Parker, W. C. (2003). Teaching democracy: Unity and
diversity in public life. New York: Teachers College
Press
191pp.
$25.95 (paperback) $54.00 (hardcover)
ISBN 0-8077-4272-4
Reviewed by Kristen L. Buras
University of Wisconsin, Madison
January 14, 2005
In Teaching Democracy, Walter Parker (2003)
theorizes democratic citizenship and pedagogy. He attempts to
reappropriate the word idiot, originally "a term of
reproach in ancient Greece reserved for persons who paid no
attention to public affairs and engaged only in self interested
or private pursuits" (p. xv). Hoping that his book will
facilitate the struggle against present-day idiocy, Parker goes
on to explore what counts as enlightened and engaged citizenship
and what can be done—outside and inside of educational
institutions—to promote it.
Unfortunately, Parker's (2003) theory of political
enlightenment and engagement constitutes a classed, raced, and
gendered discourse on citizenship which fails to critically
incorporate the diversity he wants to argue is central to
collective life. Tensely related to his theory are a number of
concrete pedagogic proposals, largely rooted in the deliberative
tradition, for promoting democratic citizenship. Yet his effort
to make the case that diversity represents a deliberative asset
is weakened by insufficient attention to the ways unequal power
shapes dialogue and how teachers might specifically address
associated dilemmas.
In this review, I plan to examine these issues by closely
analyzing Parker's text, often in relation to alternative views
and evidence. Ultimately, I argue that the shortcomings of this
book challenge each of us to examine the forms of knowledge and
agency privileged and marginalized in our own "democratic"
visions and educational practices and to perpetually consider the
"constitutive outside," meaning those domains excluded or
rendered unthinkable by particular cultural constructions and
epistemologies (Butler, 1993).
The Idiot and the Citizen
Parker (2003) opens Teaching Democracy by defining
the idiot and citizen in opposition to one another. In addition
to describing the idiot as one who is "self-centered," Parker
also explains that such a person "does not know that
self-sufficiency is entirely dependent on the community" (pp.
2-3). Instead, "idiots are idiotic precisely because they are
indifferent to the conditions and contexts of their own
freedom" (italics in original; p. 4). In contrast, the
citizen assumes a more public identity and appreciates Martin
Luther King's proclamation that: "Injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network
of mutuality" (p. 8). While Parker's construction of idiots and
citizens may at first appear to shed light on the tensions
between radical individualism and the common good, the class,
raced, and gendered dimensions of his conceptualization soon
surface.
Providing an illustration of self-centered idiocy, Parker
(2003) references a study done by Edward Banfield in 1958
entitled The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Parker
reports:
Banfield found in southern Italy an impoverished village
that fairly could be described as . . .
idiotic. There were virtually no associations. There
was no organized action in the face of
striking . . . local problems, and these were felt
problems. Locals complained bitterly about
them but did nothing. There was no hospital, no
newspaper, only five grades of school, no
charities or welfare programs, no agricultural
organizations. . . . The only "association," so to
speak, was the nuclear family. (p. 5)
He continues, "Banfield concluded that the villagers'
inability to improve their common life was best explained by
their . . . unwillingness to conjoin—to associate and act
outside their families" (p. 6). This type of idiocy, Parker
explains, was termed "amoral familism" and its logic was
"maximize the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear
family" (Banfield in Parker, p. 6).
Labeled as "backward" by Banfield and as "idiotic" by
Parker (2003)—idiotic being a term Parker formally
wishes to reappropriate in a historically Greek sense (meaning
self-interested or private) while indirectly getting purchase out
of its contemporary usage (mentally deficient or
foolish)—the poor are depicted as fully responsible for
their life circumstances. Rather than partly contextualizing
this mode of operation as a response to either historical
circumstances (e.g., relations between the urban north and rural
south in Italy) or the immediate, daily struggle to survive
poverty, members of this Italian community are chastised for the
self and familial absorption that prevented them from
collectively mobilizing for improvement like "citizens" would
do. "To lead a non-idiotic life," Parker declares, "is to lead
the unavoidably connected and engaged life of the
citizen." "Citizens," he continues, have an "obligation
to create a public realm" (italics added; p. 11). Parker
warns:
The continual tug from the warm nests of family and ethnic
group of origin can cause any of us to lose sight of the
public square altogether. The tug is often strong for the new
immigrant. . . . for members of cultural minorities who after
generations still face oppression. . . . strongest, perhaps, for
members of the cultural majority—middle-class Whites in the
United States—whose ethnic nest has become broadly and
deeply institutionalized.
