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Toward an Activist Curriculum

by Nate Mickelson

The Death of Why? The Decline of Ques­tion­ing and the Future of Democ­racy by Andrea Batista Schlesinger. Berrett-Koehler (2009)

Awak­ened just in time to watch the 2008 pres­i­den­tial debates, a modern-day Rip Van Win­kle might have been for­given for think­ing he had seen some sort of par­o­dyrather than an elec­tion in motion, SNL rather than USA. Since they were noth­ing more than a sequence of scripted ques­tions and equally scripted non-answers, the debates added lit­tle to what we brought with us to vot­ing booths later that fall. But how­ever lit­tle infor­ma­tion we gained, many of us felt more firmly con­vinced of our pre­vi­ous choices as a result of hav­ing watched. We heard what we expected to hear based on what we thought we knew, and because what we heard con­formed to our expec­ta­tions, we took it as evi­dence that our prior views were cor­rect. Though we may not intend to, we pseudo-think in this cir­cu­lar way all the time because we have, or think we have, too lit­tle time to thor­oughly con­sider our positions.

But isn’t pub­lic edu­ca­tion sup­posed to train us to avoid this kind of think­ing and equip our chil­dren with the skills to stop this cycle? Andrea Batista Schlesinger, the author of The Death of Why? The Decline of Ques­tion­ing and the Future of Democ­racy is not con­vinced. In fact, Schlesinger seri­ously doubts that schools teach stu­dents how to ques­tion what they find in the world, and she doubts that the meal the media has made of pub­lic dis­course offers any oppor­tu­nity for devel­op­ing such crit­i­cal fac­ul­ties out­side the class­room. In her view, we have become an answer-centered com­mu­nity rather than a question-centered one in all respects, from what we value in edu­ca­tion, to what we read and watch online, to what we expect of our polit­i­cal lead­ers. Schlesinger has spent most of her life mak­ing change hap­pen on a local scale, and her first book reads more like a hand­book for train­ing pro­gres­sive activists than just another lament for the demise of Amer­i­can intel­lec­tual culture.

1.

In a moment not so dif­fer­ent from our own, John Dewey claimed that the role of edu­ca­tion in a democ­racy was to “give indi­vid­u­als a per­sonal inter­est in social rela­tion­ships and con­trol, and habits of mind which secure social changes with­out intro­duc­ing dis­or­der.” Schlesinger fol­lows Dewey in claim­ing this as the main objec­tive of pub­lic edu­ca­tion and defines Dewey’s “habits of mind” as the ask­ing of “thought­ful ques­tions” of those in power or those who would attain power. As she has in her work with the Drum Major Insti­tute for Pub­lic Pol­icy (DMI), she aims in The Death of Why? to offer oppo­si­tion to the cap­i­tal­ist hege­mony she sees as gov­ern­ing soci­ety by giv­ing voice to the con­cerns of those most harmed by cap­i­tal­ist processes. Though she does see direct con­se­quences — in the late 2008 col­lapse of the finan­cial sys­tem in par­tic­u­lar — Schlesinger seems most con­cerned with the indi­rect harms such processes per­pe­trate through 1) media and 2) pub­lic education.

Before turn­ing to pub­lic edu­ca­tion, the side of the equa­tion of harm to which Schlesinger devotes most of her atten­tion and through which, exclu­sively, she sees avenues for oppo­si­tion, a quick review of her account of Inter­net think­ing is in order. Pick­ing up from Nick Carr’s 2008 arti­cle “Is Google Mak­ing Us Stu­pid?,” Schlesinger argues that though we may be search­ing more and more and thus may seem to be ask­ing more and more ques­tions, our use of Google and other search engines actu­ally ingrains in us and in our chil­dren new habits of mind detri­men­tal to the ask­ing of ques­tions alto­gether. She describes watch­ing class­room after class­room full of stu­dents click­ing away, engag­ing infor­ma­tion hor­i­zon­tally rather than ver­ti­cally. Her com­plaint is not that today’s stu­dents lack curios­ity, it’s that in the breadth of their engage­ment, they never reach deeply enough into a given arti­cle or blog post to form a gen­uine under­stand­ing of what infor­ma­tion it presents. In the end, she con­cludes, young peo­ple nav­i­gate from place to place on the Inter­net, from search to search, ques­tion­ing and absorb­ing noth­ing, until they find some­thing with which they already have a demon­stra­ble affin­ity. In most cases, that some­thing has lit­tle to do with mak­ing the world, or our own coun­try, a bet­ter or more equi­table place.

