Eric Schlosser. (2001). Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Reviewed by Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Eric Schlosser. (2001). Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Houghton Mifflin. 356pp. $25              ISBN 0395977894 Reviewed by Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison March 25, 2001 Understanding Relations         During the decade of the 1970s, critical scholarship on schooling was strongly influenced by perspectives that saw schools and other cultural institutions as simply mirror images of economic forces. This spawned a serious debate about whether cultural content, form, and processes had a degree of “relative autonomy.” This debate ultimately prefigured a good deal of the emphasis on specificity, non-determinativeness, the processes of cultural production and consumption, and similar themes that are found in material in cultural studies, postmodernisms and poststructuralisms, and neo-Gramscian analyses. Yet it also led to something else—a lamentable tendency towards over-theorization. So much time has been spent on the articulation and then rearticulation, and then re-rearticulation, of “new” theories, that the empirical realities of schools, curricula, teaching, children, and the connections between all this and the larger society sometimes get lost. Finally, it has unfortunately led many people to either ignore economic realities and class relations or to treat them as simply “textual,” as linguistic constructions that have little empirical basis. If this wasn't so dangerous, it would be nearly laughable.         Of course, it is absolutely crucial that we articulate new theoretical perspectives. But they become all too arid unless they are applied to those areas that are of pressing concern to education and the cultural, economic, and political tensions and conflicts in which it participates. Further, we need models of doing this that incorporate such theories, but that also do the work that demonstrates how we might actually apply theories from, say, cultural studies to these concerns. (A fine example of this is the analysis of the history, economics, and use of the Sony Walkman found in the book, Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman [Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, and Negus, 1997]). Yet, even without such overtly theorized studies, at the very least we need analyses that show in rich historical and empirical detail how the economy, the state, and cultural forms interact in all their richness and complexity—and that illuminate the effects of these interactions on educational matters. Enter Eric Schlosser.         Occasionally books are written that are so compelling that they demand to be read by large numbers of people no matter what their disciplinary affiliations. Even more rarely, some of these books are written in such a way that their concerns cut across political tendencies and across the divide that separates “popular” from “academic” books. Fast Food Nation is one of those rare books. It is a form of critical journalism in the tradition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It speaks to the growth of fast food culture that now permeates a large portion of our daily lives, to our eating habits inside and outside of our homes and schools, and to the construction of desires among our children (and ourselves). This is what might be called its cultural agenda. But like all good cultural analysis (or at least what good cultural analysis should do if it is not disconnected from the material realities and inequalities that pervade our society), it connects these cultural forms to the hidden lives of the workers and labor processes that produce fast food commodities, to the manipulative ways the products are marketed, to the health costs their consumption creates, and to the environmental destructiveness that accompanies all this. And it then offers some suggestions for interrupting the forces that are creating these negative effects. This is an immensely ambitious agenda. But, to a considerable extent, Schlosser pulls it off.         In academic terms, Schlosser engages in what is called “relational analysis.” That is, any activity or object is known by its connections to other activities or objects. In critical social and cultural accounts, however, the task is to examine these activities and objects in relation to their hidden but real ties to the reproduction or subversion of relations of dominance and subordination. Within the tradition of critical educational studies, there is now a long and valued history of such analyses. Perhaps an example of thinking relationally in our daily lives would be helpful here.         In preparation for writing this essay, I walk into my office, turn on the lights, turn on my computer, get into my preferred word-processing program, and begin to type. We can interpret this as a set of simple physical acts. Michael Apple goes to his office, turns on the lights, and then turns on his computer. The lights and the computer go on—and that is the end of the story. But is that the end of the story? Yes, the lights and the computer came on. But hidden behind my actions are sets of relations that connect me deeply to this economy, whether I am aware of it or not. Since Madison, Wisconsin burns coal to produce most of its electricity, I have just had an anonymous—but no less real—relationship with the miners who dug the coal, many of whom work in dangerous and exploitative conditions, are badly injured, suffer from serious health problems, and whose jobs are now under threat. Thus, even such simple things such as turning on lights and computers link me in powerful ways to the manner in which this society organizes paid work, deals with the people who have and do not have such work, engages in environmental politics, and so on. If the topic of this story was not lights and computers but hamburgers and french fries, then this approach is exactly what one would find in Fast Food Nation.         The topic of fast food, the hidden relations that underpin it, and what this means for education is something on which I've written before. In Cultural Politics and Education (Apple, 1996), for instance, I use the example of our love of “cheap french fries” to critically examine the connections between the globalizing tendencies of international capital, the foods we consume, and the presence or absence of educational possibilities in a number of nations. Begging the reader's indulgence, I wish to include a portion of that section of the book in this review, since I think that it speaks directly to the relations that Schlosser uncovers so well. Education and Cheap French Fries         The sun glared off of the hood of the small car as we made our way along the two lane road. The heat and humidity made me wonder if I'd have any liquid left in my body at the end of the trip and led me to appreciate Wisconsin winters a bit more than one might expect. The idea of winter seemed more than a little remote in this Asian country for which I have a good deal of fondness. But the topic at hand was not the weather; rather, it was the struggles of educators and social activists to build an education that was considerably more democratic than what was in place in that country now. This was a dangerous topic. Discussing it in philosophical and formalistically academic terms was tolerated there. Openly calling for it and situating it within a serious analysis of the economic, political, and military power structures that now exerted control over so much of this nation's daily life was another matter.         As we traveled along that rural road in the midst of one of the best conversations I had engaged in about the possibilities of educational transformations and the realities of the oppressive conditions so many people were facing in that land, my gaze somehow was drawn to the side of the road. In one of those nearly accidental happenings that clarify and crystallize what reality is really like, my gaze fell upon a seemingly inconsequential object. At regular intervals, there were small signs planted in the dirt a few yards from where the road met the fields. The sign was more than a little familiar. It bore the insignia of one of the most famous fast food restaurants in the United States. We drove for miles past seemingly deserted fields along a flat hot plain, passing sign after sign, each a replica of the previous one, each less than a foot high. These were not billboards. Such things hardly existed in this poor rural region. Rather, they looked exactly—exactly—like the small signs one finds next to farms in the American mid-west that signify the kinds of seed corn that each farmer had planted in her or his fields. This was a good guess it turned out.         I asked the driver—a close friend and former student of mine who had returned to this country to work for the social and educational reforms that were so necessary—what turned out to be a naive but ultimately crucial question in my own education. "Why are those signs for **** there? Is there a ***** restaurant nearby?" My friend looked at me in amazement. "Michael, don't you know what these signs signify? (Note 1) There's no western restaurants within fifty miles of where we are. These signs represent exactly what is wrong with education in this nation. Listen to this." And I listened.         The story is one that has left an indelible mark on me, for it condenses in one powerful set of historical experiences the connections between our struggles as educators and activists in so many countries and the ways differential power works in ordinary life. I cannot match the tensions and passions in my friend's voice as this story was told; nor can I convey exactly the almost eerie feelings one gets when looking at that vast, sometimes beautiful, sometimes scarred, and increasingly depopulated plain.         Yet the story is crucial to hear. Listen to this.         The government of the nation has decided that the importation of foreign capital is critical to its own survival. Bringing in American, German, British, Japanese, and other investors and factories will ostensibly create jobs, will create capital for investment, and will enable the nation to speed into the 21st. century. (This is of course elite group talk, but let us assume that all of this is indeed truly believed by dominant groups.) One of the ways the military- dominated government has planned to do this is to focus part of its recruitment efforts on agri-business. In pursuit of this aim, it has offered vast tracts of land to international agri-business concerns at very low cost. Of particular importance to the plain we are driving through is the fact that much of this land has been given over to a supplier for a large American fast food restaurant corporation for the growing of potatoes for the restaurant's french fries, one the trademarks of its extensive success throughout the world.         The corporation was eager to jump at the opportunity to shift a good deal of its potato production from the US to Asia. Since many of the farm workers in the United States were now unionized and were (correctly) asking for a liveable wage, and since the government of that Asian nation officially frowned on unions of any kind, the cost of growing potatoes would be lower. Further, the land on that plain was perfect for the use of newly developed technology to plant and harvest the crop with considerably fewer workers. Machines would replace living human beings. Finally, the government was much less concerned about environmental regulations. All in all, this was a fine bargain for capital.         Of course, people lived on some of this land and farmed it for their own food and to sell what might be left over after their own—relatively minimal—needs were met. This deterred neither agri-business nor the government. After all, people could be moved to make way for "progress." And after all, the villagers along that plain did not actually have deeds to the land. (They had lived there for perhaps hundreds of years, well before the invention of banks, and mortgages, and deeds—no paper, no ownership). It would not be too hard to move the people off of the plain to other areas to "free" it for intensive potato production and to "create jobs" by taking away the livelihood of thousands upon thousands of small scale farmers in the region.         I listened with rapt attention as the rest of the story unfolded and as we passed by the fields with their miniature corporate signs and the abandoned villages. The people whose land had been taken for so little moved, of course. As in so many other similar places throughout what dominant groups call the Third World, they trekked to the city. They took their meager possessions and moved into the ever expanding slums within and surrounding the one place that held out some hope of finding enough paid work (if everyone—including children—labored) so that they could survive.         The government and major segments of the business elite officially discouraged this, sometimes by hiring thugs to burn the shanty towns, other times by keeping conditions so horrible that no one would "want" to live there. But still the dispossessed came, by the tens of thousands. Poor people are not irrational, after all. The loss of arable land had to be compensated for somehow and if it took cramming into places that were deadly at times, well what were the other choices? There were factories being built in and around the cities which paid incredibly low wages—sometimes less than enough money to buy sufficient food to replace the calories expended by workers in the production process—but at least there might be paid work if one was lucky.         