C H A P T E R S E V E N
THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY
Specifically, I argue that translocal struggles do not simply determine local conflicts; rather, local people appropriate them for their own purposes, and local conflicts partially shape translocal struggles. In this case, local parents ap- propriated the neoliberal language of “choice” out of frustration at their in- ability to influence local curriculum decisions; the success of this discourse strategy had broader consequences, both for the school district and perhaps also for translocal struggles over educational authority and governance. The discussion demonstrates that large-scale structural transformations such as the global spread of neoliberalism are partly constituted by local processes of strug- gling that can produce enduring effects. At the same time, local struggles also partake of and are partly constituted by translocal structures and by struggles over these more enduring structures. In starting from this premise—that spe- cific local conflicts and more long-term struggles are mutually constitutive—I aim to contribute to the theoretical project recently articulated by Holland and Lave in History in Person: Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities (2001). In particular, my analysis builds upon their argument that local struggles are key sites for the cultural production of identity, and that these constitutive processes—and the politics surrounding them—mediate be- tween local conflicts and more enduring struggles.
In adopting this theoretical stance, I also present an alternative to how the global spread of neoliberal policies has generally been conceptualized within the literature on recent educational reform.1With some exceptions (for example, Lingard 2000; Luke and Luke 2000), this literature has tended to interpret the increased salience of such policies as “part of a broader eco- nomic, political and cultural process of globalization” that increasingly shapes local practice around the world, and “in which . . . state bureaucra- cies fragment and the notion of mass systems of public welfare, including education, disappears” (Whitty, Power, and Halpin 1998:31). In contrast to this more deterministic view, this paper analyzes such changes from the
“bottom up.”
BACKGROUND TO THE DEBATE
The setting for this case is the town of Shady Hills,2a community in Cali- fornia known for its abundance of material and intellectual capital deriving from its proximity to both a prominent research university and a thriving high-tech sector. The student body of the Shady Hills Unified School Dis- trict ranges from children of the intellectual and professional elite (from whose ranks were drawn several participants in the choice debate) to less privileged children from the poorer end of town. However, the debate in
question primarily engaged a subset of the district’s most involved, upper- middle-class parents.3The schools in the district enjoy a reputation for pro- viding an exceptionally high quality of public education and for being on the cutting edge of educational improvements. They provide a variety of ed- ucational options (for example, a foreign language immersion program and several “alternative” elementary schools) to students in the district, who numbered just over 7000 at the time of the debate.
Since the early 1990s, the district has become engaged in the statewide movement to “reform” elementary, middle, and high school mathematics ed- ucation by instituting dramatic changes in curriculum and instruction. The statewide reform agenda encompasses changes in the entire curriculum, from the teaching of early number concepts to calculus. Mathematics is tradition- ally taught by presenting students with a mathematical rule, illustrating its use with a sample problem, and having students imitate the technique by practicing to individual mastery on a series of similar problems. Reformers argue that all of these aspects of traditional curricula and methods must change. They say that the traditional methods of teaching mathematics have deprived students of conceptual understanding, alienated children, and failed to teach them to meaningfully apply mathematical concepts to problems and tasks outside of school. They instead promote curricula that emphasize prob- lem-solving, mathematical reasoning, and application of mathematical con- cepts to lifelike situations. Reformers argue that students learn not by being given rules to follow but by “constructing their own knowledge.” The pre- ferred method is therefore “discovery learning,” which may involve students working together in groups on complex tasks that engage their prior knowl- edge, integrate numerous concepts, and may take several days or weeks to solve. Reform programs also include collaborative writing and graphic display tasks in which students are asked to explain their reasoning and represent their solutions to the teacher and the class, not only numerically, but also ver- bally and/or visually (see California Department of Education 1992).
As new mathematics textbooks and other instructional materials began to appear in schools and classrooms around the state, parents started be- coming concerned. Local protests began erupting around the state as con- cerned parents joined together to voice their alarm. However, these efforts were met by opposition from defenders of the new curricula, who formed organizations of their own. The choice debate to which this paper is ad- dressed was a skirmish in this broader battle.
