Episode 3 Transcripts: Education Law
Hey Listeners, This is Blake Barber and you are listening to 5 minute Fridays. A podcast where I, a current doctoral student pursuing a degree in education policy talk about education for 5 minutes.
This week’s topics teachers and ideologies. But before we jump in I wanted to thank teachers and if you aren’t a teacher I need you to go find one and thank them. I have been in and out of classrooms this week, which in Memphis means I am sitting at home observing classes in Zoom and Microsoft Teams. In other schools across the nation teachers are going to school with masks and faceshields to ensure children receive an education in the safest way possible. The stress is high, the outcomes are uncertain but according to Dr. Derek Cabra there are around 60 million lessons are still happening. Thank a teacher. And bless them by continuing to listen to this podcast which is all about the profession of teaching and the ideologies that influence the profession .
The profession of teaching is the fascinating nexus individual beliefs, historic moments, policies, and ideologies. Each of these streams play a significant role in how teachers see themselves, their jobs, the communities they teach in, and the students the interact with…. Remember! thank a teacher… They work in a complicated field.
And I am not the only one to think this. Michael Apple, a leading thinker in what is called critical pedagogy wrote an essay called Consuming the Other: Whiteness, Education and French fries. In this eccentrically titled essay Michael Apple tells a story:
It is a story of relation. It begins with a human wanting french fries. Lots of French fries so many french fries the fast food restaurants has to by more potatoes. Lots of potatoes. So many potatoes that a large agriculture company needs to find land somewhere, and being a large company they are looking for tax incentives in exchange for lots of low paying jobs. The large Ag company ends up with fields in china. These fields are created and displace 1000s of people and because the govenrment gave a tax break the government does not have the revenue to help the displaced people find housing, medical care, and jobs. And in addition to those essential needs the displaced people also need a school, but the government doesn’t have money… because once again tax incentives. So in order to make it look like there isn’t that many displaced children without school the government makes a rule that children must be registered to show a need for school. The way they register is at hospital or govenrment, neither are available where people have been displaced to so in the end the children do not have school. The children do not have a school because of French Fries.
What is the point of this story it is to show that education is relational. History, systems, and ideologies will always influence education policy. One of those ideologies is Neoliberalism.
Ideology is just a word that means of group of ideas working together to try to explain the world. Neoliberalism is an ensemble of ideas that explain the world by promoting self-interest, emphasizing capital as king, and reducing the inefficient control of public government. Profit and growth are the key.
Neoliberalism became prominent in education policy in 1983 when the doom and gloom report of Nation a Risk stated that United States was no longer a dominant force in the world because it did not have the workforce it needed to compete against other nation. I want highlight the word compete. It was about competing in growth and profit making.
Since then education has been in relation with neoliberalism. And it has defined good policy in education as creating workforce that will increase profit for the nation.
I have many critiques of this ideology but I dont want to get into them this episode, what I want to highlight is many educators do not know that this ideology is the cornerstone of a lot of education policy and it is dictating what they see as bad or as good.
Many of you this last week responded to my question of how do you define good and bad and there were great answers of good and bad can be determined based on outcomes, others said their culture established what was good or bad, and others referred to religion as their compass. I am not here to critique any of the ideologies, but if good policy making is going to happen we must reflect on what we are in relation to and ask do I actually think this is good?