Despite this, he concludes, "Going back to the public square
again and again . . . this is the public work of the
public citizen" (italics added; p. 12).
Parker's (2003) opening discussion of idiocy and
citizenship reveals early on the classed, raced, and gendered
nature of his theory. In his use and discussion of Banfield's
work, Parker does not question the assumptions that influenced
this social scientist's interpretations nearly fifty years ago.
It is worth noting here that Banfield is considered by
neoconservatives to be a "victim" of leftist politics in the
1960s and 70s, along with Daniel Patrick Moynihan who issued a
widely known report that characterized "the Negro family" as
pathological, and Richard Herrnstein who more recently
co-authored The Bell Curve, a racist tome on genetics and
intelligence (see Gerson, 1997).
Equally disturbing, there is little acknowledgment by
Parker of the fact that access to specific kinds of economic,
cultural, and social capital (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986)—all
closely tied to class and other positions of privilege and
subordination—shape the propensity to mobilize like the
public citizen he idealizes. This, combined with Parker's
references to the "unavoidably engaged" citizen with
"obligations" to participate in the public sphere "again and
again," constitutes a discourse that latently assumes access to
particular resources and ironically casts those without such
access as second class, second class citizens. In a similar
fashion, while each ethnic group may have its own reasons for
"losing sight of the public square," all are equally
culpable—oppressed and privileged alike.
Perhaps a counter-illustration might serve to clarify my
critique. In the late 1980s, Fratney Street School in a racially
integrated, working class neighborhood in Milwaukee was scheduled
for demolition. Viewing the site as an ideal place for "an
educational program that capitalized on the unique features of
the neighborhood," an area parent reported: "We started to dream
about a school that would provide the highest quality education
to all of our children, black, white, and Hispanic." As a
result, community activists called for the Milwaukee School Board
to instead support the establishment of La Escuela Fratney, "a
whole language, two-way bilingual, multicultural,
site-based-managed school" (Peterson, 1995, p. 60). From the
beginning, Fratney was "committed to governance of the school by
the teachers and parents" (p. 73).
At the same time, "middle-class white parents clashed
with single mothers of African American or Latino heritage."
Based on specific assumptions about family, there was:
the tendency of some middle-class parents to judge a parent's
commitment to the school by the number of meetings the parent was
willing to attend. These parents became "meeting happy," wanting
to schedule frequent meetings at which they worked long hours.
The logistics and expense of child care were not even an issue in
their lives.
To militate against this problem, the school sought to ensure
that work was "done in smaller subcommittees at times and places
convenient to [such] parents." One parent group "meets monthly
for breakfast immediately after the school day begins, a time
that is convenient for many single mothers who drop off their
children (as long as other siblings are welcomed to attend)"
(Peterson, 1995, p. 75). To support greater involvement, the
school also created paid positions for Mexican American and
African American parents to work part-time as parent organizers.
In sum, this example reveals both the activism that relatively
poor communities often demonstrate despite the absence of
specific resources, while also acknowledging how particular forms
of class and race privilege enable some citizens to more easily
sustain "engagement" than others (see also Ball, 2003; Gandin
& Apple, 2003; Lynch & Lodge, 2002).
The struggles encountered by many single mothers in
relation to their involvement at La Escuela Fratney also render
problematic Parker's (2003) own critique of amoral familism.
