Misguided Paternalism (Education Style)

Educational reform over the past decade or so has focused predominantly on market models of reform, privatization pushes, standardized testing and Charter Schools. As I've mentioned in previous posts, most of these reforms, while relying heavily on quantifiable data, do not found themselves on any research that demonstrates their positive effects on children. In fact, research on Charter schools, NCLB and market-based reforms have often found negative effects, particularly as they relate to poor and minority children. Yet this has done little to stem the tide of pushing for more testing, more Charter schools and more attacks on teachers and teacher unions. 

The latest example of reforms in this vein comes from Memphis, where the worst performing schools in the district have essentially been taken away from the Memphis School Board and made into a separate district that implements most of the aforementioned reforms (NYT), including Charter Schools, deunionized teachers (many coming from the highly contentious Teach for America program), longer school days, highly-disciplined rote-memorization models and involvement from Kipp and other popular Charter School programs. Missing, as is often the case, are culturally-sensitive curriculum, community involvement and buy-in, any voice for teachers from the area (with many being fired) and any attempt to have teachers that reflect the students they are teaching. 

The question that emerges, as we learn of teachers taking students' shoes away, making kids keep their hands in their laps throughout class and other troubling disciplinarian methods (for kids at the elementary level), is whether white paternalism is not in fact negatively influencing the education these kids are offered. Too often, programs like Kipp and Teach for America involve young White elites going into impoverished areas and attempting to impose White middle class culture on black and brown children. Yes their intentions might be good, but are they in fact reinforcing the very stereotypes they are trying to overcome? Have they ever considered that there are other teaching methods more appropriate to these students? Do their own prejudices color the way they treat these kids -- with schools sometimes seeming more like boot camps for the military? And what of the childhood we once celebrated; a time to be free and discover one's identity? 

School reform is necessary if we are to address the growing racial inequality in this country, particularly as the population becomes more diverse. Yet one must ask if the current approaches are not, in fact, counterproductive, or maybe based on the new reality of a plutocratic state, where the few rule and benefit from the economy while the rest should be taught to be compliant citizens that work, consume and otherwise disengage from the public sphere. I am not arguing that the majority of individuals implementing these reforms are in on the plot, but that they are the middle men -- or the professional/managerial class -- that have always stood between the elites and the people providing scientific and "common sensical" arguments for why we should continue to do things that don't work or hurt the very people they are purported to help. And this seems to too often be the case. People with little training or knowledge of education and schooling are increasingly the ones making choices about educational policy and reform, and are doing so with outdated and imperically-unproven methods that are making the education system worse. It could be they are doing so on purpose or just based on their lack of knowledge, but in either case, how long are we to allow this to go on unchallenged?