My analysis is informed by 18 months of research on the ongoing de- bate over mathematics “reform” in California. My discussion draws on data derived from: participant observation at public meetings throughout the
state, interviews and discussions with key players statewide, and analysis of a wide variety of texts relevant to the debate, including news reports, min- utes from public meetings, public testimony, editorials, columns, letters to the editor from various newspapers, and other correspondence. The dis- course strategies with which the chapter is concerned are illustrated primar- ily by examples from documents and correspondence (both published and unpublished) from the period in which the choice debate occurred, from January to June 1997. My analysis also draws on conversations and inter- views (conducted in early 1998) with participants in this local debate.
THE CHOICE DEBATE
In November of 1994, a group of Shady Hills parents created an organiza- tion—HOLD (Honest Open Logical Debate on math reform)—to protest the changes in mathematics education. They argued that the new approach was insufficiently rigorous to provide their children with a solid mathematics education and pointed to a recent drop in local test scores as evidence for this charge. Members of HOLD immersed themselves in the national literature on educational reform, publicized their criticisms of the reform movement and the local math program, sought support from parents, scientists, and politicians in other cities and states, brought camera crews into teachers’ class- rooms, protested outside PTA events, joined school-, district-, and state-level educational committees, and communicated their concerns to the school board through letters and public testimony. However, HOLD’s attempts to return the district to more traditional methods were opposed with equal vigor by a local organization formed in May of 1995 to defend teachers and the mathematics program from attacks by HOLD: Parents and Teachers for a Balanced Math Program (also known as Pro-Balance, or the Pro-Balance coalition). They charged that HOLD’s efforts were not only an attempt to re- turn the district to an outmoded educational philosophy, but also an attack on the professional authority of the district’s competent, dedicated teachers.
After more than two years of aggressive campaigning, HOLD had still not succeeded in their goal of ridding the district of “reform” math. Their media campaigns and other organizing efforts had been strenuously opposed by Pro-Balance, who had succeeded in making as much noise in favor of the reforms as HOLD had made against them. In January of 1997, a few mem- bers of HOLD got together with some like-minded district parents and formed a new strategy. They revived an idea they had first suggested in March of 1995: the establishment within each middle school of separate
“houses” (which they now referred to as “teams”) that would offer different
educational approaches. Presenting this earlier idea in a new vocabulary—
that of the market—they formed a new group to pursue this agenda exclu- sively. Calling themselves the Parent Committee for Sixth Grade Choice (hereafter referred to as the Parent Committee), they requested that the Board of Education offer a “Direct Instruction Team of Choice” at both of the district’s middle schools, emphasizing four principles:
• the acquisition of academic skills and a “knowledge-based curriculum,”
• a consistent educational philosophy of clear expectations and a quiet, orderly environment,
• proven academic achievement as evidenced by quantitative measure- ment of student progress through testing and grades, and
• strong connections with parents though active parent influence—“the parent is the customer.”
Specifically, they asked the school board to offer sixth-grade students a “direct instruction” teaching alternative for the “core subjects” of math, language arts, social studies, and science. Students in the direct instruction team would be grouped together to receive separate instruction for the latter subjects, but would mingle with the rest of the sixth grade for their other three classes (such as music, physical education, Latin, and home economics).
The Parent Committee presented their proposal as a plan to “restore harmony to the district.” The years of conflict leading up to their proposal had left scars on all sides. For example, members of both HOLD/The Par- ent Committee and Pro-Balance shared with me in later interviews their feelings of being frustrated by the conflict and disrespected by their oppo- nents. The community had seen experienced teachers transfer or quit in dis- gust and frustration over the controversy, while others became fearful and defensive. Members of HOLD and Pro-Balance, meanwhile, became in- creasingly resentful and mistrustful of each other’s activities, a dynamic that spilled over into discussions of the controversial choice plan.
