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.