She likens the graz­ing the young peo­ple do online to the vol­un­tary par­ti­san­ship of their par­ents’ television-viewing habits. In an insight­ful turn, Schlesinger crit­i­cizes view­ers for seek­ing and sup­port­ing enter­tain­ment as news in the first place rather than demo­niz­ing Fox News and other cable out­lets for pro­mot­ing a given polit­i­cal agenda while claim­ing to report “news.”

Cit­ing var­i­ous sur­veys by inter­ested and dis­in­ter­ested think tanks, she claims that a grow­ing major­ity of Amer­i­cans are choos­ing to lis­ten only to voices from which they know exactly what they will hear, and within that set, only to voices with which they already agree. Not only that, but she finds many are also begin­ning to locate — or actively relo­cate — them­selves, phys­i­cally, within com­mu­ni­ties of oth­ers who share their views.

To com­bat these prac­tices, Schlesinger requires her own stu­dents at the DMI Sum­mer Insti­tute to read and dis­cuss two daily news­pa­pers each morn­ing. She argues that doing so helps stu­dents under­stand not only “what is hap­pen­ing in the world” but also to start to ask ques­tions about “the role of the news [estab­lish­ment] in inter­pret­ing and shap­ing [world] events.” In her dis­cus­sion of her work at DMI and through­out her dis­cus­sion of con­tem­po­rary media, Schlesinger assigns great impor­tance to news­pa­pers. While her pref­er­ence for the news­pa­per method of learn­ing about the world might owe more to nos­tal­gia or habit than to any real ben­e­fits derived, the point she makes in pre­fer­ring news­pa­pers bears repeat­ing. When she reads her news­pa­per and when her stu­dents read theirs, she claims, each is con­fronted with an object that must be nav­i­gated phys­i­cally. It’s not a coin­ci­dence that Schlesinger opens these sum­mer read­ing ses­sions by teach­ing her stu­dents how to fold the news­pa­per for eas­i­est sub­way read­ing. Man­ag­ing the newspaper’s phys­i­cal form moves it from “out there” to “in here,” from the ignor­able noise of the out­side world to the closer sphere of that which much be considered.

2.

Formed in 1999 in Hamp­ton, Vir­ginia, a mid-size city near the Chesa­peake Bay, the Hamp­ton Youth Com­mis­sion pro­vides a means for high school-age stu­dents to influ­ence deci­sions taken by the city as a whole and to direct town funds to sup­port stu­dent projects. Com­prised of twenty-four stu­dent mem­bers and an adult direc­tor, Cindy Carl­son, the Youth Com­mis­sion works with the Hamp­ton City Coun­cil on issues that affect young peo­ple such as plans for a new voca­tional high school and teen cen­ter, and orga­nizes forums where stu­dents ques­tion can­di­dates for local office. Though it is not a school-based pro­gram, Schlesinger offers the Hamp­ton Youth Com­mis­sion as a model for the types of school expe­ri­ence she believes would bet­ter pre­pare today’s stu­dents for full par­tic­i­pa­tion in the processes of their democ­racy. She argues that, in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing hands-on expe­ri­ence, the com­mis­sion gives stu­dents, espe­cially under­priv­i­leged ones, the con­fi­dence they will need to seek change in the world they’ll soon inherit.

Schlesinger con­trasts the pro­duc­tive expe­ri­ences stu­dents gain through involve­ment with the Youth Com­mis­sion and sim­i­lar projects — includ­ing the work done in schools by New Jersey’s Cen­ter for Civic Respon­si­bil­ity, for exam­ple — with sta­tis­tics from recent nation­wide sur­veys of civics knowl­edge. In one 2006 sur­vey, only 28 per­cent of eighth grader’s could explain the his­tor­i­cal pur­pose of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, while in another, just four­teen per­cent affirmed that crim­i­nal defen­dants have the right to legal coun­sel. As Schlesinger explains, while these results are ter­ri­fy­ing enough in what they show about what our chil­dren don’t know, they are even more ter­ri­fy­ing in that they are trend­ing down­ward at the same time that most national politi­cians claim edu­ca­tion as a top pri­or­ity. This lat­ter point she reads as one result of the pri­va­tiz­ing of schools and school func­tions car­ried out under the aegis of the stricter account­abil­ity stan­dards of No Child Left Behind. While she rightly applauds the invest­ments made through No Child Left Behind, she offers noth­ing but crit­i­cism for the test­ing regimes and the unprece­dented degree of pri­vate sec­tor influ­ence the act has produced.

