Chapter Six

Subversive Activity

I am constantly reading stuff about education.  I want to know as much as I can so I can evaluate just what it is I am doing. Have you ever experienced a school situation when a teacher will give an assignment and the students will ask, “Why are we doing this?”  That is, potentially, a pretty deep inquiry and one that questions a teachers power and authority as well as asking for a justification of a teachers decision- making.  And when you start to go against the grain you might be going down the path of subversive guerrilla classroom warfare. 

One way to conduct guerrilla warfare in schools is to find ways to exploit bureaucratic rhetoric to your advantage.  Believe me, there is a lot of it.  Jonathan Kozol, whom I earlier mentioned, remarks that if schools were held up to the same standards as businesses, they would be guilty of false advertising.  Schools are prolific spreaders of bombastic, self-serving, deceitful messages to the unsuspecting public to maintain an image that they are serious about attending to the needs of all students.  Some of them actually believe it.  The reality, however, is that the majority of public school districts in this country and state and federal government education bureaucrats do not care for your children at all.  If they did, we would not be having this conversation.  Oh, they might say they care, but kids are way down on the list.  Number one is money.  How to get it.  How to spend it.  How to get more.

The federal government does not care nor has ever cared about your child despite the current administration’s claim of a Race to the Top.  If they really cared schools would be repaired, there would be free and decent health care provided, teacher education would be enhanced,  and no child would go hungry.  This is only a beginning.  The problems facing schools today are so immense that teachers and the teaching profession are getting less respect than politicians and corporate elites.  Yet, at the same time, teachers are being blamed for the problems.  Each aircraft carrier that this country builds costs in the neighborhood of $1 billion.  Now, if the government really cared about education can you imagine what can be done with this amount of money?  Do not be swayed by the argument that we can’t solve problems by throwing money at them.  The government does it all the time. So, why is it that schools can get away with the propaganda that they really care?   You can’t possibly believe that the needs of all kids are going to be addressed.  Just the massive size of many of our high schools means that there are going to be kids who are marginalized socially, educationally, economically, politically, and psychologically. 

At my former high school the students knew that the administration, teachers, and security guards had their favorites and treated them differently.  Kids who look differently because of the clothes they wear are followed and harassed.  Some years ago one of my students was being singled out by the school for harassment.  Her mom called me and we had a rather long, interesting conversation.  She had met with the principal and felt that she was a victim of patronizing and not really being listened to about the concerns of how her daughter was being treated.  The term, hostile environment came up in our conversation. 

Indeed, high school can be a very unaccepting place for a lot of kids and some adults who are in power positions, especially in schools whose population represents wealth, treats children who do not fit the prescribed mold differently.  In fact, when it comes to a controversy between a teacher and a student of wealth, you would be amazed at how often the administration will side with the student.  Reason?  Teachers have no power but students of wealth have parents who are capable of wielding an incredible amount of influence.   

Take the time to read various mission statements of schools.  For example, “All students will learn to respect others.”  Neil Postman talks about crap detecting.  Here is a perfect example of that.  First of all how is a school going to even reasonably expect to meet that goal?  What strategies are they going to use?  How are you going to measure success in meeting that goal?  You can’t.  Yet schools use the rhetoric to try to make it seem like they are all inclusive places where any kid would want to be.  When I questioned the administration about how we are going to measure whether or not we met this respect goal, the response was they wanted each teacher to turn in a lesson plan that was centered on respect.  In that way they could quantify the number of lessons being introduced in the classroom.  Well, is the goal being met or are they deliberately side-stepping the issue by creating essentially another goal that should read:  Each teacher will show respect by turning in a lesson plan on respect and hope that some of the students will end up by showing respect.  Come one, let’s get serious.  The unfortunate thing is that the power brokers are able to bamboozle the unquestioning public and timid teachers into actually believing that all students will show respect.

It is also unfortunate that the ones who wish to promulgate such lofty ideals, such as a building administration, do not abide by the tenets of their own idealism.  For example, a student accused a teacher of making an offensive statement to her.  The student went to a counselor and eventually it went to the administration.  The teacher was called in, was informed that she had made this statement and, despite the teacher’s denial, the teacher was suspended for three days without pay.  In addition, the teacher was required to see a district counselor for anger management.  Tell me, is this a respectful way to deal with a teacher-student issue?  Is this the way adults should treat other adults?  This teacher needed to file a grievance.  The message to students is that they can get away with making false accusations and potentially destroying a teacher’s livelihood.  The message to teachers from school officials is, we don’t trust you.  We are afraid to stand up for you.  We are afraid of parents.   Guerrilla fighters, get ready.

Do you remember when you were preparing to take a multiple choice test and you were forewarned about selections that had the word, “all,” in them?  That answer bubble should not be filled in because you knew the choice was incorrect.  However, when you look at building goals and each one of them has the word, “all,” in them should not a red flag go up?  As a guerrilla fighter in the class wars how do you go about using the information you have and the rhetoric the district spreads to be tools for you to subvert the system?   Here’s one way.

For example, on one of my teaching evaluation forms sent to me by the administration there was this goal that I should try to achieve.  It states that we can have an inclusive classroom by, “implementing the multicultural plan by creating a multicultural physical environment and creating a feeling climate that affirms multiple cultural perspectives.”  Well, for teachers who are devoid of any sensitivity to multicultural education or for teachers who are just beginning, this might be a good first step.  I agree that our rooms should try to reflect, as much as possible, our social diversity.  Whether they are posters, paintings, student work, whatever, do it.  My room was a welcoming environment of diversity for years but what is so incredibly ironic about this is that the administrative offices did not have a similar climate that affirmed multiple cultural perspectives.  For that matter, the school itself reflected very little, with the exception of the media center, of a welcoming environment.  Hell, even my department chair who had made it his policy to try to nail me for anything had a cold, uninviting room that lacked any semblance of our cultural mosaic.  He was, by the way, the self-proclaimed multicultural education guru of our school.  He anointed himself after our only black teacher left. So, here is a chink in the armor that is worth exploiting. 

