigrant labor “both powers the current system and threatens its very existence.” The authors argue that we must EXPLOIT tensions in high-tech global capitalism with a politics of interruption. We should draw together weak ties to build strong ones, combine old and new media platforms, and participatory educators should teach literacies that serve activism.

Chapter Three: “From the Rightest Coup to the New Beginning of Progressive Politics in Japanese Education” by Kieta Takayama

This chapter traces the 2006 neoliberal reinvention/reappropriation of the 1947 “Fundamental Law of Education.” The 1947 law replaced the 1890 “Imperial Rescript on Education,” changing education from an obligation to the state to an inalienable human right and advocating democracy and pacifism (loc 1593-1603). The 2006 revision was carried out by a neoliberal government which saw the democratic aims of the ’47 law as a post-war emasculation that bowed to the whims of the West. It especially aimed to include nationalism ideology in the curriculum by drawing on a politics of crisis. Ultimately, Takayama argues, we must look at the connection between educational policy on the one hand, and exploitation and domination on the other. The goal ought to be to identify contradictory spaces for counter-hegemonic action (loc 1643-53).

Essentially, after tracking the gender-oppressive, nationalistic neoliberal revision of Japan’s education policy, with its conflicting reliance on British (as globl standard) precedence for justification, Takayama finds that in there has been a privatization of what was once public and submission of what once was private (such as values and the home/family) to public control (2076-86). Through responsibilization the state tries to at once control and seem free through tactics of imagined community, authority, and popularism (2158-68).

Chapter Four: “Israel/Palestine, Unequal Power, and Movements for Education.” Apple and Meschulam

In this chapter the authors use the concept of “overlapping binaries of East/West and Jewish/Arab” (3281),  to illustrate ways in which education was a central platform in the ideological formation of the Israeli state and its construction of the racial, ethnic, and religious other.

Citations and Cross-references: James Paul Gee, Debra Brant, Arjun Appadurai, Hardt and Negri, Antonio Gramsci, the New London Group, Selfe and Hawisher, Shapira and Navarro, Brian Street, Reich

Definitions:

• radical democracy (loc 594-505)
• fast capitalism and hardt and negri’s “biopolitical production” (loc 724-35)
• literacy (via gee, brandt, and street)
• Really useful discussion of neoliberalism (937-48)
• Social Factory (1264-74)

Quotes:

Questions: Re: Chapter Two–How can we support under-prepared students in their efforts to gain literacies that can access new jobs, while also fighting to limit the exploitive practices of the neoliberal agencies that they’ll serve with those literacies??? (Maybe McKerrow’s perpetual critique mixed with Gee/The New London Group’s work…selfe?)

I worry about overstatement of the current work world… too much generalization leaves invisible ways in which poor, people of color, with disabilities, and women are still exploited in service and manufacturing areas of the economy. See moments like “the digital has become a part of general intellect” (1169-80). Barbara, Cindy, and Adam’s books are important responses to this, while work by people like Bill Wolff and Johndan Johnson-Eilola might accidentally compound the issue for readers who don’t explicitly learn/think/read about material working inequity in the globalized era.

The authors argue that we must EXPLOIT tensions in high-tech global capitalism with a politics of interruption. While in some places the government itself is responsible for constraining internet content, in the neoliberal US, private companies are… See NPR’s Morning Edition’s story about Wikileaks.