Schlesinger’s anger and crit­i­cisms on these two fronts join in her account of the rise of “finan­cial lit­er­acy edu­ca­tion.” Under the cover of ensur­ing that stu­dents leave high school with basic skills for man­ag­ing their own finances, she explains, America’s largest finan­cial insti­tu­tions, JPMor­gan Chase, Bank of Amer­ica, and Mer­rill Lynch, to name three, have invaded high school class­rooms across the coun­try giv­ing lessons about sav­ings accounts, secu­ri­ties, and other invest­ment tools that explic­itly pro­mote their own prod­ucts. Beyond voic­ing the obvi­ous con­cern that time spent dis­cussing the­o­ret­i­cal invest­ments with inter­ested advi­sors is not time spent prepar­ing crit­i­cal think­ing skills, Schlesinger argues that this kind of prepa­ra­tion mea­sur­ably harms the stu­dents it means to pre­pare because it feeds their already primed appetites for quick answers to prob­lems. In her view, the les­son these ses­sions teach is noth­ing more than “To buy more things, you need more money! Choose a JPMor­gan Chase CD — don’t worry what CD means, or how JPMor­gan Chase makes money using your money for their own pur­poses.” She argues that these pro­grams sim­ply install con­sumerist val­ues rather than engag­ing stu­dents in con­ver­sa­tions about the rel­a­tive value of dif­fer­ent forms of eco­nomic orga­ni­za­tion. The fact that the stu­dents she observed swal­low the finan­cial industry’s lessons unques­tion­ingly only height­ens the con­trast between the question-centered class­room Schlesinger demands and the answer-dominated ones we’ve created.

While she agrees that the Inter­net allows today’s stu­dents more oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with one another to resist this sort of indoc­tri­na­tion than ever before, Schlesinger views the cur­rent generation’s embrace of net­worked social life with skep­ti­cism. Com­par­ing web activism with the in-person vari­ety, she says:

Much has been said and writ­ten of late about the new ways that young peo­ple are express­ing their com­mit­ment to chang­ing the world: they are using the Inter­net, orga­niz­ing their friends through online social net­works, rais­ing money for causes through Face­book. How­ever, speak­ing as some­one who started as a stu­dent school board mem­ber and has advised two can­di­dates for mayor of New York, I know there is no sub­sti­tute for involve­ment in pol­i­tics at the local level. That is where we truly learn how to ask ques­tions of those in power, develop the habits of mind of engaged cit­i­zens, and assume the pos­ture of agents who have the power to make a dif­fer­ence — because we already have.

Her claims are cer­tainly accu­rate. There is no sub­sti­tute for expe­ri­ence, and in the con­vo­luted world of pol­icy and appro­pri­a­tions, even at the local level, past suc­cess is all but a require­ment for future suc­cess. How­ever much she doubts that the Inter­net will be the place where tomorrow’s pro­gres­sive activists cut their teeth, it seems equally unlikely that city coun­cil cham­bers will be the places they learn to ask ques­tions about the soci­ety they inhabit. Before they step out polit­i­cally, stu­dents should learn to think out, as it were, in their own minds. They need to ask “why?” as they learn, not just when they are directed to by teacher-activists inter­ested in their mobilization.

3.

To say that I share Schlesinger’s dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the shal­low­ness of polit­i­cal dis­course, on the one hand, and the over­whelm­ing empha­sis on test-based ped­a­gogy, on the other, would be a vast under­state­ment. Indeed, to say we should all be ter­ri­fied of the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ries in both these realms and what they might mean for the next generation’s Amer­i­can democ­racy prob­a­bly doesn’t over­state the case by much.

Given that more and more of us tend to value quick answers over long inquiry, the inter­ven­tion that Schlesinger attempts is more than wel­come. How­ever, while she claims to offer both an assess­ment of and solu­tion to this decline in the ask­ing of “why?” at its source, she focuses most of her efforts on cre­at­ing schools that will serve as seedbeds for activism rather than as places where inquiry-filled lives or learn­ing might begin. She argues for schools as agents for encour­ag­ing direct polit­i­cal engage­ment among mid­dle and high school stu­dents rather than advo­cat­ing for teach­ing meth­ods that fos­ter broad con­sid­er­a­tion
of ideas.