From a gendered perspective, caring for one's family does not
necessarily represent an example of myopic withdrawal to a "warm
nest" away from the public sphere. Constructing engagement and
disengagement around simplified notions of private and public
ignores the fact that issues regarded as private often represent
public concerns (see Fraser, 1997). Assessments of political
engagement cannot be divorced from the feminization of poverty
and the many issues confronted by women as they perform the paid
and unpaid labor pertinent to the welfare of family. Oddly
enough, Parker references Nancy Fraser's (1997) discussion of the
false boundaries often drawn between privacy and publicity when
he later discusses the complexities of determining what qualifies
as a public issue worthy of analysis in classrooms (pp.
113-114). Yet he overlooks this feminist critique when
discussing amoral familism as a form of idiocy. On one too many
occasions, he issues unqualified statements such as "Idiocy means
not paying attention to the public household" (p. 8) or "The
public's problems are wider than the family's" (p. 39).
Democratic Enlightenment
These issues continue to haunt Parker's (2003) theory as
he moves on to discuss the defining characteristics of the
citizen. He writes, "A principal attribute of the non-idiotic
life, the life of the citizen, might be called enlightened
political engagement" (p. 33). Democratic enlightenment
"refers to the moral-cognitive knowledge" that shapes political
engagement (p. 34). Relevant here are the forms of knowledge
that signify enlightenment and how these position particular
groups as either enlightened or unenlightened (e.g., see Apple,
1993). Parker specifies: "Included are literacy, knowledge of
the ideals of democratic living, knowing which government
officials to contact about different issues, the commitment to
freedom and justice, the disposition to be tolerant of religious
and other cultural differences" (p. 34). Connecting democratic
enlightenment with literacy or contacting officials begins to
look like a class construction and is confirmed as one when
Parker declares:
Social class membership locates one in a web of circumstances
. . . closely linked with
citizenship knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes. The most
disadvantaged citizens socially and economically (in the United
States, women, African Americans, and the poor) are also "the
least informed, and thus least equipped to use the political
system to redress their grievances" (Delli, Carpini & Keeter
quoted in Parker). Affluent citizens, by contrast, are much more
likely to know officials and the rules of the game, and they use
both to their advantage. (p. 35)
There is no denying Parker's insight that dominant groups
mobilize various kinds of capital to their advantage, yet it is
dangerous to assume that the use of these resources is a sign of
enlightened citizenship. Dominant groups, whether defined by
affluence or educational level, are surely informed in particular
ways, but these understandings need not comprise the only
politically relevant or most central understandings. For Parker,
they largely do.
In fact, Parker (2003) emphasizes that political
scientists have found "again and again that years of schooling is
the chief predictive variable of citizenship knowledge" (p. 41).
He elaborates on this by discussing survey data (Nie, Junn, and
Stehlik-Barry in Parker). Examining the "consistent relationship
between school attendance" and "citizenship outcomes,"
researchers measured democratic enlightenment by responses to
prompts such as "Identify a constitutional guarantee dealing with
the Fifth Amendment," "Distinguish between democracy and
dictatorship," and "Give the meaning of 'civil liberties'" (p.
43). While the knowledge to respond to these questions is
undoubtedly important, these are highly specific formulations.
Is it appropriate to conclude that those unable to respond were
politically uninformed? What about other domains of politically
relevant knowledge? For example, might understanding how police
power is often brutally exercised in poor communities be
important? Parker's constrained definition of enlightenment and
his positioning of groups such as the poor as the "least
informed" have been and need to be challenged (Freire, 1993;
Ladson-Billings, 1994; Michie, 1999; Shor, 1992). Doing so does
not require romanticizing the perspectives of these groups (e.g.,
see Roediger, 1991) or denying the power associated with
particular forms of knowledge (Delpit, 1995), but it does mean
expanding what counts as political insight.
Democratic Engagement
In much the same way, Parker (2003) adopts a relatively
narrow view of political engagement, "the action or participatory
domain of citizenship." Indicators of engagement are "political
behaviors from voting or contacting public officials to
deliberating public problems, campaigning, and engaging in civil
disobedience, boycotts, strikes, rebellions, and other forms of
direct action" (p. 33). Again, the survey referenced by Parker
measured political engagement by assessing, for example,
"knowledge of current political leaders," "participation in
difficult political activities," and "frequency of voting" (p.
