Attempts at Looking Up

Lipman asserts that “critically reading the media, popular culture, and texts in order to better read the world is a crucial aspect of critical consciousness and collective action” (p. 62). Apple presents a discussion about the Channel One, “for-profit television network” that mandates schools to guarantee “that their students will watch Channel One every day” (p. 42). This television channel has “mandatory advertisements” that sells students as a “captive audience to corporations” (p. 42). Brining this back to Lipman, one thing teachers can do to counteract this market strategy is to, essentially, teach against it. Teachers can use material like this to sprout critical analysis and conversation about the effects of this in their students. Teachers who have the critical thought to examine the underlying effects of this type of material can hold workshops during staff development days in order to teach other teachers how to teach against this material and inspire critical thought in their students. The same can be true for the literacy packages described by Irvine and Larson. Teachers can elicit discussion about how the “skills-based pedagogies…[constrain students] in what they are enabled to do with and through text” (p. 54). Even very young students can engage in a discussion about what it is like to hear a story and discuss it versus filling in worksheets and practicing phonemes that are not grounded in the content of the story. When asked, students know surprisingly more about their learning than policy makers recognize. Students can tell us when they “use reading and writing to access the world as meaning-making subjects” as opposed to “objects of instruction” (Irvine & Larson, p. 54). This type of “teaching against” will also help students “learn from and with each other and adults in the classroom” as is advocated by Osbourn (p. 174). What I am trying to demonstrate here, is that there are ways to use crappy materials as a means for creating discussion about and in effect, teaching culturally and developmentally relevant information and meaning-making.

In addition, I think teachers have an outstanding source of potential power in their Unions. Although Apple asserts, “teacher’s unions are relatively weak at a national level” (p. 61), there is undoubtedly strength in numbers. He also explains that “behind much of this conservative impulse is a clear distrust of teachers and an attack on both teachers’ claims to competence and especially on teachers’ unions” (p. 51). I am not sure, and perhaps I am jumping to conclusions here, but I wonder if this distrust is based on a perception of teachers’ unions being solely enacted to raise teacher salary. Lipman describes that change “will require social movements of communities, students, and educators to challenge the neoliberal education agenda and the larger neoliberal economic and social agenda and to pose alternatives grounded in social justice” (p. 63). Although I don’t think the unions are the sole place for this type of movement, but I do believe it could present a starting point. The number of teachers in unions across the nation is much larger than the power of the union would suggest. However, I believe that there are many teachers in this nation that share the standpoint on change being advocated for by the articles for this week’s discussions. I think teachers relatively agree that there needs to be a paradigm shift in the way we assess and teach our students. Clearly, what we do, does not work well. Clearly more needs to be done to help all our schools as we are a culturally diverse nation that is not reflected in curriculum and standards. I believe many teachers share these thoughts. I believe that combined, we could hold power and create a grassroots effort to raise money in order to match the “financial and organizational backing that stands behind the neoliberal, neoconservative, and authoritarian populist groups” (Apple, 2001, p. 61).

Although our voices as teachers count less and less in decisions about the students we educate, there is optimism and hope in our numbers as well in our daily actions. Raising our voices will arguably only help our concerns and collectively, we have more to offer than we do individually. Grassroots organizations, conferences, scholarship, commitment, and stubborn adherence to teaching that reflects social justice are weapons.