School for Society 8: It’s the Economy, Students

Item 8: Reformers must target the economic structure of society.

John Dewey was a major critic of the American economic system. He believed that it had a negative effect on many children’s educations, because schools spent their effort to produce efficient workers for the industrial economy rather than effective citizens for a democratic society. Once those students reached adulthood, they were too busy scrambling to earn enough money to survive to devote the time and energy necessary to be involved participants in civic life. I agree with those criticisms, and so I felt that the model should explicitly address them with this item.

As we look at the way economics affect education today, I think it is apparent that economics get in the way of schools’ fulfilling their mission in a democratic society. Private corporations make fortunes providing services and materials to schools while the tax base that is supposed to support many schools is weakened. Families who can afford to do so send their children to private schools that do not face the same burdens and obstacles that public schools do. Public school districts with strong resources and reputations attract families who can afford to pay the home prices and property taxes that provide those resources. It is not surprising then that, even as education is viewed as a means of escaping poverty or improving one’s economic situation, recent studies suggest that equality of opportunity is decreasing in the United States.

This is something that a reform movement school should take on, but to do is fraught with potential problems. The teachers, administrators, and other staff at the school are not just potential reformers; they are stakeholders whose personal economic well-being is at stake. This can give them incentive to work to improve the system, but it also gives the public a reason to doubt their motives or to view their work as a taxpayers-versus-teachers situation, which is not beneficial for anyone. Sometimes there can not help but be a conflict of interest. A teachers union, for example, might have as one of its central goals the protection of its members, but a school community may feel that a specific teacher has been so ineffective that he or she should leave the school. The staff of a reform movement school must be vigilant in self-enforcing its norms and culture in order to minimize the problems that these conflicts might cause. The union could work with administrators and the public to create a set of strong expectations and a fair procedure for evaluating whether a teacher has met those expectations, and then work to ensure that the teacher charged with being ineffective has a fair hearing.

Challenging the existing economic system will also be one of the bigger conflicts that can be created by the emphasis on highlighting incompatible beliefs in order to challenge the status quo. Supporters of the current economic system would accuse a reform movement school of being overly political or teaching a radical agenda to students. And those opponents would be right that the school is being political and radical; the only difference in opinion is whether that is an acceptable thing for a school to be. As I’ve said before, once you start to teach something, you are teaching a point of view. So there will be conflict, and the reform movement school will have to assess which battles it should fight, which it must avoid, and which situations call for flying under the radar.

An example of the first category would be economic issues that directly and clearly affect schools and the quality of the education that students receive, such as unequal funding of schools, or the degree to which companies are profiting from the increased emphasis on standardized testing. In such cases it is important that the school organize the effort in the right way. If the school creates space for students to take leadership of investigating these issues and calling for solutions, then the obvious personal stakes become more of a virtue and less of a problem. If the reform movement school is able to fulfill the other aspects of its mission, then no one should be able to argue for students taking initiative and acting as engaged citizens to increase their own opportunities. If the students look like they are not engaged or responsible, then the optics would be very different. So an assignment to “Describe and evaluate the current methods for funding education” would work well to address this item. An assignment to “Write your congressman and tell him that he should vote for this particular spending bill” would not.

An example of the second would be engaging with the electoral system in a one-sided way based on a candidate’s economic positions. It’s one thing to investigate the positions of candidates or hold mock debates, but formal endorsements by the school as an organization would be a bad idea. Even social pressure exerted by authority figures is a bad idea. Protest actions against perceived specific individuals, organizations, and corporations should also be avoided as an organized school activity. A reform movement school might favor patent or copyright laws based on the free exchange of ideas and a cultural marketplace that protects the work and well-being of artists. But it is probably a bad idea to organize a School Piracy Day as an act of civil disobedience.

These examples edge toward caricature, but that is because there are relatively few situations in which a reform movement school should not engage at all. There are many ways that a school can work to understand, critique, and improve the economic structure of society without engaging in a public campaign that attracts a lot of negative attention. Here it is worth turning the attention back to the classroom and the activities connected to it. If students learn how the economy works, and begin to identify ways that it can be improved, then that is a contribution that will pay dividends for years and decades to come. I’ve talked before about the class in social justice I took in high school. Just having that knowledge when I was a teenager has helped me understand the news a lot better in the two decades since. If a reform movement school does its work well, it should be able to say the same for hundreds of students.

About Dave Thomer

Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.

July 8, 2013 @ 5:47 pm

Philosophy