42). When political agency is primarily defined in relation to
behaviors associated with electoral or "organized" politics,
however, other significant—everyday—forms of action
do not count as engagement. To appreciate this point, it is
helpful to consider the research of historian Robin D. G. Kelley
on African American working class resistance in the Jim Crow
South. Kelley (1993) insists that "daily, unorganized, evasive,
seemingly spontaneous actions form an important yet neglected
part of African-American political history" (p. 76). Building on
the insights of political anthropologist James C. Scott and other
scholars of subaltern culture and history, Kelley agrees that
"despite appearances of consent, oppressed groups challenged
those in power by constructing a 'hidden transcript,' a dissident
political culture that manifests itself in daily conversations,
folklore, jokes, songs, and other cultural practices" (p. 77).
He explains:
I use the concept of infrapolitics to describe the daily
confrontations, evasive actions, and stifled thoughts that often
inform organized political movements. . . . By traditional
definition the question of what is political hinges on whether or
not groups are involved in elections, political parties,
grassroots social movements. . . . By shifting our focus to what
motivated disenfranchised black working people to struggle and
what strategies they developed, we may discover that their
participation in "mainstream" politics—including their
battle for the franchise—grew out of the very
circumstances, experiences, and memories that impelled many to
steal from an employer, to join a mutual benefit association, or
to spit in a bus driver's face. In other words, those actions
all reflect . . . larger political struggles. (pp. 77-78)
It is precisely the infrapolitical that gets excluded from
Parker's discussion of engagement, thus compromising what might
have been a fuller examination of political agency.
Although Parker (2003) does include the caveat that the
"characteristics of enlightened political engagement" covered by
the research on which he heavily relies "do not capture the full
range of desired citizenship outcomes," the issue of that which
was effectively discounted as political knowledge and action is
too significant to be dismissed. In this case, the question of
who qualifies as a citizen is at stake—a question
deeply tied to the diversity Parker seeks to incorporate into his
theory of democratic citizenship, but paradoxically ignores in
his construction of enlightenment and engagement.
Teaching Democratic Citizenship Outside of Schools
After building his theory, Parker (2003) develops a
program for what can be done both outside and inside schools to
promote the kind of enlightened political engagement that he
conceives as central to citizenship. Aside from reducing urban
poverty, which he correlates with idiocy, another non-school
recommendation that Parker makes pertains to participation in
"voluntary associations." These civic spaces, he stresses, are
not only "relatively safe places for their members; they are
relatively free spaces of unrepressed . . . criticism of
mainstream society. The democratic potential of voluntary
associations exerting themselves on mainstream norms and values
cannot be underestimated" (p. 39). While I agree that
participation in voluntary associations is important, Parker's
portrayal of such associations is problematic.
First, Parker's (2003) portrayal of associations as safe
spaces is naive to the degree that it only marginally references
the possibility that these publics may embody unequal relations
of power. It is true that the development of parallel
associations or institutions by oppressed groups has historically
offered a higher degree of safety (Glaude, 2000). But voluntary
associations are understood by Parker to be relatively free of
internal class, race, and gender tensions. Yet even civil rights
organizations of the 1960s—to provide an example—were
sometimes founded on a counterhegemonic racial politics and
simultaneously plagued by gender tensions. Within the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), women began to talk
"about the unequal ways in which they were treated by male
staffers." Activist Julian Bond recalls attending a retreat and
"hear[ing], through a thin wall, a group of SNCC women discussing
the possibility of a 'sex strike' to call attention to their
grievances" (Powledge, 1991, p. 602). In fact, concerns about
white leadership within organizations such as SNCC also generated
racial tensions. More attention, I contend, should have been
given by Parker to the internal dynamics of voluntary
associations, especially regarding the complex and often
contradictory nature of those dynamics.
Second, Parker's (2003) view of voluntary associations as
mechanisms for the critique of mainstream politics prohibits him
from developing a more complex discussion of both their
democratic and antidemocratic possibilities. Although Parker
does briefly note that "voluntary organizations can be bad for
democracy as well as good," pointing toward the Ku Klux Klan and
Nazi groups as examples, he pays insufficient attention to less
extreme voluntary associations affiliated with antidemocratic
agendas. Organizations to protect "the family" or "common
culture," for instance, often adopt popular language while
advocating exclusionary practices and policies (see Apple, 2001;
Buras, 1999). As such, it is necessary that any democratic
program that seeks to support a multiplicity of associations
"provide a basis for distinguishing democratic from
antidemocratic . . . claims" (Fraser, 1997, p. 182). In this
regard, I believe Parker's discussion of voluntary associations
would have been strengthened by greater nuance. He is not
unaware of power inequities and antidemocratic efforts, but he
consistently gives these short shrift while disproportionately
highlighting the positive outcomes of political
participation.
Inside Schools
These issues are also evident when Parker elaborates on
various in-school initiatives to promote enlightened political
engagement. In part, Parker makes a significant contribution by
elaborating on the merits of the deliberative tradition for
teaching democracy. A welcomed corrective to neoconservative
claims that diversity contributes to political dissolution
(Hirsch, 1996, 1992, 1987; Schlesinger, 1992), Parker argues that
diversity is a deliberative asset. "A plurality of social
perspectives is a social good . . . not a problem to be
overcome," he writes (italics in original, p. 95). Parker
initially acknowledges, "We are positioned in already-structured
fields of social class, race, gender, nationality, religion,
sexual orientation, first and second language," something which
gives each of us a "unique social perspective" (pp. 95-96).
Multiple perspectives, Parker points out, help to "enlarge each
participant's knowledge . . . beyond one's own social position
and experience" (p. 98). Furthermore, "the number of alternative
understandings of a problem we can entertain in attempting to
resolve it" depends on the existence of diverse viewpoints
(Melissa Williams in Parker, p. 98). Perhaps most important,
Parker contends that a range of views "increases the likelihood
that dominant norms and beliefs are subjected to observation and
critique" (p. 99).
After making the case that diversity is a democratic
asset, Parker, to his credit, elaborates at length on a number of
concrete models for organizing public policy deliberation in high
school classrooms as well as models for educating teachers to
lead both seminars and deliberations. Rather than rhetorically
calling for teaching democracy, he takes on the difficult task of
recommending and detailing specific pedagogic interventions.
Speaking to the concrete realities faced by teachers, Parker
(2003) writes, "It is not wise to recommend things that cannot be
done. That . . . is not being serious" (p. 103). But Parker is
serious, and this is why he spends the latter part of the book
methodically detailing several democratic educational
approaches.
Parker (2003) first addresses some of the difficulties
associated with listening across difference. "Each individual in
a deliberation needs to listen," he writes. "The greatest
difficulty here often arises for discussants who, relative to
other discussants, were thrown into privileged social positions"
(p. 88). In thinking about this difficulty, Parker references
the work of Uma Narayan who emphasizes that "insiders and
outsiders may often have very different understandings of what is
involved in a situation or issue" (Narayan in Parker, p. 89).
Parker further elaborates:
By "insiders" Narayan refers to members of historically
oppressed groups (e.g., the poor, gays and lesbians, women,
people of color); "outsiders" are non-members. Non-members do
not share the oppression. People are insiders and outsiders in
relation to specific forms of oppression. (p. 89)
Considering how individuals are differently positioned, Parker
questions, "Can an in-between be created across the gulf that
separates outsider and insider, privileged and oppressed?" (p.
91) Even more specifically, "Are there strategies that might
consciously be enacted to take us—any one of us, but
outsiders especially—farther than 'good will' can take us
and, therefore, make genuine deliberation, complete with
contention and disagreement, more achievable?" (p. 92)
Again citing Narayan, Parker (2003) calls for epistemic
privilege, methodological humility, and methodological caution,
each a strategy that "aims for honest and open deliberation
across difference" and "to surpass denial, invalidation, and
alternating monologues" (p. 92). In short, epistemic privilege
"means that insiders have better knowledge about the nature of
their oppression than outsiders." Though granting epistemic
privilege "does not absolve an outsider from critical listening
and responding," it does require "the outsider to exert effort to
absorb the details of the insider's understanding." Similarly,
methodological humility demands that an outsider "realize that .
