Curriculum and Behavior Modification Bullies

Curriculum and Behavior Modification Bullies

When it comes to bullying in school, most people probably think about the insecure kid picking on others. But I wonder how many of us think about the administrators in a particular school building and the insulated bureaucrats in the district office whose positions of power allow them to perpetuate a model of curriculum and behavior bullying toward students, parents/guardians and the rest of the community.

Curriculum and behavior bullying? Curriculum and behavior bullying is the institutionalized policy of a school district requiring prescribed texts and pedagogy that reflect the traditions of the dominant society, homogenous teaching methodologies, set pacing guides, disconnected subject matter, compulsory dates of assessment, and student disciplinary actions that are consistently, and often arbitrarily, enforced throughout a school district. 

Essentially, it boils down to obliging all children at various grade levels to learn the common knowledge of the hegemonic culture but not the codes by which it operates. All the while, it often imposes arbitrary policies which demand teachers to use singular and forced instructional models. 

  

For example. Several years ago, Mike Riley, the superintendent of Bellevue, Wash. schools, instituted a policy of a common curriculum and prescribed lesson plans for all instructors under his charge. Lesson plans were posted on teachers' classroom computers so every instructor knew exactly what was to be done on any particular day. When some teachers questioned the policy and asked building administrators if they could deviate from the daily lesson plans, instructors were told the "judgment had already been made," and they were to follow the plans as written.

A prolonged teacher strike against Riley's oppressive policy resulted in the district relenting and disposing of the scripted lessons. Riley left and took a position with the College Board. The point, however, is that the policy was put into place and restricted teacher creativity and ingenuity in preparing lessons for their students. The policy would have likely remained, if not for the teachers' organized effort.

Ringing bells every hour is equally imposing, reminding students whatever topic they are engaged in matters little, for they are to move on an assembly line to the next room where they will be confronted with another subject completely divorced from the last.

This educational paradigm plays out daily in schools across the nation. Victimized students and teachers are bullied by district officials who demand that the teachers, now often nothing much more than textbook technicians, enable curricular apartheid in 50 minute slots of time.

John Taylor Gatto describes these phenomena in his book, "Dumbing Us Down."  He writes,

"Bells are the secret logic of school time; their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy the past and future, rendering every interval the same as any other, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference."

All the while, the unassuming public is lulled into passive acceptance by administrative educrats veiled as defenders of a school system allegedly designed to have all children become participating members of a democratic state. What is occurring, though, is an oppressive status quo preparing students to become obedient, noncritical thinking, willing and essential cogs in the global economy.  Driving this system of self-perpetuating academic dissonance is a betrayal of social and economic justice by those who wish to sustain the culture of power and ensure the survival of the dominant society – at the expense of our children.

Children of color and children of poverty are particularly 

disadvantaged, because they enter schools, for the most part, without the advantage of knowing the codes and rules (life skills) of the culture of power. Not only are they unequipped with this knowledge, but these children are in classrooms with some teachers who might be reluctant, unprepared, or who downright reject the notion to teach essential cultural and academic survival skills. These children are also often unaware of the existence of these codes and rules which benefit them. In her book, "Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom," author Lisa Delpit suggests that, "…while students are assisted in learning the culture of power, they must also be helped to learn about the arbitrariness of those codes and about the power relationships they represent." 

Recently, the Department of Education released a report indicating that Black children receive disproportionate disciplinary actions, even in pre-school.  In a mind boggling response to the report, the conservative National Review’s writer, Heather MacDonald, claims that Black students have “weak impulse control” compared to the more meek white students. The reason for this according to MacDonald is the “black illegitimacy rate” and the implied assumption that Blacks are just poor parents. I wonder if she ever considered that maybe white people have “impulse control” issues too considering the number of white folks who violently shoot their way through movie theatres, high schools, elementary schools, and shopping malls.

Since the rules are established by those in power, then those in charge of our public schools have a responsibility to make sure the transmission of the essential codes of the culture of power are taught to students so they may eventually become critical actors in transforming the social, economic, educational and political fabric of our society. To do otherwise, is not only bullying, but criminal.

You Wanna Be an American Idiot?