Along the same lines, our district is allegedly following a state mandate to infuse multicultural education into the curriculum.  They spent thousands of dollars doing in-service training, bringing in nationally known speakers, and providing funds for conference travel for some teachers and district officials.  In addition, they created multicultural advisory committees and had committees to review district developed standardized tests to check for cultural bias.  I was engaging students with multicultural education for years before the mandate yet I was called into the principal’s office at least once a year by irate parents for not teaching the correct version of American History.  I used Howard Zinn’s, A Peoples History of the United States, and some parents just got livid when they found out that all the flowery stories about their traditional heroes are tarnished.  I focused on the experiences of women, labor, and the marginalized while paying less attention to the contributions of wealthy European-American males.  But I made it clear to them that I had to follow the district and state mandates, and was providing the students with multiple perspectives of historical events.  And remember, the counter-attack might have to come from the community. 

I believe a part of guerrilla warfare in education is to subvert and leave a calling card.  If you are one who has already been marginalized by the bureaucracy whatever you say will probably not be listened to by the power brokers.  They will dismiss your voice.  In the case above, have community members come into your school and make observations to see if the rhetoric and the reality match.  If not, then a meeting with the building principal is in order.  If some members of the community are fed up with the games and feel they are being patronized, bypass the administrator and go straight to the press.

      Another example.   Our district promotes multicultural education but the number of teachers, counselors, and administrators or color are few in spite of the growing diverse student population.  Making alliances with community organizations, such as the NAACP, can allow you to educate the public on school matters that are typically not communicated to the population.  For a couple of years, I was the education chair of the local NAACP and attempted to set up meetings between district officials and the parents/guardians to engage in a dialogue about standardized testing.  But, because my credibility was questioned, the superintendent did not respond to my invitation although I made it clear I was representing the NAACP.  I found it amazing that the superintendent actually thought he could get away with ignoring my invitations without people noticing his behavior which treated me as an invisible entity.

Anyway, after repeated efforts to get him to respond to me had failed, the president of our chapter called the superintendent personally and invited him to our meeting.  The response?  Sure, I will be there and so will the assistant superintendent for instruction.  Well, I am glad he showed up but you know, he ignored me during the meeting.  Quality leadership.  A guerrilla tactic that is effective in this type of scenario is simply to bring issues to the table where you have not been invited nor wanted by having community organizations force the agenda.  After all, they vote.

Our district has traditionally scored high on standardized test scores.  In fact, the officials regale in it.  A former assistant superintendent for instruction raised her fist in joy at a public meeting over her glee that the district Metropolitan Achievement Test scores were up.  Attack.  We arranged for the NAACP to present a request to the school board to disaggregate the test data.  This way, everyone will know how students of color and the kids who are on free or reduced lunch are actually scoring on these tests.  As expected, the standardized test score gap between schools with a large number of students of color and students living in near poverty and those schools whose student population largely represented upper middle class and the wealthy was growing.  How do you get the district to deal with this?  Attack the concept of standardized testing and what we know about the built in biases especially against students of color and the poor, sometimes both.

Well, school districts want accountability and they have thrown their hat into the testing ring.  We constantly hear this word, “accountability,” and unfortunately, teachers are bearing the brunt of the public outcry that we aren’t doing a very good job in educating kids. However, I have experienced that by being held accountable one strategy may be the temporary accommodating of your own teaching philosophy in order to subvert the dominant paradigm.  It is a guerrilla tactic.  For example, for years I refused to teach a class labeled differentiated or advanced placement.  Although, towards the end of my teaching in public school I did teach a Differentiated class because the students could earn dual credit at a local private university as well as the local community college. In my district the students who take those classes get weighted grades.  Instead of a 4.0 for an A, they get 5.0.  That makes a huge difference when applying for scholarships and entrance into highly selective universities.  Personally, I find this approach to grading elitist and separating.  There are students who only take these classes for the weighted grade not for the challenge.  I had a student who, as a Junior, took an A.P History class from another instructor and earned an A.  She then took my History class as a Senior for no credit the following year because, in her words, wanted to learn something other than memorizing the names of presidents and their wives. A daughter of a friend of mine took an A.P class in spite of her father’s pleading with her to take the regular class because that teacher was one who would make her think, practiced Socratic dialogue, and believed in social justice.  She didn’t follow through and although got her A in the A.P. class had, in her own admission, made a mistake because the teacher was inept.  She said that in her A.P. history class instruction was primarily lecture, taking notes, and filling out worksheets.  Tests were mainly multiple choice and short answer responses.  I witnessed my daughter go through high school and many of the classes she took that were labeled A.P. or Diff. were jokes.  Take notes, fill in blanks on worksheets, read a district approved text, and submit to a multiple choice test.  One teacher even went so far as to say that her class was preparing her students for college.  In part, this teacher is right.  Many first year college classes are auditoriums with a couple of hundred students taking lecture notes.  Therefore, the logic follows, at least in the mind of this one teacher that lecturing is a model for effective teaching in high school.  Let’s look at an alternative.