. . [his] understanding is probably incomplete," while
methodological caution necessitates that one "engage carefully so
that [she is] not . . . dismissing the validity of the insider's
point of view" (p. 93).
Oddly, Parker does not appear to recognize the tense
relationship between his theory of enlightened political
engagement and his advocacy of epistemic privilege, humility, and
caution as pedagogic tools for classroom dialogue. It is
essential to recall that Parker earlier advanced the argument
that oppressed groups are generally the "least informed"
regarding core political knowledge. Despite the theory of
Parker-the-political-scientist, Parker-the-democratic-educator
wishes to center the viewpoints of oppressed groups and calls
upon those formerly positioned as enlightened to be humble and
cautious while asking that they accord epistemic privilege to
those formerly designated as unenlightened. In this regard,
there is a significant disconnect between Parker's theory of
democratic citizenship and the educational strategies that he
recommends.
Parker's (2003) discussion of the importance of
recognizing diverse forms of knowledge in
schools thus represents an advance. And in proposing
epistemic privilege, humility, and caution as useful strategies
to facilitate listening across difference, he offers teachers a
place to begin—a welcomed corrective to progressive but
ill-defined calls for incorporating diverse views into classroom
discourse. However, Parker does not adequately complicate the
pedagogic interventions he recommends for promoting enlightened
political engagement, especially with regard to dialogue under
conditions of unequal power.
Allow me to provide an illustration. Parker (2003)
details a promising approach for preparing preservice teachers to
plan and lead seminars—discussions which seek to "enlarge
understanding of the ideas, issues, and values in or prompted by
[a] text" (p. 131). He suggests that preservice teachers both
participate in an initial demonstrative seminar as well as plan
and lead their own microseminars during the semester. Parker
spends quite a bit of time reflecting on his own effort to
"select powerful texts that deal centrally with problems and
principles of democracy in a diverse society" and he includes
references to pieces by Alexis de Tocqueville, Toni Morrison,
Jane Addams, and others (p. 136).
Parker (2003) stresses that preparing to lead a seminar
involves a number of decisions, including: "How will power
differences among students be addressed? . . . How will the
seminar purpose be stated and communicated? What norms will be
posted (or proposed or elicited from the group)? What question
will open the seminar?" (p. 138) He chooses to emphasize the
importance of preservice teachers "preparing a poster" that
states the seminar's purpose as well as the norms that guide it,
such as "Don't raise hands," "Address one another, not the
discussion leader," and "Use the text to support opinions" (p.
138). Regarding the relationship of these norms to unequal power
and difference, however, Parker states only that "during the
debriefing that follows the seminar, the teacher can ask students
if they believe there was unequal expression or any domination
during the discussion, share his or her observations, and
forthrightly address problems" (p. 139).
Specifically how might teachers "forthrightly
address problems" related to unequal relations of power that
shape the way in which a seminar unfolds? On this question,
Parker is relatively quiet and decidedly less directive. Clearly
there is no simple approach that will enable teachers and
students to justly negotiate an unequal terrain, but deeper
exploration and more illustrations were
warranted—particularly when Parker's goal is to assist
educators in understanding the place of diversity in democratic
classrooms. As Fraser (1997) reminds us:
Unequally empowered social groups tend to develop unequally
valued cultural styles. The result is the development of
powerful informal pressures that marginalize the contributions of
members of subordinated groups . . . in official public spheres.