Pro-Balance immediately mobilized against the choice proposal, seeing it as an attack not only on the district’s beleaguered teachers and their much- maligned instructional program, but also on the collective good of the com- munity. Their concerns were shared by parents and teachers unaffiliated with either HOLD or Pro-Balance but alarmed by the implications of the plan—the remaking of the public schools in the image of the market. The ensuing debate lasted for six months and received coverage in both the local and regional print media, as well as on the World Wide Web. In letters to the media and public testimony to the school board, Pro-Balance challenged
each of the Parent Committee’s claims about education in the district, as well as the general notion that parents are the “customers” of the schools.
Meanwhile, the Parent Committee gathered signatures from the parents of incoming middle school students in support of their proposal, which they presented to the school board as evidence of widespread interest among par- ents in having their children placed in a direct instruction classroom. The board agreed to explore the possibility of revising its policy on alternative programs, in order to establish guidelines for the possible creation of “teams of choice.” Perhaps encouraged by this willingness to consider accommo- dating the Parent Committee’s proposal, a third group of parents two weeks later presented the board with a choice proposal of its own. They asked the board to create a third option, a “Collaborative Learning Team” that would emphasize cooperation, student-directed study, in-depth learning, commu- nity service, and creativity.
Two months and numerous revisions later, the Board of Education adopted a new policy on alternative programs. The new policy specified the conditions under which a choice program might be implemented, which were intended to address the concerns of the opponents of choice.4 The board then surveyed parents in the district to determine their instructional preferences, which resulted in the creation of one collaborative learning class at one of the two middle schools and one direct instruction class at each of the two schools. According to a Pro-Balance member, at the meeting at which the decision was announced, a leader of both the Parent Committee and HOLD presented the board with a sheet cake: chocolate on one side, vanilla on the other, and both flavors in the middle. With great ceremony, he presented each board member with a slice, congratulating them for their efforts in creating the “middle school choice program.”
GLOBAL STRUCTURING STRUGGLES
In some respects, the choice debate was a local expression of long-standing struggles, not only over competing models of government and the different conceptions of schooling they imply, but also over questions of educational authority and expertise. However, the manner in which these more endur- ing struggles structured local debate did not simply reproduce long-standing struggles on local ground. Rather, local actors used a variety of discourse strategies, some of which were directly appropriated from these broader struggles, but others of which had origins elsewhere (for example, in the dis- course of developmental psychology). This ensemble of resources together shaped the way in which the debate played out locally and its potential im-
pact on translocal struggles. In the following section, I briefly summarize the long-term, interrelated struggles that both provoked and enfolded the choice debate in Shady Hills. Subsequent sections elaborate how these global strug- gles were appropriated locally and examine the “two-way generative traffic”
(Holland and Lave 2001:22) between these enduring struggles and processes of local conflict.
Struggle over Models of Government
The contested idioms mobilized within the choice debate were appropriated from a broader struggle over models of government, “between an old social democratic model—based on a paternalistic, bureaucratic, welfarist ap- proach to government—and a neoliberal model in which the power of gov- ernment is mediated and disguised by laissez faire economics and flanked by an ethos of individualism” (Shore and Wright 1997:28). Contestation in Shady Hills over the legitimacy of how the Parent Committee characterized schools and parents was structured by the central themes of this broader struggle, particularly the neoliberal themes of choice and consumer rights, on the one hand, and the social democratic theme of expert administration of the public interest, on the other.
As several chapters in this volume elaborate, neoliberal philosophy has manifested in education primarily through a dual agenda of deregulation/de- centralization and privatization.This involves a range of initiatives to in- crease autonomy from state control and provide more choices in relation to educational matters for districts, schools, parents, and students. Advocates of privatization and deregulation argue that such plans will increase competi- tion among schools and maximize choice for consumers, forcing schools to innovate and to optimize their performance, while equalizing access to qual- ity education by empowering parents to maximize their children’s individual opportunities. These efforts, and the logic underlying them, have been staunchly challenged by a range of critics who fear that the deregulation of public education will exaggerate existing social inequalities. A key difference between the two models of government is that the neoliberal model implies that education is a “private good” (an exclusive possession, akin to other
“commodities,” which provides primarily individual benefit), while the so- cial democratic model conceptualizes education as a “common good” that confers shared, collective benefits on society as a whole. With respect to the latter notion, the social democratic model assumes that schooling should serve societal interests by instilling in students the particular skills, values, and/or dispositions that are collectively deemed to be of political or social
importance. According to this view, and in marked contrast to neoliberal views, government has a legitimate role in regulating the provision and con- tent of public education in accordance with broader social goals—for exam- ple, by imparting those skills and values deemed necessary for the perpetuation of democracy (cf. Labaree 1997:5).