“Don't wanna be an American idiot
Don't want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America”

          American Idiot by Green Day

In a 1964 article in Harper's Magazine, Richard Hofstadter writes, "In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated…how much political leverage can be gotten out of the animosities and passion of a small minority." Now, a half a century later, we see a similar pattern of behavior. Recently, journalist Michael Stickings remarked, "Much of the American electorate is dominated by apathy and ignorance, if not outright stupidity. Such apathy, such ignorance, and such stupidity are what allow so many voters to vote against their own self-interest, to be manipulated by right-wing propaganda, and to believe things that just aren't true."

Unfortunately, a significant number of our fellow citizens are willingly joining the ranks of the bewildered herd, as like lemmings, blindly getting ready to make that final leap over the cliff into the depths of an economic, social, educational, and political morass. Tea Party demagogues along with their neo-conservative Christian Dominionist right-wing cronies pumped millions of dollars into campaigns that lowered any standards of veracity. Followers of these political and religious zealots voraciously lapped up their untruths and mischaracterizations of the political and economic landscape. Without question, one of the reasons for this herd mentality is a growing acceptance of anti-intellectualism in this country.

Before I begin each class I teach at the community college, I share with students three premises which I colonized from Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America- How Stupidity became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.  Here they are:

1.  Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings or otherwise moves units.

2. Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.

3. Fact is that which enough people believe.  Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

I encourage, nay, embolden students to not believe anything I say and to question everything.  This comes a shock to many of them because they have spent twelve years in public schools where critical dialogue is marginalized and Paulo Freire’s concept of banking education is the norm.

The irony is unmistakable. Spewing rhetoric extolling the merits of the founding fathers and support of the Constitution, the leaders of this right-wing train wreck have convinced the herd that relying on blind emotion is preferable to elitist Ivy League intellectualism. Let's see. 

One of the Federalist Papers writers, Alexander Hamilton, said, "The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right." When did ignorance become a virtue?  Perhaps the right has adopted the Orwellian concept that Ignorance is Strength. Shall we escort the herd to Room 101 to re-educate them into believing that 2 + 2 = 5?

The collective memory of many in this country is so short-lived that they can be led to accept policies that are, in effect, detrimental to their own well-being. With cries from right of "Take our country back," is not one prodded to politely ask the question, "Back to where?" The signpost up ahead for this episode of "The Twilight Zone" points to the Gilded Age.

In a column in truthout.org, Henry Giroux describes our current environment as one which is controlled by the unfettered power of international corporations, 21st century robber barons. "If the first rule of robber baron politics is to make power invisible, the second is to make it unaccountable and the third rule is to give as much power as possible to those who revel in barbaric greed, social irresponsibility, unconscionable economic inequity, corrupt politics, resurgent monopolies and an unapologetic racism (parading as an attack on political correctness no less)." This is the vision to which the multitudes unashamedly and religiously rejoice in the vitriolic hymns of their modern day robber baron political saviors? Is this really the nation which the right wants us to reclaim?

A nation without government regulations, without Social Security, without minimum wage laws, without unions, with lowered taxes on the rich, without any emphasis on the crumbling infrastructure, thirst for international markets, xenophobia, homophobia and institutionalized racism?  This is their vision?  A vision that is going to be more attainable thanks to a 5-4 vote in the Citizens United decision that gives more credence to this paraphrase of Marx's observation,  "The executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the modern state are but committees to manage the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

In Thomas Frank's account of how the conservatives co-opted the middle class in "What's the Matter with Kansas," we find this passage: "All they have to show for their Republican loyalty are lower wages, more dangerous jobs, dirtier air, a new overlord class that comports itself like King Farouk — and, of course, a crap culture whose moral free fall continues, without significant interference from the grandstanding Christers whom they send triumphantly back to Washington every couple of years."

The bewildered herd, now unabashedly re-energized by the propaganda of Room 101, enters the voting booth content in the belief that 2 +2 really does equal 5, realizing that ignorance really does equal strength, war is peace, and freedom is slavery. This new millennium version of the Great Awakening has at least one thing in common with the pre-Revolutionary evangelical movement. The flock of followers is overjoyed to free themselves from the shackles of reason and instead, join the revival of emotional excess as their robber baron saviors relish a communion of unbridled avarice.