. . . One task for critical theorists is to render visible the
ways in which societal inequality infects formally inclusive
existing public spheres and taints discursive interaction within
them. (pp. 79-80)
Levinson (2003) articulates an associated concern about
dialogue—one related more to argumentative content than
mode of cultural expression—when calling attention to the
fact that a "minority group may put forth arguments within a
political debate that rest on premises about the world that are
generally accepted by . . . this group [due to their
experiences], but are rejected as bizarre or crazy by the
majority" (p. 28). Problems associated with challenging
privileged students to open their minds to unfamiliar
perspectives that violate deeply held worldviews are only
compounded by the complexities associated with inviting members
of oppressed groups to share their views in classrooms often
experienced as alienating and symbolically violent. Significant
here is Bernstein's (1977) argument that weakly framed pedagogies
(e.g., those that allow students' life experiences into the
classroom) are potentially democratizing at the same time that
they "encourage more of the pupil . . . to be made public," thus
ensuring that "more of the pupil is available for control" (p.
109).
Those who have attempted to invite discussion of
controversial issues among diverse groups of students know the
difficult and even volatile dynamics that can arise (Hess, 2002;
Hess & Posselt, 2002; Simon, 2001). As a former social
studies teacher who attempted to organize her eleventh grade
United States history course around multiple and competing
historical perspectives, I experienced firsthand the genuine
dilemmas and endless challenges of such a pedagogy (see also
Levine, Lowe, Peterson, & Tenorio, 1995). What does a
teacher do when relatively privileged students resist
consideration of alternative perspectives or articulate
opposition in nativist, racist, or homophobic terms? How might a
teacher respond when an "outsider" delegitimizes the narratives
shared by "insiders?" How, specifically, can a teacher structure
the educational experience so that epistemic privileging is more
likely? I suspect Parker could have detailed his own struggles
with the more difficult aspects of teaching democracy within a
context of unequal power relations. I wish that he had as
educators would have benefited from a more complicated and
textured discussion of dilemmas that arise.
What Teaching Democracy Might Teach Us
Parker's earnest effort to more clearly define the
knowledge and actions that characterize the enlightened, engaged
citizen invites reflection. It is important that we ask: Who is
this citizen? In answering this question, it becomes
clear that the "citizen" conceptualized in the first half of the
book (e.g., the voter who can speak on the 5th
Amendment) is not necessarily the "citizen" who is taught and
teaches democracy in the second half of the book (e.g., the
"insider" who shares viewpoints on oppression). Such "insiders,"
I would argue, are the constitutive outside—those whose
enlightenment and engagement are beyond the pale of Parker's
political science. That a scholar dedicated to furthering the
democratic project can falter in recognizing the partiality of
his view should serve to remind all of us that we are capable of
uncritically embracing selective constructions of knowledge.
What is important is that we continuously question what has been
privileged and what has been rendered peripheral within a given
epistemology, and the implications of this for building a
more or less democratic order.
Researching the "tough fronts" sometimes assumed by low
income, African American and Latino American males in urban
settings, L. Janelle Dance (2002) examines the lives of those who
are "hardcore," "hardcore wannabes," and "hardcore enough."
Though these young men all maintain a "gangsterlike" comportment,
she reveals how their association with urban street culture
ranges from "illicit" activities to the adoption of particular
"modes of dress, language, and claims of ruthlessness" for
purposes of peer respect, safe passage, and fashion. Despite
vilification as the "criminalblackman" (Katheryn Russell in
Dance), Dance reveals how each commands particular knowledge of
the streets—knowledge that many school teachers lack. In
short, these young men understand in deeply lived ways the
stresses and struggles of living in depressed neighborhoods and
the popular but racist imaginary imposed on them. That these
alleged "thugs" might meaningfully occupy the position of
student, or possess insights crucial to democratic citizenship,
is something generally eschewed by school
authorities—though the critiques of these youth carry
powerful messages about the state of education and nation. One
such young person explains:
At school they tell us to bring black history books, and we
never use them. We don't do any work in black history [in
school]. . . . They only talk about two or three black women,
Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth . . . and Rosa Parks. . . .
They [at school] act like they didn't know anything about any
black people. (p. 123)
Many teachers like the ones described above likely fit the
description of the enlightened citizen heralded by
Parker—meaning that they can detail the Bill of Rights and
vote in elections. But there are other kinds of citizens who
speak and act from the margins. They, too, can enlighten us and
teach us more than a thing or two about the precarious foundation
of the "democracy" in which we live.