So the giant machines harvested the potatoes and the people poured into the cities and international capital was happy. It's not a nice story, but what does it have to do with education? My friend continued my education.         The military dominated government had given all of these large international businesses twenty years of tax breaks to sweeten the conditions for their coming to that country. Thus, there was now very little money to supply the health care facilities, housing, running water, electricity, sewage disposal, and schools for the thousands upon thousands of people who had sought their future in or had literally been driven into the city. The mechanism for not building these necessities was quite clever. Take the lack of any formal educational institutions as a case in point. In order for the government to build schools it had to be shown that there was a "legitimate" need for such expenditure. Statistics had to be produced in a form that was officially accepted. This could only be done through the official determination of numbers of registered births. Yet, the very process of official registration made it impossible for thousands of children to be recognized as actually existing.         In order to register for school, a parent had to register the birth of the child at the local hospital or government office—few of which existed in these slum areas. And even if you could somehow find such an office, the government officially discouraged people who had originally come from outside the region of the city from moving there. It often refused to recognize the legitimacy of the move as a way of keeping displaced farmers from coming into the urban areas and thereby increasing the population. Births from people who had no "legitimate" right to be there did not count as births at all. It is a brilliant strategy in which the state creates categories of legitimacy that define social problems in quite interesting ways (Fraser, 1989; Curtis, 1992). Foucault would have been proud, I am certain.         Thus, there are no schools, no teachers, no hospitals, no infrastructure. The root causes of this situation rest not in the immediate situation. They can only be illuminated if we focus on the chain of capital formation internationally and nationally, on the contradictory needs of the state, on the class relations and the relations between country and city that organize and disorganize that country.         My friend and I had been driving for quite a while now. I had forgotten about the heat. The ending sentence of the story pulled no punches. It was said slowly and quietly, said in a way that made it even more compelling. "Michael, these fields are the reason there's no schools in my city. There's no schools because so many folks like cheap french fries."         I tell this story about the story told to me for a number of reasons. First, it is simply one of the most powerful ways I know of reminding myself and all of us of the utter importance of seeing schooling relationally, of seeing it as connected—fundamentally—to the relations of domination and exploitation (and to struggles against them) of the larger society. Second, and equally as importantly, I tell this story to make a crucial theoretical and political point. Relations of power are indeed complex and we do need to take very seriously the postmodern focus on the local and on the multiplicity of the forms of struggle that need to be engaged in. It is important as well to recognize the changes that are occurring in many societies and to see the complexity of the "power/knowledge" nexus. Yet in our attempts to avoid the dangers that accompanied some aspects of previous "grand narratives," let us not act as if capitalism has somehow disappeared. Let us not act as if class relations don't count. Let us not act as if all of the things we learned about how the world might be understood politically have been somehow overthrown because our theories are now more complex. The World of the Hamburger         In a exceedingly clear and un-mystified way, Schlosser demonstrates all of this. He brings the social relations that stand behind the empty versant plain of my story back home, forcing us to pay attention to what is happening in our own backyard. By taking us through the entire circuit of production of fast food such as hamburgers and french fries—from the processes behind the creation of these commodities from farms, ranches, and meat packing plants, to their selling and circulation, and then to their consumption in ubiquitous fast food restaurants (and now even more in our schools)—he is able to show us what the hidden relations actually are and what their real and determinate effects also are on our health, on the environment, on children's lives, on schooling, and on the workers who do the unseen labor to produce and sell these things.         The ultimate effects of his well-written and compelling description of the lives and effects behind our fast food culture can often be devastating. His discussion of how this culture is now permeating school lunches—often in ways that are dangerous not only to the immediate but also long term health of our children—should make any thoughtful educator be just as concerned with the food we serve in schools as with the knowledge that is served up as well. His summary of what is happening is short but eloquent. “There's shit in your food.”         But the effects of his descriptions on the reader are nothing compared to the real and material effects of our ever increasing demand for fast food on the workers in the meat packing industry. There the labor—often done by Latinos/as specifically brought in to work in these “factories”—is constantly being intensified. Workers labor under grim and very dangerous conditions, ones all too reminiscent of the “satanic mills” Marx described in his justly famous accounts of “primitive capitalism.” Nor are they anything like what happens to workers in, say, Macdonalds who wish to unionize, only to find that the notoriously anti-union company closes that franchise and opens a new one down the block which refuses to hire the former workers who sought a union for protection against their truly awful working condition and salaries. Nor finally is it anything like what happens to independent farmers and ranchers who find themselves caught between the muscle of multinational food processing giants and their own wish to be autonomous and to make a decent living that is also respectful of their land. Here, rural America, like the rural area I described in my own vignette earlier, becomes simply one more site for profit making, no matter what the social cost.         The story isn't pretty, but then much of this nation isn't pretty either if you reposition yourself to look at it from the bottom rather than the middle or the top. Yet, Schlosser also tells a different story, one with rich American themes. The biographies of the entrepreneurs who began fast food chains is also the story of working class men (they were almost all men) who had dropped out of school early on and who, through hard work and a good deal of luck, became wealthy. Horatio Alger meets modern mass production techniques. Indeed, one of the more fascinating parts of the book is the ways in which Taylorized forms of production and labor control (ones, by the way, that also led to the creation of our dominant models of curriculum development and to the introduction of behavioral objectives in schools [see, e.g., Kliebard, 1995; Apple 1990]) were introduced into food production in restaurants and became the signature of fast food marketing.         Schlosser also shows that the ultimate goal of most fast food companies is to create a process in which workers have absolutely no discretion whatsoever and need only the very limited skills required to load the machinery that will do nearly all of the actual cooking and serving. The fact that fast food restaurants now employ a huge number of workers—in many ways the industry has become the largest private employer in the United States and in nations such as Brazil—has important implications for our educational system. We are repeatedly told by neo-liberals that we must make closer connections between our school systems and the (paid) economy. But if the paid labor market is increasingly structured around “Mac- jobs” with their low-wage, part time, non-unionized, de-skilled labor—as much of it is—what kind of future are we preparing our children for? The world that neo-liberal school critiques live in, one in which the private sector is always better than the public sector and the common good and social justice will have to look out for themselves, looks more and more like what Schlosser describes (Apple, 2001). It amazes me that we can listen to their unabashed boosterism of the benefits of the unregulated “free” market without wondering what world they live in. Certainly, after reading Fast Food Nation it will be harder to listen to their claims without raising some serious questions about who benefits from the ways this society is currently organized. Interrupting Fast Food Culture         At the beginning of this essay, I noted that Fast Food Nation is also interested in raising challenges to the ways fast food is consumed, how it regulates our desires, and how it impacts on our lives and those of our children. Schlosser's suggestions for interrupting these things are useful but rather limited. His major—and justifiable—suggestion is for us simply to “just say no.” Don't buy the things that fast food now markets in our schools and restaurants. Certainly, boycotts have proven to be effective, in communities and in schools and universities (see, e.g., Zarni and Apple, 2000). However, leaving it up to the individual parent, student, or school seems rather too weak to me. How might one actually begin to strategically organize such a movement? There are lessons to be learned from previous actions among individuals and groups here. As I show elsewhere, sometimes these movements can actually cut across ideological boundaries, as in the left and right coalitions to challenge Channel One in schools that are currently growing nationally (Apple, 2001).         Further, there are many instances across the nation of students themselves mobilizing against what they see as destructive environmental and economic policies and against racist, sexist, and homophobic policies and practices. Can we build on these tendencies? Do they provide elements that can help us think more cogently about interrupting dominant economic, political, and cultural forms? Schlosser is not aware of these movements. It would have strengthened his analysis and proposals for action if he had included them. It certainly would have provided more reason to be hopeful.         Of course, asking Schlosser to do all of the heavy lifting of telling us how to organize against the cultural and economic forms that have led us to a nation that accepts “shit” in our food is a bit unfair. It takes us off the hook. Just as my friend and student did for me during my trip to that Asian nation, Schlosser has given us some powerful pictures of the relations we have with forces that act in hidden ways. It's now our task to take the realities he's helped to uncover and to popularize and to do something about them. I for one haven't eaten “shitty” food for many years and am involved in national and international movements that challenge its dominance. What will you do? Note I have been asked by my colleagues there to keep the names of the nation and the restaurant chain anonymous because of their fear of retribution by powerful forces there. References Apple, M.W. (1990). Ideology and curriculum, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Apple, M.W. (1996). Cultural politics and education. New York: Teachers College Press. Apple, M.W. (2001). Educating the "right" Way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality. New York: Routledge. Curtis, B. (1992). True government by choice men? Toronto: University of Toronto Press. du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H, and Negus, K. (1997). Doing cultural studies: The story of the Sony Walkman. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Fraser, N. (1989). Unruly practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kliebard, H. (1995). The struggle for the American curriculum, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Zarni and Apple, M.W. (2000). Conquering goliath: The Free Burma Coalition takes down Pepsico. Campus, inc., G. White (Ed.). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, pp.280-290. About the Reviewer Michael W. Apple John Bascom Professor of Curriculum & Instruction and       Educational Policy Studies University of Wisconsin-Madison 225 N. Mills Street Madison, Wisconsin 53706 Michael W. Apple is John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A former elementary and secondary school teacher and past president of a teachers union, he has worked with governments, dissident groups, unions, and educators in many countries to democratize educational research, policy, and practice. He has written extensively on the relationship between education and power.

