Browsing by Subject "Schooling"
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Item Bridging Troubled Waters: Principles For Teaching in Times of Crisis(Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education Vol. 4, No. 1, 2006) Foster, Kevin MichaelItem Careful What You Ask For: Parent Involvement in Schools(Practicing Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 4, 2008) Foster, Kevin MichaelItem Colonization 2.0: the evolution of inequality in a South Texas School District(2018-05) Barnes, Michael Christopher; Valenzuela, Angela; Sharpe, Edwin; Reddick, Richard; Brown, KeffrelynIn “Américo-Paredes” Independent School District (APISD), there is a prevailing sense of unity and pride, represented by a popular phrase: ¡Somos familia! While some organizations seek to cultivate a sense of ‘family’ to strengthen organizational cohesion, in APISD this notion is derived from a common set of cultural experiences. Most of the educational community—from teachers, to administrators, to school board members—attended the district as students, at times representing families with multiple generations of participation. For elder “Hispanics” (Mexican Americans), shared experiences include being subjected to punishment from “Anglo” (White) teachers or principals who swatted students’ hands (and rears) when they spoke Spanish. This system of abuse, rooted in racism, was symbolically challenged during a student walkout in 1968. The ensuing political conflict accompanied a steady decline of jobs and sustained White flight that gradually reduced the Anglo population of APISD’s twin cities. Effective political organizing increased the power of Hispanic school board members who soon attained an enduring majority. However, decades later, performance outcomes for Hispanic APISD students (99% of students) continue to lag behind more affluent, White peers statewide. Despite Hispanic board members’ historically under-examined role in the academic literature, research affirms their performance has a significant effect on student achievement. For APISD, I conduct a critical ethnography (Foley & Valenzuela, 2005) rooted in a series of transcribed life histories of Hispanic members of the school board past and present (1960-2016), and former classmates. I find that while Whites may have left Américo-Paredes in increasing numbers after 1968, Whiteness remained. My research questions include: (a) To what extent do life histories of board members and classmates reflect a narrative of oppressive schooling? (b) What systems of power, leadership, and schooling, both historical and contemporary, affect troubling events that transpire at APISD? (c) Do these factors contribute to schooling as a sustained cycle of socialization?Item The political economy of literacy in the 'post-racial' era : the common core state standards and the reproduction of racial inequality in the United States(2015-05) Williams Barrón, Courtney Elizabeth; Thompson, Shirley Elizabeth; Treisman, Uri; Marshall, Stephen H.; Browne, Simone A.; Brown, Keffrelyn D.This dissertation contextualizes The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects within the racialized neoliberal “post-civil rights” United States. It begins with an introduction to the standards, including an overview of the existing criticism surrounding the content, processes, and potential effects of the standards in practice. It then historicizes the standards’ brand of literacy within the context of literacy in U.S. history, including its discursive ambiguity and its potential as both a tool and a weapon for social control, rulership, and revolution. This is followed by an examination of the standards’ authority on the national conception of literacy, illiteracy, the literate, and the illiterate, including the definition of personal traits and characteristics for the literate person of the 21st century. The standards, fashioned within the larger national narrative of racial progress in conjunction with the social narrative of educational decline, seek to re-center the idea that higher, measurable standards will rationalize the inequalities of race and class. This project examines the political economy of literacy in a “post-racial” era, by historicizing the standards as a 21st century racial and cultural imperative. Appealing to individuals and communities across the political, economic, and cultural spectrum, the standards were initially adopted by as many as 46 states, Washington DC, and three U.S. territories. By investigating the origins, evolution, and implications of this literacy policy, we can see that the conception of literacy lends credence to aggressive capitalist ventures through the terms of race and class. The effect is a new politics of equality based on the consumption of literacy skills. Literacy, newly defined and valued as a commodity in the “knowledge economy,” is a political intervention into the pedagogies of citizenship for the 21st century, and currently serves as a primary mechanism for policing the boundaries of property, personhood, and privilege in the 21st century.