References
Apple, M. W. (1993). Official knowledge: Democratic
education in a conservative age. New
York: Routledge.
Apple, M. W. (2001). Educating the "right" way: Markets,
standards, god, and inequality.
New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Ball, S. J. (2003). Class strategies and the education
market: The middle classes and social
advantage. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Bernstein, B. (1977). Class, codes, and control: Volume
3—Towards a theory of educational
transmissions. Boston: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of
the judgement of taste. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G.
Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory
and research for the sociology of education (pp.
241-258). Westport, CT: Greenwood
Publishing Group.
Buras, K. L. (1999). Questioning core assumptions: A
critical reading of and response to E. D.
Hirsch's The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have
Them. Harvard Educational
Review, 69 (1), 67-93.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive
limits of "sex." New York: Routledge.
Dance, L. J. (2002). Tough fronts: The impact of street
culture on schooling. New York:
RoutledgeFalmer.
Delpit, L. (1995). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the
classroom. New York: The
New Press.
Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus:
Critical reflections on the "postsocialist"
condition.
New York: Routledge.
Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New
York: Continuum.
Gandin, L. A., & Apple, M. W. (2003). Educating the
state, democratizing knowledge: The
citizen school project in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In M. W.
Apple et al., The state and the
politics of knowledge (pp. 193-219). New York:
Routledge.
Gerson, M. (1997). The neoconservative vision: From the
cold war to the culture wars. New
York: Madison Books.
Glaude, E. S., Jr. (2000). Exodus!: Religion, race, and
nation in early nineteenth-century Black
America. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Hess, D. (2002). Discussing controversial public issues in
secondary social studies classrooms:
Learning from skilled teachers. Theory and Research
in Social Education, 30 (1), 10-41.
Hess, D., & Posselt, J. (2002). How high school students
experience and learn from the
discussion of controversial public issues. Journal of
Curriculum and Supervision, 17 (4),
283-314.
Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every
American needs to know. New York:
Vintage Books.
Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (1992). Toward a centrist curriculum:
Two kinds of multiculturalism in
elementary education. Charlottesville, VA: Core
Knowledge Foundation.
Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (1996). The schools we need and why we
don't have them. New York:
Doubleday.
Kelley, R. D. G. (1993). "We are not what we seem":
Rethinking Black working-class
opposition in the Jim Crow South. The Journal of
American History, 80 (1), 75-112.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful
teachers of African American
students. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
Publishers.
Levine, D., Lowe, R., Peterson, P., & Tenorio, R.
(Eds.). (1995). Rethinking schools: An
agenda for change. New York: The New Press.
Levinson, M. (2003). Challenging deliberation. Theory
and Research in Education, 1 (1), 23-49.
Lynch, K., & Lodge, A. (2002). Equality and power in
schools: Redistribution, recognition,
and representation. New York:
RoutledgeFalmer.
Michie, G. (1999). Holler if you hear me: The education
of a teacher and his students. New
York: Teachers College Press.
Peterson, B. (1995). La Escuela Fratney: A journey toward
democracy. In M. W. Apple & J.
A. Beane (Eds.), Democratic schools (pp. 58-82).
Alexandria, VA: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Powledge, F. (1991). Free at last?: The civil rights
movement and the people who made it.
New York: HarperPerennial.
Roediger, D. R. (1991). The wages of whiteness: Race and
the making of the American
working class. New York: Verso.
Schlesinger, A. (1992). The disuniting of America:
Reflections on a multicultural society.
New York: W. W. Norton.
Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching
for social change. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Simon, K. G. (2001). Moral questions in the classroom:
How to get kids to think deeply about
real life and their schoolwork. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
About the Reviewer
Kristen L. Buras is a doctoral candidate and
Wisconsin-Spencer Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
She is interested in the cultural politics of curriculum and
reform. Her research on the Core Knowledge Movement has been
published in Harvard Educational Review (1999) and will
also appear in a book she is co-editing with Michael Apple
entitled The Subaltern Speak: Curriculum, Power, and
Educational Struggle (forthcoming, RoutledgeFalmer).