Chomsky, Noam. (2000). Chomsky on MisEducation, (Edited and introduced by Donaldo Macedo). Reviewed by Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Chomsky, Noam. (2000). Chomsky on MisEducation, (Edited and introduced by Donaldo Macedo). New York: Rowan and Littlefield. 208 pp. $19.95          ISBN: 0742501299 Reviewed by Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison March 9, 2001         Education is too often thought of as simply the delivery of neutral knowledge to students. In this discourse, the fundamental role of schooling is to fill students with the knowledge that is necessary to compete nationally and internationally in today's rapidly changing world. To this is often added an additional caveat: Do it as cost-effectively and as efficiently as possible. The ultimate arbiter of whether we have been successful at this is students' mean gains on achievement tests. A neutral curriculum is linked to a neutral system of accountability which in turn is linked to a system of school finance. Supposedly, when it works well, these linkages guarantee rewards for merit. "Good" students will learn "good" knowledge and will get "good" jobs.         This construction of good schooling, good management, and good results suffers from more than a few defects. Its foundational claims about neutral knowledge are simply wrong. If we have learned anything from the intense and continuing conflicts over what and whose knowledge should be declared "official" that have raged throughout the history of the curriculum in so many nations, it should have been one lesson. There is an intricate set of connections between knowledge and power. (Note 1) Questions of whose knowledge, who chooses, how this is justified–these are constitutive issues, not "add-ons" that have the status of afterthoughts. This construction of good education not only marginalizes the politics of knowledge, but it offers little agency to students, teachers, and community members. In some ways, it represents what Ball has characterized as "the curriculum of the dead." (Note 2)         Further, it is unfortunate but true that most of our existing models of education tend to ratify or at least not actively interrupt many of the inequalities that so deeply characterize this society. Much of this has to do with the relations between schooling and the economy, with gender, class, and race divisions in the larger society, with the intricate politics of popular culture, and with the ways we finance and support (or don't) education. (Note 3) The connections between schooling and good jobs are weakened even more when we closely examine what the paid labor market actually looks like. Rosy statistics of stock market gains and wealth creation cover the fact that in the really existing economy, all too many jobs require low levels of skills and low levels of formal education. There is a decided mismatch between the promises of schooling and actual job creation in our supposedly glorious free market economy, a mismatch that is distinctly related to the exacerbation of race, gender, and class divisions in this society. (Note 4)         Of course, there are those who see a much different connection between the market and education, one that is much more positive. For them, markets may offer hope for children, but even more so for the entrepreneurs who invest in marketized schooling. In their minds, the $700 billion education sector in the United States is ripe for transformation. It is seen as the "next health care"—that is, as a sphere that can be mined for huge profits. The goal is to transform large portions of publicly controlled non-profit educational institutions into a "consolidated, professionally managed, money-making set of businesses that include all levels of education." (Note 5) Even though comparatively little money is being made now, for-profit companies are establishing law schools, creating and/or managing elementary, middle, and secondary schools, engaging in education on factory floors and in businesses. Billions of dollars from corporations, investment funds, and even your pension funds (if you are lucky enough to have one) are pouring into for-profit educational ventures. In essence, in the words of Arthur Levine, the president of Teachers College at Columbia University, capital has said "You guys are in trouble and we're going to eat your lunch." (Note 6) For the private companies involved, their motives are clear. At the same time as they will eliminate the waste that putatively always comes from public schooling, they will turn education into "an efficiently run and profitable machine—using investors' money instead of tax dollars." (Note 7) Of course, this bears little resemblance to the experiences of those sitting in for- profit prison, of those living in cities whose economic base has been destroyed as owners and investors closed the factories there and moved them to non-unionized areas so that they wouldn't have to pay a liveable wage, or for decent schooling, health care, or pensions, or for those who live the "hidden" realities of this society. In Fine and Weis's words, we can best understand what this society, and its educational apparatus, is really like if we focus on those identifiable people who live in the "unknown city." (Note 8) This, of course, raises the issue of why certain things are known and others are indeed unknown. This differential visibility of information in this society—and the structures that underpin it—is not an accident.         While there may occasionally be problems with the traditional categories of "left" and "right" in sorting through the complexities of politics on the ground in all of our nations, many of us, including Chomsky and Macedo in the book under review here, self-consciously and without apology position themselves on the left. In their minds, and in my own, the United States remains a vast experiment, one in which both right and left argue about what it is an experiment in. The debate over this is vital and undoubtedly will continue. Indeed, it is part of the political lifeblood of the nation. However, like Richard Rorty, Chomsky and Macedo also believe that it is the left which keeps it going. In Rorty's words, For the Right never thinks that anything much needs to be changed: it thinks the country is basically in good shape, and may well have been in better shape in the past. It sees the Left's struggle for social justice as mere trouble making, as utopian foolishness. [Yet] the Left, by definition is the party of hope. It insists that our nation remains unachieved. (Note 9)         Rorty is insightful about the role of the progressive criticism in keeping this nation moving. After all, almost all of the social programs that many of us now take as "natural"—social security, for example—came about because of progressive mobilizations against the denial of basic human rights. However, Rorty is on less secure grounds when he claims that "the Right never thinks anything much needs to be changed," for a good deal of the right is very much involved in radical transformations. Over the past 2-3 decades, the right has mounted a concerted attack on what many of us took as natural. The entire public sphere has been brought into question. While these attacks on public institutions are broader than education, educational and cultural institutions such as the media have been centrally located in rightist criticisms. For this very reason, Chomsky on MisEducation is a helpful addition to the literature on critical cultural and educational analysis.         My reason for saying this is grounded in a particular political claim. Not only are rightist social movements exceptionally powerful now, but one of the most important elements of learning how to interrupt them is to understand what they did and do. Rightist movements have engaged in a vast social and ideological project. Examining how this has worked and why it has been successful can tell those of us who oppose it how it might best be countered. In my mind, if you want to interrupt dominance, it is absolutely crucial to study what it did and does. (Note 10) Few people have been as active in the attempt to interrupt dominance as Noam Chomsky.         For a considerable number of years, Noam Chomsky has played a crucial role in the intellectual and political life of the nation. In essence, he has been one of those people who acts as the conscience that this country has all too often lost. In doing this he is following what Eric Hobsbawm described as the historian's and social critic's duty. For Hobsbawm, the task is to be the "remembrancers of what [our] fellow citizens wish to forget." (Note 11) Such a role entails a commitment to detail the absent presences, the there that is not there, in dominant policies. Chomsky has performed this task with relish, offering powerful critiques of the ways in which dominance works in the economy, in the state, in international affairs, and in the media and education. His question has been simple but consistent: How do official interpretations of events, official language, and official knowledge work to legitimate certain interpretations of the power relations surrounding us, while marginalizing others?         What sets Chomsky apart from many other social critics is not one thing. Rather there is an interrelated set of elements that characterizes his work. Among the most important is his attention to historical detail. He marshals fact after fact against official interpretations of events until the edifice cracks under the weight of its own perfidy. Further, he is a master at seeing relationships among events that are often hidden beneath official rhetoric. Just as important is the fact that he writes exceptionally clearly. He is impatient with the equivocations of the obfuscatory language that dominates a good deal of academic writing on power, preferring instead to speak plainly and often (and deservedly) angrily about "really existing" power in this and other countries. Obviously, then, he is not one to doubt the existence of "facts" or "truth" and in fact this often constitutes his method. He accumulates data and then adds more. Perhaps I'm a closet positivist (although I doubt it), but I must admit this is refreshing, since all too often we have given over the empirical terrain to the Right, a terrain which they have predictably and aggressively filled.         I should say that there are some dangers in doing this. The postmodern critiques of "truth" may be overstated and may be couched at times in language that borders on arrogance. But they are not necessarily wrong. The rejection of such critiques—if it is done well—can remind us that "fact talk" is still a powerful way of mobilizing support for counter-hegemonic policies in education and the larger society. It also can show how some advocates of postmodernisms in education want it both ways. They constantly rely on certain accepted "truths" (the "realities" of poverty and racism, the impoverishment of millions of people as the global forces of neo-liberalism restructure economies internationally, for example); and yet they then turn around and argue against the existence of "truth." This is but a sleight of hand. But most political and intellectual traditions engage in it. It's a bit more glaring in some postmodernisms since their positions often depend on the rejection of such things. Chomsky's "rejection of their rejection" provides much food for thought.         Chomsky's own use of the accumulation of facts can be powerful. But at times he sacrifices complexity for the sake of clarity. He can occasionally sound rather too conspiracy oriented. However, let me immediately add that any possible loss here is more than compensated for by the power of his voice. One doesn't have to see conspiracies everywhere to recognize that differential power does exist (often is quite murderous ways), that the world of public information is tilted in favor of those in dominance, and that there are close connections between knowledge and power. This is especially the case now, when we are witnessing a resurgence of what I have elsewhere called "conservative modernization," an aggressive attempt to restructure our economic, political, and cultural/educational institutions around the values and needs of a conservative alliance. (Note 12) Understanding the larger aims of the neo-liberal and neo-conservative movements currently engaged in such restructuring gives more power to Chomsky's general purpose. He engages in what has been called "speaking truth to power." It also provides a context in which to put this particular volume.         Chomsky on MisEducation is not a book on what is usually considered to be "education." It has only one chapter that deals in any formal way with schooling and this is largely about higher education. In fact, Donaldo Macedo's clearly written and passionate introduction to the book has more on education than Chomsky's own essays. Yet, education itself must not be reduced to schooling for a number of reasons. This leads us to focus only on formal institutional structures that are officially labeled as educational. But what about labor education, community programs, literacy work in various informal sites, etc.? Second, and perhaps even more crucially, such a view can cause us to de-emphasize the powerful educative (or for Chomsky mis-educative) role of the media in distributing accounts of the world that are not only often quite limited or wrong, but clearly favor those with economic and political power.         Reading his account of the ways in which the media reported on Nicaragua, for example, is among the very best analyses of how important parts of the media have been colonized and/or used to legitimate what were (and continue to be) internationally illegal and immoral acts by the United States government. It is a tribute to the way he writes that something that is now seen as simply of historical interest (as if it is over) slowly but surely grabs the reader, compelling her or him to use the historical account to ask serious questions about today's policies. The US Government's Columbia Plan comes immediately to mind. Many millions of dollars will go to the Columbian military to "fight drugs." We are constantly told that we will not get involved in the internal politics of Columbia. Yet, the Columbian military has very close ties to extreme rightist para-military groups whose response to political dissidence is to kill those who challenge the current balance of power there. The US population is constantly barraged with official pronouncements in the news that ignore such realities. The message is that the money is needed to eradicate drug production–by, for example, indiscriminate spraying that includes food crops that are needed for survival. If this sounds like the infamous saying that came out of Vietnam—"We had to burn the village down in order to save it"—it means that you have a good memory. It is exactly the loss of collective memory that so distresses Chomsky.         The ways in which the "news" is constructed may seem distant from the world of education. Yet, let me remind you that Channel One, the for-profit channel that delivers current news to students in schools–and delivers students as a captive audience to corporate sponsors–is now in approximately 40% of middle and secondary schools in the United States. As I show in Official Knowledge, what counts as the news—and even the visual codes, the camera shots, and the editing—serve to empower some groups and dis-empower others. (Note 13) Who these groups are is often lamentably predictable. Thus, even if you are a bit worried that Chomsky and Macedo construct the terrain of education in too wide a fashion, given the existence of things such as Channel One the educational logic of taking the official construction of events seriously–and rigorously deconstructing it–is compelling.         One of the most interesting parts of the book is the public debate between Chomsky and John Silber, the President of Boston University and an ardent neo-conservative. If ever there was a clear demonstration of how some of our more aggressive neo-conservative critics often use a style of "debate" that amounts to a battering ram and seem unwilling to confront counter-arguments in a serious manner, this is it. Of course, Silber is well known for this kind of behavior. But similar tendencies that include ad hominem arguments and an utter certainty in the absolute correctness of one's own position can be found in more specifically educationally related literature--for example, in Abigail Thernstrom's contribution to the debate over standards in a recent book on the topic. (Note 14)         There are some limitations in this book. I've already mentioned its possible slide into conspiracy theories. One can be a deeply politicized activist and scholar and still understand that the world of power is quite complex, with multiple centers of power and multiple dynamics at work in any situation. While I, for instance, have fought for years to maintain a focus on (an non-reductive analysis of) political economy and class dynamics, issues of race and gender—as well as other dynamics—are central to any analysis of global forces and government policies. (Note 15) We live in a gendered state and a raced state as well as a classed one. As I have been at pains to demonstrate in Educating the "Right" Way, even class forces and alliances themselves are extremely complex and cannot be reduced to a simple formula of dominant class and subordinate class. Chomsky and Macedo never quite go over the line into such reductive accounts, but they come rather too close to it at times.         These criticisms are minor compared with what Chomsky as a whole has to offer. Chomsky on MisEducation is a useful introduction to him, but it is better read in conjunction with Chomsky's other, and longer, works on the media and on international relations. (Note 16) If it whets your appetite for the larger and more detailed accounts in these other works, then it will have performed a valuable service. After all, how can we educate our students in the skills and dispositions of critical educational work if we ourselves are not equally critical of how and by whom our own understandings are constructed? NOTES I have demonstrated these connections in a number of places. See, for example, Michael W. Apple, Ideology and Curriculum, second edition (New York: Routledge, 1990) Michael W. Apple, Education and Power, second edition (New York: Routledge, 1995), Michael W. Apple, Teachers and Texts (New York: Routledge, 1988), and Michael W. Apple, Official Knowledge, second edition (New York: Routledge, 2000). See also, James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York: The New Press, 1995). See Stephen Ball, Education Reform: A Critical and Post-Structural Approach (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994). An articulate and thoughtful analysis of these relations is Jean Anyon, Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997). See also, Grace Kao, Marta Tienda, and Barbara Schneider, "Race and Ethnic Variation in Academic Performance," in Aaron Pallas, ed. Research in Sociology of Education and Socialization, Volume 11 (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1996), pp.263-297. This is described in considerably more detail in Michael W. Apple, Cultural Politics and Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), pp.68-90. Edward Wyatt, "Investors See Room for Profit in the Demand for Education," The New York Times, November 4, 1999, p.A-1. Ibid. Ibid. Michelle Fine and Lois Weis, The Unknown City (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998). 9. Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p.14. This was exactly what led me to write my most recent book. See Michael W. Apple, Educating the "Right" Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality. New York: Routledge, 2001. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (New York: Pantheon, 1994), p.3. Apple, Educating the "Right" Way: Apple, Official Knowledge. Abigail Thernstrom, "No Excuses," in Deborah Meier, Theodore Sizer, Linda Nathan, and Abigail Thernstrom, Will Standards Save Public Education? (Boston: Beacon press, 2000). See, for example, Michael W. Apple, Power, Meaning, and Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 1999). See, e.g., Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York : Pantheon Books, 1988). About the Reviewer Michael W. Apple John Bascom Professor of Curriculum & Instruction and       Educational Policy Studies University of Wisconsin-Madison 225 N. Mills Street Madison, Wisconsin 53706 Michael W. Apple is a former elementary and secondary school teacher and past president of a teachers union. He has worked with governments, dissident groups, unions, and educators in many countries to democratize educational research, policy, and practice. He has written extensively on the relationship between education and power.

Birnbaum, Robert. (2000). Management fads in higher education: Where they come from, what they do, why they fail. Reviewed by Bob Barnetson, Alberta Colleges

Birnbaum, Robert. (2000). Management fads in higher education: Where they come from, what they do, why they fail. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. xxii + 287. $32.95       ISBN 0-7879-4456-4. Reviewed by Bob Barnetson Alberta Colleges & Institutes Faculties Association April 8, 2001 Bordering at times on the epidemiological, Robert Birnbaum's Management fads in higher education traces the history of seven management fads in American higher education to develop a compelling model of the fad process and the transmission of fads to higher education. Subsequently, he posits characteristics and factors that make institutions vulnerable to fads and suggests why managers implement them. Finally, Birnbaum examines the legacy of fads in higher education. Underlying this cathartic book is Birnbaum's belief that the techniques and technologies we use are not neutral but rather embody particular ideological beliefs. Management fads are the widespread, zealous and blessedly short-lived application of techniques or practices in colleges, universities and technical institutes, often imported from government or the private sector long after the bloom is off. Ever fashionable and frequently messianic, fads offer convincing narratives, illuminate better ways of doing things, reduce ambiguity (as well as diversity), shift power between actors, and make consultants big, big piles of money. Birnbaum presents seven case studies of recent management fads. These include Planning Programming Budgeting System (1960-1975), Management by Objectives (1965-1980), Zero- Based Budgeting (1970-1985), Strategic Planning (1972-1994), Benchmarking (1979-present), Total Quality Management (1985-1996), and Business Process Reengineering (1990-1996). All of these fads differ from the scientific management that was ascendant between 1900 and the end of the second world war. The post-war massification of higher education saw the adoption of numerous management techniques and technologies to increase cost-effectiveness. Rationality became the hallmark of academic management as new decision-making systems attempted to reduce ambiguity and increase internal consistency, even at the expense of desirable outcomes. Based on the seven case studies presented in Chapters Two, Three and Four, Birnbaum outlines the five-stage progression of management fads. The first stage is characterized by the identification of a crisis that (coincidentally) invalidates existing operating assumptions. Early adopters of the fad enthusiastically report on its success, providing proponents with evidence that the fad can resolve the crisis. This triggers interest among other organizations. Criticism of the technique is deflected via the presentation of simplified versions of the fad, distancing it from previous fads, and intense rhetoric about what is at stake should the fad not be implemented. As momentum builds, the fad moves to stage two. Early reports of success become elaborated and widespread and organizational peer pressure builds as adopters receive accolades. Little attention is given to the potential costs of the technique and resisters are denigrated as self- interested or intransigent. The time between widespread dissemination of the fad and widespread knowledge of user reactions and independent analysis is the third stage. Although the fad continues to receive positive press, counter-narratives begin to emerge. Interestingly, analysis in the private sector tends to be quantitative (perhaps reflecting profit-driven criteria) while analysis in academe tends to be interpretative. In the fourth stage, momentum swings to these counter-narratives and the claims about the fad's effectiveness begin to be undermined. The growing bad press effectively inoculates institutions against adoption although current users may discount these reports to protect their financial and psychological investment in the fad. Widespread rationalization of the fad's failure—particularly among promoters eager to protect both their status and their epistemological assumptions—is its death knell. Birnbaum details the preferred rationalizations, such as poor leadership, improper implementation, and lack of resources. Less popular is the notion that a technique was based upon invalid premises. For example, underlying most fads is the belief that organizations work like machines. That is to say, organizations are rational, possessing clear goals and operating via an understandable (and therefore manipulable) causality. Although several alternative metaphors have emerged (cf. Cohen, March and Olsen, 1972; Birnbaum, 1988; Morgan, 1997; Cutright, 2001), the mechanical metaphor for organizations endures, perhaps because it suggests organizations can be controlled. Birnbaum argues that several factors pressure institutions to adopt management fads. Predominant, to my mind, is the culture of crisis wherein political and ideological agendas are pursued through criticism of goals, processes, and outcomes. Where these claims stick, institutions or systems are vulnerable to the introduction of value-laden management fads. For example, in my jurisdiction (Alberta, Canada) performance funding was ostensibly introduced to address ill-defined problems with institutional accountability and performance. Although there is little evidence that accountability or performance has improved (or needed to), "our" performance indicators now act as a conceptual technology—shaping what issues we think about and how we think about them (Barnetson and Cutright, 2000). For example, measuring enrollment growth defines accessibility as the availability of seats and thus ignores the impact of rising tuition on the ability of students to afford those seats. One institutional response to fads and their proponents is the virtual adoption of a fad. Institutions seeking approval from governments, peers, the private sector, or the public may publicly espouse the methods and jargon of a new fad. In practice, institutions (or sub-units) may not adopt the technique or process of the fads or may implement them in a way so as to limit their effect until interest passes. Given that management fads are introduced in higher education after they have come and gone in government or the private sector, waiting out the fad may be a cost-effective and culturally appropriate response. Virtual adoption also makes it easy for institutions to abandon a fad. Successful fads—those achieving widespread notoriety and adoption—have a common set of traits. A fad that can be transmitted to other organizations via repetition will likely be successful. For example, Birnbaum asserts that individuals whose organizational perspective is structural (rather than cultural or interpretative) are more likely to be captured by a fad. They may, in turn, become key vectors for the spread of the idea. The success of a fad is also enhanced if the fad sounds reasonable (in light of our internalized beliefs about how organizations work) and if its definition is malleable enough so that its adoption will create little cognitive dissonance. When reasonableness and vague definition are combined with a high level of complexity (i.e., where a fad requires behavioural changes so significant that causal and outcomes analysis are retarded), a fad becomes nonfalsifiable. That is to say, detractors cannot disprove claims about a fad's effectiveness. The nonfalsifiability of fads may be reinforced by the political, ideological and financial investment of adopters who have no desire to hear a critical analysis, even after the fad has passed. But what influences managers to adopt or support management fads? Birnbaum posits six interrelated biases. These include role bias wherein academic managers feel pressured to take charge despite limited resources and understanding, ambiguous or conflicting goals, and intractable problems. Adopting fads offer managers an opportunity to appear to be in charge. Managers can also experience cognitive biases such as making decisions based on intuition rather than evidence, generalizing from favorable anecdotal evidence, and selectively assessing the impact of a technique on the organization. This may be reinforced via a placebo bias wherein the implementation of a fad masks symptoms without addressing the underlying problem. Normative bias can result in managers applying a logic of appropriateness (e.g., mimicking the actions of other managers in uncertain situations) over a logic of rational choice. Similarly, managers may adopt a fad to reinforce their self-image as effective at solving problems and influential in the organization (a self-efficacy bias). Finally, managers with their credibility heavily invested in a fad may have their judgment compromised by a commitment bias. The positive and negative legacy of fads is difficult to assess. Birnbaum asserts that even limited exposure to fads may subtly alter the functioning of organizations as useful concepts, models and processes are incorporated into an institution. One positive effect of fads is pressure experienced by academic managers to recognize the importance of data in decision making. Fads also create opportunities for institutions to evolve by adopting new practices that better fit the environment, reinforce managers' commitment to engage and actively shape their environment, and trigger intra-institutional interaction. Finally, fads may draw institutional attention to specific issues such as cost effectiveness, innovations at other institutions and the like that, while important to external stakeholders (and therefore to maintaining institutional legitimacy), are not a high academic priority. The negative effects of fads are legion. These include an overemphasis within and outside the academy on numbers that may reshape priorities towards the quantifiable or pressure institutions to alter their performance to get prettier numbers. For example, Alberta has adopted performance funding. A single PI (enrollment growth) has been responsible for the majority of the variance in funding awards. Expensive (but necessary) adult upgrading programs hamper institutions' ability to expand enrollment during this time of constrained funding and this pressures them to get out of upgrading and into other more cost-effective programming areas. Persistent, public and possibly inappropriate inspection may in turn reduce trust in higher education. Similarly, justifying a fad by reference to a crisis in higher education reinforces the belief that higher education is in an almost constant state of crisis. Quantification may also give managers a false sense of certainty and undermine the value of decisions informed by intuition. The transient nature of fads can also give rise to cynicism within the community about managers and thereby reduce their influence. At the same time, the centralization required by many fads may undermine the autonomy of faculty—both individually and as a group. Based upon Birnbaum's analysis, the most damaging outcome of fads appears to be their impact on the narrative that undergirds higher education. As Birnbaum writes, In the United States, the educational narratives of the past have been stories of personal virtue, civic participation, democracy, and social justice. The narrative gods of the present appear to be economic utility, consumerism, and technology—a weak foundation on which to build a just social order or excite the imagination. The idea of higher education as a social institution has been displaced by higher education as an industry (p. 266). Fads promote a narrative wherein business is portrayed as efficient and effective and higher education is not. Faculty members are often cast as the villains in this narrative as they resist the introduction of management techniques to protect their pay, privileges and status. When one accepts this characterization (as part of adopting a fad), the obvious solution is to subject higher education to the discipline of the market and reorder governance to mirror that of the private sector. Birnbaum argues: [T]he simplicity of this narrative is its power, and the story of a small, privileged elite that benefits at the expense of the public is an evocative story that taps into the American psyche. So is the narrative of a fad that pledges to right the wrong and put the university in its place. Interesting stories are more likely than accurate ones to be accepted (p. 227). As corporate priorities and practices creep into higher education, Management fads in higher education makes an important contribution to our understanding of how this will affect colleges, universities and technical institutes. Specifically, by codifying our knowledge of fads, this well written book gives us insight into the fad process as well as the impact of fads on institutions and, more broadly, upon the entire undertaking of higher education. Those who have (and those who have not) survived TQM, BPR, PIs, and their ilk will also find a reasoned explanation for their cynicism about new management fads. Perhaps more useful, Birnbaum's book may help faculty and administrators discover the positive outcomes that can flow from these elaborate exercises. References Barnetson, B. & Cutright, M. (2000). Performance indicators as conceptual technologies. Higher education. 40 (3). 277-292 Birnbaum, R. (1988). How colleges work: The cybernetics of academic organizations and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cohen, M.D., March, J.G. & Olsen, J.P. (1972). A garbage can model of organizational choice. Administrative science quarterly. 17 1-25. Cutright, M. (ed.) (2001). Chaos theory and higher education: Leadership, planning, & policy. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Morgan, D. (1997). Images of organizations, 2nd Ed. London: SAGE. About the Reviewer Bob Barnetson Bob Barnetson is research and communications officer for the Alberta Colleges & Institutes Faculties Association. His areas of interest include higher education policy and academic labour.

Cherryholmes, Cleo H. (1999). Reading Pragmatism. Reviewed by Gail Masuchika Boldt, The University of Iowa

Cherryholmes, Cleo H. (1999). Reading Pragmatism. New York: Teachers College Press. 168 pp. $24.95 (Paper) ISBN 0807738468 $52 (Cloth) ISBN 0807738476 Reviewed by Gail Masuchika Boldt The University of Iowa March 29, 2001         Cleo Cherryholmes suggests one motive for writing Reading Pragmatism as the oft-cited criticism that poststructuralism, deconstruction, interpretive analytics, and new historicism, while generating powerful forms of interpretation and criticism, do not provide an agenda for action. Cherryholmes argues that pragmatism requires the critical, anti-essentialist lenses of poststructuralisms, but views pragmatism as taking up where these theories leave off (p. 4). Turning to Peirce, Dewey, and his own previous writings, Cherryholmes calls for a critical pragmatism focused on aesthetics and power that supports deliberate, reflective conduct (p. 7).         Critical pragmatism as Cherryholmes reads it requires that the pragmatist should consider her/his thoughts and actions from the perspective of imagined outcomes. Pragmatists actively anticipate outcomes from multiple perspectives and then choose, from among the many possibilities, that course which is most likely to lead to an aesthetically beautiful outcome. Aesthetic beauty is defined as results that are satisfying and fulfilling (p. 5). Cherryholmes argues that human action begins with desire, and that humans choose a way of life that we believe is most likely to bring us desired outcomes. In some ways... we have always been pragmatists in our research and reading. We have been choosing our community and a way of life in doing what we do. Among our conceits, however, have been claims to an epistemologically (say positivism or empiricism) or dogmatically superior (say an immanent socialism) position in order to deny, evade, and exclude the instabilities, uncertainties, terror and responsibilities that accompany pragmatism. (p. 81).         He suggests that given that we desire, imagine, choose, and act anyway, a desirable move from a pragmatic perspective is to add a deliberately critical component to this. Using critical, non-essentialist tools, Cherryholmes' critical pragmatist seeks to understand all positions as interested, to understand his/her actions and agenda in a context of history and power relations, to continually reinterpret and criticize anew one's goals in new situations and in light of multiple theories, conceptions, outcomes, and beliefs, to always seek out new perspectives on one's goals, beliefs and actions, and to revise, revise, revise.         A major difficulty, of course, is that people have differing, often conflicting ideas about about what a satisfying, beautiful outcome would be. Cherryholmes is clear that he does not accept that all outcomes are equally valid (p. 43). He turns to Foucault for the argument that subjectivities are social constructions and that what consequences we can imagine, what critiques and actions we have access to, our methodologies, and those things we desire and experience as satisfying and fulfilling are not freely and equally chosen. It is possible, [pragmatists] understand, that what appears to be a freely chosen aesthetic or a rationally calculated outcome may well be a highly determined effect of power and ideology. Aesthetic conceptions and desires are generated in unequal social transactions. Therefore, revealing and criticizing power is required if one is seriously interested in conceptualizing consequences. (p. 37).          Cherryholmes concludes this section by stating that in critical pragmatism "criticism is aesthetic and artistic as well as intellectual and political" and that obvious targets for pragmatist scrutiny are social and political inequalities (p. 38). To make this argument, he turns to a democratic ideal. Declaring this democratic ideal as "social openness, inclusiveness, tolerance, and experimentation" (p. 40), Cherryholmes contends that democracy is necessary to pragmatism because it promotes the diversity of experiences, ideas, interests, and needs that pragmatists require to imagine multiple, diverse outcomes and to provide on-going criticism for their own and others' choices. Likewise, democracy needs critical pragmatism insofar as pragmatism encourages the kind of openness, experimentation, and spirit of change that constitutes democracy.         Cherryholmes makes many specific references to education. He is clearly interested in questions of educational research, theory, practice, and reform. With Reading Pragmatism , he wants to provide a useful foundation and methodology for analyzing actual teaching practices and claims that are made about education in research and policy documents. To this end, he demonstrates multiple critical readings using The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives ("Bloom's Taxonomy") and a piece of research entitled "Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-Fostering and Comprehension-Monitoring Activities" by Palincsar and Brown. Cherryholmes offers poststructural and deconstructive readings of both texts as well as a possible feminist reading of the Palinscar and Brown text. He criticizes both texts by reading them on their own terms and claiming that there are serious inconsistencies between what they claim to want to achieve and the methodologies employed. He projects and criticizes possible unspoken results of the practices and theories set out by the texts, e.g., the support of binaries and hierarchies, the reifying of texts, and the reproduction of the status quo via social reproduction of social class and beliefs about authority.         Cherryholmes states that research can and should be read as a form of literature. He reproaches educators for uncritically "trying to tell each other and the public persuasive stories" (p. 100) that further dominant stories about education and society. Stating that there are limits to what "modernization" and "professionalization" instituted through such moves as "standards, accountability, control, productivity, and specialization" (p. 101) can bring to schools, he turns to Fullan to suggest a pragmatic picture of educational change. He cites Fullan's position that "rational procedures... have a long history of failing to match up to the promises of education change agents and reformers" (p. 104). He adapts Fullan's "themes for the future of education change," calling them "thoroughly pragmatic" (p. 104). These themes include breaking down oppositional politics in favor of alliances that work together toward implementing a few principles. Solutions should be flexible and come from a plurality of perspectives rather than monolithic or universal, and should arise in a specific context. Change is most powerful when the stakeholders find the change personally meaningful. Finally, Fullan argues that change often requires those involved to accept that change includes contradiction, ambivalence, paradox, and dilemmas. For Cherryholmes, these conflicts provide precisely the canvas upon which pragmatists paint beautiful landscapes through experimentation, reflection, community, conversation, criticism, and revision. Responses         As I have reflected upon my response to Reading Pragmatism, part of what I have struggled to articulate is the paradoxical sense that the way that I think and act as an educator seems very much as Cherryholmes advocates (or so I flatter myself) and yet I experienced several points of concern with ideas in the book. As I engaged in critical readings of the texts Cherryholmes presented from "Bloom's Taxonomy" and the reciprocal teaching research, for example, I formed a slate of hypotheses and criticisms about models of knowledge and learning that seemed to underlie these documents. Reading Cherryholmes' critiques, I found that we shared many of the same concerns. Therefore, I couldn't help but feel an affinity for what I took to be his views on beautiful outcomes in educational research and practice. Cherryholmes' call for understanding the beliefs and power structures that are supported by specific practices, and particularly those that replicate positions of dominance and subordination, represents one of my most desired outcomes as a teacher. I want my students to think critically about practices and ideals, to engage in broad dialogue, to choose carefully, to take an experimental approach with the courses of thought and action they engage, to reflect, to get feedback from a diverse community, and then to reevaluate and revise on an on-going basis. I believe in the importance of regarding my own on-going teaching practices as "rough drafts," with revisions occurring as desired outcomes are measured against actual outcomes. In spite of valuing much in common with Cherryholmes, I felt a persistent discomfort with his effort to establish pragmatism as an ethical framework for deliberate, reflective conduct within critical theories and practices.         To establish the rationale for reasserting pragmatism, Cherryholmes claims that his theoretical forbearers—post-structural and deconstruction theorists such as Foucault and Derrida—"do not have a project that looks to action, nor do they seek one.." (p. 4) (Note 1) Frequently Cherryholmes critiques his own categories and ideals, but importantly fails to do so relative to the concept of "a project that looks to action." If by "a project that looks to action" Cherryholmes means a blueprint for action such as he turns to in the final chapter, then he is quite right in saying that critical theories do not provide this. Given that any action or idea can only be assessed in its local contexts, given that the same action or idea can have multiple, often contradictory outcomes even within a single person, and given that contexts and structures of power change constantly, to provide a project that looks to action would be contradictory, misleading, and at times dangerous. In spite of not having such a blueprint, most people who employ such theories do, in fact, look to action. Most of the themes he advocates in the last chapter—working in alliance, flexible solutions arising in a specific context in which the stakeholders are the major actors, a plurality of perspectives, and the productive engagement of contradictions, ambivalences, paradoxes, and dilemmas—have been standard fare in many texts drawing from critical theories for several years. (Note 2)          Knowing that these possibilities for reflection and action are available in critical texts, I began to wonder about the intended audience for this book. A sense that Cherryholmes' project was curiously decontextualized bothered me throughout my reading and I wished that he had offered a specific context for the writing of this book. When other theorists have written extensively about the need to take action, no matter how temporary, uncertain, and partial, I wondered why Cherryholmes felt the need to make this turn to pragmatism as the "action portion" of anti-essentialist critiques. I began to think that I had a better sense of the context for this book after a relatively recent visit to Michigan, Cherryholmes' home state. As is the unfortunate trend nationwide, what I found there was tremendous pressure put on educators at primary, secondary, and university level for increasing standardization around content, pedagogy, and student evaluation and promotion. These are concerns that Cherryholmes points to in Reading Pragmatism in a general manner, but the strength of these as very real and present problems only became clear after being in Michigan. Cherryholmes is concerned with teachers and researches at all levels whose actions or inaction support, whether unwittingly or otherwise, a status quo that creates and perpetuates ugly outcomes. These ugly outcomes include educators' participation in the perpetuation of political, social, and economic inequalities and in the creation of students who are bored, disconnected, and disempowered by teaching methodology. They also include students who are taught that there is one right interpretation, method, or answer, that texts are authoritative, and that constructs portrayed by texts and methods are natural and beyond question.          The drive toward standardization that so many educators are rightly suspicious of is powered in part by the naturalization of its own discourses via reference to objective measures, scientific research, and controlled methodologies. Critical theories are messy. Critical theorists typically attempt to resist standardized methodologies, criticize objectivity and question research. This refusal to be pinned down provides a fertile field for proponents of standardization to discredit the work of critical educators as non-scientific, soft, wishy-washy, and dangerous. The pressures being put on critical educators to conform and "get with the program" are very real. In this context, Cherryholmes' use of pragmastism reads to me like an attempt to gain or maintain a foothold by arguing that critical educators do, in fact, have guidelines that could impel a certain line of measured response. Conceding this ground feels like a pragmatic move on his part. Perhaps Cherryholmes believes that by making some concessions, beautiful outcomes or at least less ugly outcomes are likely to occur. Some of the reasons I fear this to be a self-defeating strategy became clear to me as I thought about what Cherryholmes had to omit to present his argument.         The push toward standardization in education is part of larger conservative responses to the on-going cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversification of America which challenge the very premises of what matters and what works in school and society. Many Americans feel that the nation is in crisis because it is losing some essential identity. Standardization in school lays the burden of failure and the necessity of change on those whose existence might alternatively be read as a challenge to existing hegemonies. Reading Pragmatism might be read as a plea akin to "Can't we all just be reasonable?" aimed at both critical educators and conservative proponents of standards and accountability, but not particularly at those who are already marginalized by discourses of rationality. Cherryholmes' citation of Fullan's argument that "The first move... is from a negative politics that imposes change from above and resistance from below to a positive politics of implementing a few principles" (p. 104), seemed hazardously dehistoricized. I couldn't help but think that there wasn't much precedent for expecting the "above" to have the good will to heed the call of pragmatism and criticize their own positions of power, and that therefore it might in many cases be premature to call for an end to resistances from below. Indeed, his appeal to reasonableness, to analysis and reflection, and to deliberate action seemed ill-conceived given that economically, politically, and socially marginalized peoples are epistemologically represented as those least capable of reasoned, rational, reflective thought and action. Scepticism about appeals to reason are read as further proof of irrationality. This conceptualization of pragmistim concedes the advantage to those who already hold the discursive advantage and who are often least likely to want to engage in discussion aimed at creating greater equity. (Note 3)         Cherryholmes provides other examples of omiting certain important perspectives in his appeal to reasonableness. In his citation of democracy as the foundation for making and defending choices, he fails to acknowledge the body of writing about some of the other, less beautiful effects effects of democracy, particularly by critical race theorists and post-colonial theorists. (Note 4) In particular I noticed the absence of critical and particularly post-colonial, diasporic, or race theory critiques when Cherryholmes made the claim cited above that we are all pragmatists since we all have been "choosing our community and a way of life in doing what we do" and then justifying that with claims of dogmatically or epistemologically superior positions (p. 81). Comparing this to the claims of Radhakrishnan (1996) below certainly begs the question of just who is constituted and who is marginalized in Cherryholmes' claim about what we all have been doing. What concerns me here is the historical reality that, for so many of us of the third world, modernity came through as a powerful critique of our own selves and systems, ergo as a higher and superior form of knowledge. It was as if we had been made the Socratic Other; hence the pedagogical authority of the modernist will to knowledge that demystifies the native of her worldview and corrects her into modernity. The dire consequences for the postcolonial subject are twofold: (1) the capacity to benefit from the critique is at the expense of one's solidarity with one's own traditions, and (2) the acceptance of another culture's provincialism is mandated as the true form of universalism. ...[Modernity] has to act as a civilizing mission on behalf of the entire world. (Radhakrishnan, p. xix)          I don't believe that Cherryholmes' call for looking forward to outcomes rather than looking back is intended to wipe out the history that currently appoints some to subordinate positions. In fact, he calls for such critical uses of history and Foucauldian genealogies as important tools in hypothesizing outcomes. Still, in his failure to speak specifically, to contextualize his own project with historical and present day examples, to seek critically the limits of pragmatism, and to bring in a plurality of viewpoints that might express reservations about his platform, Cherryholmes has failed to convince me that establishing his view of pragmatism as an ethical platform is likely to produce outcomes I would find to be particularly beautiful. Notes I find Cherryholmes' citation of Lilla (1998) to support this point to be odd. Lilla argues that precisely the kind of analytic tools that Cherryholmes champions have lost their appeal in Europe and not-so-subtly chides Americans for their on-going interest in Derrida's analytics. He offers a particularly sarcastic reading of Derrida's discussion of justice in The Politics of Friendship . Given that Cherryholmes' use of democracy is quite similar to how Lilla critically describes Derrida's use of justice, I don't understand Cherryholmes' decision to use the Lilla article. See, for example Butler (1990, 1993); Grewal and Kaplan (1994); and Radhakrishnan (1996) to name but a few. See, for example, hooks (1994) and Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995). See, for example, Ladson-Billings (1995) and Spivak (1999). References Butler, Judith. (1990). Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, Judith. (1993). Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex." New York: Routledge. Grewal, I. and Kaplan, C. (1994). Scattered hegemonies: postmodernity and transnational feminist practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. Ladson-Billings, G. and Tate, W. (1995). "Toward a critical race theory of education." Teachers College Record 97(1): 47-68. Lilla, M. 1998. "The politics of Jacques Derrida." The New York Review of Books. June 25: 36-41. Radhakrishnan, R. (1996). Diasporic meditations: between home and locations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Spivak, G. (1999) A Critique of post-colonial reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. About the Reviewer Gail Boldt is an Assistant Professor in the Language, Literacy, and Culture program at the University of Iowa. She is currently teaching a graduate course entitled "Foucault and Education." Her Ph.D. is from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Westhues, Kenneth. (1998). Eliminating Professors: A Guide to the Dismissal Process. Reviewed by Peggy Brandt Brown, University of North Texas Westhues, Kenneth. (1998). Eliminating Professors: A Guide to the Dismissal Process. Lewiston, N.Y.: Kemper Collegium Publication, The Edwin Mellen Press. Pp. 218 $29.95(Cloth)     ISBN 0-7734-8210-5 Reviewed by Peggy Brandt Brown University of North Texas April 16, 2001             When a friend of mine who works in a different department of my university read Kenneth Westhues's Eliminating Professors: A Guide to the Dismissal Process, he said the book made him laugh and offered him some insights. My friend said he could look around his department and see who was in one of the five stages of dismissal that Westhues delineates. Westhues means for his book to be humorous, which it is, but only to a point. Westhues is an angry man who uses his book to vent his frustration at the process in which he is caught. It is insightful, but over and over I came back to what the book could have been as compared to what it is.             Westhues is a sociology professor at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, who wrote Eliminating Professors between September 28th and December 11th of 1997. The dates are important because while he was writing the book, he was waiting for an outside judge (or arbitrator) to deliver a final, binding decision to the president of Westhues's university concerning his side in a discipline case in which he had been involved for four years. The book is divided into five parts and in each section Westhues spends time telling his readers what is happening with the continuing delays in the delivery of the outside judge's verdict. The "Outside Judge" is a top level administrator from another Canadian university who continually is unable to make his deadlines for reasons anyone ever involved in the active administration of a university can imagine. Eliminating Professors is a catharsis of Westhues's anger and stress while he is in that particular limbo of academe. As Limbo is the abode of souls barred from heaven, so is Westhues barred from his normal academic life because during this time he is on a semester sabbatical. As he writes, he is unsure if he will be able to return to the place where he has spent his professorial life for the last 22 years. This is not an objective work that gives no indication of the author's life or bias. It is a cry against what has been happening to him and a venting of his frustration and bitterness.             