Struggle over Educational Authority
Contestants in the choice debate also appropriated language and ideas from an enduring struggle over the status and authority of the teaching profession and the field of education more generally. The establishment of education as a distinct field of study early in the previous century, the concurrent pro- duction of specialized vocabulary and knowledge as the basis of professional expertise, and the development of separate university-based schools of edu- cation, professional organizations, and journals created a degree of both iso- lation and unequal power between education experts and members of the lay public. The principles and commitments of educational progressivism, in its various incarnations (e.g., administrative, pedagogical, and/or social, in varying degrees within different institutions and at different times), came to dominate schools of education in the United States.5This powerful, albeit contested, intellectual tradition, and indeed the very existence of education as a distinct field of scholarly inquiry and professional training, presupposes that teaching and learning are complex processes requiring specialized knowledge and training on the part of educational practitioners. This per- spective implies a more complex view of curriculum and instruction, and thus a greater expectation of professional expertise on the part of classroom teachers, than the “transmission” model of teaching and learning that has dominated the popular imagination for most of the last two centuries and persists into the present.6
In opposition to this model of teachers’ work, movements of profes- sional educators have long advocated the “professionalization” of teaching, that is, giving teachers greater authority over a range of educational deci- sions, elevating the status of the profession, and consolidating and stan- dardizing the body of technical knowledge that comprises teachers’
expertise. However, professionalization often comes at the cost of under- mining connections and relationships between schools and communities/parents, particularly when teachers and education experts use their professional authority “as a weapon to further distance parents and communities from attaining a meaningful voice in school affairs” (Zeichner 1991:367). Indeed, since the establishment of education as a distinct pro-
fessional field, public campaigns for changes in curriculum have tended to pit parents and academics favoring a “traditional” or transmission approach to curriculum and instruction against experts trained and/or housed in schools of education and advocating progressive reform. The previous cen- tury witnessed several waves of revolt in response to efforts by professional educators to reform public school curricula in keeping with progressive ide- ology. Common to both earlier and current antiprogressive campaigns were not only similar concerns for discipline, order, and academic excellence, but also a shared disdain for professional education experts (Cremin 1964).
LOCAL STRUCTURING PRACTICES
The following section elaborates the manner in which contestants in the choice debate marshaled cultural resources to press their claims and chal- lenge the claims of their opponents. In particular, I analyze the rhetorical structure of the debate and its relationship to the global, structuring strug- gles described earlier. I view these enduring struggles as among the sources of “discursive resources” for local contentious practice that partially struc- tures more enduring struggles. Specifically, I focus on the idioms, vocabu- laries for making claims, and “modes of subjectification” that actors in the choice debate mobilized, some of which were appropriated directly from the global struggles described previously, and others of which had sources in other salient cultural structures. “Modes of subjectification” refers to the ways that language constructs individuals as particular sorts of persons en- dowed with particular needs, rights, and capacities (Fraser 1989:164–165).
The Language of Needs
Both sides in this debate framed their arguments in terms of the language of needs, using an individualistic psychological vocabulary to instantiate claims in this idiom. On the one hand, critics of the choice proposal claimed that choice would undermine the district’s middle school philosophy, which was dedicated to meeting the “unique developmental needs” of young adoles- cents.7This feeling is illustrated in the following comments in a letter to the school board from a local teacher:
We know that children must feel safe and included in order to focus on learning. . . . We fear for the educational, social and emotional health of all of our students in a “tracked” system, be it explicit or de facto. Young adolescents are particularly sensitive to issues of inclusion versus “special