While there may be merit to encour­ag­ing stu­dents to involve them­selves in move­ments for social change, Schlesinger pushes too hard. The proto-progressives and vet­eran teacher-activists she cel­e­brates in Hamp­ton might have found suc­cess in steer­ing plans for a new voca­tional high school, but she offers no evi­dence that these stu­dents have learned any les­son but ones about the mechan­ics of local gov­ern­ment and the col­lec­tive power of stu­dents in such an arena. These are valu­able lessons, but they do not pro­mote the ask­ing of ques­tions as ques­tions Schlesinger seems to value, and they do not assure the future of Amer­i­can democ­racy. Schlesinger is so focused on mak­ing change now that she con­fuses sub­ject mat­ter with method.

In his dis­cus­sion of the proper sub­jects for school instruc­tion, Dewey warns that, regard­less of the sub­ject, there is a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence in what that sub­ject means to the edu­ca­tor and to the stu­dent. Rather than teach­ing “sub­ject mat­ter in itself,” Dewey argues, the bet­ter edu­ca­tor will teach a given sub­ject matter’s “inter­ac­tion with [her] pupil’s present needs and capacities.”

In a way, Dewey seems to call for exactly what Schlesinger calls for. What could be more rel­e­vant to the Hamp­ton stu­dents’ needs and capac­i­ties than the con­struc­tion of a new voca­tional high school? But how­ever much Dewey wants ped­a­gogy to depart from rote instruc­tion and insu­lar­ity, he stops short of call­ing for direct polit­i­cal engage­ment, and for good rea­son. The real sub­ject mat­ter in Schlesinger’s Hamp­ton exam­ple is not a voca­tional high school and it’s not even social change or pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics. Rather, it’s local gov­ern­ment in oper­a­tion, the work of pro­fes­sion­als who have been trained for, or at least elected to, their posi­tions and who are bur­dened with main­tain­ing the inter­ests and ful­fill­ing the needs of a pop­u­la­tion much larger than those who roam the halls of Hampton’s high schools.

Hampton’s teacher-activists, and Schlesinger her­self, are trained polit­i­cal actors. They are experts in the sub­ject mat­ter of gov­ern­ment in oper­a­tion. Their senses of duty to the under­served should be admired, but their call for stu­dent par­tic­i­pa­tion in local gov­ern­ment misses the mark. In call­ing for such par­tic­i­pa­tion as the ideal form of edu­ca­tion under democ­racy, they con­fuse some­thing that affects their stu­dents’ lives with some­thing that per­tains to their “needs and capac­i­ties,” in Dewey’s terms. Not even Schlesinger’s stu­dents at the Drum Major Insti­tute, col­lege stu­dents who have cho­sen to spend part of their sum­mers learn­ing to be bet­ter and more pro­gres­sive cit­i­zens, qual­ify as experts in the sub­ject of gov­ern­ment in oper­a­tion. Like the Hamp­ton stu­dents — and, I would argue, like Schlesinger when she sat on the New York City school board — they don’t know enough, or care to know enough, about the broader con­text of the poli­cies they are encour­aged to sup­port or that they choose to sup­port of their own voli­tion. They are not experts; they are learn­ers. They should be encour­aged, as Schlesinger encour­ages stu­dents in her DMI sum­mer ses­sions, to observe actively, but they should not be tasked with doing the work of experts.

To the degree that Schlesinger calls for more crit­i­cal think­ing on the part of all cit­i­zens as they inter­act with infor­ma­tion they find on the inter­net, more crit­i­cism of pri­vate cor­po­rate influ­ence on edu­ca­tion, and more of actual debate in the media cir­cus that serves as our pol­i­tics, she suc­ceeds and should be heeded. To the degree that she claims to pro­vide a tem­plate for improv­ing our sys­tem of edu­ca­tion, and thereby, a tem­plate for return­ing “why?” to the cen­ter of pub­lic dis­course, she will need to sup­ple­ment her work here with less of the real world and more of the classroom.

There’s no doubt that Schlesinger has and will con­tinue to change our democ­racy for the bet­ter. And so will her stu­dents, but not because she teaches them activism. Rather, pro­vided that she teaches with the same pas­sion that comes through this book, her stu­dents will surely engage what­ever they find in their stud­ies and their lives because they learned with a model learner, with some­one who val­ues their ideas as the begin­nings of crit­i­cal think­ing rather than as kin­dling that might flame into the fire of
pro­gres­sive politics.

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Posted by Nate Mickelson on Oct 20th, 2009 and filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

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