Westhues states that he undertook to study "the process by which people get eliminated from groups, organizations and societies. Such a study struck me [as] a sociologist's duty, to answer a public need" (p.vii). He continues: Every corporation faces the problem of how to eliminate an employee with whom its contract is not simply at will, that is, dissolvable for any or no reason. Tenured professors are but an extreme example of employees who have a claim to permanence, often also seniority, autonomy, high salary, emotional ties and substantial investment of self. Employees of this kind are hard to terminate. Formally, they can be dismissed only for cause.(p.ix).             He asserts that he is writing about the patterns that groups follow to expel someone from the social circle. He offers his work as a handbook for line administrators in higher education and for managers and officials concerned with human resources issues. But the book is not a guide, but rather a satire with all administrators portrayed as unethical, manipulative, vindictive, and just plain nasty people while the other actors are either dupes or innocent souls who are persecuted while trying to work in places where they only think that "values on critical, independent thought, academic freedom, tenure, and individual rights continue to hold sway." (p. 115)             Westhues collected 25 case studies of other people who were being forced to leave places they had worked for long periods of time. Most, but not in all the cases, were academics. From these cases, Westhues synthesized a construct he calls Dr. PITA which stands for Pain In The Ass, which pretty well describes these people. They are the ones who are out of step. Over and over his most vivid examples are people who are ethic minorities and frequently internationals whose native languages are not English. He maintains that the root of the problem is tenure or some other kind of continuing status that prevents the troublemaker from being fired. If the person did not have tenure, he or she would have been fired Westhues claims. The only thing the administrator (who wants this human problem to go away) has to do is ignore any claims of tenure or of a "lifelong or career-long moral commitment between colleagues, an imagined bond of reciprocal trust. Each was expected to tolerate the other's rants and ravings, no matter how unsound, unbalanced, unmarketable, or unpopular"(p.17). For Westhues, there is never a legitimate reason for the removal of a tenured PITA.             The book is divided into five parts that parallel the concept of workplace mobbing developed by Heinz Leymann. The first part is called "Overview and Objective" and discusses who Dr. PITA is and why a university would want to get rid of such a person. Westhues describes ten alternative exit doors through which Dr. PITA can be pushed. These are retirement, fabricated resignation, transfer, death, "long-term disability/physical illness, long- term illness/mental illness, early retirement, dismissal for cause, downsizing or financial exigency, and constructive dismissal or, in the USA, when Dr. Pita decides to sue the university for damages.             The second part of the book discusses the two initial stages of the elimination process which are ostracization and harassment. Westhues calls these techniques "torment" and they include many ways an administrator can make life miserable for a professor. During these stages the professor's department begins to mark Dr. PITA as different and a person who does not belong. In this section, Westhues discusses a worst case scenario. In 1992, after over eight years of turmoil, Dr. Valeery Fabrikant brought a high powered rifle to his workplace at Concordia University in Montreal and shot four professors dead and severely wounded a fifth. Westhues analyzes Fabrikant's case identifying the different stages of elimination the administration used to get Fabrikant to leave and how the process only created an overpowering rage in its victim.             Stage Three is called "the Incident" and is the subject of the third part of the book. The Incident is an event which the administrators can use to start official investigations or some type of proceedings against Dr. PITA. Westhues implies that the incidents are always overblown and frequently instigated or even fabricated to provide an excuse to proceed against Dr. PITA. In this section Westhues made an interesting argument about sexual harassment being society's current catch-all of moral indignation, a cause for moral panic, but ruined his point by implying that all sexual harassment claims are chimeras. It is demeaning to people who have been sexually harassed and have had the courage to come forward. He also seems unaware that many businesses are dealing with the issue of sexual harassment by spending time and money on the development of policies, training, investigations and enforcement. In many large businesses, people accused of sexually harassing others are suspended immediately and fired upon the completion of investigations that prove their guilt. Appeals are handled in the courts. The process does not take four years.             The fourth section of the book is called "The Aftermath of the Incident" and deals with the procedures and actors in the appeals DR. PITA usually makes against his or her accusers. Westhues's satirical vein runs strong in this section. He discusses judges, arbitrators, the media and Dr. PITA's friends and how the administrators can block all efforts made on the behalf of the beleaguered Dr. PITA.             Stage Five is simply "Elimination". Westhues was writing this section in November, and his distress over the lack of resolution of his own case is truly the subject of this section. He does discuss mental illness as an exit door an administration can use to shove out a PITA. In each of the cases he cites, he depicts the professors as harmless victims being pushed around. The administrators are overreacting just to get the PITA out. As a licensed professional counselor, I found these cases particularly disturbing. Based on his descriptions of the situations, my reaction is that there were enough true warning signs to warrant caution. In his discussion of the Fabrikant case, Westhues described what could happen. He made us aware of just how bad things can get. In each of the mental illness cases, if something had not been done and Dr. PITA had responded violently, there would have been no excuse for inactivity on the part of those involved.             Westhues raises legitimate concerns relating to the process groups use to force former members to leave. However, the loss of one person's employment is not comparable to the Nazi's extermination of the Jews and other ethic minorities. Repeatedly, Westhues quotes sources that draw that comparison. If he wishes to compare the two, he could use the workplace mobbing phenomenon, show its application to both situations and discuss how this could be an example of a universal human societal pattern employed in many situations involving the distancing of one person from a group. He could have supported his conclusions with other studies of similar types. Yet he said, "Little holocausts are happening every day in our most civilized societies."(p.vii).             Earlier I said I kept looking at what this book could have been. The book I would have liked to have read could have discussed how the entrenchment that tenure encourages is the basis of the problem and could have suggested a new, more humane way of dealing with embedded faculty. It could have explored other, less damaging ways to remove people from their workplaces. The Fabrikant case could have been used as a worst case scenario and other solutions explored that could have resolved the situation in less drastic ways. Westhues could have made Eliminating Professors the work of scholarship that he intimated it would be in his foreword by using citations and naming sources and by careful examination of the issues and literature relating to the topic. He claims to be doing a study, but there is no standard sociological methodology in this work.             If he had been a little more light handed, a little less angry, and a little more balanced in his presentation, this could have been a very humorous work. Westhues is writing satire. Any man who can say, "most professors have the media savvy of toads" (page 144) is not lacking in wit.             Another colleague of mine who has been the victim of workplace mobbing—a term she understood and identified with immediately—said she would have liked to have seen more on how a person in such a situation could "dodge the bullet" as Westhues apparently has done. (However, we do not know this for certain because the book ends before the Outside Judge returns his decision. Three years later Westhues is still at the University of Waterloo, but the reader does not know if he is an active, accepted member of his community again or if he exists at the edge of the academic world, still in limbo if you will, as were some of the Dr. PITAs in his case studies.)             Westhues's Eliminating Professors engaged me on several different levels. Although it was not the book I thought I was getting, it did cause me to think about and question group and departmental dynamics in ways I had not before. I became aware of new areas of research. I do know different people got very different meanings and insights from the work and on that basis alone I can recommend it. About the Reviewer Peggy Brandt Brown is with the Program in Higher Education, College of Education, University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. She is a licensed professional counselor with the State of Texas although her license is inactive at this time. Her areas of interest are higher education administration, college students and suicide, and grant writing for student services and student development interests. Lindsey, Randall B.; Robins, Nuri; & Terrell, Raymond D. (1999). Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders. Brenda Campbell Jones, Azusa Pacific University Lindsey, Randall B.; Robins, Nuri; & Terrell, Raymond D. (1999). Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Pp. 238 pp. $28.95 (Paper)         ISBN 0803967632 Brenda Campbell Jones Azusa Pacific University April 20, 2001         Lindsey, Robbins, and Terrell in their book, Cultural Proficiency, A Manual for School Leaders, present a voice on matters of culture, pedagogy, and politics in our schools that prevent success for many of our children, especially children of poverty and of color. They assert that culture can be understood and that powerful learning for each child is within the grasp of well-prepared teachers. The authors offer a wide variety of rich anecdotal examples that can be the source of meaningful dialogue around such issues as race, culture, and oppression. The reader feels compelled to examine his or her internal biases and assumptions about teaching, learning, and professional practices. The book offers practical staff development strategies and activities that will enrich our understanding of our children and ourselves.         Cultural Proficiency, A Manual for School Leaders is especially significant to school administrators because it makes a convincing argument for administrators and teachers to become culturally proficient in order to meet the needs of our diverse population. Lindsey et al. define cultural proficiency as follows: Cultural proficiency is the policies and practices of an organization or the values and behaviors of an individual that enable the agency or person to interact effectively in a culturally diverse environment. Cultural proficiency is reflected in the way an organization treats it employees, its client and its community. (p. 21)         Culturally proficient educators recognize that culture means far more than recognizing racial and ethnic differences. It suggests that we must always be willing to be in a state of learning in order to demonstrate an understanding of various cultures. We need to be able to respond effectively to issues of culture and diversity in order to facilitate student learning. This approach can lead to positive community relations, foster effective leadership and enrich the teacher's ability to learn and teach. The authors contend that a culturally proficient school "promotes inclusiveness and institutionalizes processes for learning about differences and responding appropriately to those differences." (p. 25)         In a world where the "minority" is rapidly becoming the "majority," the contribution that the authors make could not be mmore timely. Cultural proficiency is neither a program nor a series of steps to become more culturally aware, but rather a way for us to view and experience our world. It is based on the belief that all people have the capacity to be the change we want in the world.         The book focuses on two major areas, the Cultural Proficiency Model and Barriers to Cultural Proficiency. The first area of focus, the Cultural Proficiency Model, complete with the continuum, essential elements, and guiding principles, is punctuated with cases studies and other references that serve to illustrate the major concepts. The Cultural Proficiency Model as shown in Table 1 offers six points along the cultural proficiency continuum that indicate distinctive ways of seeing and responding to difference. As schools address the issues of diversity, the authors offer a description of specific behaviors in the five essential elements that must be present in a school and most importantly, within oneself in order to be culturally proficient. The five essential elements include one's ability to "value diversity, assess one's own culture, manage the dynamics of difference, institutionalize cultural knowledge, and adapt to diversity." (p. 39) These are viewed as a tool, a starting point of conversation, to equip the reader to be more successful with students who traditionally have not been successful in our current school structure. Table 1 Cultural Proficiency Continuum (p.31) Cultural destructiveness: The elimination of others people's cultures Cultural incapacity: Belief in the superiority of one's own culture and behavior that disempowers another's culture Cultural blindness: Acting as if the cultural differences one sees do not matter or not recognizing that there are differences among and between cultures Cultural precompetence: Awareness of the limitations one's skills or an organization's practices when interacting with other cultural groups Cultural competence: Interacting with other cultural groups using the five essential elements of cultural proficiency as the standard for individual behavior and school practices: acceptance and respect for difference; ongoing assessment of one's own and the organization's culture; attention to the dynamics of difference; continuous expansion of cultural knowledge and recourses; and the adaptation of one's values and behaviors and the organization's policies and practices Cultural proficiency: Esteeming culture; knowing how to learn about individual and organization culture; interacting effectively in a variety of cultural environments                  The authors' basic premise for the book is that change in schools is a combination of individual and organizational change. What the authors term as "inside-out" approach to change is that we must begin change first with ourselves then with our organizations. What they believe should be a fairly obvious issue is too often invisible to educational leaders. As populations change in schools, or as chronic underachievement is confronted, the authors assert that educators have indicated how "others" need to change (e.g., educators speak of how the disadvantage nature of groups leads to underachievement instead of what educators need to do differently to insure achievement).         Educational leaders fail to assess the growth needed within them in order to respond differently to students. We also fail to take stock of the school relative to the change that is needed in order to insure academic achievement for all students. Hence, the reinforcement of the need for change is "outside" of self. The message that is sent to students and the school community is that "those" children can't learn. As educational leaders, we have yet to become convinced that all children can and do succeed at high levels. Successful schools choose to equip themselves with the necessary skills and the capacity to adapt and change in order to make a difference in the academic lives of their students. The five essential elements of cultural proficiency describe behaviors that must be present within a school and within oneself in order to become culturally proficient educators.         A strength of the book is its presentation of a case story. The scenarios describe the work of the authors in schools and districts over the past ten years. They are factual and illustrate effectively each of the concepts that the authors present in the book. The case story approach allows the reader to systemically examine the culture of a school or district in terms of the behaviors that are exhibited. In order to achieve this mission, the authors offer a value base from which to integrate and build upon the information and skills presented. They call this value base the guiding principles. The guiding principles are based upon the assumption that: Culture is ever present, people are served in varying degrees by the dominant culture, people have group identities and personal identities, diversity within cultures is important and each group has unique cultural needs. With such a base, you can transform a daunting challenge into an opportunity that brings all people together to create a culturally proficient district or school. (p.43)         The guiding principles help the reader to recognize the importance of inviting and encouraging all groups and individuals to share in the responsibility for change.         The second part of the book is designed to raise issues that address the barriers to cultural proficiency. The chapters on overcoming resistance to change and entitlement describe the individual and institutional resistances to change in schools. The authors contend that change is possible and that when it is done successfully, processes like cultural proficiency become part of the cultural fabric of the organization.         The authors believe that the primary barriers to this much- needed change are the presumption of entitlement and unawareness of the need to adapt. They state: People with a presumption of entitlement believe that they have acquired all the personal achievements and societal benefits they have accrued solely on their own merit and character and therefore don't feel a need to release or reorder any societal organizational perquisites they may have. Unawareness of the need to adapt means failing to recognize the need to make personal and school changes in response to the diversity of people with whom one interacts simply because it never occurred that there was a problem. (p. 71)         According to the authors, the journey towards cultural proficiency begins with the awareness of the dynamics of entitlement. This is especially important to educators because most of us who teach in schools are products of the same educational system. The system taught us to transmit the values and cultural norms of the dominant culture to children. Most American teachers were educated by the universities to teach the Hollywood manufactured "Beaver Cleavers" of our society who enter our school system with more highly valued cultural capital. Therefore, most educators do not know what to do or how to proceed with students who enter our schools with cultural capital different from their own.         An example provided by the authors of how we transmit the norms and values of the dominant culture is our use of language. We use language based upon the norms of the dominant culture to describe students of color and poverty in an oppressive manner. Instead of using language that describes the students' strengths, educators use language that describes the discrepancy between the oppressed and entitled groups. In the following table, the authors present some of the more common terms. Table 2 Words Used to Describe Oppressed and Entitled Groups (p. 107) Oppressed Entitled     Inferior     Superior     Culturally Deprived     Privileged     Culturally Disadvantaged     Advantaged     Deficient     Normal     Different     Similar     Diverse     Uniform     Third World     First World     Minority     Majority     Underclass     Upper Class     Poor     Middle Class     Unskilled Workers     Leaders         By using the terms on the left column, the authors stress that such language continues to dehumanize people by objectifying them and blaming the victims for the oppression. As culturally proficient leaders we can assist each other to use language that is additive in nature and affirms the value of our students.         Educational leaders will face a variety of reactions as we introduce the concept of cultural proficiency. We will have to seek ways to address and overcome the barriers that are presented to us. It has been my experience that some people will acknowledge and understand the need for change and others will not. Even those who are eager to change may find it difficult because they encounter resistance. Dominant group members, white, straight men in particular, who are the most entitled members of our society, are challenged by Lindsey et al. to eliminate forms of oppression and create culturally proficient schools. This action would require that dominant group members understand their role in shifting the balance of power in order to end oppression, thereby creating schools where everyone in the school community has access to power. The personal responsibility to take such initiative would require a moral choice by those belonging to the dominant group. Similar to the white male educator described earlier, most of the members of the dominant culture in the United States do not see themselves as having more power and privilege than others in society. Therefore they view the responsibility to change the oppressed system as issues for the oppressed to worry about. This makes the goal of becoming culturally proficient leaders becomes even more difficult to achieve.         Legislative and judicial actions to resolve the imbalance of power have always been sought by the oppressed. The rights of African Americans and women had to be insured through the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Court mandates such as Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, serve as evidence that the struggle for equality requires much effort, sacrifice, and perseverance. When reading the book one is pressed recognize that oppressed groups seeking equality needed to be amended into the constitution in their quest for justice. On the other hand white straight men, as the unstated norm have never been amended into the constitution. Whether consciously or unconsciously they have enjoyed power, as manifested in the form of privilege or entitlement, as part of our history and economic status in this country. Even the most "advantaged" members of society benefit from learning about the privilege that accrues as a result of their entitled positions. It would only serve to make them more responsive and responsible members of society. Once we all understand this and accept the notion that some people receive entitlements based on gender and race and others have impediments placed before them based on gender and race, we can each take responsibility for our moral and ethical pursuit of becoming culturally proficient leaders.         From my experiences working with schools as a coach and facilitator, I have found that the chapters on the five essential elements, overcoming resistance to change, and entitlement, to be the most instructive and helpful as schools and organizations take on the task of becoming culturally proficient. However, there are three apparent weaknesses of the book. One is that not enough qualitative data on the successful use of the cultural proficiency model exist. Another is that the authors suggest no recommendations for institutions of higher education in preparing administrators for this kind of paradigm shifting work. Since the book is based on the assumption that our morals and values will guide us as we do this work, then the values that help administrators to compose their practice ought to be addressed and examined. Qualitative data on the use of language and dialogic forms of communication would be useful in examining the successful transformational practices of the cultural proficiency model in our schools.         Recommendations regarding the courses offered by institutions of higher education for administrative preparation programs would have been helpful. As administrators are prepared to become culturally responsive, they will need skills that help them to examine who they are and skills that will enable them to challenge the practices of privilege in our schools. It is important that administrators entering the field are knowledgeable about the strengths in style, ways of being, and values that diverse administrators bring to their work. If we were truly committed to developing a new form of practice, these perspectives would need to be included with deliberate and positive intent more than ever before in administrative preparation programs. Lastly, by placing oneself on the cultural proficiency continuum suggests that the goal to train leaders so that the "placement" is at the end of the continuum rather than sending the message that leaders need to be in a state of always becoming proficient. With this in mind, one could easily assume that the authors are grounded in a tradition of functionalism. However, the activities at the end of the book and around the case study would tend to position the book to promote reflective practice.         Still, Lindsey, Robbins, and Terrell, are insightful in that they propose no quick fixes. They recognize that the change process is a very complex undertaking. The authors do advocate though that three goals are kept in mind as culturally proficient leaders continue on this journey: Create an environment where people are comfortable and motivated to do their work. Point out aspects of the environment that demand change. Avoid demoralizing the people who will be required to change. (p. 86)         Our student body and our work places are more diverse than ever before. We realize that our abilities to understand and respond to differences in constructive ways are not what they could be. Although the book is a manual for school leaders, its design lends itself to any leader of any organization. It should not be limited only to schools. While the issues that we face in schools today are fundamentally important, cultural proficiency is a perspective from which all members of our society can benefit. This book advances our thinking and propels us to take a positive step into a paradigm of dialogue and new opportunities. About the Reviewer Brenda Campbell Jones is Executive Director, Azusa Pacific University, Menifee Campus. From 1993 until 2000, she was Executive director of the California School Leadership Academy. Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Hess, Frederick M. (ed.) (2008). <cite>When Research Matters: How Scholarship Influences Education Policy</cite>. Reviewed by Mark Oromaner Hess, Frederick M. (ed.) (2008). When Research Matters: How Scholarship Influences Education Policy . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Edu... Chomsky, Noam. (2000). Chomsky on MisEducation, (Edited and introduced by Donaldo Macedo). Reviewed by Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison Chomsky, Noam. (2000). Chomsky on MisEducation , (Edited and introduced by Donaldo Macedo). New York: Rowan and... Ravitch, Diane. (1996) National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide. Reviewed by Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison Ravitch, Diane. (1996) National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide. 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