- Joined
- Jul 9, 2008
- Messages
- 30,277
- Reaction score
- 17,796
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Centrist
Marxist? Specifically what approach are you referring to?
Most teachers I know from TN to MA, whether they belong to a union or not, say the same thing about these over the top top down policies. These policies have been questioned by scholars too. Just because you don't have much interest in it, doesn't mean it has no merit.
Abstract
No Child Left Behind and other education reforms promoting high-stakes testing, accountability, and competitive markets continue to receive wide support from politicians and public figures. This support, the author suggests, has been achieved by situating education within neoliberal policies that argue that such reforms are necessary within an increasingly globalized economy, will increase academic achievement, and will close the achievement gap. However, the author offers preliminary data suggesting that the reforms are not achieving their stated goals. Consequently, educators need to question whether neoliberal approaches to education should replace the previously dominant social democratic approaches. Assessing No Child Left Behind and the Rise of Neoliberal Education Policies
Fair enough but many people who work in the trenches disagree.
Dewey's pragmatist ideologically was intentionally designed to be part of the Marxist class struggle. I didn't see the necessity of it being as such, given that his view of pedagogy otherwise had some very basic, very positive notions. He just thought that pedagogy needed to be a central component to ideology. There's some limitations to the progressive school of pedagogy, but it had a lot to contribute. I do find, however, that taking pedagogy and making it a microcosm for meta-politics to be rather distasteful. That's why I really don't care for this neoliberal vs. social democratic war in the classroom.
I'm not denying that Unions and some scholars see some sort of existential threat from standardization and accountability measurements, but it needn't be that way. Furthermore, while I am quite an adamant critic of NCLB's benchmark mandates, its usefulness with data is sorely underrated. Thankfully, it was preserved in the Senate version of the ESEA reauthorization and is now going to remain in the committee version as well.
Data collection, for many reasons, became associated with corporatism and neoliberalism like it was some kind of plague. But really, what it was doing was showing the public real figures on what many people already understood: that the public school system was underserving certain demographics.
Yeah, and sometimes those in the trenches need a good kick in the rear every so often.
That's why I abandoned the notion of staying in the trenches. The teaching profession needs a few good kicks in the rear and I help give it to them, because few will.
Last edited: