Rachael Shapiro

learner. teacher. maker.

Search Results Tag: Michael Apple

Apple, Michael. The State and Politics of Education.

by Rachael

Published on: February 16, 2011

Categories: critical pedagogy, exams, Reading Notes

Tags:2003, capitalism, critical pedagogy, curriculum, globalization, gramsci, hegemony, Michael Apple, neoliberalism, official knowledge, raymond wlliams, technology, the state, thick democracy, thick description, transnationalism

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Citation: Apple, Michael, ed. The State and Politics of Education. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Summary

In the introduction to this collection, Apple offers a similar argument to that in Global Crises, specifically that thick description as a method is one of the most effective ways of working in and through the “flow” of the contemporary moment. He positions education as a site of contact between hegemonic and counterhegemonic forces. As an example, he discussed the revolutionary potential of technology as a similar site of possibility (16). Apple names Gramsci’s concept of hegemony as among the most productive for contemporary critical scholarship. Noting the role of the state in producing particular subject positions for its citizens, Apple explains that within these positions citizens can sometimes use their agency for resistance (12). But resistance can be progressive or neoliberal and must not be romanticized as always positive (13). Common sense is pointed to as one of the most effective tools of neoliberalism, which he related to the contest between state-determined official vs popular knowledge (14). Collective action is the best response.

Afterward: Extrapolating from the included chapters, Apple stresses the value of thinking contextually, addressing the multiple layers between the global and the local, constantly attending to the (in)visible structures of power (with contradiction being a key factor), keeping history in constant consideration, noticing education as a critical site for both good and ill, paying attention to social movements on all sides of the political spectrum, and avoiding “rhetoric” and slogans at the expense of thick descriptive research (221-2). He advocates the generative possibility of using postmodernism and cultural studies as simultaneous theoretical lenses. And, he cites Karl Manneheim’s insistence on the “interest of the whole” (223).

Apple and Oliver, Chapter 2: This chapter looks at exactly why and how neoliberalism is able to spread within the minds of reasonable people not ordinarily prone to fundamentalism. They find, using the case of a textbook dispute in Sun Valley, that when aspects of the institution that are meant to protect it do not promote compromise and addressing legitimate concerns, citizens may respond through action and heated reactionary politics. They write that:

Given the power of these groups, many school districts have offices and/or standard procedures for dealing ‘efficiently and safely’ with these repeated challenges. One of the effects of such procedures has often been that the institutions construe nearly all challenges to official knowledge in particular ways–as censorship, and as coming from organized New Right groups. Thus the educational apparatus of the state expands as a defensive mechanism to protect itself against such populist pressure. Yet once this structure is established, its “gaze” defines social criticism in ways it can both define and deal with. This has crucial implications for how we see the role of the state in the politics of education. For it is in the growth of such bureaucratic procedures and the associated length of time the it takes to rule on challenges that the Right often finds fertile soil.

Discussion

This collection is excellent in its insistence on thick description and attention to the macro power structures mixed with the very immediate and local material reality. Each chapter seeks to uncover the tensions therein and to make helpful analyses toward modeling the possibilities for scholarship and justice. The text is excellent as a model for how to integrate case analysis, critical theory, and a political mission in an academically rigorous ways. As far as the exam question goes, Apple et al model what it means to be a political educator in terms of the framework Apple lays out in his afterward: thick description, analysis toward seeing and later being able to exploit tensions in power structures. This work justifies (in the most active sense of that term) the use of theory and scholarship in the quest for social justice.

Pedagogy Exam Synthesis #1

by Rachael

Published on: January 10, 2011

Categories: critical pedagogy, exams, pedagogy

Tags:education, Joe Kincheloe, Michael Apple, the student, the teacher

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So my goal here is to keep track of the ways in which the authors from my “Globalization, Democracy, Pedagogy” exam lay out particular claims/ideas related to 1) the goals or vision of education, 2) the role of, portrayal of, or vision for students and 3) the same for teachers. In this way I believe I’ll be able to note trends, reflect upon my own writing and practice, and construct informed critiques, while also preparing for some cross-disciplinary comparison.

Joe Kincheloe, The Critical Pedagogy Primer.

Goal/Vision for Education:

Do we want socially regulated workers with the proper attitudes for their respective rund on the workplace ladder? Or do we want empowered, learned, highly skilled democratic citizens who have the confidence and the savvy to improve their own lives and to make their communities more vibrant places in which to live, work, and play? If we are unable to articulate this transformative, just, and egalitarian critical pedagogical vision, then the job of schooling will continue to involve taming, controlling, and/or rescuing the least empowered of our students. Such students do not need to be tamed, controlled, and/or rescued; they need to be respected, viewed as experts in their interest areas, and inspired with the impassioned spirit to use education to do good things in the world. (8)

Knowing and learning are not simply intellectual and scholarly activities but also practical and sensuous activities infused by the impassioned spirit. Critical pedagogy is dedicated to addressing and embodying these affective, emotional, and lived dimensions of everyday life in a way that connects students to people in groups and as individuals. (11)

Conception of the Student/Image of the Teacher:

Critical teachers, therefore, must admit that they arein a position of authority and then demonstrate that authority in their actions in support of students. One of the actions involves the ability to conduct research/produce knowledge. The authority of the critical teacher is dialectical; as teachers relinquish the authority of truth providers, they assume the mature authority of facilitators of student inquiry and problem posing. In relation to such teacher authority, students gain their freedom–they gain the ability to become self-directed human beings capable of producing their own knowledge. (17)

Means:

Power literacy 9-11
Bricolage: The task of the bricoleur is to attack this multicultural complexity, uncovering both the visible and invisible artifacts of multiple forms of power, and documenting the nature of its influence on not only their own but on scholarship and knowledge production in general. In this process, bricoleurs

Michael Apple, et. al. Global Crisis, Social Justice, and Education. (Kindle Edition)

Goal/Vision for Education:

Paraphrased from Apple’s introductory framework at locations 420-431:

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

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

…In many instances, practices of literacy and processes of schooling are functioning more and more as flows in important global networks and as a means by which workers add or learn to add value in economies driven in powerful ways by the generation, assessment, and application of new knowledge. (loc 694)

Conception of the Student/Image of the Teacher:

More generally, it is the case that students who use digital tools to participate in the pro-immigration movement–whether through digital storytelling or by using mobile phones or networked computers to disseminate information and rallied and walkouts–acquire and further develop aspects of the general intellect of technologically advanced socioeconomic systems and enlist this knowledge in a project that challenges these systems in part by exposing their dependence on the wages and unwaged labor of immigrant groups and other marginalized communities. In pursuing such strategies, then, immigrant students and other activists exploit key tensions in high-tech global capitalism so as to advance the causes of social justice. (1305-1309)

Means:

By examining the specifics of two interacting sets of transformations, we are much more able to think through the issues associated with a politics of interruption. That is, we can begin to point to ways in which the politics of globalization point to ways in which the politics of globalization might be altered at both the macro and micro levels. Overly general portraits of globalization–those that do not focus directly on the nuances and details of particular dynamics–make this more difficult. (697-702)

Nancy Welch, Living Room.

Goal/Vision for Education: She essentially argues that toward the goal of a greater democracy, through “living room.” She writes:

Of course, my hope in this book and in my teaching is that we can turn to twentieth-century mass social movements–movements that raised the demands of health care, housing, retirement pensions, and full civil rights; movements that have said no to lynch mobs, fear-mongering, and false populist prophets [***cough...Sarah Palin.....cough***] as historical examples of effective, from-below action.

As comp teachers, we can educate students in the power of public writing, demonstration, and activism as a way to encourage them to revive the ethos of individual and collective citizens in their cause of public-making.

Synthesis

Thinking about the connections between these three, very different, texts, I’m seeing that among the most important properties of both a teacher and scholar is a sense of what’s happening in our current climate. For Kincheloe it has to do with an awareness of the whole person involved in every aspect of the teaching situation, and the forces that contribute to the whole person’s make-up. Affect is a constant theme in his work. He defines critical researchers as those who study the invisible (142), what he earlier refers to as power literacy. So, together with acknowledging all that’s in front of us, Kincheloe wants us to take into account all that we cannot see as well. Education, as noun and verb, is a sort of process of learning to see. Welch, meanwhile, advocates the empowerment of students as public citizens capable of articulating their needs, wants, and concerns as they see them. This too involves to some extent the teaching of the whole person, and she emphasizes that one must have a deep understanding of political history in this country and of rhetorical strategies. Teachers and students work together toward the goal of staking out and expanding the public sphere. Finally, Apple and Collins in chapter two of Global Crises emphasize the need for students and teachers to work together to seize opportunities to exploit the tensions in high-tech global capitalism toward the goal of greater freedom, democracy, and civil rights. Such a politics of interruption is only made possible, however through methods like thick description, which allow us to see what specific tensions exist in these complex and dynamic times.

Collaboration, teacher-as-facilitator, and multiple and flexed literacies seem central to the goal when we take the three together like this.

Michael Apple, Ed. Global Crises, Social Justice, and Education

by Rachael

Published on: December 13, 2010

Categories: diss, exams, Reading Notes

Tags:critical pedagogy, education, globalization, literacy, Michael Apple, neoliberalism, pedagogy, politics, thick description

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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. 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. 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.

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